Freedom Day: Bittersweet reminder of past struggles, present woes

Every year, on the anniversary of the first democratic election in South Africa, the pros side of the assessment ledger gets shorter and the cons one longer.

Next year, it will be three decades since freedom dawned in 1994.

Freedom Day, 30 years later

And that leaves the ANC just a year to fix the disasters for which it has been responsible so that a proper Freedom Day celebration may be held.

That’s looking increasingly unlikely.

• Our economy is struggling because of ruinous load shedding.
• Unemployment has soared to historically high levels, also partly due to the electricity crisis.
• Crime is spiralling.
• Service delivery is collapsing in many towns and cities.
• People are angry
• The racism Nelson Mandela hoped would one day be banished from our society seems stronger than ever.

Many people yesterday would have turned to booze to ease their pain and regarded Freedom Day merely as a respite from misery.

The road ahead

Yet, none of that is reason to forget, or ignore, where this country came from.

Apartheid was racist. It was a crime against humanity. It destroyed the lives of countless families. People died for the freedom we have now.

We must never let the woes of the present obscure the evils of the past.