On April 27, 1994, South Africa experienced a day that left even its worst cynics a little dewy eyed. As seen from those memorable aerial photographs, a multi-hued South Africa stood patiently together in long queues that snaked across open fields or draped around whole city blocks waiting for the opportunity to democratically vote together for the first time.
There was something wonderful about that day, and if prompted, many South Africans who experienced it will tell you magical stories about witnessing a tearful old Gogo voting for the first time, or perhaps recount a heart-warming and mind-changing conversation with a person from a different culture queueing next to them.
Of course 16 years later, many South Africans (black and white) are feeling more than a little disheartened about days like Freedom Day – not disillusioned so much by its memories, but rather more pessimistic about its true impact on our nation. After all, what does it mean to be free and does that really apply to all South Africans? How free are we really, as individuals and as a nation?
In his 1941 State of the Union Address, the then President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt made the point that the world should be founded upon four essential freedoms: The freedom of speech and expression; the freedom of every person to worship God in his (or her) own way; the freedom from want and the freedom from fear.
Well, under that definition, South Africans have only reached the half way point in their 'long walk' to freedom. For when it comes to situations of want and fear, millions of South Africans are suffering just as much as they have ever done during our checkered history. As President Zuma admitted last week, the civil service since 1994 has largely failed in its efforts to provide decent living conditions for all.
After all, how can you be free when your children are starving, or living in appalling conditions, or dying because of inadequate health care? It is a huge disappointment to almost every single person who lined up on that first Freedom Day to vote that so many South Africans are still lacking basic care, largely because of rampant corruption, greed and inefficiency.
Of course, South Africa’s poverty problems are rooted in the old apartheid system, and would exist to this day even if we had enjoyed 16 years of non-stop unselfish and inspiring leadership and service delivery. Yet, I cannot help but wonder how many millions of lives would presently be in a far better situation than they really are if our democratic government had not displayed such inefficiency, greed, corruption and self-serving politicking.
So for many South Africans there is still no freedom from ‘want’, but for almost every South African there is definitely no freedom from Roosevelt’s fourth point – fear. The papers this week carried stories of a father from Pretoria who was brutally hacked to death in his own home while his two year old son watched from his cot. It is just one more in a long list of violent crime statistics that now dominate our social imaginations far more than those massive queues lining up to joyfully vote in 1994 have ever done. Fear is a huge part of life in South Africa – there are very few whose lives have not been affected by crime in some way or the other.
In a different sense, it appears that even our President with the comprehensive security personnel he enjoys, is not free from fear. Sure, he is probably immune from random criminal acts but he is definitely not free to act and lead the country in the way he deems best. It seems that our popularist President’s ride to power has been sustained by a wave of numerous favours and IOU’s, to the point that he is now effectively hamstrung. He owes the ANCYL, the Unions and many others to the point that he does not seem to have the freedom to even blow his nose without checking it out first.
Therefore, under Roosevelt’s four definitions of freedom, South Africa is sorely lacking in the last two. While this may initially sound like yet another negative asssessment on the failings of contemporary South Africa, it really is anything but. This is because the Gospel definition of freedom is something entirely different. The Bible records thousands and thousands of years of hope which is almost always against tremendous odds. Freedom in Scripture is not the absence of conflict, but the peace of God found in the midst of life’s storms and upheavals.
This is why Scripture challenges us to bring God’s hope into situations that are not perfect and peaceful, but rather teeming with difficulties and real human pain. A biographer of Viktor Frankl, who endured years in a Nazi concentration camp, once noted that because of Frankl’s decision to live with hope even amidst the ruin of his daily life, he was actually freer in that camp than even his prison guards. South Africa is by no means perfectly free, not while situations of dire want and fear still grip and constrict our country, yet nonetheless it is up to each and every God-follower to remember how powerfully transformative it really is to live in God sustained hope whilst simultaneously working towards change.
The fate of our country is still in our hands, for ultimately freedom is dependent on how we choose to respond to issues when ever and where ever freedom is threatened. Scripture promises that there is nothing in all heaven, hell or earth that can take away our free choice to live and work towards hope and real change … unless, we choose to allow it.