Dear Mandela: We are still not free

On the 27 April, Freedom Day (a South African national holiday) was marked throughout the country with political party rallies, NGO commemorations and thousands of now customary non-political braais (BBQs). It is a holiday that has come to signify something different to each and every South African - most of whom barely recognise the history and political implications of the day.

Freedom Day also marked a milestone for the South African shackdwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo. As they took to the streets once again for an 'UnFreedom Day' march through central Durban, the award winning documentary on the movement, Dear Mandela, was also aired for the first time on South African television.

Even though it was broadcast on satellite TV (thereby excluding the vast majority of South Africa's poor), it quickly set off a fire-storm of chatter on local twitter accounts with #DearMandela trending for hours as many viewers decided to write their own UnFreedom Day tweets to Nelson Mandela. The struggle of the shackdwellers of Durban had struck a chord even amongst those South Africans privileged enough to have access to private TV.

A FILM ABOUT UNFREEDOM

The film charts the struggles and activism of three distinctive young members of Abahlali as they take up the cause of development and the fight for dignity with their communities. Putting aside their personal aspirations, they unwittingly place their lives at risk when the inevitable backlash brings them face to face with ruthless political repression.

In 2009, Zama Ndlovu, a single mother of two and one of the main protagonists in Dear Mandela, went into hiding after a vigilante group of self-identified ANC supporters attacked Abahlali activists in the Kennedy Road Informal Settlement. Three years later, Zama and her family have returned to Kennedy Road, but still live in fear of another attack. In the meantime, shack fires, another violent and politicised force plaguing shackdwellers, have claimed her family's home three times.

Yet, Zama remains unwavering in her commitment to the struggle. She reminds others that they should think twice before discriminating against poor communities like hers'. "Middle class people tend to look at the people from the shacks, like people who are not like human beings. Living in a shack doesn't mean that you cannot think for yourself," she says.

Mazwi Nzimande, 18 years old when the documentary was filmed, has since suffered numerous death threats, with groups of strangers showing up at his mother's home in Joe Slovo to make explicit threats: leave the movement or suffer the consequences.

Mazwi echoes Zama's words and the belief that the poor must lead their own struggles. He exclaims that "being poor in life, doesn't mean that you are poor in mind".

'NOTHING FOR US WITHOUT US'

What I found invaluable about the film Dear Mandela is that, beyond the misleadingly narrow service delivery discourse that currently dominates South African political party and NGO politics, the members of Abahlali baseMjondolo recognise that they are fighting for much more than toilets and a roof over their heads. They are demanding, not just services, but also ownership of the development process itself.

Zama and Mazwi, like thousands of other members of the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement, want to be active participants in everything that affects their lives. To them, democracy isn't something that only takes place every five years at the ballot box where you vote for others to do development for you. Democracy must be an everyday process by which people constitute their own power over their circumstances.

BUILDING UHURU

The need for grassroots activism as a prefiguration of freedom is clearly evident as opposition towards the proposed Traditional Courts Bill grows in South Africa. The lack of effective resistance at the local level has meant that authoritarian means of governance in rural areas remained even while they were off the legal books. The Post-1994 era brought us “democracy” without democratisation. This bill, like the apartheid laws enacted to prop up the Bantustan apartheid system, will formalise the despotic power that chiefs claim over the rural poor.

With the ANC's attempt to legalise this regime, are we making a return to apartheid or could it be just as true that for rural South Africans as well as shackdwellers, history was never left behind?

Dear Mandela reminds us on UnFreedom day that freedom must be about more than just a farcical electoral ritual used by political parties to placate us.

Electoral politics tries to convince us that its better to be a shackled welfare recipient surviving day-to-day on the crumbs of capitalism than to recognise that these handouts are, in fact, an expression of oppression which exists to ensure a co-opted hegemony over the 'rebellious masses'.

We need to be aware that freedom cannot be quantified statistically. Freedom is not only about service delivery and having access to a plot of land or a small government house.

A house means nothing if it was just given to you. It means everything if it is something you have spent your life fighting for; something you been instrumental in achieving because you have recognised your own human dignity and your own self-worth in the process of living that struggle.

Through the process of working together, communities that mobilise around important issues tend to empower themselves to address other issues which affect them. For example, drug abuse and other forms of crime are often reduced substantially when communities are united and engaged in self-organised struggles.

As Biko said “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Freedom cannot exist unless we reclaim our consciousness from those that oppress us and want to speak for us, without us. We must recognise that a person becomes a person through other people; that none of us are free until all of us are free.

Looking forward towards future struggles, it is therefore critical that we keep questioning our freedom in a deeper sense through a continuously evolving bottom-up process. Instead of tweeting to Tata Madiba (aka Nelson Mandela, who we must realise had chosen long ago to take up the mantle of government and put aside his previous disposition as a freedom fighter), let us write instead to one another demanding that we all sit down and engage on how to fight for more authentic freedom.

The Brooklyn premier of the film will be on Saturday 2 June: https://www.facebook.com/events/243340472437096/?ref=ts

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* Jared Sacks is a Cape Town-based activist working with community-based social movements and the Take Back the Commons movement. He is also the co-founder of Children of South Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.
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