Conversations, Declarations, National Indaba – open letter to Asmal

Dear Kadar,

I fully support your “Declaration in Defense of the Constitution”. I believe that there are thousands of South Africans who share your concerns and will support your call. Thousands of people in the past two years have marched, submitted declarations and have demonstrated (some unfortunately violently) throughout the length and breath of this land. People have voiced there concerns on a range of issues, from the lack of delivery, job losses, crime, to corruption in our civil service and big business. Some of those who marched were delegated to attend the ANC conference in Polokwene and they made their voices heard in that forum.

A few weeks ago Jay Naidoo, in response to media pressure, expressed his views on the crisis facing South Africa and pleaded for us as a country to take drastic action. Now you have added your voice to the howl of criticism at what some have termed the “irresponsible” actions of people who you and I would address as our comrades. But the time has come for us to distinguish between good and bad comrades and assert our rights as citizens.

I would like to draw your attention to my response to Jay Naidoo on SAhistory’s new blog at www.historymatters.org.za. I argued that we need is to convene a national indaba where civil society organisations can impress on our political formations and in particular the ANC leadership our concerns about the state of our justice system, the growing inequality in our society, Zimbabwe, the rapidly disfunctional education and health system, the endemic violence, the deterioating race relations, xenophobia and most important of all, growing poverty and unemployment.

I believe that we need to demonstrate to the new government that we care. That we need an ongoing but structured conversation to begin addressing the problems facing us as South Africans. We need to impress the government, labour, and business that we need to rededicate ourselves as a people to the eradication of inequality, poverty, fighting racism and all forms of discrimination and ensuring that we build a sound educational, health and social welfare system.

Declarations must translate into a new commitment geared to building national unity. Lets work towards a national indaba.