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In anyone’s language, 30 years is a long time. It is a generation. In that period, a lot can happen. Countries can be created, civilisations destroyed.
Some of us are old enough to have lived in a South Africa where a large majority of our people were treated as third class citizens. Every wakeful moment a black South African was confronted by laws that challenged his/her very existence on this southern tip of Africa. Black people were, by law, required to carry identity documents and would be stopped at random by bellicose police officers to produce this hated document which could influence the trajectory of one’s life.
If you had a Xhosa surname, you could be bundled off to the Transkei or Ciskei, even if you had never been there.
READ: Mondli Makhanya | 1994 wasn't a miracle – SA's challenges require more than 'miracles'
Before 1994, there were laws that determined which jobs, residential areas, educational and other opportunities you could access, based on your race.
The demise of apartheid and the ushering in of a non-racial democracy seemed miraculous to many of those who had been at the receiving end of the belligerently racist regime. People could, at last, be full human beings.
Far from being a “miracle” that many commentators have deemed it to have been, the dawning of a new non-racial democracy in South Africa was actually the result of hard work.
In the build-up to the 1994 elections, this country experienced horrific incidents of politically inspired violence.
As we celebrate 30 years of democracy, let us not forget the sacrifices that had to be made to pave the thorny path towards our destination of a non-racial, equitable society. Many died, others were maimed, even more went to prison and into exile in pursuit of the goal of freedom.
Communities were displaced by marauding regiments serving the old regime. Schoolchildren sacrificed their education and innocence of youth as they took on heavily armed soldiers and policemen with rudimentary weapons.
READ: Mavuso Msimang | How to move SA from being a country of two nations to equality
But let us not fool ourselves. We have not yet arrived at our destination. In our march to our imagined nationhood, we have been distracted by many challenges.
The ogre of corruption in the public and private sectors tends to overshadow many of the strides we have made in trying to fashion ourselves into a nation that is progressive.
Because corruption undermines service delivery in its many manifestations, we have seen industries collapsing, leading to job losses. Unemployment breeds crime, among many other socioeconomic challenges. And crime at the moment is one of the major challenges facing this country.
Women and young girls have to contend with rampant gender-based violence, a scourge that is emblematic of corrosion of social mores. Racism still lurks, with mainly black people at the receiving end of overt and subtle discrimination in workplaces and social settings.
READ: Thuli Madonsela | SA set for anti-racism backsliding as structural inequalities remain unchanged
In order to get our train back on track, we need to re-embrace the ethic of hard work and selflessness that helped vanquish apartheid. That will require principle from across the board.
The point-scoring is understandable at this time, but when the elections are behind us, we will have to pull together across party lines and across all sectors of society to restore the dream of 1994.
It was not an unachievable dream. It was about working together to create a normal, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous society. In recommitting ourselves to that dream, we should remember the words of poet James Grengs:
While freedom is never free,
Remember
It has been bought at great price,
And so is a thing of great value.
We must defend it
From those who would take it away.
The defence of our freedoms
Will cost us
More than we wish to pay.
But we must pay, to defend,
For if we try to make freedom free,
We forget
True freedom is never free.
