We, the People. Albie Sachs
the prospects as much as possible for it to be brought about as swiftly, securely and painlessly as possible. A democratic constitution is one and entire. It does not have ‘own affairs’ sections – one set of guarantees for blacks, another for whites.
A constitution is a document with an intellectual reach into the future. It is our generation that drafts it in the light of our historical experience and thought of our age, but we consciously attempt to produce something that will last.
If we wish to break down the habits of thinking in racial categories and encourage the principles of a non-racial democracy, we must produce a constitution that contemplates the rights of all the citizens of our country, not just of a section, however large and however abused in the past. To be effective, the Constitution must be rooted in South African history and tradition. It must draw on the traditions of freedom in communities, not just those who at this historical juncture are in the forefront of the freedom struggle.
There is in fact not a section of the population, whatever its position today, that has not at some time in history fought for freedom.
Many of the foreparents of the whites who live in the country today were refugees from persecution – the Huguenots who fled from massacre in France because of their faith, the Jews who escaped from pogroms and then from Nazi terror. Thousands of English-speaking whites occupying important positions in the professions and public life, volunteered for military service against Nazism and fascism in Europe and later marched in the Torch Commando against the extension of racist rule in South Africa.
South Africa has had an unusually large number of bishops who have been willing to go against the tide, usually stronger in their own churches than outside, as well as of writers and journalists and lawyers and academics and medical people (even at least one freedom-fighting dentist and two road engineers).
There is not an Afrikaans-speaking white family that was not touched by the struggles over the right to speak Afrikaans and to uphold their Afrikaner identity; Boer heroism against the might of the British Empire became legendary throughout the world, and is part of South African patrimony, just as the concentration camps in which thousands of civilians died are part of our shame.
Workers from all over the world, driven by hunger and unemployment, came to work on the mines in South Africa, where they died in huge numbers of lung disease; hundreds fell at the barricades, gun in hand, as they fought against reduction in wages.
The tradition of singing freedom songs as patriots faced execution was started by four trade unionists who sang ‘The Red Flag’ as they mounted the gallows.
Many South African women joined the suffragette movement and challenged the physical, legal, and psychological power of male rule.
Apartheid has distorted this history, subordinating each and every action to its racist context, suppressing all that was noble and highlighting all that was ugly. The ideals of democracy and freedom are presented as white ideals, the assumption being that blacks are only interested in a full stomach, not in questions of freedom. Daily life refutes this notion. It is the anti-apartheid struggle that has kept democracy alive in South Africa. It is not just the number of organisations that have indicated support for a document such as the Freedom Charter that proves this, but the growth of a powerful, alternative democratic culture in the country. The culture of democracy is strong precisely because people have had to struggle for it.
In the last resort, the strongest guarantee of freedom in South Africa lies in the hearts of the oppressed. It is they more than anyone who know what it is like to have their homes bulldozed to the ground, to be moved from pillar to post, to be stopped in the streets or raided at night, to be humiliated because of who their parents are or on account of the language they speak. Inviolability of the home, freedom of movement, the rights of the personality, free speech – they fight for these each and every day. If the Constitution is suffused with the longing of ordinary people for simple justice and peace, then freedom in South Africa is ensured.
Constitutions can have many meanings. In the first place, they establish the structures of government, and lay down how political power is to be exercised. Yet a constitution does much more than indicate the political and legal organisation of the state. It serves as a symbol for the whole of society, as a point of reference for the nation. People like to feel that they have constitutional rights even if they do not exercise them.
The existence of a constitution is an indication that society is ruled by steady and known principles and not by the arbitrary whims of persons. Like the flag, the anthem and the emblem, the constitution stands above everybody and everything and symbolises a shared patriotism binding on all.
The Constitution can also serve as an educator. Its language is appealed to in all sorts of situations, it is studied in school, it integrates itself into the general culture of the society. The language of freedom in the Constitution becomes part of the discourse of the people. In South African conditions the Constitution will in addition be a compact, solemnly entered into by democratically chosen representatives of all the people, emerging out of strife, with the sense of and commitment to the creation of a set of rules in terms of which all can live together with pride and in peace.
Above all, the Constitution is a vehicle for expressing fundamental notions of freedom, at the conceptual, symbolic and practical levels. In South Africa this aspect has special importance. An effective Bill of Rights can become a major instrument of nation-building. It can secure for the mass of the people a sense that life has really changed, that there will be no return to the oppressive ways of apartheid society, while at the same time it can give to those who presently exercise power the conviction that their basic rights can be guaranteed in the future without recourse to a group rights scheme.
For many years, supporters of majority rule looked with suspicion on the idea of a Bill of Rights and the rule of law. On the other hand, proponents of entrenching fundamental rights and freedoms, balked at the notion of ‘one person, one vote’. Two currents that for a long time tended to flow in different directions are now joined together. In turn, solving the questions of political rights and of fundamental liberties makes it possible to give guarantees in relation to the aspect of cultural diversity. All taken together make it possible to contemplate manifestly fair procedures for regulating the process of eliminating the inequalities created by apartheid. The envisaged provisions are not for black South Africans or for white South Africans, but for all South Africans; the last word goes to freedom.
THREE
We Have to Mistrust Ourselves
Preparing Ourselves for Power
FROM TOWARDS A NEW CONSTITUTION FOR SOUTH AFRICA: ADVANCING HUMAN RIGHTS IN SOUTH AFRICA | OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS | 1992
I start with two poignant sayings I brought back home to South Africa with me after years of exile elsewhere in Africa. The first is: the beautiful people are not yet born. It is the deeply sad observation of a Ghanaian novelist on the disappointments of independence in his country, applicable to Zimbabwe today. The second is even harsher: a rich man’s fart smells sweet.
The Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o felt this phrase was so apposite to the situation in his country that he used it several times in a recent novel. Young Kenyans could not imagine that the Father of the Nation, Jomo Kenyatta, patriarch, autocrat and amasser of fortunes, had once been a famous freedom fighter who had spent a decade in prison for opposing British colonial domination.
Will the post-apartheid generation feel the same about us?
We who have spent all our lives fighting power, now suddenly face the prospect of exercising it. Many of us are as fearful at the prospect of finding ourselves in office as those presently there are alarmed about giving it up.
At the moment when we are about to see the achievement of what we dreamt of, a kind of sadness rather than joy settles upon us. Where there should be a feeling of elated accomplishment, there is an emotion of disenchantment, in some cases even cynicism. Can it be that apartheid, by depriving us of