Date: 21/03/004
Source: Democratic Alliance
Title: T Leon: We have rights on paper but not in practice
Today we look back at the events in Sharpeville on 21 March 1960 from the perspective of a country that has a Constitution with the most ambitious bill of rights in the world.
The rights in our Constitution do not only limit what the government can do to individuals. Our rights also describe what the government must do for individuals.
Each of us has the right to housing, to health care, to food and water. Each of us has a right to a clean environment and a decent education. Each of us has the right to use our language and participate in our culture. Each of us has the right to live in peace and security.
Rights on paper, not in practice
Eight years have passed since our new Constitution was established. And ten years have passed since South Africa became a democracy.
We can now look back and decide whether the government has succeeded or failed in living up to the human rights in our Constitution.
Our conclusion must be this: that while the government has succeeded in honouring some of the rights in our Constitution, it has failed to honour others.
Two weeks ago, I was visiting the town of Bochum. And while I was there, I saw something called the Desmod Park Housing Project.
There are no houses at all. There is only a pile of bricks, cement, door frames, toilet pans and roof sheets. The government delivered the materials but did not bother to build anything with them.
They are just lying there, a year later, on the ground. Already the cement has been ruined by the rain.
Meanwhile, the people of the community are still living in shacks. They are still waiting for the government to build the houses that it promised them. They are still waiting for their constitutional right to housing to be fulfilled.
That is the story of human rights in South Africa. The building materials are there, in the pages of our Constitution. But the houses have not yet been built. We have rights on paper, but not in practice.
Last week I visited Cambridge Township in East London where people are still waiting to receive the houses they were promised. The poverty and squalor in which people are living ten years into democracy borders on the inhumane.
Human rights and poverty in Bushbuckridge Bushbuckridge is another example.
The official unemployment rate in here in Bushbuckridge Local Municipality is 63 percent. And more and more people are losing their jobs. 10 000 jobs were lost from this area between 1996 and 2001. Even worse, four out of five people have no source of monthly income whatsoever.
This crushing poverty is made worse by the fact that the socioeconomic rights of the people have not been fulfilled.
One out of five households in Bushbuckridge has no access to sanitation. One out of six households depends on candles instead of electricity for light. And only one in twenty households has access to clean water inside their dwellings.
Last month, the South African Human Rights Commission inspected the Tintswalo hospital, which serves almost one million people in the region.
The Human Rights Commissoners found the conditions at the hospital to be "shocking".
Hundreds of people arrive at the hospital before dawn and stand in queues all day long. There are queues for everything-for admission, for treatment, and for medicine. Only a few people make it to the front of the queues. The hundreds of other people still standing in the queues must return the next day.
Such practices, such poor conditions violate the constitutional rights of the people of Bushbuckridge and the surrounding areas to have access to health care.
It is because of the neglect and mismanagement of the ANC government that Tintswalo hospital does not have the proper staff and facilities that it needs.
Human rights abroad
Last month, Parade magazine in the United States published a list of "The Worlds Ten Worst Dictators".
Two of the ten worst dictators rule countries that share borders with South Africa. They are Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (number four on the list), and King Mswati III of Swaziland (number ten on the list).
The ANC has, on occasion, spoken out against abuses of human rights and democracy in Swaziland. But it refuses to do so in Zimbabwe.
In fact, President Mbeki has become Robert Mugabes best friend, his foremost ally, and his strongest defender.
Last December, President Mbeki attacked the idea that human rights were important in Zimbabwe. He said that the issue of human rights was a tool used by "some within Zimbabwe and elsewhere.for overthrowing the government of Zimbabwe and rebuilding Zimbabwe as they wish".
For President Mbeki, human rights are not fundamental. They are flexible, depending on the political interests and allegiances of the ANC.
One of the keys to upholding human rights is to bear witness. And President Mbeki has borne false witness in Zimbabwe. To all of the worlds leaders-Bush, Schroeder, Blair-he has said that the Zimbabwean government and the opposition are talking.
But they do not appear to be talking. And it is time that President Mbeki was honest enough to admit the truth: that quiet diplomacy has failed.
Two of the other dictators on the list of the ten worst in the world are Fidel Castro of Cuba and Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea-both of whom are good friends of the ANC and its leaders.
Exactly a year ago, the Cuban government carried out a brutal campaign of repression against political dissidents, journalists, human rights advocates, labour union organisers, and professionals. It convicted 75 pro-democracy activists in kangaroo courts and sentenced them to long jail sentences in filthy prisons. The ANC has said nothing about these gross abuses of human rights.
President Thabo Mbeki has also strengthened ties with Equatorial Guinea and its leader, President Obiang Nguema-a man who has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from his own country and who routinely tortures his political opponents.
Recently, 15 South Africans were arrested in Equatorial Guinea, on suspicion that they were involved in a plot to overthrow the government of that country.
If these men are guilty, they should be punished. But they must be held in humane conditions and given a fair trial.
Unfortunately, the ANC government has been slow to protect their human rights, as well as the human rights of the 70 men who were arrested in Zimbabwe on similar charges.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma made the appallingly callous statement that "any South African nationals should not expect too much assistance from the government. One of the South Africans apparently told the diplomatic corps in Equatorial Guinea what nonsense he committed there. He will have to explain that himself".
The ANC government picks and chooses which human rights abuses it condemns and which it condones, depending on its ideology and political interests.
Again and again, President Mbeki sides with oppressors like Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe against their people.
He and his government have turned a blind eye to the well-documented human rights abuses of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
They have tried to assist him, by hook or by crook, with millions of rands of our own taxpayers money and with hundreds of guns and bullet-proof vests that our own police are desperately short of. Crime and victims rights
The continuing brutality of crime in South Africa is a violation of the human rights of ordinary, law-abiding men, women and children.
Each of us has a constitutional right to security of the person. But the government has failed to guarantee that right.
In a recent survey, the Institute of Security Studies determined that 22,9 percent of South Africans had been victims of crime in the previous year.
That is only slightly down from the percentage recorded in 1998, when 24,5 percent of South Africans said that they had been victims.
That means that over the course of the past five years, more than 7 out of 10 South Africans have been victims of crime.
In 1998, 60 percent of South Africans said that they felt safe walking in the areas where they live. By 2003, only 25 percent said that they felt safe.
Yesterday, there were news reports that one-fifth of active police personnel-21 334 officers-have left the South African Police Service since 1998. There are almost 4 000 vacant detective posts.
Clearly, the ANC government has failed to protect the rights of ordinary people and victims of crime.
The DAs policies for restoring human rights in South Africa
The Democratic Alliance has many different policies that will protect and promote human rights in South Africa.
We will protect the rights of ordinary people to safety and security by putting 150 000 police on the streets in the next three years. In rural areas, we will create a new specialised protection service to carry out regular patrols and border control.
The DA will strengthen the criminal justice system so that criminals are caught and convicted without delay. There will be no more easy paroles, and no more mass presidential pardons. We will help victims by providing a fund for victims of crime. And we will carry out regular victims of crime surveys, and make sure that crime statistics are reported on a monthy basis, station by station.
We will restore human rights to its rightful place at the top of South Africas international priorities. We will develop alliances with those countries that share the values of South Africas Constitution and that have committed to standards of good governance.
In Zimbabwe, we will speak out loudly and forcefully in favour of human rights and democracy. We will implement a Road Map to Democracy that leads to new democratic elections, and which is enforced by "smart sanctions" against the Mugabe regime.
Finally, we will improve service delivery to the poor by outsourcing social development programmes to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), religious organisations and the private sector.
The government admits that it has "lost" R15-billion over the past decade that was meant to be spent on social development. There are billions more that were meant to be spent on housing, water, health care and other basic necessities, but which have been lost, mismanaged, or left in state coffers. We know, for example, that there has been underspending of almost R4-billion in housing in the last four years.
The state simply lacks the capacity to uphold the socioeconomic rights of the people. It must build new partnerships with organisations and corporations that have a proven track record of delivering good services to the poor.
The DA will establish a clear policy framework for outsourcing social development activities and making public funds available to NGOs, religious organisations and private foundations that assist the poor.
Conclusion
South Africa cannot afford to forget the past.
Tomorrow, I will be travelling to the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto, to commemorate the events of 16 June 1976, when students rose up in protest at the Bantu education policies of the apartheid government.
I will also be travelling to the Potchefstroom Concentration Camp Cemetery, to remember the brutality and suffering to which so many women and children were subjected during the Anglo-Boer War.
The history of South Africa is full of tragic examples of the abuse of human rights.
But while we must acknowledge and learn from that history, we cannot dwell in it forever.
Our challenge is to take the lessons of the past and use them to build a new future.
The Constitution is our guide. The human rights that it provides are the building blocks of a new era for South Africa.
It is our task to take those human rights and use them, build on them, fight for them.
We cannot let the bricks of Bochum lie in the sun and rot in the rain. We cannot let the people of Bushbuckridge wait another decade to see a real change in their lives.
We must act today.
We must vote DA. Because South Africa deserves better.
Source: Democratic Alliance
Title: T Leon: We have rights on paper but not in practice
Today we look back at the events in Sharpeville on 21 March 1960 from the perspective of a country that has a Constitution with the most ambitious bill of rights in the world.
The rights in our Constitution do not only limit what the government can do to individuals. Our rights also describe what the government must do for individuals.
Each of us has the right to housing, to health care, to food and water. Each of us has a right to a clean environment and a decent education. Each of us has the right to use our language and participate in our culture. Each of us has the right to live in peace and security.
Rights on paper, not in practice
Eight years have passed since our new Constitution was established. And ten years have passed since South Africa became a democracy.
We can now look back and decide whether the government has succeeded or failed in living up to the human rights in our Constitution.
Our conclusion must be this: that while the government has succeeded in honouring some of the rights in our Constitution, it has failed to honour others.
Two weeks ago, I was visiting the town of Bochum. And while I was there, I saw something called the Desmod Park Housing Project.
There are no houses at all. There is only a pile of bricks, cement, door frames, toilet pans and roof sheets. The government delivered the materials but did not bother to build anything with them.
They are just lying there, a year later, on the ground. Already the cement has been ruined by the rain.
Meanwhile, the people of the community are still living in shacks. They are still waiting for the government to build the houses that it promised them. They are still waiting for their constitutional right to housing to be fulfilled.
That is the story of human rights in South Africa. The building materials are there, in the pages of our Constitution. But the houses have not yet been built. We have rights on paper, but not in practice.
Last week I visited Cambridge Township in East London where people are still waiting to receive the houses they were promised. The poverty and squalor in which people are living ten years into democracy borders on the inhumane.
Human rights and poverty in Bushbuckridge Bushbuckridge is another example.
The official unemployment rate in here in Bushbuckridge Local Municipality is 63 percent. And more and more people are losing their jobs. 10 000 jobs were lost from this area between 1996 and 2001. Even worse, four out of five people have no source of monthly income whatsoever.
This crushing poverty is made worse by the fact that the socioeconomic rights of the people have not been fulfilled.
One out of five households in Bushbuckridge has no access to sanitation. One out of six households depends on candles instead of electricity for light. And only one in twenty households has access to clean water inside their dwellings.
Last month, the South African Human Rights Commission inspected the Tintswalo hospital, which serves almost one million people in the region.
The Human Rights Commissoners found the conditions at the hospital to be "shocking".
Hundreds of people arrive at the hospital before dawn and stand in queues all day long. There are queues for everything-for admission, for treatment, and for medicine. Only a few people make it to the front of the queues. The hundreds of other people still standing in the queues must return the next day.
Such practices, such poor conditions violate the constitutional rights of the people of Bushbuckridge and the surrounding areas to have access to health care.
It is because of the neglect and mismanagement of the ANC government that Tintswalo hospital does not have the proper staff and facilities that it needs.
Human rights abroad
Last month, Parade magazine in the United States published a list of "The Worlds Ten Worst Dictators".
Two of the ten worst dictators rule countries that share borders with South Africa. They are Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (number four on the list), and King Mswati III of Swaziland (number ten on the list).
The ANC has, on occasion, spoken out against abuses of human rights and democracy in Swaziland. But it refuses to do so in Zimbabwe.
In fact, President Mbeki has become Robert Mugabes best friend, his foremost ally, and his strongest defender.
Last December, President Mbeki attacked the idea that human rights were important in Zimbabwe. He said that the issue of human rights was a tool used by "some within Zimbabwe and elsewhere.for overthrowing the government of Zimbabwe and rebuilding Zimbabwe as they wish".
For President Mbeki, human rights are not fundamental. They are flexible, depending on the political interests and allegiances of the ANC.
One of the keys to upholding human rights is to bear witness. And President Mbeki has borne false witness in Zimbabwe. To all of the worlds leaders-Bush, Schroeder, Blair-he has said that the Zimbabwean government and the opposition are talking.
But they do not appear to be talking. And it is time that President Mbeki was honest enough to admit the truth: that quiet diplomacy has failed.
Two of the other dictators on the list of the ten worst in the world are Fidel Castro of Cuba and Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea-both of whom are good friends of the ANC and its leaders.
Exactly a year ago, the Cuban government carried out a brutal campaign of repression against political dissidents, journalists, human rights advocates, labour union organisers, and professionals. It convicted 75 pro-democracy activists in kangaroo courts and sentenced them to long jail sentences in filthy prisons. The ANC has said nothing about these gross abuses of human rights.
President Thabo Mbeki has also strengthened ties with Equatorial Guinea and its leader, President Obiang Nguema-a man who has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from his own country and who routinely tortures his political opponents.
Recently, 15 South Africans were arrested in Equatorial Guinea, on suspicion that they were involved in a plot to overthrow the government of that country.
If these men are guilty, they should be punished. But they must be held in humane conditions and given a fair trial.
Unfortunately, the ANC government has been slow to protect their human rights, as well as the human rights of the 70 men who were arrested in Zimbabwe on similar charges.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma made the appallingly callous statement that "any South African nationals should not expect too much assistance from the government. One of the South Africans apparently told the diplomatic corps in Equatorial Guinea what nonsense he committed there. He will have to explain that himself".
The ANC government picks and chooses which human rights abuses it condemns and which it condones, depending on its ideology and political interests.
Again and again, President Mbeki sides with oppressors like Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe against their people.
He and his government have turned a blind eye to the well-documented human rights abuses of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
They have tried to assist him, by hook or by crook, with millions of rands of our own taxpayers money and with hundreds of guns and bullet-proof vests that our own police are desperately short of. Crime and victims rights
The continuing brutality of crime in South Africa is a violation of the human rights of ordinary, law-abiding men, women and children.
Each of us has a constitutional right to security of the person. But the government has failed to guarantee that right.
In a recent survey, the Institute of Security Studies determined that 22,9 percent of South Africans had been victims of crime in the previous year.
That is only slightly down from the percentage recorded in 1998, when 24,5 percent of South Africans said that they had been victims.
That means that over the course of the past five years, more than 7 out of 10 South Africans have been victims of crime.
In 1998, 60 percent of South Africans said that they felt safe walking in the areas where they live. By 2003, only 25 percent said that they felt safe.
Yesterday, there were news reports that one-fifth of active police personnel-21 334 officers-have left the South African Police Service since 1998. There are almost 4 000 vacant detective posts.
Clearly, the ANC government has failed to protect the rights of ordinary people and victims of crime.
The DAs policies for restoring human rights in South Africa
The Democratic Alliance has many different policies that will protect and promote human rights in South Africa.
We will protect the rights of ordinary people to safety and security by putting 150 000 police on the streets in the next three years. In rural areas, we will create a new specialised protection service to carry out regular patrols and border control.
The DA will strengthen the criminal justice system so that criminals are caught and convicted without delay. There will be no more easy paroles, and no more mass presidential pardons. We will help victims by providing a fund for victims of crime. And we will carry out regular victims of crime surveys, and make sure that crime statistics are reported on a monthy basis, station by station.
We will restore human rights to its rightful place at the top of South Africas international priorities. We will develop alliances with those countries that share the values of South Africas Constitution and that have committed to standards of good governance.
In Zimbabwe, we will speak out loudly and forcefully in favour of human rights and democracy. We will implement a Road Map to Democracy that leads to new democratic elections, and which is enforced by "smart sanctions" against the Mugabe regime.
Finally, we will improve service delivery to the poor by outsourcing social development programmes to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), religious organisations and the private sector.
The government admits that it has "lost" R15-billion over the past decade that was meant to be spent on social development. There are billions more that were meant to be spent on housing, water, health care and other basic necessities, but which have been lost, mismanaged, or left in state coffers. We know, for example, that there has been underspending of almost R4-billion in housing in the last four years.
The state simply lacks the capacity to uphold the socioeconomic rights of the people. It must build new partnerships with organisations and corporations that have a proven track record of delivering good services to the poor.
The DA will establish a clear policy framework for outsourcing social development activities and making public funds available to NGOs, religious organisations and private foundations that assist the poor.
Conclusion
South Africa cannot afford to forget the past.
Tomorrow, I will be travelling to the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto, to commemorate the events of 16 June 1976, when students rose up in protest at the Bantu education policies of the apartheid government.
I will also be travelling to the Potchefstroom Concentration Camp Cemetery, to remember the brutality and suffering to which so many women and children were subjected during the Anglo-Boer War.
The history of South Africa is full of tragic examples of the abuse of human rights.
But while we must acknowledge and learn from that history, we cannot dwell in it forever.
Our challenge is to take the lessons of the past and use them to build a new future.
The Constitution is our guide. The human rights that it provides are the building blocks of a new era for South Africa.
It is our task to take those human rights and use them, build on them, fight for them.
We cannot let the bricks of Bochum lie in the sun and rot in the rain. We cannot let the people of Bushbuckridge wait another decade to see a real change in their lives.
We must act today.
We must vote DA. Because South Africa deserves better.
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