FREEDOM DAY DEBATE

4 May 2010

Freedom Day - 16 years later

Speaker, the topic of today's debate gives us an opportunity to reflect on the 16 years since the first democratic election. It allows us to explore the notion of freedom and what freedom means, in a practical sense, to everyday people.

The great philosopher Isaiah Berlin identified two concepts of freedom. The first was negative freedom or what he called "freedom from". It defined freedom as being the absence of constraint, or freedom from excessive state interference in peoples' lives.

His great insight was that to be truly free, people need more than just the absence of constraint. They need the opportunities and the wherewithal to improve their lives. This was his second concept of freedom, what he called positive freedom or "freedom to".

Speaker, this is more than philosophical mumbo-jumbo. In fact, the concepts of negative and positive freedom are rooted in our Constitution. The Constitution protects people from power abuse by the ruling party. Indeed, it establishes institutions independent of the ruling party which are meant to protect people from power abuse. At the same time, the Constitution obliges the state progressively to realise basic human needs such as water, nutrition, shelter, and so on.

At the heart of our Constitution is a specific understanding of the role of the state: to protect people's rights and freedoms, to expand their opportunities, and to do those things for people that they cannot be expected to do for themselves. Our Constitution regards people as active agents, not permanent victims. If our constitutional democracy is to succeed, people must be prepared to use their freedoms and seize their opportunities to improve their lives. This implies that together with freedom, comes personal responsibility.

Our vision of the "open, opportunity society for all" mirrors the founding premises of our Constitution. Like the Constitution, this philosophy, embodies both negative and positive conceptions of freedom - "freedom from" and "freedom to".

An open society is one in which people are free, where government is transparent and accountable, and where strong, independent institutions flourish, assisting citizens to hold the ruling party to account. It is a government that respects the rule of law and agrees to be bound by the Constitution.

To give practical effect to these principles in the Western Cape, we have made the details of tenders awarded transparent and accessible to the public. We are giving citizens the means to assess the progress of our programmes and projects. And we are obliging officials and politicians to disclose their business interests and prohibiting them from doing business with government, so that we can significantly reduce corruption and power abuse.

An opportunity society is one centred on giving people the wherewithal to improve their lives, whatever the circumstances of their birth. We believe that the best affirmative action is broadening opportunity, not manipulating outcomes to favour the interests of the corrupt elite. We believe that opportunity enables people to shape their destiny and break free from a lifetime of dependency on the state.

To open up opportunities for all in the Western Cape, we are cutting wasteful and unnecessary expenditure so there is more money to spend on service delivery. We are creating jobs by making the Western Cape the best place to do business in the country. We are focusing on increasing the quality of schooling so that every child's life chances are improved. We are improving public healthcare because we don't believe that quality medical treatment should be reserved for the wealthy. And we are increasing access to safe and reliable public transport so that everybody can have freedom of mobility.

The more we succeed in building an open, opportunity society for all in the Western Cape, the freer the citizens of this province will become.

Speaker, the success of this project is vital not just for citizens of the Western Cape. It is crucial for the rest of the country. We need to establish a living example of our "Constitution in action" for our country as a whole. This is all the more urgent as the governing kleptocracies in the rest of the country undermine the letter and spirit of our Constitution even as they claim to uphold it.

The tragedy, Speaker, is that the freedom envisaged in our Constitution is slipping away from us. South Africa is becoming a closed, crony society for insider comrades only. It is this that fundamentally undermines our Constitution and will, unless it is stopped, drive South Africa into the tragic ranks of failed states.

In the closed, crony society, freedom is limited to a small but powerful elite, who define it as their capacity to abuse power in their own interests. Like Isaiah Berlin's two concepts of liberty, there is "freedom from" and "freedom to". It is freedom to loot. And it is freedom from accountability.

We see this playing itself out every single day, as elite groups in the ANC slug it out with each other for access to government tenders. We have seen it in Julius Malema's R140 million tenders in Limpopo and ANC Youth League leaders pocketing 30% of deals done. We see it in the ANC's front companies, ranging from Imvume to Thebe to Chancellor House, where the ANC in government grants tenders to the ANC in business to enrich the ANC and its leaders.

Under the ANC we have become a vampire state. We have granted a parasitic elite freedom to loot and freedom from accountability. We have allowed them to hide this extreme power abuse behind the rhetoric of liberation.

The assumption at the heart of the Constitution is that South Africans are active agents, with the power and, crucially, the responsibility, to hold their government to account. The means the Constitution gives people to do this is the vote. If South Africans consistently return to power an elite kleptocracy, then we must be very honest and say that it is we, the voters, who are failing the Constitution, and not the other way around.

If we want the Constitution to protect us, we have to protect the Constitution. And we do that by using our vote to remove from power those who abuse power. That is the only way. And it has to be done before it is too late.

Speaker, the great struggle in South Africa in the next 16 years will not be over the great ideological divisions of left and right. Neither will it be based on racial or ethnic identities. It will be between those who want freedom and opportunity for all under the Constitution and those who want freedom for the few to loot from the many.

In the Western Cape, we will play our part in this struggle by showing how government can actively increase peoples' freedom. We will give all South Africans the chance to judge for themselves what is best: the open, opportunity society for all or the closed, crony society for an elite group of comrades, only.

And Speaker, in doing so, we must transcend racial divisions - even as our opponents in this House attempt to smear us with fabricated emails and other dirty tricks. As time goes on, more and more people will see these tactics for what they are - the desperation of a party as deceitful and self-serving in opposition as it was in government.

Let me challenge my colleagues on the other side of the House today. Use your constitutional rights to genuinely hold us to account, but don't abuse these rights. Let us engage in robust debates on policy and delivery, but let's put a lid on the dirty tricks.

To conclude, Speaker, let me remind every Member of this House that our constitutional duty is to increase freedom for the many and not just the chosen few. This is the goal that must animate all of us as we fulfil our respective goals in opposition and in government.

Issued by the Office of the Western Cape Premier, May 4 2010

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