Celebrating 26 of years of freedom in lockdown

As South Africans celebrate their 26th Freedom Day apart and under conditions of a lockdown due to the coronavirus that had engulfed the globe, political parties differ on whether there is a reason to celebrate amid virus fears and increased poverty.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his televised virtual Freedom Day address from Pretoria, said the devastating legacy of the past ran so deep that at times as government they had been found wanting in addressing the suffering it had subjected the people to.

“Poverty and inequality continues to stalk our land. A child born to parents of means has a comfortable home, is fed and sheltered, receives a good education and has good prospects for a prosperous life. For a poor child, every day of life can be a struggle for shelter, for food and for opportunity. In this final decade of the National Development Plan, we must change the pace of social and economic transformation.

“Some people have been able to endure the coronavirus lockdown in a comfortable home with a fully stocked fridge, with private medical care and online learning for their children. For millions of others, this has been a month of misery, of breadwinners not working, of families struggling to survive and of children going to bed and waking up hungry,” Ramaphosa said.

ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule urged South Africans to be proud of the significant successes of the last 26 years. He said a new society based on the values of justice, freedom, and democracy had emerged out of the unjust and inhuman society of the past.

“Our people were liberated from the evil policies that sought to condemn them to landlessness and poverty. We have a collective duty never to take our freedom for granted,” Magashule said.

“We may be separated from one another, but we are united in our fight against Covid-19.”

But South African Federation of Trade Union’s general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi had a different view. He said 26 years after the people queued up to vote in the first democratic elections in 1994, there were still long queues of starving people desperate for food and water.

He said the majority of South Africans had no reason to celebrate “freedom” on this day.

“They have no freedom from poverty, no freedom from hunger, no freedom from unemployment, racism, patriarchy and crime. This is not the future that we voted for in 1994! We cannot celebrate freedom in the midst of poverty and hunger,” Vavi said.

He said people were now stuck in even longer virtual queues waiting for overdue UIF pay-outs and the new “coronavirus grants” promised by the government, and many workers have been summarily dismissed and left without income. Many on the streets struggled to get food, while police and soldiers harassed residents, and spaza shop owners were forced to close by authorities.

DA interim leader John Steenhuisen used Freedom Day to call for greater opening of the economy.

“The DA supports a much wider opening of the economy. Firstly, there is no evidence to say why this should not happen. There has been little to no transparency around the data or analysis being used to guide government’s response. Secondly, a wider opening can still achieve the same level of public safety if the government changes its approach from one based on force to one based on trust,” he said.

Steenhuisen said the move to Level 4 of the lockdown was meant to allow for a greater level of economic activity, but there is far too little to distinguish Level 4 from Level 5, and thus Level 4 inadequately balances the looming economic crisis.

The DA yesterday submitted its inputs to Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and Trade and Industry Minister Ebrahim Patel as its comments around the Draft Framework for Sectors – Level 4. One of the two documents was a response to Level 4 proposals and the other to the ministers’ proposal for a curfew.

IFP president Velenkosini Hlabisa, who acknowledged all the gains of post-apartheid freedom, said his party believed that political freedom must be met with a fight for real social and economic justice.

“The growth and the transformation of our economy is essential in completing the struggle that was won by the generation before us for our political freedom and democracy,” Hlabisa said.

He lambasted the existing disparities in income across racial and gender divides.

– ericn@citizen.co.za

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