Charter is a reminder of the gulf between leaders and people

In SA, it has become something of a national tradition for citizens to take to the streets to register grievances against authority in what we’ve come to call service delivery protests.

This week it was the turn of Johannesburg mayor Mpho Phalatse to receive a petition from disaffected Soweto residents, who have had electricity problems for years.

The power problems in Soweto, as in other townships, have curiously been allowed to fester and grow, with city authorities showing little will or ability to resolve them.

The failure to address grievances has not been due to residents’ failure to air their grievances through protests that are sometimes peaceful, sometimes accompanied by the now-familiar blockading of public roads with burning barricades.

The question is why have service delivery protests been allowed to become ingrained into the fabric of public life, when we lay claim to being one of the poster children of democracy, with regular elections to choose our leaders?

Perhaps the answer lies in the so-called social distance between the leaders and the led; where the purported leaders no longer represent the interests of those who elect them; where leaders are politically and often physically divorced from the people.

In the case of Soweto, residents would have seen too many of their leaders, as soon as they are elected, abandon the community for the suburbs, where there’ sa comparatively better provision of services such as power and water, and the residents are treated with more respect.

The supposed leaders become outsiders looking in, citizens of a parallel universe with a different lived experience to those whose welfare they are supposed to look after.

This leads one to question whether the Freedom Charter, which marks its 67th anniversary today, were to be written to reflect today’s SA, would assert that “the people shall govern”?

At the heart of the question is accountability of those elected, from local councillor to MP and all the way to the president. It is an issue raised in part this week by chief justice Raymond Zondo in his final report into state capture, suggesting that the president should be chosen directly by voters rather than a political party. This having observed how the ANC had failed to hold former president Jacob Zuma to account.

While addressing the presidency, Zondo may have been talking about all public office bearers, and the implications for public accountability in a system where representatives are chosen by political party barons, rather than the people.

The charter, adopted at Kliptown at a time when the struggle to end apartheid was gaining greater momentum, was seen by its followers as the blueprint for a future democratic, egalitarian and nonracial society. It envisioned a nation that was the very antithesis of the apartheid society.

Many of the charter’s values were fused into the post1994 constitution, such as equality before the law, protection against discrimination, labour rights, freedom of speech and association, and the right to shelter.

Yet, it remains a much-revered but controversial document, with critics believing it does not go far enough as a basis for fundamentally transforming society, including the colonial and apartheid-inspired patterns of land ownership.

Others have demanded that all its promises be fulfilled to the letter, including the nationalisation of mineral resources and banks. Additionally, as a manifesto of social change, it has suffered the curse of being distorted and selectively referenced by political players to advance narrow, self-serving agendas.

Proof of its political cachet lies in the fact that it is seen as a lodestar by both the ANC and the EFF, politically distant as they are.

But others in the political system may view it with deep suspicion, deeming it a quasi-socialist master plan and a threat to the free market system. Worse, the ANC, which is the governing party, is too distracted by its internecine conflicts to make a sensible contribution to conversations about either the charter’s value or to accelerate the process of nation building begun in 1994.

Many of the problems which its drafters sought to address remain with us today. Yet we have hardly begun to have honest, constructive dialogue about how to solve them.

The usefulness of the charter probably lies in the spirit in which it was conceived of asserting our oneness as a nation and the imperative to turn ours into a more just, inclusive and economically fair society.

The existing economic inequalities and persistent racial divisions are a constant reminder that, after concluding the constitutional deal of 1994, we are still left with much unfinished business regarding the reconstruction of our society.

After 28 years, it should be obvious that, due to social instability and creeping lawlessness, the stalemate between the rich and the poor is unsustainable. It should also be apparent that the standoff can be resolved only by honest dialogue between key stakeholders, from business, labour, civil society and politics.

The alternative is to abandon the country to endemic social conflict and deteriorating economic conditions, inevitably leading to anarchy and violence.

While the charter, with its fair share of political critics, might not be the silver bullet to solve SA’s problems, it would be a valuable addition to deliberations about country’s future. The prerequisite for serious national dialogue is a demonstration of maturity on the part of leaders in political, economic and other spheres of society, who should seek to act for the good of SA and all its people, not for narrow, divisive interests.