Yesterday I returned home after participating in the ‘All African Moot’ competition. This competition, which was expertly organised and run by the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights, saw the coming together of 73 universities from around the continent. The students were required to draft memorials, which are in essence one’s argument in written form, and then make presentations to a panel of judges, on various human rights issues. The slogan of the competition, “From Human Wrongs to Human Rights”, though somewhat cheesy, epitomises the purpose of the event. It is meant to, and I believe it does, educate students and prepare them for their futures as human rights ‘activists’.
Whilst I was there, my sense of cynicism at the state of South Africa – politically, judicially, economically and socially – was given a brief reprieve. In the weeks preceding my week-long trip, we witnessed xenophobic violence, blatant attacks on our country’s judiciary, political rhetoric by the ANCYL, the SACP, COSATU, and perhaps most tellingly, the ANC, ‘warning’ of a threat by ‘counter-revolutionaries’ (does this remind you Mad Bob’s talk of Tony Blair’s – now Gordon Brown’s – and Britain’s undying quest for a re-colonisation of Zimbabwe), and the now infamous words of the young, mischievous, and sometimes too passionate Julius Malema – OH, the intemperance of youth!
Prior to my trip I was entering into a slough of cynicism, depression and despondency. How could I not? We face so many obstacles that we have to, that we must, overcome. The people in charge, our political leaders (or as they should perhaps be reminded, our political representatives), however, seem determined to ‘lead’ us into the abyss. As succinctly put by Plato: ‘It is the punishment of those who are too intelligent to engage in politics, to be governed by those who do’.
HOWEVER, notwithstanding this – the onslaught of incompetence, the signs of an impending totalitarian state and the ANC’s recently expressed desire to ‘regulate’ the judiciary – my week long participation in a Moot Competition involving some of the best legal students from around the continent, inspired me to think of a future in which not only South Africa, but indeed the African continent, is able to give effect to, what time has now seemingly rendered, the fictitious principles of democracy and human rights.
Throughout the week I engaged in discussion with fellow students whose views, insights and ideas astounded me. Their brilliance truly gives me hope for the future. It gives me hope that if properly utilised and facilitated, if allowed to bloom without ‘regulation’ and with the freedom that any successful democracy so desperately requires, the current generation of despots that plague the continent of Africa will, as so eloquently said by Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke, be the last that we have to suffer.
HOWEVER, on returning home, sick with flu, vulnerable and susceptible to the old and familiar enemy of cynicism, I began reading the newspapers. I had been inoculated from the happenings of South Africa whilst in Pretoria, fortunately or otherwise, and when trudging my way through the papers of the week gone by, the immensity of the task ahead of us was truly illuminated. In paraphrasing the words of Jody Kollapen, Commissioner of the SAHRC, itself recently subjected to an attack by the ruling elite: “We are a country of staggering highs, but we are also a country of depressing lows”. The future may seem bleak. It may seem without hope. BUT I cannot, I will not, accept that our future is predetermined. I must believe that we as a people, individually and collectively, can escape the horrors that Zimbabwe is now suffering. For without hope we have nothing. We all have the potential, the capacity and the ability to make a difference. My means of trying to make a difference shall be through the use of the law. How will you make a difference?
August 22, 2010
Activism, Democracy