We too raised questions about the direction our country was going

Dear Ms Sexwale,

I was very moved by your letter. I am also pleased to see that the younger generation take politics seriously and are raising tough questions about the direction in which our country is moving. We too raised questions about the direction our country was going in our time, and we found the answers in the struggle for freedom. Then, as now, at the centre of that struggle was the African National Congress.

I want you to note well, I say the ANC, not Dr J.S. Moroka who was ANC president when I joined. I joined the ANC, not Dr Moroka! As you probably know, Dr Moroka left office in disgrace and later even repudiated the ANC. It is vitally important to separate leaders from the movement, because as you can see from the case of Dr Moroka, leaders, even presidents, come and go. But the movement lives on and outlasts them.

The media find it easier to reduce politics to personalities. We live in an era of celebrities, so politics too is reduced to personalities. Unlike in the US where elections are about voting for an individual candidate, here in South Africa we vote for political parties, not for their president or leader. So, are you not mistaken in conflating the incumbent president with the ANC? The question that faces the voter, including yourself, is not whether do you like this candidate or that candidate, but which political party is likely to take the country in the right direction.

In four successive elections the overwhelming majority of South African voters said that party is the ANC. After a 62% win in 1994, the ANC went to a 67% win in 1999, then close to a 68% win in 2004, finally coming down to 65% in 2009. And, despite what opinion makers and opposition parties claim, it has never abused the two thirds majority in had in 1999 and 2004! Whatever else anyone may say about it, the ANC is the legitimate government of South Africa and governs because the majority of voters want it to govern.

When we went to the polls in 1994, the ANC went to the South African electorate with a campaign slogan "A better life for all". It has elaborated on it in subsequent elections, but its slogans have been consistently inclusive. Can you say the same of the main opposition parties? In 1999 the Democratic Party (DP) went to the polls on the slogan "Fight Back!" Was there ever the slightest doubt who was being incited to "Fight back!"? and to fight back against whom?

During the 2009 elections the Democratic Alliance (DA) campaign called on voters to deny the ANC a two-thirds majority. What for? To advance the economic freedom struggle of our people, perhaps? I wonder.

How do you explain the inclusivity of ANC campaign slogans while other parties always appeal to only sections of the population? Perhaps you misunderstand what has taken place in this country over the past thirty years. Our people do not follow the ANC blindly, as they do religion. Our people support the ANC because of its track record of one hundred years of selfless struggle. But they don't follow blindly, the protests you find so uncomfortable should tell you that. But these protests are demands for attention, not calls to reject the ANC government.

You seem very upset that there are strikes, demonstrations, public protests and other manifestations of displeasure with various aspects of life. Well, that is what we actually fought for, were arrested for and spent twenty-seven years in jail for: The untrammelled right of the citizen to raise his/her issues publicly in the most effective manner. We fought precisely for the right to strike, to demonstrate, to march - in designer or just plain tackies - to voice your grievances as loudly as possible.

If you watch the television news regularly you would know that such public manifestations are a daily occurrence in virtually all the capitals of Europe, but especially Greece - the country that originally gave us the concept of democracy. For nearly six months last year demonstrators in the USA occupied Wall Street, the headquarters of the New York Stock Exchange.

What such protests, in South Africa as elsewhere, indicate is that citizens are unhappy about one thing or another. In De Doorns today it is farm workers, protesting against their shockingly poor wages. Tomorrow it might be factory workers demanding better conditions. These are not symptoms of a democracy's ill health. On the contrary! These are signs of its vibrancy.

Let us remember, democracy does not promise a government that will bring heaven to earth. What it promises is a government of the people, by the people, for the people. A government citizens put in office; a government citizens can vote out of office; a government that citizens have the right and the power to challenge in the law courts, and on the streets.

Don't mourn the demonstrations, strikes and public protests. Celebrate them, as proof of a functioning democratic system. That is democracy in action. Regrettably the contentment of citizens is never reported, because they express it quietly in their homes or during the occasional opinion survey. Strikes and demonstrations can give the impression of massive discontent even when it is limited to a few places, among a few people.

We do not have a one party state! We do not have a one union country! COSATU is a federation of a number of trade unions, as is NACTU and FEDUSA. True, the unions in COSATU enjoy wider and deeper support amongst the workers than the unions in the other two federations. But that is support won through struggling for the rights of the workers. Before the mid-1970s the racist regime and all White employers did not recognise the right of African workers to form unions, let alone go on strike.

The unions in COSATU literally had to be organised from scratch, under the hostile eyes of the Security Police and employers' organisations - like the Chamber of Mines. The activists, who went about organising the workers were jailed, detained and tortured, not for alleged "terrorist activities" like me. They were persecuted purely for organising African workers! Comrade Neil Aggett was literally beaten to death for doing nothing more than that.

That tells you that every little right - including the elementary right to attend a meeting - that African workers have today, was purchased with their blood! Are you surprised that they defend those rights with such fervour?

Is COSATU ruining the country by making unreasonable wage demands? I do not want to debate what is reasonable and what is not, because that changes from day to day. But have you considered the success of South African businesses since democracy? They have flourished and made money hand over fist.

Marikana, which you rightly decry, and the current unrest in De Doorns offer some clues. The mining corporations have made millions, pay their directors and senior managers huge bonuses each year, yet these same companies expect African miners to be content with low wages! The fruit farmers of the Hex River valley export to Europe and to the East, where their products command high prices. Yet they expect their workers to live on R70.00 per day!

Who then is running the economy down? How will workers who can't put enough food on their tables purchase the goods turned out by South African industry? Who will buy all the fine things our factories produce if South Africa's workers earn too little to buy them? How will the South African economy grow if its goods can't be sold locally?

It is not the trade unions, least of all those in COSATU, that are running the country's economy down. It is White owned and controlled business, that developed and grew on the basis of a low wage economy, satisfied to meet only the needs of the White minority, who are doing this. The working people do not only deserve better wages, but that is the only way in which the South African economy will produce the consumer market here at home to grow the economy!

When you say the ANC is in trouble, you are right. But that too needs to be weighed carefully. A few years ago when we experienced those horrible attacks on African immigrants, there was only one party that went into the troubled areas and brought an end to that xenophobic violence. Why was it the ANC alone that regarded it as its duty to and which enjoyed the credibility to go into those areas to restore calm?

During my own years in the movement, there have been terrifying moments of despair, when one thought all was lost. After ostensibly leading the Defiance Campaign, Dr Moroka repudiated it in court. How do you think, we, the rank and file volunteers, felt at that moment? Can you imagine the battering our morale took during those first five years on Robben Island? Each year a new crop of political prisoners arrived, indicating that the structures we had built were being taken apart.

For those in exile it was even worse. Instead of giving up, Comrades like Chris Hani had the courage to stand up and demand change. The 1969 Morogoro conference, that set the ANC on the right path, was the result. So too, today when you feel that things have gone wrong, do not throw your hands up in despair. Do what Chris and others did. As one who was born into the ANC, I imagine you are a member of a branch. Demand and organise to bring about change.

The hard truth is that the other parties have neither the policies nor the will to solve South Africa's problems. Their non-response to the xenophobic incidents indicate that. We know IFP government from the former KwaZulu homeland and from KZN between 1994 and 2004. We had NP and NP/DP coalitions governing the Western Cape between 1994 and 2004.

There was a five year ANC inter-regnum, then back to the DA which now governs. Have they addressed the problems of the Western Cape? How are they doing with gangsterism in the Cape Flats? How are they doing with workers in the province? How are they doing with the African townships? How are they doing with employment equity? How about equitable procurement?

As for the new kid on the block, COPE? Well, I think its inability to convene even an inaugural conference speaks for itself! Alongside George Bush, Mr 'Terror' Lekota, bares the unique distinction of being president by court order!

Literally thousands of your people, including children as young as Hector Pieterson, died so that you will one day have the vote. Please don't mock their sacrifice by throwing it away on a whim. Despair helps no one and is the road to defeat.

It is only by exercising this hard won right that you choose South Africa and also help shape your own future!

Yours for a better life in a better South Africa.

Andrew Mlangeni

>> Andrew Mlangeni is a political activist, Rivonia trialist and former Robben Island prisoner. This article first appeared in ANC Today, the weekly online newsletter of the African National Congress.

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