In 1959, as the FM went to print for the first time, SA stood on the brink of one of the most calamitous events in its history. Within months, a demonstration against pass laws in Sharpeville, a township in the Vaal Triangle, turned violent, the police opened fire on the crowd, killing 69 people and injuring 180 others. It led to a brutal clampdown on all opposition to apartheid. In many ways, Sharpeville was the catalyst that opened the gates to the next three decades of repression and turmoil.
Today, the country stands once again on the threshold of a new era. Now, I’m confident that we’ll never return to the darkness of the past. But the actions we take now will determine whether this new era is one of gradual decline, or a bright new dawn in which the promise of our 1994 democratic breakthrough is realised.
Our destiny, I am convinced, is the latter path. The resilience and determination of South Africans, which brought down the apartheid state and gave birth to our democracy, are undiminished. There have been plenty of missteps in the past decade, and there are still challenges today, which has slowed the emergence of confidence. Critically, however, this has not extinguished the capacity of our people to act together in pursuit of a shared prosperous future.
I feel it’s true to say that every South African seeks a stable, prosperous and more equal society. They want an end to poverty, unemployment, crime and violence. They want to live in vibrant cities teeming with commerce and industry, in neighbourhoods that reflect the diversity of our people, on farms and smallholdings that produce enough to make livelihoods sustainable. They want wages that can sustain their families.
But there is a general appreciation across the divides of race, class and politics that such a society will not be built without a significant change in our national mindset, to fundamentally transform SA’s social and economic fabric. We need to transfer resources, skills and capabilities to those disadvantaged by our past.
And so the question that begs an answer is: why, when there is such broad consensus on what we seek, have we not achieved the SA of our dreams?
Part of the answer lies in the grave depth of the deprivation that stretches back three centuries. Deprived of land and assets through successive waves of dispossession, black South Africans were consigned to lives of poverty and misery.
It was an injustice made even worse by the deliberate denial of decent education to generations. The effects of these acts of impoverishment are felt to this day — defining the lived experience of millions of South Africans, and continuing to constrain SA’s development.
While democracy in 1994 brought a definitive end to apartheid, it did not fundamentally change the distribution of economic power, bequeathed by colonialism and apartheid. Instead, democracy provided the conditions in which we could set about progressively transforming our society.
Now it is fair to say we have seized the opportunity. After 25 years, we have made real progress in reducing poverty and broadening social protection for the poor. In 1994, for example, only 51% of children aged 7-15 were enrolled in school; by 2018, that was 99%. Equally, access to primary health-care services, measured in visits per year, increased from 67-million visits in 1998, to 128-million by March last year. By 2018, there were 17.8-million grant recipients, compared with 2.4-million in 1996.
At the same time, we’ve raised the standard of living of our citizens, and broadened participation of black South Africans in the economy. We have a robust political system, an active parliament, strong institutions, an independent judiciary, a vibrant civil society, independent media and a progressive constitution.
But we haven’t moved as far, or as fast, as we should have. Perhaps this is partly because expectations ran ahead of what was possible. Either way, we know that mistakes have been made and good work has been undermined by corruption, neglect and incompetence. (In the past decade, in particular, state capture weakened institutions and eroded public confidence.)
The truth is that the achievements of the past 25 years are mixed. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our efforts to expand access to electricity to all our people.
In 1994, only 34% of South Africans had access to electricity. Today, 80% of homes have electricity. Yet SA’s energy sector is in crisis. Poor policy decisions, mismanagement, widespread corruption and incompetence mean that today Eskom struggles to produce enough power to meet demand. It is deep in debt to the tune of R450bn, unable to recover its costs and beset by several operational problems. Eskom, clearly, poses a grave threat to the entire economy.
It’s also true that the electricity crisis comes at a time when the recovery of our economy is extremely fragile. While the economy is creating new jobs, it is not doing so on a scale that makes much difference.
The challenge for us is: how do we respond to this?
In the face of stagnant growth, deepening unemployment and load-shedding, we have a choice: we can despair or we can act. We can walk away from the "Rainbow Nation" project or we can resolve to work together to revive it.
We can discard the Rainbow Nation idea as a vague statement of racial harmony, or we can harness its transformative power to build a country in which all are equal in their diversity — and equal not merely in constitutional rights, but equal too in access to land, work, housing, education, health care and opportunities.
Of course, we now know that the task of building such a country is arduous. It requires nothing less than the energy of everyone. It requires a common vision and strong partnerships.
But I’d like to believe we’re getting there.
All the consultative and compact-building initiatives we have embarked on are aimed at addressing precisely the challenges I’ve mentioned here. For example, there has been progress in creating jobs since the presidential jobs summit last year, which brought together government, business, labour and community representatives.
But on other measures agreed at the jobs summit, progress has been rather slow. So, to remedy this, the leaders of these groups now meet once a month with me and Deputy President David Mabuza to isolate where the blockages are, and figure out how to remove them.
In recent weeks we finalised the Integrated Resource Plan, which provides a clear roadmap for our energy sector.
This, alongside a set of far-reaching measures to set Eskom on a path to sustainability, and a process to release high-demand broadband spectrum, is aimed at unshackling our potential.
As a government, we’ve heard the concerns raised by investors, businesspeople and unions about the binding constraints to greater growth, and we’ve sought to respond to them. Making it easier to do business is obviously a paramount concern, so we’re reducing the waiting time for the issuing of water-use licences and introducing e-visas.
Arguably, the greatest challenge we have today in SA is the number of young people who don’t have jobs. By May, nearly four in every 10 young people (those aged between 15 and 34 years old) didn’t have a job. It’s clear that SA’s younger generation shoulders the biggest unemployment burden.
To address this, we need close collaboration across public entities, companies, civil society and unions. Over the past few months, we have been developing an integrated strategy to provide several pathways for young people into work. It’s a strategy driven from a dedicated project management office in the presidency, drawing on the expertise of many people.
Taken all together, we’re developing the elements needed for an economic recovery and a broader social revival. But this is only possible thanks to the fact that we’re collaborating with different constituencies, all of whom have different interests but who are all bound together by a desire for a better future. This is how we revive the idea of a Rainbow Nation — not simply through proclamation, but through united action towards a common goal.
I’ve written a lot here about fixing the economy and reducing poverty, but this is only part of the answer. To reach where we want to be as a country, we also have to build a more inclusive sense of nationhood. We must confront all forms of racism, sexism and intolerance, and actively work to remove the divisions of class, colour and culture that still divide our society.
In the past 60 years that the FM has been landing on our shelves every week, we’ve seen the remarkable capacity of South Africans to overcome the most intractable of problems. We’ve come this far together, and only together can we go forward.
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