ARTICLE: A JUNK WORKERS DAY
2017-04-30
As the country stares into junk status, the hardest hit are the poor and unemployed.
As the country stares into junk status, the hardest hit are the poor and unemployed.
As with other historical events, many South Africans still remember 27 April 1994 very well. A day of long voting queues and goodwill, the feeling of a new beginning. It was the birth of the “New South Africa”.
After that, many Freedom Days followed. Numerous South Africans, especially those who experienced 1994, will regard this year’s Freedom Day as the lowest point of all Freedom Days.
Why? Because we see what is happening to us in the political, economic and social arena. There is great tension in the ruling party – about the current President, but also in the leadership struggle for a new President. There is talk of corruption and state capture by government leaders and officials. We see the economy stagnate and that our country’s financial system has basically been downgraded to junk status. We experience racial tension and an apparent total lack of reconciliation and shared values.
As South Africans mourn the death of a great leader in Ahmed Kathrada, the broadest consensus on both social media and the mainstream, was one that expressed bereavement for a towering man who had lived through the worst of times and the best of times but died a sad man. Why was this so, we ask? Ahmed Kathrada’s poignant letter to the President summed up his and the views of millions of South Africans. We expected more, we expected better and are now bereft.
It was a poignant start to the Centre for Unity in Diversity’s Roundtable Series – held on 28 March in Cape Town – to pause and reflect on a great man’s legacy as we gathered to reflect on our first theme for the year, “Social Cohesion in Contemporary South Africa”. The Roundtable Series is crafted to stimulate discussion and debate on core issues that flow from the constitutional premise, “United in our Diversity”, captured in the Preamble.
As South Africans mourn the death of a great leader in Ahmed Kathrada, the broadest consensus on both social media and the mainstream, was one that expressed bereavement for a towering man who had lived through the worst of times and the best of times but died a sad man.
“This Court and the country as a whole are now confronted with a situation where the executive admitted that it is unable to perform its constitutional and statutory responsibilities to provide social assistance to its people. And in the deepest and most humiliating irony it places its hopes in a private corporate entity to get out of this situation”
– Justice Johan Froneman, the Black Sash pronunciation, March 17, 2017
“The problem is that Hlaudi on went a campaign to appoint freelancers on a permanent basis. Now we are left with an exorbitant wage bill… They do not know what to do with all these people, because they do not have the skills to be moved to critical areas such as television and sales”
– Unknown senior SABC employee, Rapport, March 19, 2017
In a decisive and often scathing judgment on Friday, 17 March 2017, the Constitutional Court ruled that “SASSA and CPS are under a constitutional obligation to ensure payment of social grants to grant beneficiaries from 1 April 2017 until an entity other than CPS (own emphasis) can do so and that a failure to do so will infringe upon grant beneficiaries’ rights of access to social assistance under section 27(1)(c) of the Constitution”.
The judgment has been widely analysed and there appears to be consensus that under the circumstances, the Court’s decision to suspend the declaration of invalidity for 12 months was the most practical and least disruptive.
The judgment placed a marked emphasis on the fact that there was a constitutional obligation on “both SASSA and CPS as organs of state performing a constitutional function for a considerable period to not end on 31 March 2017”. The emphasis on constitutional duty and reference to both as state organs is key to an understanding of the firm order made by the Court, notwithstanding the fact that CPS is a private entity. Bolder still was the request that CPS hand over its audited statements for Court scrutiny by end April 2017. This, to ascertain the quantum CPS made since 2013 from the illegal and invalid contract, with the prospect looming of the company having to return up to R1 billion.
In a decisive and often scathing judgment on Friday, 17 March 2017, the Constitutional Court ruled…
The killing of 69 unarmed people in Sharpeville, South Africa, protesting apartheid pass laws on 21 March 1960, stirred the conscience of the world and saw the United Nations General Assembly adopt a Resolution to declare the day International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 1966.
The killing of 69 unarmed people in Sharpeville, South Africa, protesting apartheid pass laws on 21 March 1960, stirred the conscience of the world and saw the United Nations General Assembly adopt a Resolution to declare the day International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 1966. ‘Sharpeville Day’ also became the origin for the post-1994 government of South Africa’s Human Rights Day, declared a public holiday.
While definitions of racism and racial discrimination are varied, at the heart of the matter is prejudice that is embedded in race, colour, ethnicity and often the combination of these. The UN, in its International Convention on All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), defines it thus, “the term ‘racial discrimination’ shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, social, cultural or any other field of public life”.