Freedom Day: A Crossroads after 14 years of South African Democracy

Today, our country celebrates Freedom Day to mark the liberation of our country and its people from a long period of colonialism and white minority domination - which means that we no longer have the situation in which political power is enjoyed and exercised by a minority of our population, to the exclusion of the majority. Freedom Day is not an African National Congress day, but a day for all South Africans. When South Africa was liberated both the oppressor and oppressed were liberated. We pledge "Never again would a minority government impose itself on the majority".

South Africans are "One people with one destiny". It is therefore imperative for South Africans of diverse political and economic backgrounds to work towards a common objective. On Freedom Day we celebrate the relentless efforts of those who fought for liberation, of the many men and women who took up arms and courted imprisonment, bannings and torture on behalf of the oppressed masses.

However "Are we really free when our people remain poor, when there is mass unemployment, unwarranted violence and crime"? Freedom should mean emancipation from poverty, unemployment, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination- but poverty continues to exist, with black people, women, children, the disabled and the elderly. "We need to continue to work to eradicate poverty, racial inequalities and socio-economic disparities," Freedom Day means something very valuable, the necessary condition for us to achieve the vital and fundamental objective of a better life for all.

South Africa faces a new threat 14 years after the first democratic election, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said on Saturday.

She was addressing a large crowd at the KwaZulu-Natal Freedom Day celebrations in Molweni, outside Durban.

"The threat is a ruling party that believes it is more important than the Constitution. It is a party that believes it will rule until Jesus comes," said Zille.

She said the African National Congress (ANC) wanted to control the media, politicians, Parliament and crime fighting bodies, such as a the Scorpions.

"Instead of allowing the judiciary its independence, the ANC wants to make judges accountable to politicians, instead of fighting crime and corruption, the ANC wants to take away the Scorpions ..." she said.

Earlier, Zille said South Africa was not yet truly free.

"... but many people may disagree. ... Elections are not enough to make you free. We only have to look at Zimbabwe to see that," she said.

South Africa's largest union, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), has declared April and the months ahead months of mass action against high food and energy prices, inflation and the erosion of living and working conditions of farm workers.

Addressing thousands of people at the main Freedom Day rally for the province of Mpumalanga, Cosatu's provincial secretary Norman Mokoena said the labour federation regretted having to celebrate South Africa's 14th Freedom Day “in the wake of one of the worst capitalist assaults on the already unacceptably low living standards of workers and the poor.”

"The 27th of April was more than an election day," former education minister, Professor Kader Asmal recalls, as South Africans gear up to celebrate Freedom Day, 14 years after the country's first democratic election.

"It was the first act of self-determination for the entire people of South Africa," Asmal told News24.

The ANC stalwart, who was instrumental in the drafting of the country's democratic Constitution, recalled returning to South Africa in 1990 after years of exile.

"When we got our ID my wife, who is English, was told her voting station was Sea Point," said Asmal, laughing at the memory. "My voting station was Mitchell's Plain!

"We lived in the same house but I was allocated to a 'black' area."