This post is based on
a speech delivered by the DA Leader, Helen Zille, at the launch of the Our DA Campaign in
Alexandra, Gauteng on Saturday.
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| Helen Suzman and Nelson Mandela |
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We are here today to launch a campaign. It is not an
election campaign. It is more important than that.
We are here to tell the untold story of the DA, a story
that many South Africans have never heard. It is a story about who we are,
where we come from and where we are going. We want every South African to know
this story.
We have not been particularly good at telling it. So we
must take responsibility for the fact that many people don’t really know much
about us and what we want for South Africa.
Like any political party, there are many strands to our
history. But in recent years, the DA’s strongest strand, the golden thread
around which the party’s tapestry has been woven for more than half a century,
has somehow become obscured, even invisible. And so, for the next few months,
we are going to draw out this central thread, so that we can strengthen the
fabric of South Africa’s democracy.
The DA’s story is part of the great South African
tapestry. We have had our share of victories and defeats; triumphs and
tragedies. But for too long we have allowed our political opponents to define
us.
When I travel around South Africa, it truly shocks me
to hear that many people think the DA would bring back apartheid if we won an
election. There are a significant number of people who think the DA was
responsible for apartheid, and that Helen Suzman was a member of the ANC. I ask
myself how we allowed these false perceptions to take root.
From today, we must take responsibility for changing
them.
We need to start by turning back the clock more than
half a century. It is the year 1959. The National Party has been in power for
just over a decade. Its policy of apartheid is denying black South Africans
their rights on a scale never seen before.
It is the one of the darkest chapters in our
country’s history.
In 1959, a small group of 11 Members of
Parliament broke away from the United Party to form the Progressive Party to
oppose apartheid and fight for a democratic South Africa.
Jan Steytler, the first leader of the Progressives,
defined the new party’s vision. He said:
“Colour
and colour alone should not be the yardstick by which people are judged. We
consider that all South Africans should be given the opportunity to make a
contribution to the political and economic life of our country. We want to face
the future, not with fear but with confidence that we can live together in
harmony in a multi-racial country.”
This was the birth of the Party that has become the
Democratic Alliance. The Progressive Party was founded on the values the DA
still champions today.
In those days, not many voters
supported us. Despite the hard work of a dedicated team, Helen Suzman was, for
13 years, the only Progressive Party candidate elected to
Parliament. She was the only MP who consistently and relentlessly fought
against every apartheid measure the National Party sought to entrench in
law.
She opposed the law that required every black South
African to carry a pass book at all times.
She opposed the law that allowed police to detain
someone – first for 90 days and later for 180 days – without bringing them to
trial.
She opposed the notorious Group Areas Act – a law that
forced people to live in separate areas on the basis of race, and that pushed
black people to the outskirts of towns and cities, far away from jobs.
She resisted the forced removals implemented under the
Group Areas Act that destroyed whole communities.
She opposed laws that reserved certain job categories
for whites; laws that segregated beaches, parks, toilets and transport; and
laws that told people who they could love and marry.
And, although we didn’t have the numbers in parliament
to block these laws, Helen’s relentless opposition to them, on our behalf,
shone an international spotlight on the atrocities of apartheid and helped
mobilise support for anti-apartheid campaigns, throughout the world.
Helen was also a champion for the rights of workers.
She demanded trade union rights for all and fought for better wages and working
conditions.
She also visited prisons and secured better conditions
for prisoners. Nelson Mandela would later write this about her first visit to
Robben Island:
“It
was an odd and wonderful sight to see this courageous woman peering into our
cells and strolling around our courtyard. She was the first and only woman to
grace our cells.”
Helen’s work made a big impact on many young people
including myself. I saved money from odd jobs to travel to Cape Town, and
get a ticket to the Parliamentary gallery to watch her debating. I was
awestruck at her ability to speak so powerfully on every measure that came
before the House.
While other parties had a range of MPs, each with their
own portfolios, Helen had to be a specialist on everything. She did it
with the help of a dedicated team behind the scenes, some of whom are still
with us here today. They helped her research countless speeches and hundreds of
questions on housing, education, forced removals, the effects of the Pass Law,
detentions, bannings, whippings, torture, police brutality and executions. Even
when it seemed hopeless, they kept on going because they had a purpose.
It is the same purpose that inspires us today. We all believe in what
South Africa can become.
In the election of 1974, we celebrated a small
breakthrough (which we thought enormous at the time) when 5 more Progressives
were elected as Members of Parliament to join Helen in her fight.
This team was the most effective
opposition to the National Party in Parliament. Among many other things, we
denounced, on an international stage, the government’s brutal crushing of the
1976 Soweto Uprising.
Above all, we resisted the government’s plan to strip
black South Africans of their citizenship through apartheid’s Bantustan policy.
In 1978 we helped expose the channelling of public
funds to a pro-government newspaper as part of the apartheid government’s
propaganda war – a scandal that led to the resignation of then Prime Minister
BJ Vorster.
In the 1980s we opposed the border war in Angola and
the State of Emergency. Members of the party met the ANC for talks in Lusaka
and lobbied PW Botha to grant the “Sharpeville 6” a reprieve from their death
sentences.
In the years leading up to South Africa’s first
democratic election, we played a pivotal role in negotiating our democratic
Constitution.
Not many people know that the Constitution that emerged
from the CODESA negotiations has its roots in the Molteno Commission set up by
the Progressive Party back in 1961. We recommended a national convention, an
entrenched constitution, a bill of rights, a common voters’ roll, a clearly
defined role for the provinces and an independent judiciary. We had been
preparing for the constitutional negotiations for three decades, and we were
ready for them when they finally came. That is why our team played such a
crucial role in shaping our country’s founding compact.
37 years after Helen Suzman helped launch Parliament’s
first progressive, non-racial party, Nelson Mandela asked her to accompany him
when he signed the Constitution into law in 1996. It was, and remains, a
document that contains so many of her values and beliefs.
Madiba’s gesture on that historic day was a measure of
the respect that one great South African held for another. He went on to say
this about Helen Suzman:
“Your courage,
integrity and principled commitment to justice have marked you as one of the
outstanding figures in the history of public life in South Africa.”
In the DA today there are many, many people who
struggled bravely and often at great personal cost against apartheid. At the
time they did not think of themselves as heroes, they were ordinary people who
were doing what they could, where they were, with what they had. Looking
back today, we know their efforts were heroic. They built the foundation on
which we stand today.
Some have their roots in the ANC, the Black
Consciousness Movement, the UDF and the PAC. Others were trade unionists. Many
were detained, harassed or even imprisoned for the part they played in the
struggle.
People from all political traditions are coming
together in the DA because they want to build a constitutional democracy in
which every person, whatever the circumstances of their history or birth, has
the freedom and the means to live a life they value. I cannot pay tribute
to them all today, but I can give a few examples to show how many strands are
being woven together around the DA’s golden thread to reveal the full diversity
of the emerging South Africa.
There is my friend and colleague,
Patricia de Lille, the Mayor of Cape Town, who began work in a paint factory
and, became a leader in the trade union movement. She started out as a shop
steward for the South African Chemical Workers' Union or SACWU. She soon became
SACWU's regional secretary, and later a member of its National Executive
Committee of SACWU. When the PAC and other political organisations were
unbanned in 1990, Patricia led the PAC delegation at the CODESA negotiations.
She broke with the PAC to lead a new party, the Independent Democrats, and
became the first woman to lead a political party in South Africa. And as
we discussed the challenges of the day, we became friends and then political
colleagues.
And there is our retired Federal Chairperson, Joe
Seremane, who traces his earliest political memories back to the defiance
campaign in 1952 when, at the age of 14, he walked into a post office in
Johannesburg through the ‘whites only’ entrance. Ever since that first act of
defiance, Joe was committed to fighting apartheid with everything he had. In
1963, when he was just 22 years old, he was captured by the security police and
was charged with ‘furthering the objectives of a banned organisation’ – the
PAC. They sent him to Robben Island for 6 years for that.
After he was released, Joe was banished to Mafikeng and
wasn’t allowed to leave the town. But the security police thought he would
radicalise the young people in Mafikeng, so in March 1976 he was detained and
held for 28 months without being charged, mostly in solitary confinement and
suffered severe torture. He lost a brother in exile in horrific
circumstances, and has striven to this day to uncover the truth behind his
murder.
Our Federal Chairperson, Wilmot James, became politically
active at the University of the Western Cape in 1972 when he joined the South
Africa Students Organisation, an anti-apartheid black consciousness movement.
Because of this involvement, the security police detained him for a month at
Victor Verster prison in 1976. He joined the UDF soon after its formation in
1983. Wilmot later led IDASA, the organisation that facilitate dialogue between
antagonists in the struggle particularly the ANC and the NP in Dakar and
Lusaka.
Our newest colleague and friend, Nosimo Balindlela, the
former Premier of the Eastern Cape, first became involved in the struggle
against apartheid at the University of Fort Hare. Her family was forcibly
removed to Middeldrift in the Eastern Cape. She joined the United Democratic Front
when it was formed, and her political activism led to her dismissal from many
of the schools at which she worked. And then she rose through the ranks in the
ANC to become, first a leader of the Women’s League and later the Provincial
Premier.
And then there is Basil Kivedo, the Mayor of Breede
Vallei, who became politically active at the young age of 16 – initially with
the Youth Forum of the Christian Institute under the leadership of Beyers
Naude, and later as a student activist at UWC. By the time Basil reached
university, he was a radical anti-apartheid activist in the Black Consciousness
Movement and rose serve on the Provincial Executive. He, and one of his
students Wilmot James, led the campus protests in 1973 and played a role in the
1976 uprising. Basil worked closely with the late Seve Biko and Abraham Tiro,
the student leader assassinated by a parcel bomb in exile in Gabarone. In
1980, Basil was jailed for his political activities, spending 14 months in
solitary confinement at the Victor Verster prison and experienced the
techniques of the notorious “wet bag torturer” Jeff Benzien who later applied
for amnesty to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. On his release, Basil
joined the ANC’s military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe, and received military
training in Tanzania, and mobilised MK’s Bonteheuwel Military Wing. After
demobilisation he was in a task team involved with the re-integration of
Umkhonto and the SA National Defence Force.
None of the people I have mentioned
ever did these things with any sense of heroism or personal aggrandizement.
They were just determined to save South Africa from a future defined by the
oppression they knew all too well.
Today we acknowledge the debt of gratitude South Africa
owes to each one, and thousands of other unsung heroes – from all political
traditions and organisations.
I cannot hold a candle to any of them, but I was
fortunate that my own background was very different from that of most white
South Africans, and for that I have to thank my parents. Having left Germany in
the 1930s, they had experienced racial bigotry, exclusion, oppression, tyranny
and finally genocide within their own circle of friends and families. This
shaped their own view of the world, and they passed on their passionate hatred
of prejudice to their three children of which I am the eldest.
My mother joined the Black Sash early on and
volunteered in their advice office. My dad bought the liberal newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail every
morning on the way to school and discussed the issues of the day with me. This
shaped my world-view. In high school I joined the Young Progressives.
The small band of “Young Progs” walked the streets in
elections, campaigning for Helen Suzman. And when I was lucky enough to
win a place as a cadet journalist at the Rand
Daily Mail I had the guidance of truly outstanding editors.
Allister Sparks did more than any other person outside my family to shape my
understanding of South Africa, and gave me opportunities that few other young
people had. He sent me to cover the brutal realities of apartheid South Africa
-- the consequences of the pass laws, forced removals, the Soweto
uprising and deaths in detention. It was under his guidance that I
was able to write the story about the real reason for the death in detention of
Steve Biko, who did not die of a hunger strike, as the apartheid government
tried to tell the world. He was murdered. The Rand Daily Mail had the courage to
expose these horrors without the constitutional protections of the right to a
free media or free speech. Now and again I had to leave my small flat on the on
the outskirts of Hillbrow and go and live elsewhere for a while, till the
threats subsided. This was a normal part of many journalists’
lives.
When things became too hot for our newspaper
proprietors to handle, Allister was fired and I resigned and came to live in
the little house I had bought in a part of Woodstock in Cape Town that had
miraculously escaped the ravages of the Group Areas Act. It was one of
the few remaining rainbow communities in the heart of apartheid South Africa. I
joined the Black Sash, the End Conscription Campaign and the Open City
Initiative. Like many others, I was arrested, but unlike others, I had my day
in court when I was charged (for being in what was described as a “black group
area” without a “permit”). I was duly found guilty and given a suspended prison
sentence.
Through the facilitation of the Black Sash, my husband
and I made our home available to ANC activists hiding from the security police
during the state of emergency in 1987. I was deeply touched recently when I
re-connected with the grandson of one of them thanks to the power of the social
networking site, Twitter.
So many South Africans are part of the DA’s growing
circle, and it is one of the reasons that I am so confident South Africa will
succeed as a democracy. Resistance to oppression and power-abuse runs deep in
our veins.
The DA has grown so fast, because we have
been able to convince people from many different backgrounds that racial
nationalism is a dead-end, and that South Africa can only thrive as an open,
opportunity society for all. We have grown, and continue to grow, without
sacrificing our principles, our values or our vision for South Africa. All
DA members of today – regardless of their previous affiliations – are
dedicated to the vision that Helen Suzman championed so long ago.
These are the pioneers we celebrate
today. They include people like Joe Seremane, Patricia de Lille, Wilmot James,
Basil Kivedo, Nosimo Balindlela, and so many more. We are here today so that we
can honour our past, and enable all young South Africans to own the future.
The Democratic Alliance was and remains
part of South Africa’s struggle for freedom. So were many others. But as
Coretta Scott-King, Martin Luther King Junior’s widow, so profoundly put
it: “The struggle for
freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation.”
That is why we are building a new,
diverse majority in South Africa, on the foundations of the best ideas we
inherited from our past.
A growing political party is like a
mighty river. It has tributaries that flow into it from the surrounding
hills. Each stream has its own source and its own story. But they
come together because of the power of one central idea that unites them
all. I have spoken of that idea today. It is the basis of our
Constitution. It is the “Big Idea” on which all successful democracies
are based: the Open, Opportunity Society for All. And that is why so many
young South Africans want to be part of it.
