Has freedom failed in SA?

GEOFF SIFRIN

Optimism abounded; the country seemed to be headed towards a non-racial, prosperous future. In retrospect, such ideals were naïve, given the scale and complexity of the problems.

What have we done with our freedom? There are some successes; lots of failures. South Africa is still one of the most unequal countries in the world.

Half of its population lives in poverty; 40% of its youth are unemployed and will probably never work; and a tiny, wealthy elite lives comfortably. Many people who can afford to leave are doing so.

In this season of holidays and memorials, including the elections on 8 May, the tendency to look at the past with nostalgia is epitomised by a new South African-made film called An Act of Defiance. It was made in 2017, and released here a day before Freedom Day this year. It is about the 1964 Rivonia Trial.

It tells the story of Bram Fischer, the lawyer who put his life at risk to defend Nelson Mandela and his black and Jewish comrades in apartheid South Africa. This led to life imprisonment for Mandela on charges of sabotage.

The film’s Jewish thread is clearly articulated. Aside from the Jewish defendants, the state prosecutor, Percy Yutar, was also Jewish.

Joel Joffe, later Lord Joffe, the instructing solicitor for Mandela’s defence team, was Jewish. He played a key role in helping the future South African president and his compatriots avoid the death penalty..

The film’s director, Jean van de Velde, is at pains to represent the texture of South Africa in the early 1960s. But when you leave the movie house, you realise that today’s dire reality is not that different to how it was back then. Mirrored in seemingly innocuous scenarios, some things remain as they were during apartheid, when whites were bosses and blacks were servants.

Today, in a lush park in a fancy neighbourhood near Rosebank Mall, Johannesburg, there’s a black beggar whose sole activity is to pick up the dog poo left there by mainly white people who come to walk their pedigreed dogs on weekends. He calls himself Shepherd.

Take a step back from this: in Paris, you can be fined for letting your dog mess on the pavement. In South Africa, the wealthy don’t think it strange to have a black man, a spade and plastic bag in hand, waiting behind their crouching poodle. For Shepherd, last Saturday was just another day in the park, in spite of it being Freedom Day.

Does South Africa as a society still have the will to change, as it fiercely believed it could, on 27 April 1994? At that time too, there were the proverbial ‘shepherds’, but also the hope that apartheid’s devils could be defanged.

South Africans are confused and uneasy. Tribalism and racism are rising; national pride is falling. In this condition, some countries turn to an autocrat who promises to sort things out. But autocrats who start off as benevolent, generally turn into harsh rulers who won’t leave. A glance north to Mugabe and Zimbabwe is a warning.

South Africa faces a rough ride to get back on track.