Of pain, suffering and horror (IOL)

The 21st day of March is officially Human Rights Day in South Africa. Others call it Sharpeville Day. It is not without reason that many prefer the day to be remembered as Sharpeville Day. The very mention of Sharpeville Day triggers a powerful memory. A reminder. An epic moment in African resistance and human rights history. Of sacrifice, struggle and vision. Of suffering, pain and horror. Of activism, courage and confidence. Of a deep-rooted value for human life and human dignity. Of a struggle for a democratic, non-racial and socialist South Africa.

Sharpeville Day – March 21, 1960, when the apartheid police massacred 69 non-violent and unarmed protesters. About 200 other protesters were injured. The protesters had engaged in peaceful civil disobedience. They marched towards the police station without carrying the dompas, thus inviting arrest. Instead, they were met by a brutal and bloody response from the apartheid police.

The pass laws made it compulsory for Africans to carry the dompas at all times. Failure to produce thedompas when the police demanded it made it a criminal offence. It was meant to demean, denigrate and dehumanise the African. On March 21, 1960, apartheid police massacred 69 non-violent and unarmed protesters in Sharpeville, above. They were later buried in mass graves, top. Picture: Alf Kumalo

Today the words democracy and human rights are often used interchangeably. There is the presumption that all electoral democracies are champions of human rights. The public mind also perceives human rights to be of a “white” and “western” origin.

For instance Jan Smuts, prime minister of a racist South Africa, is said to be a contributor to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A racist and human rights ideologue at the same time? Human rights and democracy both in their ideological conceptualisation and historical origins are contested.

Clearly, these concepts mean different things to different people and nation states. They are rooted in different histories and they have followed different trajectories. You might say c’mon man; democracy is democracy, plain and simple, one person, one vote. South Africa is a democracy and the United States of America is a democracy. You are right in that both of the countries are electoral democracies, but the ideological roots and the trajectory towards democracy in these two countries could not be more different.

How else do we explain that the most venerated contemporary symbol of human rights and the first democratically elected president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, was placed on a terrorist list by a democratically-elected government in the United States and removed from that list in 2008?

The constitution of South Africa was signed by Mandela and Sharpeville was the place chosen to launch the new constitution. You might remember as you cruise down Che Guevara Road in Durban that the person after whom the street was named, the iconic internationalist fighter for social justice who was an inspiration to the anti-apartheid struggle, was assassinated by United States CIA mercenaries.

Why these contradictions?

In the United States, the popular native (Sioux Indian) resistance to colonialism and racial capitalism was defeated. Electoral democracy emerged as a triumph of white settler colonialism and the bloody and brutal annihilation of the native people of America. This experience is captured in the lyricism of Neil Young’s epic song, Pocahontas: They killed us in our teepees and they cut our women down, they might have left some babies crying on the ground.

In South Africa, electoral democracy came into existence with the electoral victory of the people. The preamble of the South African Constitution hints at this historical reality and opens thus: “We, the people of South Africa, recognise the injustices of our past, honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land.”

The native resistance in South Africa and America was characterised by an egalitarian universalism. Inherent in the struggle was a human rights activism that was not only non-racist, but also anti-racist. Not only non-capitalist, but also anti-capitalist. The colonised were prepared to share the land and wealth with their colonisers. They were not prepared to be subjugated by the colonialists, nor were they prepared to surrender the land and natural wealth to the exclusive ownership of colonial capital. They were not prepared to accept capitalism. The revolutionary words of Crazy Horse, the great Sioux martyr, captures the spirit of this resistance to capitalism: “You cannot sell the earth upon which people walk.”

Crazy Horse chose to die for these ideals rather than to surrender to the colonisers. The colonisers thought that they had killed the vision of a democratised economy with the killing of Crazy Horse. The vision is alive today, not in the status quo and government but in the streets of the United States of America. In what is referred to as the “Occupy Movement”, the activism for social justice could not be more alive. They thought they killed the spirit of Crazy Horse, but listen to Young’s band named Crazy Horse and you realise that this is a spirit that never dies.

The right of every human being to share the wealth was also fundamental to the human rights struggle in our country. The preamble of our constitution also hints at this social ownership of wealth, “We, the people of South Africa, believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it”. This human rights universalism is radically different to the human rights exclusivism that emerged in capitalist democracies and the free market system in North America and Europe. Is our current system of governance in sync with our ideological and historical roots?

Eighteen years gone and millions of people languish in misery and poverty. Income inequality in South Africa is the highest in the world. The poorer 50 percent of our people earn 8 percent of the national income while the richer 50 percent earns 92 percent of the national income.

It is clear that the democratisation of the electoral system has not resulted in the democratisation of the economy. We might salivate to the sounds of parliamentary liberation, but must live with the scars of an economic defeat. Electoral democracy might have given some colour to capital but seems to be going in only one direction, rightwards. Particularly after the Reconstruction and Development Programme was abandoned and the State stepped into growth, employment and redistribution strategy (Gear) and down a neo-liberal road. We have a democratisation process that is stunted.

Of course, all of the injustices from our colonial and apartheid history cannot be corrected in 18 years, but this legacy does not excuse a current capitalism that perpetuates these social injustices and a former liberation movement that governs and agreed to compromise on the equal distribution of wealth.

We are where we are in terms of our class divide mainly because of our colonial and apartheid history, but also because of a post-apartheid capitalist system. There are very few who doubt that South Africa has the most progressive constitution on Earth. What is the value of this constitution if its rights cannot be realised and actualised?

A poor child, born to poor parents, is undernourished when she goes to school, comes back to sleep in a brick-less house, without water, without electricity, without sanitation and without hope. What attachment does she have towards the constitution and what meaning does it have for her?

If the constitution is threatened by power-hungry, chauvinist politicians, would she defend it? What value is there to the constitution when justice like other fundamental human rights is commodified according to the market. Those who can’t afford it are denied it.

If we don’t have the courage to change Gear and actualise a human rights and social justice reality that is rooted in our history, where all our people share equally, what will be the lifespan and fate of our constitutional democracy?

The historical pillage, plunder and theft of property have been given legitimacy by the ruling party. This private property absolutism has criminalised and alienated the poor from the constitution. The ruling party also agreed to pay the atrocious debt to capitalists who did business with the apartheid regime. 

If we insist on calling it Human Rights Day, let us still remember Sharpeville, the sacrifice of the great ones who fell on that bloody day and all the others who sacrificed in the struggle. More importantly, let us remember what it is that they sacrificed for. We have an inspirational history of resistance, of principled leaders who could not be compromised, bought or sold. Mangaliso Sobukwe, Chris Hani, Steve Biko, Griffiths Mxenge, Bram Fischer, Strini Moodley… a never-ending list.

But let us also remember those who sacrificed and perished. The ones who like the Sharpeville 69 are not with us in the flesh, but whose spirit, vision and sacrifice should inspire us to actualise social justice and Africanise, Azanianise our conceptualisation of democracy and human rights.

lqbal Suleman is an attorney at Lawyers for Human Rights.