Our duty to safeguard our hard-won democracy

JEFF KATZ

Participants met with survivors of that tragedy, visited and laid wreaths at the memorials to those who died and listened as the various speakers sharing their views on what Human Rights Day means to South Africa and why it was decided that it be observed on this particular date. 

There was again a Jewish presence at this year’s Human Rights Day events in Sharpeville, led by SAJBD Gauteng Chairman Shaun Zagnoev and including lay and professional leaders of the Board, students and King David and Yeshiva College learners.

The Board today puts much emphasis on leading the Jewish community in being an active part of fostering a human rights culture in our country. This, as we are increasingly coming to recognise, means identifying with the particular symbols and institutions that encapsulate our shared national heritage and values.

Public holidays are among the most important of these institutions. Each was carefully chosen to highlight an aspect of South Africa’s history that can be said to be core not just to what happened in the past, but to what we, as a nation, are aspiring to in the present and for the future.

Through remembering the suffering and injustices of the past, we commit ourselves to doing our part in ensuring that those tragic events are not repeated. It is a reality that by and large the white minority, of which our community is a part, has to date failed to identify in any meaningful way with these national days of remembrance, and we need to make a greater concerted effort to remedy this.

Just as our own traumatic experiences of persecution have left lasting scars, so are black South Africans still struggling to come to terms with the legacy of hurt, humiliation, exploitation and dispossession that they and their ancestors were subjected to under apartheid.

Given this shared understanding, I believe that we have a special duty to make ourselves aware of what happened and to empathise with those who suffered and in many ways continue to suffer because of it.

This means resisting the tendency, unfortunately all too common among white South Africans, to play down (whether overtly or by implication) the gravity of what the majority population were forced to endure in the years of white minority rule. In this area, we as a community need to speak less and listen more. 

Regardless of background, the duty to ensure that our hard-won democratic rights and humanitarian values continue to be the core of our society, is incumbent on all South Africans.

At both the collective and individual level, our community must strive to be part of that process, not just through upholding democratic, non-racial values, but through at all times acting with absolute integrity in every aspect of our lives. 

         Listen to Charisse Zeifert on Jewish Board Talk, 101.9 ChaiFM every Friday 12:00-13:00