“Free” South Africa: A history
Fifty years is a long time.
For many in this day and age, that would constitute close to an entire lifetime. Starting from the early days of life — childhood — defined by playing outside, going to school and making friends. Learning how the world works, enjoying the freedom from responsibility while wishing for the privileges of adulthood.
Then entering into said adulthood. The process of finding a spouse, and going through the enormous mental and emotional development that comes with marriage. The blessing of becoming a parent. Watching one’s children grow and learn, in the process coming to recognize the efforts of one’s parents and resonating with how they had raised their children, probably in tougher circumstances. Forgiving them for their mistakes, appreciating their sacrifices and resilience in the face of hardship, and ultimately taking care of them alongside one’s own children.
Reaching old age. Spending the twilight years in the company of loved ones, conveying a lifetime of wisdom to children and grandchildren and reflecting on the life one has lived.
An entire lifetime of human development, constituting a full cycle of physical, emotional and interpersonal growth. From beginning the journey weak and fragile, to reaching the peak of life as an adult, before ending it weak and fragile once again. Fifty years is a long time.
Or is it?
When paging through the annals of history, seldom do we find that events are described or even listed in periods shorter than a century.
Looking at the Roman Empire, for example, the major happenings that defined the empire are given in intervals of centuries. Between the supposed founding of Rome in 753 BC to it becoming a republic in 509 BC elapsed close to two hundred and fifty years. Julius Caesar would only be born some four centuries thereafter around 100 BC. Rome’s sacking by the Visigoths would take place after a further five hundred years in 410 AD. The empire would fall following the loss of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire over a full 1000 years later in 1453.
Similar is the case when looking into the history of other ancient civilisations like the Chinese or the Greeks, and even more modern peoples like the British Empire, or the Ottomans themselves. Indeed human history as a whole is only ever considered in epochs, millennia or centuries. Anything of shorter span simply isn’t significant enough to be worthy of mention, let alone scrutiny. Thus in the grand scheme of history, fifty years isn’t a long time at all.
Back in the present, we find a South Africa that is half a lifetime into its “free” and “liberated” era. It is a nation that is beginning to be defined by a generation who have known no other version of the country except the one they find themselves in now. A generation that has been born into a “free” South Africa, wherein they have lived through childhood and are now well into adulthood.
The “Bornfrees” are steadily turning into the majority.
But to the mirror of history this is but a speck. How will democratic, “free”, post-1994 South Africa truly be chronicled? When our children and grandchildren look back at what South Africa was at the turn of the millenium, how will they remember it?
What was it like to live in post-1994 South Africa? What sort of place was it? What had our forefathers accomplished, or suffered, there? What impact did the country have on the world? What did it represent? How did other nations perceive it? Overall, was it a country that was a net giver, a provider, a benefactor to the rest of the people of the world? Or instead a taker, a consumer, … a beggar even?
Will they look back and be proud of the legacy that South Africa left behind?
Will South Africa even have a legacy to leave behind?
How will democratic South Africa’s first century be remembered? How will its first fifty years be remembered? Well, let’s consider where we are now— what is “free” South Africa like now after two and a half decades?
To the Bornfree generation, the reality is that South Africa has become a skeleton of what it was when it obtained its “freedom”. Within this rather long (short) period, we find ourselves in a country that is deteriorating by the day.
Access to basic human necessities like electricity and water are now in jeopardy across the country. The country’s roads are being swallowed up by the gravel underneath. While these circumstances are nothing new to a country in Africa, the tragedy is that none of these problems existed, or were even conceivable, when South Africa obtained its “freedom” in 1994.
Special mention must be given to the country’s crime rate, the sheer rampancy of which has rendered much of the civilized populace desensitized. Taking murder — among the most diabolical of violations against humanity — as an example, government statistics place the number at 58 instances per day. Multiplying this by 365 and again by 27, and this yields a figure history itself would be hard-pressed to procure the likes of — 571 590. Well over half a million souls smothered within twenty seven years. These are numbers one would associate with real, active war zones, not of a “free” country during peacetime.
It is likely that our descendants will judge SA not by the solitary decade of relative economic stability post ’94. Instead these early years will either be forgotten entirely or seen as something of a transition period, much like the Weimar Republic, and history gives us enough warning of how that turned out.
While history will not remember this version of South Africa fondly, what will become of our progeny? What about their lives and lifetimes? What sort of country will South Africa be when it is time for them to go through childhood, adolescence, adulthood and beyond?
For the sake of our children we must accept and acknowledge that the South Africa of 2044, when they should be at the peak of their lives, will not be a better place than it is today.
In the grand scheme of history, fifty years isn’t a long time.
