Children marching on the
anniversary of the Soweto uprising. EPA/Kim Ludbrook
South Africa’s youth-led movements such as #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall provided contrasting view to perceptions that young people are apathetic and disinterested in the future of their country. But the protests didn’t quite dispel concerns about their lack of political involvement, particularly during elections where there’s been low youth voter turnout.
So we asked young people what they thought about politics. Our research involved focus groups with South Africans aged between 15 and 25 years of age from very different backgrounds. Sampled areas ranged from the rural Eastern Cape, to peri-urban Orange Farm and middle class Kensington, a Johannesburg suburb, amongst others.
Our findings challenge the widely reported perception that young people in South Africa are despondent and don’t care about politics or their role as citizens. What emerged from our research was a picture of young people with strongly defined opinions and knowledge of current affairs. Many said they were involved in some kind of civic activity.
All of the participants expressed a distrust of formal politics. But they also said they have a keen interest in the future of the country and are staking their claim in forging that future, albeit in different and new ways.
What was clear from the research is that young South Africans are engaging with politics very differently to the way in which young people got involved in the 1976 Soweto uprising. They have found new platforms and ways to share information, make their voices heard and ultimately be politically engaged on the back of growing internet based communication, especially social media.
In 1976 young people taught South Africa that they can’t be ignored. They are a powerful force that can shift the course of a country’s future. Today’s youth are no different. They are interested and engaged.
Distrust of formal politics
The people in our focus groups expressed distrust of formal political mechanisms such as voting, demonstrations, and membership of political parties.
Most indicated that they held little faith in the current leadership of the country. They found political leaders to be self-serving and disinterested in them and their communities. While they enjoyed watching parliament in action, this was because it provided entertainment value rather than serious content.
The discussions laid bare why many young people don’t vote. Most expressed alienation from all of South Africa’s political leaders. They said they didn’t know who they could trust or which political party would serve their interests.
As one put it:
Well, there’s ANC, an old promising party who is no longer keeping its promises, then follows the DA which is led and dominated by white people and you’d think when they are in power they may neglect us and care for whites only and also there is Malema who we think is going to corrupt us, so you just think it’s better not to vote.
They also said they didn’t see any point in voting given that there seemed to be little relation between what politicians said they would do versus what they actually did. A common sentiment is reflected in these quotes:
What is the point in voting? Nothing ever changes anyway.
We are not going to vote either because it’s not going to make a difference.
Personally for me I would vote for a party that I have seen making the biggest difference but everyone is fighting in parliament and they are not going out and making the difference that they are supposed to. And when it comes to voting time then all the municipalities jump up and start to do what they were supposed to do. I think that’s the thing. We don’t know who to vote for because no one is making a big difference.
This distrust and alienation often means that young people opt out of formal political processes such as voting and engagement with political parties.
But this should not be read to infer political disinterest and apathy. On the contrary, young people have found other ways to voice their opinions.
Different approaches
Social media is widely used, across the spectrum of youth interviewed, both to voice protest as well as to engage on issues they care about. And many said they have heated face-to-face discussions with their peers about key issues, particularly those affecting their own communities. All these approaches were more appealing, meaningful and accessible than political party membership and voting.
They also held very fervent issues-based views. The focus groups prompted heated debates about xenophobia and the role of foreign nationals in their communities. The participants also felt strongly about common challenges in their communities such as substance abuse, crime and teenage pregnancy.
Our research shows that young people are thinking about key issues in their communities and that they’re getting involved, particularly where issues affect them directly. The difference between this generation and the 1976 generation is that they’re doing so in non-formal ways.
The #feesmustfall campaign is a good example of this. It arose out of an issue that directly affected the lives of many young people. They did not feel that formal democratic processes served them, leading them to engage in a wave of protests driven largely by social media engagements across campuses.
Political parties trying to win the youth vote need to reconnect with where the majority of young people are, more so because young people will continue to form potentially the biggest proportion of the voter base at least until 2050. It’s time the country stopped stereotyping them as apathetic, disinterested and morally bankrupt and started engaging them in ways that are meaningful to them, and connect with the issues they’re interested in.
_This article was co-authored with Lauren Stuart, Thobile Zulu and Senzelwe Mthembu.
“We intend for the character of our march against the Zuma Presidency to be educational, embracing, inclusive and diverse”
By Ashleigh Furlong
3 August 2017 Revered Michael Weeder, Phumeza Mlungwana, Imam Rashied Omar and Father Michael Lapsley. Photo: Eloise Schrier
Leaders of civil society came together at a press conference
ahead of the “People’s March” on Monday, calling for the country to
continue to mobilise against corruption after the march.
“The removal of Jacob Zuma should signal to [those in government]
that even stealing a pencil from a department cannot be acceptable when
we know that there are young people who are going to school and do not
have stationary,” said Tshepo Motsepe, the general secretary of Equal
Education.
Motsepe was joined by multiple other leaders of civil society and
religious organisations at the St George’s Cathedral. They will be
marching on 7 August in Cape Town under the banner of #UniteBehind,
calling for the removal of President Jacob Zuma. On 8 August Members of
Parliament hold a no confidence vote on the president.
Motsepe said that Zuma is “corrupt to the core” and that this “rot
runs so deep” that even government clerks are stealing. This affects the
poor and working class, said Motsepe. He said that we need to ask what
kind of government we want in the future and not demobilise after the
march but continue to put pressure on the government.
This was echoed by Phumeza Mlungwana, the co-chair of the press
conference, who said that while marching was important, it was not the
only tool that needed to be used. She said that “we must make sure that
we address the systemic challenges of our country”.
Mandisa Dyantyi, Deputy General Secretary of the Social Justice
Coalition, said the government needs to “step up and represent the needs
of the people”.
“We are marching on the 7th because we have had enough,” she said.
Imam Rashied Omar of the Claremont Main Road Mosque said they are
“not naïve to believe that this one march will get Jacob Zuma to go.” He
also said that simply getting rid of Jacob Zuma and the Guptas would
not mean that the country’s problems were solved. Once the short-term
goals were achieved, people needed to redouble their efforts to hold
government to account. Omar said that he believed that the reason why
South Africa is currently in this position is because civil society
retreated and placed its faith in politicians.
At a recent gathering of the South African Council of Churches
members were called on to withdraw their moral support from the
government and to call for new elections. Omar emphasised that the march
on Monday has “nothing to do with the planned marches by political
parties”. He said: “We refuse to be co-opted onto the political agenda
of any political party.”
On 8 August political parties will lead a march that is also calling
for the recall of Zuma.
#UniteBehind decided not to join in the 8 August
march after they were unable to reach an agreement with the Democratic
Alliance on the logistics and nature of the march.
“We intend for the character of our march against the Zuma Presidency
to be educational, embracing, inclusive and diverse; instead of
listening to a line-up of leaders from every political party, who will
understandably be using the platform to promote their organisations,”
#UniteBehind explained in a statement.
The People’s March on Monday is set to start at 3pm at Keizersgracht Street.
Published originally on
GroundUp
.
What we eat matters to us – but we’re not sure whether it ought to matter to anyone else. We generally insist that our diets are our business and resent being told to eat more fruit, consume less alcohol and generally pull our socks up when it comes to dinner.
The efforts in 2012-13 by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to ban the sale of extra large soft drinks failed precisely because critics viewed it as an intrusion into the individual’s right to make their own dietary choices. “New Yorkers need a mayor, not a nanny,” shouted a full-page advert in the New York Times. And when a school near Rotherham in northern England eliminated Turkey Twizzlers and fizzy drinks from its canteen, outraged mothers rose in protest, insisting that their children had the right to eat unhealthy food.
At the same time, many Britons are troubled by reports that as a nation their fondness for sugar and disdain for exercise will eventually bankrupt the NHS; there is considerable support for the idea that very overweight people should be required to lose weight before being treated. We agree that our poor dietary choices affect everyone, but at the same time we’re certain that we have a right to eat what we want.
The story about how we started to think this way about food is closely linked to the rise of the potato as a national starch. Britain’s love for the potato is bound up with notions of the utilitarian value of a good diet and how a healthy citizenry is the engine room of a strong economy. To find out more about that, we need to go back to the 18th century.
Enlightened eating
Today’s somewhat uneasy marriage of public health and individual choice is the result of new ideas that emerged during the Enlightenment. During the 18th century, states across Europe began to rethink the bases of national wealth and strength. At the heart of these new ideas was a new appreciation of what we would now call public health. Whereas in earlier centuries rulers wished to prevent famines that might cause public unrest, in the 18th century, politicians became increasingly convinced that national strength and economic prowess required more than an obedient population disinclined to riot.
They believed it required a healthy, vigorous, energetic workforce of soldiers and labourers. This alone would ensure the success of industry. “The true foundations of riches and power,” affirmed 18th-century philanthropist Jonas Hanway, “is the number of working poor.” For this reason, he concluded:
… every rational proposal for the augmentation of them merits our regard. The number of the people is confessedly the national stock: the estate, which has no body to work it, is so far good for nothing; and the same rule extends to a whole country or nation.
“There is not a single politician,” agreed the Spanish thinker Joaquin Xavier de Uriz, writing in 1801, “who does not accept the clear fact that the greatest possible number of law-abiding and hard-working men constitutes the happiness, strength and wealth of any state”. Statesmen and public-spirited individuals therefore devoted attention to building this healthy population. It was the productivity puzzle of the 18th century.
The Potato Eaters (1885). Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh Museum
Clearly, to do this required an ample supply of nourishing, healthy food. There was a growing consensus across Europe that much of the population was crippling itself with poorly chosen eating habits. For instance, the renowned Scottish physician William Buchan argued this in his 1797 book Observations Concerning the Diet of the Common People. Buchan believed that most “common people” ate too much meat and white bread, and drank too much beer. They did not eat enough vegetables. The inevitable result, he stated, was ill health, with diseases such as scurvy wreaking havoc in the bodies of working men, women and children. This, in turn, undermined British trade and weakened the nation.
Feeble soldiers did not provide a reliable bulwark against attack, and sickly workers did not enable flourishing commerce. Philosophers, political economists, doctors, bureaucrats and others began to insist that strong, secure states were inconceivable without significant changes in the dietary practices of the population as a whole. But how to ensure that people were well-nourished? What sorts of food would provide a better nutritional base than beer and white bread? Buchan encouraged a diet based largely on whole grains and root vegetables – which he insisted were not only cheaper than the alternatives, but infinitely more healthful.
William Buchan (1729–1805): ‘What a treasure is a milch cow and a potatoe garden.’ Wikimedia Commons
He was particularly enthusiastic about potatoes. “What a treasure is a milch cow and a potatoe garden, to a poor man with a large family!” he exclaimed. The potato provided ideal nourishment. “Some of the stoutest men we know, are brought up on milk and potatoes,” he reported. Buchan maintained that once people understood the advantages they would personally derive from a potato diet, they would happily, of their own free will, embrace the potato.
The benefits would accrue both to the individual workers and their families, whose healthy bodies would be full of vigour, and to the state and economy overall. Everyone would win. Simply enabling everyone to pursue their own self-interest would lead to a better-functioning body politic and a more productive economy.
The marvellous spud
Buchan was one of a vast number of 18th-century potato enthusiasts. Local clubs in Finland sponsored competitions aimed at encouraging peasants to grow more potatoes, Spanish newspapers explained how to boil potatoes in the Irish fashion, Italian doctors penned entire treatises on the “marvellous potato” and monarchs across Europe issued edicts encouraging everyone to grow and eat more potatoes.
In 1794, the Tuileries Gardens in Paris were dug up and turned into a potato plot. The point is that there were an awful lot of public-spirited individuals in the 18th century who were convinced that well-being and happiness, both personal and public, could be found in the humble potato.
Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was a leading spud-fancier in late 18th-century France.
These potato-fanciers never suggested, however, the people should be obliged to eat potatoes. Rather, they explained, patiently, in pamphlets, public lectures, sermons and advertisements, that potatoes were a nourishing, healthy food that you, personally, would eat with enjoyment. There was no need to sacrifice one’s own well-being in order to ensure the well-being of the nation as a whole, since potatoes were perfectly delicious. Individual choice and public benefit were in perfect harmony. Potatoes were good for you, and they were good for the body politic.
This, of course, is more or less the approach we take to public health and healthy eating these days. We tend to favour exhortation – reduce fat! exercise more! – over outright intervention of the sort that has seen Mexico impose a 10% tax on sugary drinks, or indeed Bloomberg’s soda ban.
Our hope is that public education campaigns will help people choose to eat more healthily. No one is protesting against Public Health England’s Eatwell Guide, which provides advice on healthy eating, because it’s useful and we’re perfectly free to ignore it. Our hope is that everyone, of their own free will, will choose to adopt a more healthy diet, and that this confluence of individual good choices will lead to a stronger and more healthy nation overall. But our modern belief that a confluence of individual self-interested choices will lead to a stronger and more healthy nation originated in the new, 18th-century ideas reflected in the works of Buchan and others.
It is no coincidence that this faith in a wonderful confluence of individual choice and public good emerged at exactly the moment the tenets of modern classical economics were being developed. As Adam Smith famously argued, a well-functioning economy was the result of everyone being allowed to pursue their own self-interest. He wrote in 1776:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
The result of each person pursuing their own interest was a well-functioning economic system. As he asserted in his Theory Of Moral Sentiments:
Every individual … neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it … he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.
Strong men and beautiful women
The best way to ensure a strong national economy, in the view of classical economists such as Adam Smith, is to let each person look after their own well-being. The worst thing the state could do was to try to intervene in the market. Interventions in the food market were seen as particularly pernicious, and likely to provoke the very shortages that they aimed to prevent. This rather novel idea began to be expressed in the early 18th century and became increasingly common as the Enlightenment progressed. As we know, faith in the free market has now become a cornerstone of modern capitalism. These ideas have profoundly shaped our world.
It was perhaps inevitable that Adam Smith should particularly recommend potatoes. His idea of the free market was premised on the conviction that national wealth was possible only when people were happy and pursued their own self-interest. Happiness and comfort, in turn, required a plentiful supply of pleasant and nutritious food – and this is what potatoes offered, in Smith’s view. Not only was the potato far more productive than wheat – Smith calculated this carefully – but it was also incredibly nourishing. As he noted, “the strongest men and the most beautiful women” in Britain lived on potatoes. “No food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its being peculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution,” he concluded.
From: The Wealth of Nations (1776). Adam Smith
Smith linked the personal benefits individuals would derive from a greater consumption of potatoes to a greater flourishing of the economy. If planted with potatoes, agricultural land would support a larger population, and “the labourers being generally fed with potatoes” would produce a greater surplus, to the benefit of themselves, landlords and the overall economy. In Smith’s vision, as in that of William Buchan and countless other potato advocates, if individuals chose to eat more potatoes, the benefits would accrue to everyone. Better input of potatoes would result in better economic outputs.
In keeping with the individualism that underpinned Smith’s model of political economy, he did not recommend that people be obliged to grow and eat potatoes. His emphasis rather was on the natural confluence of individual and national interest. Indeed, potential tensions between personal and public interest were addressed directly by 18th-century potato enthusiasts, concerned precisely to see off any suggestion that they were subordinating individual freedom to collective well-being.
John Sinclair, president of the British Board of Agriculture in the 1790s, observed that some people might imagine farmers should be left to make their own decisions about whether to grow more potatoes. He conceded that: “If the public were to dictate to the farmer how he was to cultivate his grounds”, this might “be the source of infinite mischief”.
Providing information to inform individual choice, “instead of being mischievous, must be attended with the happiest consequences”. Advice and information, rather than legislation, indeed remain the preferred techniques for transforming national food systems for most policy makers. Nutritional guidelines, not soda bans.
The 18th century thus witnessed the birth of ideas that continue to be immensely influential today. The conviction that everyone pursuing their own economic and dietary interests would lead to an overall increase in the wealth and health of nations lies at the heart of the new, 18th-century model of thinking about the economy and the state.
Potato politics
It’s this idea – that private gain can lead to public benefits – that underpins the 18th-century interest in the potato as an engine for national growth. It also explains why during the 20th century, states and educational institutions across Europe established official potato research institutes, funded scientific expeditions to the Andes aimed at discovering new, more productive varieties of potato, and generally promoted potato consumption.
These connections between potatoes, political economy and a strong state moreover explain the current Chinese government’s obsession with potatoes. China is now the world’s leading producer of potatoes, which arrived in China in the 17th century but which have long been viewed as a food of the poor, while rice remains the prestige starch. For some decades, the Chinese state has been working to increase potato consumption and since 2014 there has been a particularly big push. There has been a great deal of pro-potato propaganda as regards both the cultivation and the consumption of the tuber.
Just as was the case in 18th-century Europe, this new Chinese potato promotion is motivated by concerns about the broader needs of the state, but it is framed in terms of how individuals will benefit from eating more potatoes. State television programmes disseminate recipes and encourage public discussion about the tastiest ways of preparing potato dishes. Cookbooks don’t just describe how potatoes can help China achieve food security – they also explain that they are delicious and can cure cancer.
One-third of the world’s potatoes are harvested in China. International Potato Center
As in the 18th century, in today’s China the idea is that everyone – you, the state, the population as a whole – benefits from these healthy eating campaigns. If everyone pursued their own self-interest, potato advocates past and present have argued, everyone would eat more potatoes and the population as a whole would be healthier. These healthier people would be able to work harder, the economy would grow and the state would be stronger. Everyone would benefit, if only everyone just followed their own individual self-interest.
The 18th century saw the emergence of a new way of thinking about the nature of the wealth and strength of the nation. These new ideas emphasised the close links between the health and economic success of individuals, and the wealth and economic strength of the state. What people ate, just like what they accomplished in the world of work, has an impact on everyone else.
At the same time, this new commercial, capitalist model was premised fundamentally on the idea of choice. Individuals should be left to pursue their own interests, whether economic or dietary. If provided sufficient latitude to do this, the theory runs, people will in the end choose an outcome that benefits everyone.
A small history of the potato allows us to see the long-term continuities that unite political economy and individual diets into a broader liberal model of the state. It also helps explain the vogue for the potato in contemporary China, itself undergoing a significant reorientation towards a market economy.
The connections between everyday life, individualism and the state forged in the late 18th century continue to shape today’s debates about how to balance personal dietary freedom with the health of the body politic. The seductive promise that, collectively and individually, we can somehow eat our way to health and economic well-being remains a powerful component of our neoliberal world.
Silent protest parade in New York against the East St. Louis riots, 1917. Library of Congress
The only sounds were those of muffled drums, the shuffling of feet and the gentle sobs of some of the estimated 20,000 onlookers. The women and children wore all white. The men dressed in black.
On the afternoon of Saturday, July 28, 1917, nearly 10,000 African-Americans marched down Fifth Avenue, in silence, to protest racial violence and white supremacy in the United States.
New York City, and the nation, had never before witnessed such a remarkable scene.
The “Silent Protest Parade,” as it came to be known, was the first mass African-American demonstration of its kind and marked a watershed moment in the history of the civil rights movement. As I have written in my book “Torchbearers of Democracy,” African-Americans during the World War I era challenged racism both abroad and at home. In taking to the streets to dramatize the brutal treatment of black people, the participants of the “Silent Protest Parade” indicted the United States as an unjust nation.
This charge remains true today.
Several thousand people attended a Seattle rally to call attention to minority rights and police brutality in April 2017. AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
One hundred years later, as black people continue to insist that “Black Lives Matter,” the “Silent Protest Parade” offers a vivid reminder about the power of courageous leadership, grassroots mobilization, direct action and their collective necessity in the fight to end racial oppression in our current troubled times.
Racial violence and the East St. Louis Riot
One of the great accomplishments of the Black Lives Matter movement has been to demonstrate the continuum of racist violence against black people throughout American history and also the history of resistance against it. But as we continue to grapple with the hyper-visibility of black death, it is perhaps easy to forget just how truly horrific racial violence against black people was a century ago.
Prior to the “Silent Protest Parade,” mob violence and the lynching of African-Americans had grown even more gruesome. In Waco, a mob of 10,000 white Texans attended the May 15, 1916, lynching of a black farmer, Jesse Washington. One year later, on May 22, 1917, a black woodcutter, Ell Persons, died at the hands of over 5,000 vengeance-seeking whites in Memphis. Both men were burned and mutilated, their charred body parts distributed and displayed as souvenirs.
Even by these grisly standards, East St. Louis later that same summer was shocking. Simmering labor tensions between white and black workers exploded on the evening of July 2, 1917.
For 24 hours, white mobs indiscriminately stabbed, shot and lynched anyone with black skin. Men, women, children, the elderly, the disabled – no one was spared. Homes were torched and occupants shot down as they attempted to flee. White militia men stood idly by as the carnage unfolded. Some actively participated. The death toll likely ran as high as 200 people.
The city’s surviving 6,000 black residents became refugees.
East St. Louis was an American pogrom. The fearless African-American anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells traveled to the still smoldering city on July 4 and collected firsthand accounts of the aftermath. She described what she saw as an “awful orgy of human butchery.”
The devastation of East St. Louis was compounded by the fact that America was at war. On April 2, President Woodrow Wilson had thrown the United States into the maelstrom of World War I. He did so by asserting America’s singularly unique place on the global stage and his goal to make the world “safe for democracy.” In the eyes of black people, East St. Louis exposed the hypocrisy of Wilson’s vision and America itself.
The NAACP takes action
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People quickly responded to the massacre. Founded in 1909, the NAACP had yet to establish itself as a truly representative organization for African-Americans across the country. With the exception of W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the NAACP’s co-founders and editor of The Crisis magazine, the national leadership was all white. Branches were overwhelmingly located in the North, despite the majority of African-Americans residing below the Mason-Dixon line. As a result, the NAACP had largely failed to respond with a sense of urgency to the everyday horrors endured by the masses of black folk.
James Weldon Johnson changed things. Lawyer, diplomat, novelist, poet and songwriter, Johnson was a true African-American renaissance man. In 1916, Johnson joined the NAACP as a field secretary and made an immediate impact. In addition to growing the organization’s southern membership, Johnson recognized the importance of expanding the influence of the NAACP’s existing branches beyond the black elite.
Johnson raised the idea of a silent protest march at an executive committee meeting of the NAACP Harlem branch shortly after the East St. Louis riot. Johnson also insisted that the protest include the city’s entire black community. Planning quickly got underway, spearheaded by Johnson and local black clergymen.
A historic day
By noon on July 28, several thousand African-Americans had begun to assemble at 59th Street. Crowds gathered along Fifth Avenue. Anxious New York City police officers lined the streets, aware of what was about to take place but, with clubs at the ready, prepared for trouble.
At approximately 1 p.m., the protest parade commenced. Four men carrying drums began to slowly, solemnly play. A group of black clergymen and NAACP officials made up the front line. W.E.B. Du Bois, who had recently returned from conducting an NAACP investigation in East St. Louis, and James Weldon Johnson marched side by side.
The parade was a stunning spectacle. At the front, women and children wearing all-white gowns symbolized the innocence of African-Americans in the face of the nation’s guilt. The men, bringing up the rear and dressed in dark suits, conveyed both a mournful dignity and stern determination to stand up for their rights as citizens.
They carried signs and banners shaming America for its treatment of black people. Some read, “Your hands are full of blood,” “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” “Mothers, do lynchers go to heaven?” Others highlighted the wartime context and the hollowness of America’s ideals: “We have fought for the liberty of white Americans in six wars; our reward was East St. Louis,” “Patriotism and loyalty presuppose protection and liberty,” “Make America safe for Democracy.”
Throughout the parade, the marchers remained silent. The New York Times described the protest as “one of the most quiet and orderly demonstrations ever witnessed.” The silence was finally broken with cheers when the parade concluded at Madison Square.
Legacy of the Silent Protest Parade
The “Silent Protest Parade” marked the beginning of a new epoch in the long black freedom struggle. While adhering to a certain politics of respectability, a strategy employed by African-Americans that focused on countering racist stereotypes through dignified appearance and behavior, the protest, within its context, constituted a radical claiming of the public sphere and a powerful affirmation of black humanity. It declared that a “New Negro” had arrived and launched a black public protest tradition that would be seen in the parades of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter marches of today.
The “Silent Protest Parade” reminds us that the fight against racist violence and the killing of black people remains just as relevant now as it did 100 years ago. Black death, whether at the hands of a Baton Rouge police officer or white supremacist in Charleston, is a specter that continues to haunt this nation. The expendability of black bodies is American tradition, and history speaks to the long endurance of this violent legacy.
But history also offers inspiration, purpose and vision.
Ida B. Wells, James Weldon Johnson and other freedom fighters of their generation should serve as models for activists today. That the “Silent Protest Parade” attracted black people from all walks of life and backgrounds attests to the need for organizations like the NAACP, following its recent national convention, to remember and embrace its origins. And, in building and sustaining the current movement, we can take lessons from past struggles and work strategically and creatively to apply them to the present.
Because, at their core, the demands of black people in 2017 remain the same as one of the signs raised to the sky on that July afternoon in 1917:
Mass funeral for the victims of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre. Flickr
Every year South Africans celebrate Human Rights Day on March 21 to commemorate the 1960 Sharpeville massacre when police opened fire on a crowd killing 69 unarmed people. They were protesting against the humiliating pass laws that controlled the movement of black people.
Besides a reminder of a dark period in the country’s history, this day also celebrates South Africa’s unique and highly acclaimed constitution. Its Bill of Rights guarantees human dignity and equal rights to all citizens.
But, despite the constitutional protection of human rights and its relative success at providing basic services to citizens, the government struggles to meet demands for socio-economic rights. For example the pace of delivery of housing, water and sanitation, health care and education, which are provided for in the constitution, has been slow since South Africa’s transition to democracy.
The biggest concerns for many South Africans, according to Human Rights Watch, include: access to treatment for people with disabilities, unemployment, corruption, freedom of expression, police brutality and violence.
What South Africa has going for it is its constitution. This needs to come to life by protecting human rights across the board. This can only happen if laws are made real, by for example, cases being taken to court to set precedents that protect rights.
Human rights challenges
An estimated half-a-million children with disabilities have been shut out of the country’s education system according to Human Rights Watch.
Unemployment remains stubbornly high. In the third quarter of last year it reached 27.1% after averaging 25.37% from 2000-2016. This has led to high levels of poverty. According to Stats SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey 8.9 million people who want to work don’t have jobs.
And corruption
threatens the rule of law, democracy and human rights …
South Africa is ranked 64th out of 175 in the 2016 Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. It ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sectors are perceived to be.
Media freedom, free expression and the free flow of information are vital to a healthy democracy. These have all been hard-won in the country. Although it’s not all bad news on this front, the Right2Know Media Freedom & Diversity movement, which focuses on freedom of expression and access to information, notes that:
Compared to most of our neighbours, and indeed many old western democracies, our press freedom record is not all that bad, but this is only because with every attempt by the powerful to restrict media freedom, the public is able to keep pushing back.
Another persistent problem is police brutality and use of excessive force, especially against protesters. In its submission to the United Nations in 2016, the South African Human Rights Commission reported that
South Africa has witnessed a tremendous increase in the number of protests, particularly those relating to the failures of local government to deliver basic services.
Another major concern is that South Africa remains a deeply violent society. For example, violence against women, including rape and domestic violence, remains very high. One in every four women is physically abused by her intimate partner. According to Professor Naeemah Abrahams, Deputy Director at the Gender and Health Unit at the Medical Research Council, a woman is killed every six hours by her current or former intimate partner.
A study conducted by the World Health Organisation in 2012 found that 65% of women in SA had experienced spousal abuse in the year before the research was conducted.
Thankfully, South Africa continues to play an important, although at times inconsistent role, in advancing the rights of LGBTIQ+ people. It was the first country to protect sexuality in its constitution and is reckoned to be a champion of gay rights. Yet in June 2016 it refused to support a landmark resolution on LGBTI rights at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Fixing the problem
To address these shortcomings South Africa must focus on the judicial enforcement of human rights. A right without a remedy raises questions of whether it is in fact a right at all.
Although there are other ways of protecting rights, judicial enforcement has a clear role in developing an understanding of these rights. Test cases can lead to systematic institutional change to prevent violations of rights in the future. This has already happened in some important landmark cases such as the Constitutional Court ruling that set the bar for protection of HIV positive people.
Other possible solutions include: education, constructive dialogue, exerting pressure to bring violations of human rights to public notice and to discourage further violence and curbing corruption by protecting whistleblowers.
But two questions remain: do South Africans have the perseverance and are they strong and morally bold enough to stand up for these rights? And, if necessary, to challenge the powerful (government) in court where they are threatened?
_This article was co-authored with Lauren Stuart, Thobile Zulu and Senzelwe Mthembu.
The connections between everyday life, individualism and the state forged in the late 18th century continue to shape today’s debates about how to balance personal dietary freedom with the health of the body politic. The seductive promise that, collectively and individually, we can somehow eat our way to health and economic well-being remains a powerful component of our neoliberal world.
“Give me a chance to live.”
But two questions remain: do South Africans have the perseverance and are they strong and morally bold enough to stand up for these rights? And, if necessary, to challenge the powerful (government) in court where they are threatened?