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FREEDOM DAY FOR WHO?
What kind of freedom is it if you still live in a shack, or have to beg for food?
It’s the freedom to vote, to choose your own government. It’s a freedom that didn’t exist 25 years ago for 90% of South Africans. It’s a freedom for self-determination, equal opportunities, equal employment, equal education.
But what good is the freedom to vote if you still feel like a refugee in your own country?
25 years on and 90% of our sportsmen in the major sporting codes are from the 10% minority population, 90% of CEOs are from the 10% minority population, and 90% of the land is owned by the same 10% minority population.
What kind of freedom says you can now get a tertiary education equal to that of your white friends, but then says you have to pay R15,000 even though the only household income is from your mom who is a domestic worker for your white friend’s mom who only pays her R700 a month?
Why do I drive in to a petrol station and see black people at the pumps and white people in the cars?
Why do I feel more sympathy for a white beggar than a black one?
And how dare I feel inconvenienced by outsourced workers making demands for better living conditions? If their salaries increased by 20% year-on-year for the next 5 years and I get no increase for 5 years, I would still have made more money in 12 months than many of them would have in a lifetime. Instead of celebrating the victory that outsourced workers are slowly winning, I’m agitated by the fact that justice for them means I might earn a little less than I’d have expected. How dare I?!
I do still have hopes and dreams on this freedom day.
I hope that the national minimum wage comes in soon and it causes us to rethink our privileges and comforts, because how can it be right that some people pay more for their DSTV subscription than they pay their domestic worker?
I hope to see free higher education in South Africa in my lifetime, because then I’ll know that the dream of a son of a gardener to become a doctor is possible.
I cherish the idea of being able to shout and cheer for a South African cricket or rugby team that is 90% black.
Yes, I am fearful of the day my salary is cut to make up the shortfall of doing the right thing for outsourced workers, but I’ll find a way to deal with it because I’ll know that the sacrifice of my privileges has helped someone else get what they rightfully deserve – and that’s just better.
I dream and hope and pray for these things despite my fears, because I know that it will mean South Africa’s democracy is beginning to mature; historic institutionalised privileges are being dismantled; poverty, inequality and unemployment are being destroyed; the economy is growing; big business is being transformed; more and more land is being acquired by black people and that the government is starting to work for all the people.
The white privilege in me is uneasy as I write this, but that’s okay – I’ll deal with it, because “great achievement is born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness” (Napoleon Hill).
