Dream deferred as queues of liberty become queues of want

Looking back at the 22 years of freedom, as we have this week, has been a joyless exercise, full of regret at ample opportunities squandered and pearls that have been fed to swine.

The verdict is unambiguously harsh. Since the emotional highs of April 1994, memories of which still induce tears, South Africa has been on a downward spiral. Our cherished freedom notwithstanding, we’re a diminished nation with diminishing prospects.

Those given the responsibility to run the country are actively running it down. We’ve entrusted its government to a bunch of corrupt, crooked incompetents.

All social indicators are pointing in the wrong direction. Those snaking queues we often look back at with giddy nostalgia have now become, as someone has pointed out, a metaphor for the unemployment line, the services that have not been delivered, the hospitals that have run out of linen or medicine, the criminals who are running amok with total impunity...

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The list is too long. The dream remains deferred.

The economy is in the doldrums: among the worst performing in Africa — shedding, instead of creating, jobs. Unemployment continues to skyrocket, especially among the youth where upwards of 60% to 70% are loitering in the streets, unemployed and some even unemployable. Many have come to terms with a life of joblessness.

The only thing that’s ballooning is teenage pregnancy. And politically that’s not even on the radar. Nobody wants to touch it. It’s a hot potato. Stats SA released research figures the other day which came as a blow to the solar plexus. Black youths between the ages of 25 and 34, it said, were less skilled than their parents.

This revelation is even more upsetting given the fact that black people, victims of years of discrimination and denial, ipso facto occupied the lowest rung in the social order. Those for whom the struggle was principally waged are still being left behind.

We have to confront an uncomfortable truth: our children, brought up in the midst of all the opportunities and possibilities that freedom offers, are worse off than their parents were under the yoke of apartheid. It is a serious indictment of the ANC government, which for 22 years has had untrammelled power and a conducive environment to at least put a stop to the effects of apartheid, and then start anew. Instead, they’re presiding over the perpetuation of the ghastly consequences of a system that’s supposed to have died 22 years ago.

Hendrik Verwoerd must be having a cheerful chuckle.

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As statistician-general Pali Lehohla puts it: “When parents are better equipped than the children, it’s a sign of regression. It suggests a very difficult future.”

We knew that our education system — with all available resources thrown at it — sucks, but we didn’t know it was this bad. It’s a cocktail of disaster, as Lehohla said.

Freedom, while often hard to define, is not some woolly or nebulous concept. It is a powerful tool in the empowerment of ordinary people. It opens and broadens vistas and opportunities. Which is why it’s such a shame that our education system is cruelly failing our young people, and thus society as a whole. Without education they will lack the skills to take advantage of those opportunities that our freedom makes available.

But there seems to be ignorance, wilful or deliberate, even in the high echelons of government, of what freedom in society — and its consequences —means. State Security Minister David Mahlobo ironically chose this week to stand up in parliament and accuse certain unnamed NGOs of conniving with foreign agents to bring about regime change.

This is reckless and dangerous talk, by somebody with little knowledge or regard for freedom of speech or association in a free society. If he has evidence, then he must charge the suspects. Chances are he doesn’t.

This is, of course, the same individual who ordered the jamming of signals in parliament during the state of the nation address last year so that ordinary South Africans would be shut out from what was being said or done on their behalf.

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The authorities also announced they were investigating charges of treason against Julius Malema, who has threatened to remove the ANC government “through the barrel of a gun”—a classic case of using a knobkerrie to kill a fly.

Th at ’s not to say that Malema, who has been a thorn in the ANC’s flesh and is often given to verbosity, is a pesky insect. The investigation is clearly politically motivated.

But it’s totally unacceptable for an MP to even suggest or allude to the use of violence as a means to solve problems, especially in a society inured to violence such as ours.

Free societies have always grappled with where to draw the line between free speech and hate speech or war talk. We should always err on the side of openness.

Freedom began with so much excitement and optimism, with Nelson Mandela, the icon of our struggle, proudly at the helm. We begin its third decade disheartened, embittered and desperately trying to rid ourselves of a successor of his. In the slogan of yesteryear, the struggle continues.