'SA must reset its moral compass': Archbishop Thabo Makgoba on UDF's 40th anniversary

South Africans need to be brutally honest with one another about the country’s failings and work hard to reset the nation's moral compass, Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba said on Sunday.

Speaking on the 40th anniversary celebration of the founding of the United Democratic Front held in Johannesburg, Makgoba said against the background of all that has gone so horribly wrong, and despite many bold initiatives, South Africans need to work out “here and now, what is good”.

“We need to mobilise our energy, our courage, our imagination, our skills and our political will, and channel them into a mighty stream, just as we did against the apartheid state, 40 years ago.

“I don't have to tell you that we are mired in the mud of corruption. We are a country marred by the most glaring inequality in the world. Services we built for our people have collapsed in some areas, and too many public servants have forgotten they are servants of the public. We need to marshal all that we are into hearing and answering the cries of the poor, completing half-finished tasks and responding to the new obstacles that have emerged. 

“We need to ask again what is good for the women and children who are battered daily, for the poor who can only dream of going to bed with a full stomach, for the unemployed who stand along the streets of our cities and the rural poor whom the formal economy does not reach. We need to ask again what is good for those who are deprived by the seemingly unending spiral of corruption that robs our people of the hard-won victories of our struggle,” he added.

Makgoba said every act of corruption was an act of theft from the poor.

“We need to ask urgently what is good for the whistle-blowers who are so vulnerable, exposed and in real danger as they seek to put an end to acts of wanton corruption. We need to ask what is good for the foreigner who lives with insecurity as the dark clouds of xenophobia continue to hang low over those look for hope in South Africa.

“The struggle is not over; we cannot sit back simply to revel in past victories. Too much remains to be changed. I know that for myself I will only be able to hold my identity as a child of the UDF with pride, if in the here and now we resolve to end the blight that still mars the landscape of our country. 

“Yes, we won our rights, but like Moses and the children of Israel, we've escaped the bondage of Egypt only to go astray, wandering in the wilderness. Now, are we, like them, condemned to wander in the wilderness for 40 years?” 

Makgoba renewed his call to the churches.

“We need a new struggle, a struggle to replace the old struggle against apartheid with a new struggle to regain our moral compass, a struggle to end economic inequity, a struggle to bring about equality of opportunity.

“And I want to address the young people of this country. You are correct when you tell us that the promises of democracy are not being realised. We can understand your disillusionment, we understand why you are opting out of politics and public life. But that is not the answer to our crisis. That will not secure you and your children's future. No, the answer to our crisis is for you to roll up your sleeves and make the new struggle for a new generation,” he said. 

He said the country needed a “peaceful revolution in which young people stand up, reject corruption and self-dealing, and help get involved in the political process”.

“Please, young people, for the sake of our country's and your futures, dig deep into the radical roots of the old struggle against apartheid, and dare to dream and work for a country in which there is justice, equity and equality of opportunity. 

“Organise among yourselves, and those of you who are old enough, register with the Electoral Commission, then campaign and vote in next year's elections. We need and the older cadres among us need to use our resources to help young people in this struggle. In faith communities, religious leaders need to make our houses of worship 'voting sanctuaries', where young people can receive guidance on how to register. 

“We can host workshops on voter education and provide instruction on our electoral system. Civil society needs to partner with business to raise funds for a historic effort to revitalise our democracy and get us moving again, so that we can realise the promises of our constitution,” Makgoba said.

Before he joined the struggle 40 years ago, Makgoba was a relatively quiet, science student who enjoyed tennis, squash and fun at varsity.

“Then I joined my fellow Wits students and came from Johannesburg on a bus to Cape Town, where at the Rocklands Civic Centre in Mitchells Plain, the formation of the UDF was not only about our political freedom, but became a critical part of my own conscientisation. Every kilometre in that bus was fraught with tension, the possibility of arrest, of being turned back and becoming subject to the range of persecutory tricks that the government of the day used to attempt to smother the flames of freedom which burned in our hearts,” he said.

He told President Cyril Ramaphosa and attendees at Sunday’s celebrations, he was a child of the UDF and “part of its undeniable, unquenchable legacy, part of the generation in whom the fires of hope burnt steadily and who took responsibility to pass it on, undimmed, to others”.

“My own predecessor, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, used to repeat in those conflicted times: 'Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness.'

"So if we are now able to see further, if we are able to vote in free elections, if we are able to walk our streets without a 'dompas' then it is because, for generations, others, and indeed the UDF, have passed on those lamps of hope. 

“Forty years later, we can say we have those rights which we and Allan Boesak were demanding. But now we have to ask: what have we done with them?”