Whatever happened to ubuntu?

Only question to ask to test one’s moral stance is where one stands on life and death

EVERY TIME a new issue crops up, one is again confronted with vexatious questions: where do I personally stand, what did people stand for in the dark days of the Struggle against an unjust system, and who and what should I support without making a fool of myself.

The latest one is the question of how former president Jacob Zuma was granted parole. Eyebrows were raised when older folks noticed that the Helen Suzman Foundation had joined the fray to have this matter tested in our courts.

One would rather have expected the FW De Klerk Foundation and others with the aims of protecting and preserving their undeserved privileges on that bandwagon, but the human rights proponent Helen Suzman? Or are their aims the same?

Suzman was the only member of the apartheid Parliament since 1959 when her party broke away from the weak United Party, its members later absconding to the racist National Party in droves.

The only question one has to ask any person to test his moral stance is where he stands on the issue of life and death, whether he supports the death penalty or abhors it.

Just abhorring it is not enough. When she was confronted with this question from early in her life, she made it crystal clear where she stood: steadfastly, actively opposed to it, taking on those who did not.

Here is what she stated in a letter to The Star on March 9, 2004: “In 1969, when I was the sole DP (Democratic Party, forerunner of the DA) MP, I moved a private member’s motion regarding the death penalty, in which I made it clear that I was strongly in favour of its abolition. Needless to say, I was not supported by a single other MP.”

On the other hand, both Douglas Gibson, their former chief whip, and Tony Leon, both later rewarded with ambassadorial posts by the democratic government, made utter fools of themselves in trying to explain their party’s so-called fence-sitting death penalty policy, which, of course, is not a policy at all.

In a letter to a paper headed “DA sets hanging record straight” on September 7, 2004, Gibson stated unequivocally: “The Democratic Alliance has never campaigned on the death penalty. We have merely stated our position, when asked, or in response to misinformation propagated by other political parties. That position is that the DA has a free-vote position on the death penalty, as it does on other matters of conscience.”

He further makes the absurd allegation that 70% of South Africans, therefore the majority of both his party and the ANC, support it, whereas at Codesa in 1993 it was agreed by all parties that it would be best for our country, with its ugly past, to abolish it in its entirety. On this issue he was branded a “mampara” by Hogarth in the Sunday Times of August 29, 2004.

Leon, their party’s leader at the dawn of democracy, was taken to task by several people on this issue. A Rapport reader in a letter dated March 21, 2004, described his stand on the death penalty as an “egg-dance”.

But the secretary-general of the now defunct New National Party in a letter to the Sowetan, stated that Leon made a fool of himself and that his party should rather come out clearly in favour of the death penalty.

There were and today still are, many instances where politicians, including DA members such as these two, and even judges, members of the clergy and academia, will use the murder of unfortunate people to drum up support for the death penalty to gain more votes for their parties.

The sad point, however, about Suzman’s legacy is whether as an MP, she too voted in favour of cross-border raids and attacks by the military, some done with jet fighters, on mostly innocent civilians supposedly political activists threatening the security of our country.

In a raid on Transkei in those dark days, purportedly a sovereign step-state of apartheid, five children were killed in such a raid. Our former Constitutional Court judge, Albie Sachs, lost his arm in another attack in Mozambique and Father Lapsley lost both hands and one eye in a letter-bomb sent to him in Zimbabwe by apartheid henchmen.

If independent observers and historians would today show proof that Suzman had indeed voted in favour of such raids, then one can understand why those young folk running her foundation are doing the very same: denigrating anyone of another colour, disregarding and trampling on their human rights with impunity.

Unfortunately, many people still believe that black people can do nothing good, they are too many, therefore all their actions should not only be questioned, arrogantly belittled and themselves insulted, but also actively obstructed, their numbers to be kept in check.

Mr Zuma is an elderly, sickly man. Why would we want to see him in orange overalls and now deny him the opportunity to spend his last days reflecting on his wrongs in order to make amends? And so should each one of us. Human rights demand of us to let sickly and people older than 70 out of our overcrowded, unsafe jails. What harm can they still do?

The callous apartheid regime only released Bram Fischer and Robert Sobukwe from lengthy imprisonment when they were close to death.

Former president Nelso Mandela was not even afforded the opportunity to attend his son’s funeral when he spent most of his years on Robben Island. Are we still so vindictive?

It is ludicrous that after one’s death such people can decide on one’s behalf how to pursue future issues. Would Mrs Suzman have endorsed their decision to help turn our courts into “political boxing rings” in her name, as Freedom Under Law is warning?

What would her stand have been on the Palestine issue? How her pitiful party is treating homeless people?

Would she have supported her party using a R15m donation obtained from the mineral wealth of our country to help uplift our poor out of poverty and the misery they live in, and not run off to clog our courts desperately trying to fight crime as they should, instead of adjudicating on mostly frivolous eye-for-an-eye issues of a political nature to score points?

What are the views of her children and grandchildren, her friends and colleagues on these issues? Have they too been brainwashed to believe that human rights do not matter when revenge and retribution are the best and only remedies?

Furthermore, if that 70% in her party that support the death penalty knew how black and coloured people, even political activists, were hanged by the hundreds by the apartheid regime, how people are being beheaded in Muslim-majority countries for apostasy, how honour killings are done in rogue-states, some threatening to execute homosexuals, would they still support such a scourge?

Would they still proclaim theirs is a “free” or conscience vote?

What should we now believe? That her life-long Trojan fight for human rights were such rights for the privileged minority or the suffering majority? How quickly can such a noble stand be discredited? She knew indeed that the death penalty separates the wheat from the chaff.

What happened to ubuntu? Our country produced three powerful Helens, but the one that stands out head and shoulders was the one who led the 1956 Women’s March to the Union Buildings!

One can only surmise that one day when the scales come off gullible people’s eyes who still believe this wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing party, firmly trying to erect their foundationless enclave on the sand it will hardly rise from, then only will they understand Aesop’s fable called “Wolf! Wolf!” By that time it will be too late.