Youth lament SA’s incapacity to uphold human rights

On Human Rights Day, South Africans generally enjoy a day off with family to celebrate the human rights we are granted by our Constitution.

“Well, all those except our right to security, equal opportunity, or autonomy,” said 19-year-old Yona Treger, a Biomedical Sciences student at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).

Though South Africa may hold itself up as a protector of human rights, some youngsters within the Jewish community think that in recent years, this has fallen by the wayside.

“The chutzpah that South Africa has to pride itself on human rights is immense and the fact that we accept it is shameful,” said Treger. “The government of South Africa has done nothing to uphold human rights. In its notorious case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, it stated that Israel was cutting off electricity and water and this was ‘calculated to bring about the physical destruction’ of the Gazan people. Why then does it cut off South Africa’s water and electricity every other week? Does it wish to bring about the physical destruction of South Africa? Or possibly just our rights and dignity?”

For these youths, human rights should be universal, because “human beings ultimately deserve to live in a world where equality, dignity, and freedom are the societal norm”, according to Sienna Sharfman, an 18-year-old first-year Bachelor of Arts student at Wits.

Said Treger, “Human rights are the default because as humans, we have evolved past thinking purely in terms of kill or be killed and value each other for our humanity.”

Shimon Stein, a 20-year-old Accounting Science student at Wits agreed, saying “Human rights provide the framework for societal order and progress, allowing people to advocate for their rights and work toward improvements that benefit society. In a system where human rights are respected, individuals can voice their opinions and bring about change. Without them, authoritarian systems may arise that suppress dissent and focus on serving the interests of the powerful rather than the people.”

Said Sharfman, “The Bill of Rights serves as a reminder that we need to be proud of the achievements made by those who gave up their lives for our ability to live in freedom.”

Similarly, 17-year-old Grade 11 student Josh Woolf said South Africa was a beacon for human rights because “we allow for diverse peoples and cultures to be accepted and to live the way that they want to live and give them the right to exist in a fair way”.

Gilad Sherman, a 21-year-old BCom Digital Marketing student at Vega, said it was important that we uphold human rights because they “prevent oppression and ensure fairness. South Africa’s past shows how dangerous it is when rights are denied.”

Though some think that South Africa does, indeed, care about human rights in theory, they believe that the government doesn’t do enough to ensure that they are protected by all.

“No matter how good we think we are at upholding human rights, challenges remain, particularly for the disadvantaged,” said Stein, “Poverty and high levels of violence in townships prevent many South Africans from fully realising basic human rights such as the right to life. While the legal system protects human rights, these issues still affect many communities.

“Our Constitution is progressive,” said Sherman, “But in reality, corruption, crime, and inequality show that rights aren’t always upheld. Many still lack basics like water and housing.”

Twenty-two-year-old Economics student Daniel Rome believes that though South Africa has some important institutions like the Constitutional Court and the Bill of Rights, systemic and institutionalised corruption has resulted in a lack of service delivery that has had an impact on the ability of South Africans to enjoy the rights they were promised.

Treger believes South Africa has failed to uphold human rights because daily, 77 people are murdered and 117 rapes are reported to the police. “There’s not a shadow of a doubt in anyone’s mind that in the grand majority of these cases, there will be no justice,” he said. “The police mafia will do its absolute best to do no work so that its members can sit in their cars or stations playing Candy Crush or receiving bribes. The government is fine with this, it denies the existence of farm murders, and would rather sing about how it ‘shoots to kill’.”

Said Rome, “South Africa, the African National Congress, and the South African government should concentrate more on protecting our citizens than on foreign affairs and trying to present themselves as beacons of hope and human rights.”

For Treger, “It’s a travesty that 31 years after apartheid ended, a child who never was an oppressor will have his opportunities stolen from him and given to a person who was never oppressed. Because somehow, wronging another innocent through racial quotas will rectify past oppression.”