Government's contempt for the people of South Africa

Now that our government has revealed its contempt for the people of South Africa in matters ranging from HIV and Aids denialism and apparently unstoppable crime to the shameful Selebi affair as well as our country's role in Zimbabwe's unresolved crisis, to name but a few of the state's assaults on our fragile democracy, we need to strike back.

With scant prospect of a better ANC government waiting in the wings, it is up to those citizens who feel strongly enough about the country's slide into authoritarianism and indifference to speak up in anticipation of national elections next year.

In one of a series of public debates supported by Independent Newspapers and the Economic Justice Initiative at the University of Cape Town recently, Archbishop Desmond Tutu noted with despair that young South Africans were pledging to kill for ANC president Jacob Zuma.

He told a packed auditorium, "We have to remind some in our country that there are those in Zimbabwe who have been ready to kill for Mr Mugabe. See what happens!

"They (the ANC's Youth League) speak about a revolution," he continued. "Now, I don't know what that refers to, but whatever it is, that revolution is not going to be sustained and preserved by intemperate, almost insane utterances.

"That revolution, the dream that is South Africa, the promise that is South Africa, that is going to be preserved when you and I are vigilant, you and I preserve freedom, you and I stand up for justice … you and I say, hey, our people did not shed blood for nothing."

Businesswoman and former University of Cape Town vice chancellor Mamphela Ramphele, sharing the same platform, said that both Zimbabwe and South Africa had cultures of personalised politics that invested too much power in leaders.

"We are messing up big time is some areas," she said. "The limits of impunity are within our power to set. The question is whether we are prepared to do so before it is too late."

Reminding a packed auditorium that the limits of tyrants are set by the level of tolerance among those subjected to tyranny, Ramphele said: "In a sense the people of Zimbabwe waited too long before challenging Mugabe's tyranny. It was a case of for whom the bell tolls.

When it tolled for the 20 000 young people of Matabeleland in the 1980s, many kept their heads down. When it tolled for the white farmers, many even cheered for the false dawn. Now that the bell is tolling for each and every Zimbabwean who might be in the wrong place at the wrong time, there is no place to hide."