April 27: Turning a day of celebration into a day of mourning - time is running out

Officers remove debris on the road following protests and stoning of vehicles in Botriver. Hundreds of residents participated in the violent protest over basic service delivery issues, forcing traffic diversions as parts of the N2 were blocked. Picture: Supplied

Officers remove debris on the road following protests and stoning of vehicles in Botriver. Hundreds of residents participated in the violent protest over basic service delivery issues, forcing traffic diversions as parts of the N2 were blocked. Picture: Supplied

Published Apr 19, 2022

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Dr Wallace Amos Mgoqi

It is a tragic irony of life that a day of celebration, such as April 27 in our calendar, marks the birth of our democracy can be turned into a day of mourning.

Precisely because of the pervasive failures of government in service delivery across the board.

On Tuesday, April 12, my family and I had to travel to Hermanus on a business trip. And as we passed the other side of the Houwhoek Pass, in Botrivier, we realised that there was some commotion between traffic police and SAPS on the other side of the road. It was only on the following Wednesday that we read the headlines in The Cape Times, ‘Vehicle torched in Botrivier mayhem’ that we realised that it could easily have been our vehicle.

We live in perilous times, largely occasioned by the failure of the government to live up to its promises.

It transpired that the Botrivier residents were on tenterhooks following a protest that erupted as a result of basic service delivery issues. Hundreds of residents participated in the violent protest, forcing traffic diversions as parts of the N2 were blocked.

A car was set alight, and some were stoned. Community activist Naledy Mani said the protest was about basic service delivery in a new housing development, as residents felt that their plight was not being heard by the municipality.

“We feel like we are not human beings and the municipality that is supposed to service us with basic services are not taking us seriously. Residents who are to move to the new Beaumont housing development are angry because of the following engagements last week with the municipality. We still do not know when the new housing development will have electricity.”

Video: IOL

She continued: “Currently at the temporary Beaumont relocation site, residents are using illegal electricity connections which are killing our children. But the municipality has become so comfortable with those illegal connections that they now want residents to move to their new homes where there is no electricity. Imagine moving a resident to an area where there are fewer basic services than what they have on a temporary relocation site?...

“Why must we resort to violent protesting to be heard when our municipalities know what the needs are and they do not deliver? We feel like we are always on the back burner when it comes to receiving the services we shouldn’t have to fight for. This is a failure by the municipality which has caused unhappiness.”

What an eloquent articulation of the residents’ plight by this ordinary community activist!

It has become a sad day, indeed, that citizens have to suffer so much, cry so much, in the hands of those who are supposed to serve them and instead be treated with disdain, indifference and antipathy. Where else can they go?

Ministers and the President seem also helpless in getting things right across the board.

On a personal note, as a family, we lodged a land restitution claim before the closing date of December 31, 1998. Because at the time I had been the Chief Land Claims Commissioner, our family claim could not be processed, as it would amount to nepotism, so the minister said at the time.

Sadly, that land claim is still unsettled and the officials treat claimants with utter disdain, indifference and antipathy, and appeals to the highest echelons have all drawn blanks.

The foundations have collapsed, but where do the victims run to when foundations are destroyed?

Where do residents of small areas like Botrivier, so small that the area hardly shows on any map, go when faced with intractable problems such as these — far from the corridors of power?

It was that iconic fighter and champion of human rights, Eleanor Roosevelt, who said, in answering the question: “Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.

“Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, and equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.”

During our time, before the removal of President Thabo Mbeki from office, he would make an appointment with the Executive Mayor and her Mayoral Committee, as well as the City Manager and his Executive Directors to make presentations to him. In the presence of members of the communities served on the City’s strategic plans, especially the Economic Development Plan.

And members of the communities were encouraged to participate. This created an environment of holding those in public office accountable and serving with a sense of awe, and of responsibility which should always animate us as we engage in the great task of public service.

Today’s public servants no longer have this attitude of having the privilege and honour to serve, but are fairly blasé in their attitudes towards their work and those whom they are called to serve. They have also become hard-hearted instead of being tender-hearted towards the people they serve. The time has come for a sea-change to take place, and it is this year.

Let me conclude this discussion by borrowing the words of the last three Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 28, 29 and 30, as follows: “We all have the right to live in a peaceful and orderly society so that these rights and freedoms can be protected, and these rights can be enjoyed in all other countries around the world; We have duties to the community we live in that should allow us to develop as fully as possible.

“The law should guarantee human rights and should allow everyone to enjoy the same mutual respect; No government, group or individual should act in a way that would destroy the rights and freedoms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

There is a great need to bring in a new breed of people from the highest echelons to the lowest with a different spirit, different values, different attitudes toward public service, a complete overhaul. Anything short will not cut it or make it.

On April 27, what shall we have to celebrate when millions of our people are groaning under a yoke of suffering, oppression, occasioned principally and pre-eminently by their own democratic government in its wholesale failure to deliver basic services to its people; they are hankering after justice.

We owe it to our people to get some semblance of justice. It is due to them. Then they will have every reason to celebrate and not to mourn.

* Mgoqi writes in his personal capacity.