Many inequalities remain in place
APARTHEID was a heinous system. No one can deny or dispute the fact.
Any system that is by law based on discrimination against a person is inhumane. Not only did apartheid discriminate against blacks, but it also imprisoned, tortured and in the extreme executed those who challenged the apartheid state.
Although there are sporadic instances of such abuse of state power (the Andries Tatane killing, Marikana, forced evictions, etc), we still cannot claim that it is at the same intensity as was under apartheid.
The second main crime of apartheid was the appalling living conditions under which the majority of South Africans were forced to live.
Places like Soweto on Sea, Kleinskool, Veeplaas, Helenvale, Blikkiesdorp, Kabah, old Salt Lake, Walmer Township and many more bear testimony to these appalling conditions that our people were subjected to. Nowhere in the metro is there one white suburb that comes close to any one of these areas.
The third dehumanising factor of apartheid was the discrimination in the work place. Not only were black people forced into the lowest paid jobs, but they were also treated as sub-humans and not equal to their white co-workers.
The fourth and not by far the least was the education system. In our province alone we had six different education systems (old Transkei, Ciskei, Bantu education for those who lived in the republic, Cape administration for whites, Cape administration for coloureds and whatever it was called for Indians).
Not only was education extremely skewed in favour of the white child, but so were the institutions. Let’s take tertiary education for an example – the University of Port Elizabeth only allowed white students so Afrikaans speaking blacks had to travel to the University of the Western Cape (UWC), South African Indians to Westville in Durban and Xhosa speaking South Africans to one or the other homeland institution.
The fifth and last factor I want to draw upon is the question of gender discrimination. Not only did apartheid discriminate against non-white people, but it steadfastly believed that men and women were not equal.
Hence women of all races were discriminated against, but it goes without saying that black women faced the brunt of such discrimination. They were discriminated against because of their race, their gender and their status in society.
The list of divide and rule during apartheid is endless. It will therefore be completely shortsighted for any South African to believe that all these ills of our past have disappeared after 18 years of democracy.
What then is the situation today? Bad town planning is the order of today: the poor are still thrown at the far end of the city centre, black residential areas still lack a great deal of social infrastructure (libraries, swimming pools, proper bus shelters, sports facilities, play parks, proper street lighting, tarred roads, etc).
Where we do build these facilities, we don’t maintain them and they fall into disrepair in no time. Still today we don’t have one major park in the townships that can compete with St George’s or Victoria Park.
Customer service has ground to a halt, notwithstanding the much published Batho Pele principles. This cut across all departments in government.
Redress is almost unheard of these days. The unfortunate part is that the private sector is as guilty of poor service provision.
The disparity of our education system continues to be a crisis. Here one must be fair and state that although the state must take full responsibility for our poor state of affairs in education, the trade unions and Sadtu in particular must carry part of the blame, especially in our province.
The quality and access to healthcare in our province leave much to be desired. With winter on our doorstep the same people of last year and the years before still have no decent shelter or electricity to keep them warm.
“There shall be work security and comfort.” This noble clause of the Freedom Charter is clearly forgotten. The majority of black people are still without work, while all South Africans live in fear.
Indeed we have no racial law on our statute books today. One wonders therefore why it is still the same people who suffered so much under apartheid who continue to feel the burden of oppression and exploitation today.
The ills of apartheid will still be with us for many generations (as the holocaust is for the Germans). Hence we cannot afford as a nation the luxury of pointing fingers.
Apartheid did not work, so let us make our democracy work, for all its children.