WHOSE FREEDOM IS IT ANYWAY?

It’s been a week of freedoms right? South Africa’s Freedom Day celebrations last week, Workers Day commemoration and World Press Freedom Day earlier this week had me reflecting on what freedom is to a people. How far have we come with our freedoms? Free from what? Whose freedom is it anyway? Where are we going with these freedoms we continuously seek in our respective corners?

The depth of the significance of South Africa’s Freedom Day has and never will be felt by many of us who now enjoy the liberties that renowned and nameless African National Congress (ANC) and other mass democratic movement activists like Chris Hani fought and died for.

The profoundness of April 27, 1994 is most felt by all those who directly suffered and continue to suffer indignity and loss of life thanks to the restrictive and racist Apartheid government of yesteryears. Or is it?
With the current state of affairs in the republic, it’s hard to imagine that the top brass, particularly the head of the ANC, care to remember how this day attained its public holiday status.

In fact, the ANC under President Jacob Zuma has unearthed numerous ills that have made the nation question whether they are free indeed.
At least this is what some of the people have voiced out through their political party representatives and other organised structures like workers’ unions.  In fact, the people have said it themselves ever so visibly in the past month with the marches against the president and the ANC at large.

At least that kind of freedom – to express themselves – they have and is respected even at grassroots.
South Africa’s constitution is hailed as one of the most progressive in the world; the freedoms it promises and makes an effort to respect in most instances remain a rumour in a majority of African countries. [Ahem] But the other reality is that this litany of freedoms remains only but a promise for the majority of South Africans as President Zuma’s government has so graciously illustrated.

It’s a common and well documented struggle for most liberation movements; once in power, they not only lose sight of the very people who trusted them with the power but they invest as much energy and resources as they do when wining and dining their families and friends on ‘dealing with’ those who call them out on accountability and transparency.

You will find many academics and journalists who stood on the side of liberation movements during tough times criticising injustices of bad governance under colonialism and Apartheid being labelled ‘sell-outs’ and ‘agents’ of western colonial forces. Makes you wonder, “Whose freedom is it anyway?”

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