South Africa, use freedom now or lose freedom tomorrow

April 27 is Freedom Day in South Africa. In writing this week’s editorial it is tempting to lament the unfreedom tens of millions of people in South Africa still experience: freedom from hunger, freedom from disease, freedom from femicide, freedom from ignorance, freedom from democide. 

The list goes on.

We can – with good reason – blame the government, the business elite and corruption.  

However, that dread refrain is now all too familiar.

Instead, on this freedom day we urge people in South Africa to think about the meaning of freedom; the grave threats to freedom in the world; and how to use the freedoms we still have most effectively to advance the constitutional vision of socioeconomic freedom, equality and social justice.

Freedom is not a passive state, it’s an active state; freedom is not a privilege, it’s an obligation; freedom is not an end but a means to an end. Freedom is not just something we demand only of the government, but also something we must actively create within and around ourselves. 

Freedom is not an ornament, but a set of tools to go about building a fairer, safer and sustainable society. 

Undoubtedly, South African democracy and constitutionalism are taking strain. We can see the outlines of an alternative gangster state that exists in KwaZulu-Natal. Given space, the RET faction and others inside and outside the ANC would metastasise this cancer onto the country as a whole.

The fact that they can’t is because, at this moment, we still have many of the freedoms in our Bill of Rights: most of us have freedom of speech and association, freedom of the press and other media, the rights to assembly, demonstration, picket and petition. The right to campaign for a political party or cause, to vote. 

We have access to the courts and an independent judiciary. 

We have Chapter 9 institutions like the South African Human Rights Commission, the Auditor-General and the Office of the Public Protector, when that office is in honest hands.

None of these freedoms is without serious challenges. Ask Abahlali baseMjondolo if they have freedom to campaign for a cause in the shacklands of eThekwini, and they will tell you about their 20 murdered leaders. 

Our argument is not that we should be “grateful” for these freedoms and shut up; they do not balance out the socioeconomic freedoms and the right to human dignity that tens of millions are still denied. 

But if we don’t use the freedoms we have now there is a danger that in the years ahead we will lose them.

The only way to protect these freedoms is by exploiting them to the full, by persuading people of their value, and demonstrating their power by working together on campaigns for other freedoms that most of us agree are necessary: for access to sufficient food, basic education, early childhood development, and to mitigate the climate crisis.

Last call for democracy