On August 9 1956, 20,000 women from across SA converged at the Union Buildings to protest against pass laws and to end human rights violations being perpetrated by the apartheid government. It was a battle for democratic rights for all; for freedom, the right to equal treatment and the right to participate fully in society. They took a stand not only against injustice, but for a society that allows all people to fully exercise their rights.
On Sunday August 7 2022, the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation hosted an annual memorial walk to honour and celebrate the lives and contributions of the courageous women who led that march in 1956. At the graveside of Lillian Ngoyi and Helen Suzmann, comrades who insisted on being laid to rest together, Sophie de Bruyn, the only surviving leader of the march, expressed fears that the compatriots she walked side by side with could not possibly be at rest, as SA today does not resemble the society they fought for.
Moving to the gravesides of Rahima Moosa and Albertina Sisulu, the calls to action to change SA came from young women. Calls for more action, greater solidarity and new innovative ways to further change in society was the plea from young activists who called for a new wave of social and political action to bring change to our broken society.
The Rivonia Circle has made similar calls to action. Working across six provinces and engaging with many different communities since January 2022, it is clear SA is in a democratic crisis. Reflecting on the outcomes of our workshops, town hall meetings and research, there can be no doubt that people overwhelmingly believe SA is going in the wrong direction and needs a collective intervention.
As one community after the other registers dissatisfaction with the state of service delivery, the high levels of crime and unacceptable levels of unemployment, we must be willing to move from resistance to taking progressive action. Rivonia Circle calls this developing a “new politics”.
Protests and resistance are useful. They are important parts of democratic participation and should be enabled and protected, particularly in a context where the political establishment seems uninterested in playing their role until faced with threats of protest. Still, our politics can be expanded to include more acts of collaboration, co-creation of solutions and compacts where all people commit to using their individual and collective power to participate in co-governance and devising solutions.
New politics has at least three possible expressions. The first is what is best described as “Civics”. This refers to building consciousness, awareness and promoting advocacy among all: empowering people with information about how our democratic systems function, contemplating how they need to change and committing to leveraging all available avenues to advance change. There are many organisations that do this work already. Recent initiatives by organisations like Accountability Lab, the Movement for Care and Activate! have produced various methodologies for community and organisation capacity building.
The second is community solutions-building and action. There is a growing appetite in communities to take active part in creating solutions. In Rivonia Circle’s democracy builder programme, from a total of 10 workshops discussing democracy, governance and the future SA communities want, 26 community-led projects have been initiated across six provinces since February 2022. Ten have already been completed, including projects tackling safety, youth development, food security, entrepreneurship, clean environments and education. Each project was designed and implemented entirely by community members, who raised their hands to be part of the solution.
Finally, electoral politics must change as part of a new culture of political action. Too many have disengaged from voting, citing a lack of belief that voting will change things and a low level of trust in the promises of parties and politicians who seem far removed from communities and are more interested in votes than in change. A new electoral politics will require new ways for people who are not in party politics to set the agenda for political contestation.
It requires a different electoral system that devolves power away from parties and puts power to hold public representatives accountable back in the hands of communities. It requires new political formations that will both contest for power at the polls every five years and those who will contest politics daily between elections, to ensure electoral promises are kept.
Supporting new politics in different forms is a mission we can all be part of, enabling different people to take on different roles in building a better democracy and society for all.
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