The Meaning of Freedom
I was asked to contribute to the Freedom edition of the Big Issue. In all honesty, I have tired of this topic. Academics and the Social Justice sector are only now discovering and engaging the conversations around the significance of this freedom we have. Reiterating observations of our reality as profound wisdom and stating as a revelation the musings my friends and I shared over a joint during our first year many moons ago. They will all miss the revolution if it ever comes, anyway here was my contribution published in April 2021.
Freedom. Jordan Pieters
My whole life, I’ve been told that I was free. That I am free.
Born in 1997, ‘A Born-free’. Apparently born free from the chains of oppression. You do not have to look far back in history to believe this fact. Colonialism, Slavery, Genocide, and a still-functional Apartheid society (with the perpetrators forgiven without the need to ask for forgiveness). In comparison to pre-1994 Apartheid South Africa, I am indeed free, and I enjoy Freedom from persecution based on my racial classification, yes. But does that truly mean that I am free? That We are free?
Self-determination, the ability to determine one’s future and plot the course of one’s destiny unimpeded and unobstructed, is a common understanding of what it is to be free or experience freedom. When was the last time you experienced that? Have you ever? When we use the term ‘Freedom’ in South Africa, it appears to be in relation to Apartheid and not much else. Let’s then examine some of the freedoms we are so privileged to have in South Africa.
Political freedom is often pessimistically touted as the conciliation prize we received as a proxy for economic freedom after the CODESA negotiations. At least we can finally vote and participate in the democratic process. Political freedom is the ability of a nation’s citizens to participate and influence the political process freely. In 2019, the IEC reported that the age segment 18–29 had the lowest voter registrations in at least a decade. Young people, both politicized and somewhat indifferent, already associate the ANC, not with the glory of the victory of the struggle but rather the festering theft and corruption of its members laid bare in recent years. The sheer depth of the decay and desire to steal from and further disenfranchise this nation’s impoverished for braai packs and luxury cars was perhaps too much information. The extent of the rot was unimaginable.
The DA has been oscillating between being a Far-right fringe group to a rank-and-file sub-structure of Cyril Ramaphosa’s forces. Young people do not think that any change will come from voting, and many view it as a completely pointless action with no result, regardless of how many sacrificed their lives to attain this freedom. Young people associate the respective parties and leaders with what they read in the media and social media. When engaging with young people about the various political parties presented for them to vote for if they so wished, it becomes apparent that many young people do not even know the policies, specific mandates and positions of the main political parties. The State’s Rainbow Nation propaganda machinery has worked perhaps too well; now, many young people do not even know the most basic history of South Africa, including the heroics of the ANC outside of Public Holiday dates and specific events. Young people appear then to not even want to participate in this sorely won democratic process. Who will then vote in the next ten years? What does democracy mean when ‘the People’ do not recognize it as a means to participate in the political process and do not think they are represented?
7,2 million South Africans are unemployed, according to the data released recently by Statistics South Africa (StatsSA). Many are working in jobs that barely skirt the National Minimum Wage just increased, from R20.76 to R21.69 per hour. The Household Affordability Index by Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group estimates that 30,4 million South Africans live below the poverty line. 18,2 million South Africans depend on social grants, according to data published last year by Social Development minister Lindiwe Zulu, with the need far more pervasive. How can it be a functional economy if the majority of the people in the country are excluded from it or exploited by it? Never mind the means of production, many South Africans are starving and do not know where their next meal will come from, and there is no political will to change that. Economic freedom, very clearly, a pipe dream for many in this country.
Freedom of movement is another of the freedoms so cherished in the Rainbow Nation. It was a freedom dismantled by the Apartheid regime with a disturbing efficiency seen in the Group Areas Act and the Pass Laws, which banished black people from urban areas unless to provide labour. We can go to former whites-only spaces now, visit former whites-only beaches and even attend former white schools and universities. But I have to wonder what freedom of movement means for a mother sitting in a taxi on her daily 2-hour commute to work, worried about the safety of her son after seeing the reports of children killed in gang shootings while playing outside. Or to a father away from home due to the migrant labour legacy of Apartheid concerned for the safety of his daughters as they take their daily walk to and from school after seeing the repeated devastating reports in the media of violence enacted against children and women. What does Freedom of Movement mean for people who, in efforts to live closer to economic opportunities, have their homes repeatedly demolished by law enforcement and Red Ants who label them as ‘land invaders’? What does it mean for the community of Woodstock, which has been devastated by gentrification and for the people of Wolwerivier who were banished from their communities, employment and schools and exiled to the outskirts of the City? According to SAPS, five teenagers were shot in Cape Town on Thursday (25/02/2021), four more people were shot and killed on Saturday (27/02/2021), as well as two police officers on Sunday morning (28/02/2021). What does Freedom of Movement mean in these communities?
It becomes clear then that just like most else in this country, Freedom is also a privilege. To feel represented and heard by the State, to feel safe in your community, to have a community, to have a job, to have food is a privilege.
There is a popular game called ‘Two Truths and a Lie’ in which players must uncover out of three facts, which is the Lie told. South African politics feels like a game of ‘Two Lies and a Half-Truth’ with the concept of a functional society becoming more and more obscure. The idea that we must be grateful to have been Born-Free has been a common thread throughout my life. So many people died for our Freedom, sacrificed everything to attain this ideal, so many of them just children and I cannot help but ask myself if the cost for this deferred Freedom was too high? Did they die for this? Unrelenting propaganda telling us one thing, but our lived realities a stark contradiction. This has left many young people disillusioned, frustrated and angry. I am extremely interested to find out what this anger will morph into. All I hope is that it will be some form of change. What I do know, however, is that the non-racial society that the ANC has incessantly shoved down our throats does not exist, and it never has. What does exist is a cacophony of festering wounds, intergenerational trauma, and extreme poverty and desperation. A dangerous combination with fewer paths available to young people with the doors of education still barred.
So, I agree, I was born free from the racial persecution of Apartheid, and I am grateful, but I do not yet have the privilege of calling myself free.
