The negotiated settlement between the
apartheid government and the liberation movement was SA’s attempt at redress
for the injustices of the past. Opposition to apartheid included various forms
of resistance, some legal and others illegal, and all manner of protest
movements. Defiance campaigns against the pass laws, the group areas act,
migrant labour and influx control are examples of resistance. Protests took the
form of marching and picketing against detention without trial, torture in
prisons, the separate amenities act, and so on. The struggle against apartheid
also entailed bombings of security infrastructure, soft targets like
restaurants, churches and the buildings of political organisations. While much
of this was illegal, acts of resistance were considered legitimate given the illegitimacy
of white minority domination.
The negotiated settlement at CODESA
demanded a post-apartheid Constitutional dispensation that would allow basic
political rights such as the right to vote and campaign for the party of your
choice and participate in the activities of one’s political party. The right to assembly, demonstration,
picket and petition – the right, peacefully
and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and to present
petitions – in a legitimate state, of course, is different to protest and
resistance in an illegitimate state.
Within the current regime there are all
kinds of social movements whose modus operandi are to march and protest around
working class issues that affect them most deeply. They have used court
actions, have mounted constitutional challenges, and have marched to make their
voices heard and demand transformation. These are the Landless People’s
Movement, the Treatment Action Campaign, the Anti-Privatization Movement, and
others. The Trade Union Movement has also used protests and marches to make
their voices heard around the labour laws, wage disputes, pay increases, etc. COSATU,
however, has used many an illegal form of protest to upstage its Alliance
partner in games of political brinkmanship instead of dealing with the rights
of the unemployed and poverty. As a labour aristocracy, our trade union
movement often organises protests that have nothing to do with worker issues
but they use protests to extract various concessions and avoid accountability
(as in the case of teachers), wage increases above the inflation rate, shorter
work days, and so on.
Year in and year out, the masses vote for
the ANC but when they do not get what they want, they trash the streets, smash
windows, violate the rights of ordinary citizens, and use illegal means to
achieve their goals regardless of the rights of others. Seventeen years into
our democracy, we have a well-established protest culture but not an equally
well-established democratic culture. Nurtured on a diet of rights, demands, and
entitlements, the ANC government has failed to instil a culture of
responsibility and obligations.
The majority of black South Africans refuses
to use their vote to demonstrate their unhappiness with the government yet will
use illegal means of protest to make their voices heard. South Africans have
yet to learn that governments should be loyal to them and not the other way
around. Unfortunately, liberation movements demand loyalty in perpetuity from
those whom they claim to have liberated. Sadly, the “liberated” remains
hoodwinked and we fail to learn lessons from post-independence Zimbabwe, Kenya,
Malawi, Zambia, Ethiopia, and Somalia!
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