BRIDGETTE GASA AND BOBBY GODSELL
The preamble to our country’s constitution, adopted in 1996, offers two sets of statements that speak to all 50 million citizens:
“We, the people of South Africa, recognise the injustices of our past; honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in diversity.”
The second statement effectively describes the nation that these 50 million people should construct.
“We therefore adopt this constitution so as to:
l Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights.
l Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law.
l Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person.
l Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.”
Unfortunately this new nation, described above through such hopeful words, has to be built on the foundation of centuries of conquest, conflict and division.
South Africa in 2011 remains a deeply divided society. Both the cause and consequences of the divisions are evident in many areas of our social reality.
Chief among them is the fact that our society continues to show sharp divisions along the lines of race. For example, in 2005, white households earned on average R69 680 per annum; Asians R24 707; coloureds R13 213 and blacks R6 979. Unemployment rates by race in 2010 were 29.8 percent for blacks, 22.3 percent for coloureds, 8.6 percent for Asians and 5.1 percent for whites.
Our country also is deeply stratified in class terms with the top 20 percent of households earning 70 percent of national income, and the bottom 40 percent just 6 percent.
Spatial inequalities and lines of exclusion are equally sharp.
Most blacks in rural areas (whether former homelands or former “white” farming areas) entered the democratic era with no assets of any kind.
Though the new constitution promises both gender and sex equality, and women have made impressive progress in both public representation and the public service, the National Development Indicators in 2009 indicated that women on average still earn less than men and only 18 percent of managers are women. Women also bear the brunt of the HIV/Aids pandemic.
Same-sex civil unions were incorporated into law in 2006.
Gay and lesbian people may adopt children, join the army and are legally protected against discrimination. However, corrective rape and widespread social discrimination are still evident.
Other lines of division and social exclusion are evident with regard to language, economic activity and the ability to make use of the law. The Planning Commission is quite clear that without vigorously addressing these divisions, the vision of our constitution will not be realised.
Central to the plan that the commission is charged to produce by the end of the year are concrete actions to achieve this social cohesion. Agreeing and then implementing these plans will not be easy. It will require a continuing balance between measures that address the divisions of the past, and other measures aimed at entrenching a common loyalty to a shared future – measures aimed to strengthen inclusion.
It will require different groups to be ready to make sacrifices in the short term to ensure stability and prosperity in the longer term.
It will require a robust sense of citizenship for every South African that is as clear about the responsibilities of citizenship as it is about the citizen’s rights. Is such a national effort realistic or possible?
In 1994 South Africans confounded almost every analyst and commentator. We ended centuries of conflict, avoided years or decades more of civil war, and crafted out of the most unpromising history a negotiated transition to a full and real democracy.
We have just completed the fourth local government elections, with millions of South Africans exercising their democratic rights to choose local governments peacefully but with vigorous competition between parties. No-go areas where some parties cannot campaign are a thing of the past.
South Africans have, and will almost certainly continue to have, multiple identities: of race and ethnic origins; of language and religion; of class; and indeed of regional geography. The challenge is to build on top of these identities an overarching South African-ness.
In the documents the Planning Commission made public on June 9, we ask of South African society many questions.
For example, how do we strengthen the conviction already deeply embedded in many South Africans that our country does indeed belong to all who live in it, black and white? That the rights and responsibilities of citizenship should be shared equally irrespective of gender?
That we want a society that includes all and offers hope to each?
That the rich and resourceful have a duty of solidarity towards the poor and excluded? And that democracy indeed means government by, for and of the people?
For example, can class be used instead of race to drive equity?
Should the focus be on social equity rather than the continuing divisions of both class and race?
For example, should the nine languages recognised as “official” continue to be so recognised, and state resources continue to strengthen these, while the widespread use of English as the major medium of social interaction is acknowledged?
For example, can a successful social compact be negotiated to address the most critical issues facing our society – the economic exclusion of millions of young, black South Africans?
We ask these questions, soliciting input from South Africans from all walks of life, because we believe that vision-crafting is a collective endeavour. The commission cannot claim to have the answers to these questions. We are sure there are many other equally significant questions. We will seek out these questions and indeed a range of answers in the public engagement that has now begun.
The work of the commission in its first year of operation has deepened and strengthened the conviction of all 26 commissioners that through the promise of our 1996 constitution, we can build a nation that provides hope and opportunity for all, that unites individual responsibility and social solidarity, and helps us to achieve the national objective of being united in diversity.
There is an acknowledgement that neither the Planning Commission nor the government or any political party can do this mammoth task on its own. But a people determined to realise the promise of their future can.
n Gasa and Godsell are NPC commissioners. For more about NPC, the commissioners, or access to all the five chapters released this week, visit www.npconline.co.za