Rebuilding SA requires all hands on deck, says Mufamadi

South Africans dare not leave the democratic project to politicians to fulfil, says Professor Sydney Mufamadi.

The former Cabinet minister turned academic and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s national security advisor was speaking at this year’s Freedom Seder, the annual pre-Passover dinner to the broader South African community hosted by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) on Tuesday evening.

There was a huge disconnect between the concept of democracy that had been envisaged by the drafters of the constitution and enshrined in it and that which was being practised in the streets, Mufamadi said.

“We must understand the profound ramifications of the unravelling of the democracy project for South Africa. A reset is urgently necessary, it cannot be the sole preserve of the political class,” he said.

“Rebuilding this country is a permanent work-in-progress. It requires all hands on deck.”

Referring to the current Russian-Ukraine crisis, Mufamadi said claims of the growing gulf between US President Joe Biden and President Cyril Ramaphosa were overstated.

Mufamadi recalled the work done by former president Thabo Mbeki’s administration – in which he served as a Cabinet minister – with then US president George W Bush’s administration in search of solutions for Iraq, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“We had disagreements, but we always stayed focused on the goal of finding solutions together. We didn’t always find [those] solutions together, indeed SA’s position on Iraq was vindicated by posterity,” Mufamadi said.

SA had a very real role to play in bringing about an end to the war in eastern Europe.

“The gulf between our present positions [between the US and SA] is closing. There is agreement that a negotiated settlement ultimately has to be found.”

Whether at home or on the international stage, there had to be room for discordant views in a debate, otherwise it couldn’t be termed a debate if there was only one voice, he said.

“We can’t have a world order built on exclusion, but rather it must be on the basis of human civilisation built on the melange of human experience.”

ALSO READ: Older generation must teach young people such as Malema about the past – Mufamadi

The Freedom Seder was also the community launch of Mensches in the Trenches, a collection of previously untold stories of Jewish activists in the struggle against apartheid, written by acclaimed journalist and author Jonathan Ancer.

“Many of my generation of activists didn’t have the opportunity to meet these people,” Ancer said.

He, however, had met many.

“I had the honour of being in the trenches with them. Their contribution was worthy of being memorialised…”

The book reminded him that Jewish experiences of anti-Semitism “was not dissimilar from that suffered by black South Africans under apartheid. Their forebears lived in the ghettos of Europe, mine in the ghettos of SA or on native reserves called homelands”.

– news@citizen.co.za