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Exactly what ‘the people shall govern’ means changes as conditions change (Part Three)

Exactly what ‘the people shall govern’ means changes as conditions change (Part Three)
Raymond Suttner
By Raymond Suttner
16 Jan 2025
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The Freedom Charter, with the words ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it’, is an anti-xenophobic text, and it is key, when we have a national dialogue, that we try to give it a meaning that is going to draw people together, not separate them into hostile camps.

Part Three of a three-part series.


Read Part One here and Part Two here.


I wrote an article in August last year that was titled “The national dialogue is neither national nor a dialogue”. Now that may be the case for a particular moment in time, and I was writing about what had been done and what appeared to be planned at that particular moment in time, which continues into the present.

This national dialogue ought not to be written off simply because that is how it has been “envisaged” by some government figures up till now.  In any genuine dialogue, that is an engagement, many speak and are heard, and some who have spoken are also there to listen to others raising quite different issues or ideas based on their distinct experiences. 

If a dialogue becomes a dialogue in fact and not merely in name, it acquires certain qualities, which are dynamic, which are ongoing, which do not stop at a particular fixed time. That cannot be determined before the dialogue has even started, and whose ending cannot be stipulated before it has started.

If that does not happen and we are in fact talking about a process that is ongoing, one cannot write off the importance of a national dialogue. Then it ought to be supported and its work assisted.

In the year 2025, any genuine dialogue can only begin, and it cannot be taken as having reached anything like a national character, if it is purely at the level of officials, government and trade union leaders, political parties and so on.

The reach of a national dialogue must geographically encompass the whole of the country. And to do that is quite intimidating, because of the scale of organisation required, which is not to say it cannot be done. 

Our response ought to encourage those who are faltering to make this national dialogue truly national and an actual dialogue, which means that it has to take time to develop mechanisms for reaching the outermost parts of the country and uncover the suffering that the most marginalised people are experiencing more than 30 years after the inauguration of democracy.

Consequently, the way I’m advancing the notion of a national dialogue is similar to how we have to understand notions like democracy, like the national and dialogue. These are words that do not have a fixed content, even if it spells out that “the people shall govern”. 

Exactly what “the people shall govern” means changes over time and as conditions change.

No words have a final meaning, no matter where they are inscribed and in whose name. They are and must be contested to have credibility and to meet new conditions. They change also to acquire a meaning that is most conducive to addressing the multiple problems we face today.

One of the most famous US jurists, Judge Benjamin Cardozo, once said — in a better time than today — that the “great generalities of the Constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age”.

Now, in the same way, a much more modest endeavour like the current national dialogue could become something more significant if we were to understand it to be words whose meanings may not all be known in advance, and can be developed over time and need not be static.

The national dialogue in the 70th year of the Freedom Charter


The problems that I’ve referred to with regard to the national dialogue are also found in the way in which the Freedom Charter is commemorated or has been commemorated up till now.

The Freedom Charter is a very important document, but its meanings are not final. No one can make them final. They were never made or intended to be the final word on any matter.

The word freedom itself has many contestations over its meaning, and some leading thinkers have said it cannot be made final. This is partly because — drawing on an African-American spiritual — freedom is a “constant struggle”. (This is also the title of a book by Angela Davis).

A number of the clauses of the Freedom Charter were very important contributions to freedom at the time, but the meanings/contributions that these clauses represent today need not be identical to that of 70 years ago. It would be strange if it were, but alas, it is a tendency in South Africa to treat the Freedom Charter as something that cannot be altered or whose interpretation is given.

I nearly said that it is treated as akin to a biblical text, but our late comrade, Father Albert Nolan, taught that a biblical text cannot have one meaning and must change over time. It is not the text, but the spirit behind the words that must evoke our attention.

So, it is incorrect to associate static meanings with religious texts, whether it is the Qur’an, the Torah, The Hindu Vedas or any other important religious texts. 

Now the Freedom Charter is not a religious text, although it has some of the qualities that many religions commend to us. For example, in just about every religion, there’s a reference to “welcoming the stranger”.

In the same way, the earliest words of the Freedom Charter — and indeed the Constitution — are that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white. Now, at the time that the Freedom Charter was conceived, most people do not appear to have seen xenophobia as a problem (and it may not have been. I do not know).

But within the Freedom Charter, just as people find similar inspiration from aspects of religious texts, there is a message of universality. South Africa belongs to all who live in it is an incipient anti-xenophobic text, and it’s very important when we remember the Freedom Charter in this year, just as if/when we have a national dialogue that we try to be true to the spirit, not necessarily every letter, of the Freedom Charter, that we try to give it a meaning that is going to draw people together, not separate them into hostile camps.

The national dialogue and the ethical dimensions


A range of motivations have brought people into the call for and debate over the character of a national dialogue.

We need to look back to our political history, and it’s not difficult to find an ethical dimension being a prominent reason why people joined the Struggle for freedom, or in earlier periods, why people joined other movements in support of a range of causes.

I’m not suggesting that every ethical dimension (or cause) is justifiable, but it is important to recognise that there is an ethical dimension, and to ask ourselves what role it is playing and whether it can be sustained without proper attention to this.

At this very moment, people are dying in Stilfontein because the state has put barriers in the way of their being rescued from a mine. It is said that more than 100 have died, some of them of starvation, and the number of dead may be far more.

Over the weekend, a court decision compelled the state to take steps to rescue those who remained below the surface.

My sense is that Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo would not have needed the prodding of a court decision to take this action.

And we have to ask ourselves, how it can be that the state, not just the ANC, but the state as a whole, has deteriorated to such a point ethically that it is prepared to be callously indifferent to the plight of those in Stilfontein.

And there are a number of other situations to point to. I’ve referred to the 250,000 people who are to be dismissed as community workers, who had a job somewhere near what the bread line is and where our social duty ought to have been to ensure that they were brought into more secure circumstances.

All over the country, we have situations where people are dying or living in situations close to death. We need to draw this into our consideration of the future of a national dialogue, if it does have a future, and ensure that that future includes an ethical dimension that links with the references that are made to universality — the need for freedom to be the right of every single human being in this country. DM

This article first appeared on Creamer Media’s website polity.org.za

Raymond Suttner is an emeritus professor at Unisa, who spent more than 11 years as a political prisoner. He was in the leadership of the UDF, ANC and SACP, but broke away at the time of the Jacob Zuma rape trial.

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