Cape, Trevor A Manuel, MP
20 July 2007
I would like to thank the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation for the
honour of presenting this lecture. It is an honour accentuated by the
commemoration of the 20th anniversary of Ashley's murder.
Yet, at the risk of appearing insensitive to so great a tragedy, I do not
wish to focus on Ashley himself. All of us know of the remarkable achievements
of his short 20 years. More importantly, it is necessary to both avoid the cult
of the personality and to make assumptions of what Ashley may have lived to be.
We have to focus on the mission. And we must recognise that all of us gathered
here and beyond have all ended in a variety of different places, some of us are
public representatives, some are public servants, others entrepreneurs, some
still remain full-time organisers and yet others have had difficulty in
adjusting to the scale of changes.
Few of us have had a choice about what exactly we would do after that phase
of struggle that so defined our being. None of us committed to the struggle
with any ulterior motive or the vaguest notion of what we would be tasked with
later the only order was, and still is, service to our people.
We should also remember that yet others of our generation have passed on,
whether due to natural or unnatural causes. I want to pay a special tribute to
the immense contribution of Comrade Verlin Swarts who was recently laid to
rest. So, it is necessary that we draw attention to the cause for which Ashley
laid down his life.
A poem by the Mozambican revolutionary, Jorge Rebelo assists in such focus,
it reads:
Come, brother and tell me your life
come, show me the marks of revolt
which the enemy left on your body
Come, say to me 'Here
my hands have been crushed
because they defended
The land which they own'
'Here my body was tortured
because it refused to bend
to invaders'
'Here my mouth was wounded
Because it dared to sing
My people's freedom'
Come brother and tell me your life,
come relate me the dreams of revolt
which you and your fathers and forefathers
dreamed in silence
through shadowless nights made for love
Come tell me these dreams become
war, the birth of heroes, land re-conquered,
mothers who, fearless,
send their sons to fight.
Come, tell me all this, my brother.
And later I will forge simple words
which even the children can understand
words which will enter every house
like the wind
and fall like red hot embers
on our people's souls.
In our land
Bullets are beginning to flower.
Let us just listen to that strong last verse again.
And later I will forge simple words
which even children can understand
words that will enter every house
like the wind and fall like red hot embers
on our people's souls.
In our land
Bullets are beginning to flower.
So, the challenge which arose from Ashley's murder is a challenge to those
who remained. It has, for the past 20 years, been a challenge to ensure that
the bullets that tore into his body in Albermarle Street in Hazendal on 9 July
1987, have flowered. It is a challenge that is continuous and presents itself
to the generation of the 1980s who live on and struggle on.
To understand the flowering of bullets, we must ask the tough questions
about whether the "simple words" were forged, whether these words entered every
house and whether they have burnt into our people's souls like "red hot
embers."
Looking back over these 20 years, we will acknowledge that in the immediate
aftermath of his death, all of the messages were understood and indeed,
multiplied. The repetitive states of emergency failed, mobilisation increased
and the apartheid regime crumbled. But, we will also all agree that there has
been a break in the necessary continuity and I think that we know that the
gains of no revolution have been permanent.
All of us who spent any amount of time with the young Ashley would know of
the extent to which he was inspired by other revolutions of the time obviously
the great romance of the Cuban revolution was an immense inspiration, but so
too was the Nicaraguan revolution in the 1980s and as Africans the three great
revolutions in the former Portuguese colonies were the greatest motivation.
Even today, it is good to quote from Jorge Rebelo, one of our great
inspirations from Frelimo in Mozambique. Similarly, we still draw on the wise
words of Amilcar Cabral who led the Partido Africano da Independencia da Guine
e Cabo (PAIGC) in Guinea-Bissau and the poet and first President of a liberated
Angola, Augustino Neto of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola
(MPLA).
Beyond the words, we need the analysis of each of these countries to hold
them up as a mirror to our own efforts and to understand the unfolding of
history. Much has changed in these past 20 years the Berlin Wall fell two years
after Ashley, seven years after his passing we marked the arrival of democracy
in our own country and over all of this period the world has steadily and
continually integrated.
Let us return to those four immediate revolutions that so inspired
Ashley.
* Nicaragua was over-run by the US-backed Contras, the people were
impoverished even more than they were under the Somoza, regime and just last
year, Daniel Ortega was re-elected as President in what has now become one of
the world's poorest countries. It is probably safe to assume that the resource
constraints he now faces are much, much more difficult than in the heady days
after the 19 July 1979, Sandinista revolution. It remains to be seen whether
the government he leads will be able to improve on the material conditions of
its citizens.
* Angola, where Ashley trained, resolved its battles with the
counter-revolutionary Uniao Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola
(UNITA) some time ago. It remains one of Africa's countries best endowed with
natural resources, yet its citizens live in abject poverty and are denied
access to the most basic of public services. I recently read an article that
described President Jose Eduardo dos Santos as "one of the world's most crooked
and predatory presidents in the world." This is indeed a profound tragedy.
* Mozambique remains poor and from time to time is afflicted by natural
disasters, yet it is held up as a remarkable story of socio-economic recovery.
As economic growth rates improve, so the extent and quality of public services
improves concomitantly.
* Guinea Bissau is increasingly and despairingly being described as a "Narco
State." I read a heart-breaking article recently that described that country,
for which Amilcar Cabral lived and died in the following terms, "there are few
phone lines and almost no electricity. Even the president's office building has
a generator roaring outside. The judicial police headquarters has no working
communications radio, computer or phone. Its four police cars all need repair,
and there is no money for fuel. In theory police officers earn about $100 per
month. But like the nation's judges, bureaucrats and Cabinet Ministers, they
have not been paid since January. Civil servants received only three months pay
last year."
I am afraid that I find all of this rather despairing, these countries and
their revolutions were what put the fire into our bellies and it gave us hope
and determination. Let us return to those beautiful words of Jorge Rebelo and
ask about the words falling 'like red hot embers' on the souls of the citizens
of those countries and ask the tough question, "did the bullets begin to
flower?"
We have to learn from the world because we tend to be extremely hard on
ourselves. If we asked the same questions about South Africa, there is so much
we can learn. Pause and consider the measurable the number of houses
constructed and handed over, the number of homes connected to electricity and
water, the provision of free basic services, the number of clinics and
hospitals built, the number of learners registered in the schooling system, the
number of police personnel we employ, or the number of vehicles at their
disposal on all of these counts we score exceedingly well.
Or we can take a high level view of the amount we spend on public services,
as against what we spend on functions like defence, we are one of the very few
countries in the world that spends more on water provision than we do on
defence and we can feel proud as South Africans. Yet, in each of these areas,
the quality of the services leaves so much to be desired, and in the
consequence the majority of our people, who are entirely dependent on public
services, are denied the joys of the flowers that ought to grow from where the
bullets fell. So we must pause to consider this deficiency.
The objective of our liberation struggle is defined in the Freedom Charter,
which Ashley lived and died for and which our late President OR Tambo described
as follows:
The Freedom Charter contains the fundamental perspective of the vast
majority of the people of South Africa of the kind of liberation that all of us
are fighting for. Hence it is not merely the Freedom Charter of the African
National Congress (ANC) and its allies. Rather it is the Charter of the people
of South Africa for liberation. Because it came from the people, it remains
still a people's Charter, the one basic political statement of our goals to
which all genuinely democratic and patriotic forces of South Africa adhere.
This is not rocket science, the bulk of the Freedom Charter is an expression
of ordinary people about their desire for improvements in the quality of their
lives, it is a coherent statement that binds us to improve on the quantity and
quality of public services. Our Constitution preserves these fruits of struggle
by entrenching access to these services in the Bill of Rights.
Now, in order to deliver these services we need a few basic ingredients
firstly, we need policies and we have these in abundance and all of these
policies can be tested against those described in the Freedom Charter.
Secondly, we need financial resources, as the figures attest, and in a
situation where we currently run a budget surplus, the financial resources are
clearly not a constraint. Thirdly, we need people, as in public servants, in
national and provincial governments we employ 1,3 million public servants and
the municipalities together employ roughly 250 000 workers. That gives us a
total of roughly 1,6 million workers employed in the provision of public
services in fact, this amounts to about 20% of all workers in formal
employment. But we are clearly not getting a return on investment from
this.
One of the key challenges confronting South Africa is human resource
development. It has been a central impetus for struggle across all political
persuasions since the introduction of Bantu Education in 1954. The Freedom
Charter gave full expression through the clause, "The Doors of learning and
Culture shall be opened." We all understand that the only way to reverse the
scourge of unemployment, under-employment and under-development is through
education.
This fact is confirmed by the Transformation Audit of our hosts, The
Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. The 2006 Audit advises, "by 2008/09
South Africa will be spending R 112 billion per year on public provision of
education. This amounts to nearly 20 percent of non-interest expenditure, the
largest spending on a single sector and is over R 26 billion more than the
current fiscal year's allocation. Yet the same report warns that "nearly 80
percent of schools provide education of such poor quality that they constitute
a very significant obstacle to social and economic development."
The report details this fact in numbers by sharing that the matric pass rate
last year, as a percentage of the cohort was 35,9% and the Maths higher grade
pass rate was 2,7%. I submit to you that this is a deep tragedy, compounded by
the fact that school education has been constructed in a model that provides
for the tightest community control through the establishment of School
Governing Bodies.
There are sound developmental reasons why the struggle for education is so
important, the core responsibility of education in a democracy is to equip an
individual to act and think in the existing situation, while providing him or
her with the means to go beyond that situation.
So, let us return to the basic precepts, the delivery of public services is
dependent on three ingredients policy, financial resources and people. We have
established that the first two are in place, what exactly is wrong with the
third? Might it be that all of our articulation, those "simple words that even
children can understand" were so wrong? Might it be that the expressions that
we learnt from the Freedom Charter, that "the doors of learning and culture
would be opened" were so misunderstood? Could it be that we had so convinced
our people that Freedom was to be attained in a single day, beyond which there
would be magic and that that day was 27 April 1994, beyond which no further
action would be required of us? Or might it be that our words failed to "fall
like red hot embers on our people's souls" and that the people most impervious
to the heat of such embers are our educators?
Should we not pause to ask what these abysmal outcomes are about? I have
used the example of education, but I could as easily have referred to the
provision of healthcare or policing or the construction of communities where
once townships existed. But I have used education consciously because it
provides such a tangible link between our collective past and future, where our
present actions will determine the outcomes. I have used education
deliberately, too, because it was so important a site of struggle for the youth
in places like Bonteheuwel where the leadership was provided by the young like
Ashley Kriel.
But I have also used the example of education because we should all
understand that if we fail in this area, we will fail this generation of young
people, who will be unable to find employment. And believe me, with a 2,7% pass
rate in maths on the higher grade, the 97,3% who did not pass maths on the
higher grade will definitely not find either employment or enrolment in
tertiary education, and unemployed young people are a risk to all of the gains
of our revolution, they find the money and power of gangsterism and drugs too
attractive and thus carry the seeds of counter-revolution.
This example also speaks directly to whether the bullets that slayed Ashley
and Anton Fransch, or Christopher Truter, or the victims of the Trojan Horse
Massacre, or the Gugulethu seven or even Robbie Waterwich and Coline Williams
were bits of propelled lead that took lives or whether, as in the words of the
poem, they will flower to produce a different future.
In raising this as sharply as I do, I am not trying to absolve the state.
Rather, I am asking questions about whether we have the quality of partnership
to deliver the developmental outcomes for which so many sacrificed. A
developmental outcome needs at the forefront a developmental state, but it
needs strong partnerships with organised communities. Organised communities
must ask of our people to remain as engaged as we have always been we
demonstrated our power when we had the state as the enemy; but it also needs a
developmental orientation amongst those of our people employed to provide the
public services to make a difference. In short, the relationship between the
state as employer and those in its employ can never merely be defined by the
norms of industrial relations; it has to be focused on the objectives and the
outcomes. And we all know what we strive for.
This discussion is about the challenge of continuity in leadership and
struggle. Any such discussion would be incomplete without a reference to the
struggle for non-racialism. Under apartheid, it was a struggle clearly defined
as against the spatial geography of apartheid; we knew and understood that
victory would be seized time and again by literally 'crossing the railway
line.' In this province, it appears that the struggle for non-racialism, with a
focus on working class solidarity, was best advanced in conditions where the
African National Congress was in opposition.
At a governmental level there has been significant slippage and in general
terms, even in 'person-to-person' context, the struggle seems to have been
abandoned. The impact of this deficiency on the conscious development of a
non-racial, non-sexist democracy is worrisome. Its tardiness speaks to a
discontinuity which might be a measure of a consciousness which has either
never existed, or has existed in the subconscious only.
Perhaps we need to alter our perspective on what the state should and should
not drive perhaps we, in government, ourselves may have been na�ve in believing
that the partnership would be automatic. Perhaps we assumed that it would be
understood by all as a necessary continuum to lock in the gains of our
revolution and we have been let down. Perhaps we ourselves must focus more
strongly on the outcomes we seek and explain continuously that a developmental
state must lead more strongly. Perhaps we should drive a consensus about the
fact that the developmental state is the very antithesis of a namby-pamby
entity with policies and vision but lacking the muscle to drive the changes.
Perhaps government must be more prepared to act against its own when people do
wrongs, such as misappropriating the resources meant for development. So yes,
perhaps we are at fault for not being sufficiently determined. But if we are at
fault, then do not complain when we drive a harder bargain.
Much of what I have said thus far focuses on what we can measure. We should
surely also give much more attention to developing a system of values to ensure
that "the bullets begin to flower." We have to do battle with the notion that
as a consequence of democracy this country has been atomised into 50 million
entities that each must see for themselves. We must guard against the cult of
the personality and this terrible drive to get rich by any means necessary.
President Mbeki warned of this in the Nelson Mandela lecture delivered
exactly a year ago where he said:
Thus everyday and during every waking hour of our time beyond sleep, the
demons embedded in our society, that stalk us at every minute, seem always to
beckon each one of us towards a realisable dream and nightmare. With every
passing second, they advise with rhythmic and hypnotic regularity, get rich!
Get rich! Get rich!
If we succumb to those demons, or if we allow any part of our communities to
succumb, we will never be able to provide a growing and shared prosperity for
all. So rather than merely focusing on what is wrong, we must recommit to what
we can and must do that is correct. I am persuaded by the words of a Brazilian
commentator, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, who writes:
People should be equipped and empowered in such a way that the manners in
which they receive their educational and economic equipment leave the greatest
range of social and economic life open to experimental reshaping. The practical
means of basic human rights rests on an apparent paradox. We make people's
basic rights and capabilities secure against the swings of the market and the
reversals of politics. We do so, however, in the hope that thus equipped,
people may thrive all the more in the midst of innovation and change. We do so,
however, in the hope of making the scope for valuable change broader.
So our responsibility is to give form and life to the relationship between
the state and society, to lock in the gains of our struggle and to correct the
deficiencies that we have inadequately addressed in the past thirteen years.
But, we do so mindful of the fact that our people are disempowered and without
due care the mere existence of a 'friendly state' could potentially further
disempower them.
The empowerment of our people can only come through detailed engagement and
the principled commitment to plough back into the communities that spawned us.
This is no small task; it is the act of bringing the bullets into flower. It
calls for a dedication and commitment no less than that which we demonstrated
during the events that cost Ashley and so many other young people their
lives.
I have an enduring memory of the funeral of Ashley (an event I missed
because I was in prison); it is of the battle between our comrades there, many
of whom are here with us this evening and the police, as represented by Dolf
Odendaal, for control of the ANC flag that draped the coffin. The comrades
secured the flag on that day and we must commit to securing the flag from this
day forward. Our flag is not three bits of cloth sewn together, it is the very
embodiment of what drove our action, it is the source of our courage, it is the
history of ninety-five years of struggle, moreover it is the repository of the
values for which so many laid down their lives. Take it, hoist it, salute it
and cherish it that was the spur to Ashley's action twenty years ago and it
must remain the spur to our actions still. We must in good conscience and in
unison declare "in our land, bullets are beginning to flower."
Thank you.
Issued by: National Treasury
20 July 2007
