'Freedom is an ongoing battle'
2008-04-25 16:26
Verashni Pillay
Click here to hear what 14-year-old pupils have to say about celebrating Freedom Day in 2008.
Note: This report features sound.
Cape Town - "The 27th of April was more than an election day," former education minister, Professor Kader Asmal recalls, as South Africans gear up to celebrate Freedom Day, 14 years after the country's first democratic election.
"It was the first act of self-determination for the entire people of South Africa," Asmal told News24.
The ANC stalwart, who was instrumental in the drafting of the country's democratic Constitution, recalled returning to South Africa in 1990 after years of exile.
"When we got our ID my wife, who is English, was told her voting station was Sea Point," said Asmal, laughing at the memory. "My voting station was Mitchell's Plain!
"We lived in the same house but I was allocated to a 'black' area."
Fourteen years of freedom
Asmal, 74, went on to become a Member of Parliament and was actively involved in politics until his retirement earlier this year. He served as minister of water affairs and forestry, as well as in the education portfolio. He also chaired the National Assembly portfolio committee on defence and founded the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement.
"It is enormously important that we celebrate it," said Asmal, as three days of commemorative celebrations, under the theme "Business Unusual", gets under way.
Asmal studied law in London from 1959 to 1963. Unable to return to South Africa because of his political activities, he spent the next 25 years at Trinity College in Dublin, lecturing in law and rising to be Dean of the Faculty of Arts.
His experience was to inform his life-long passion for human rights.
But while apartheid is a thing of the past, Asmal acknowledged that freedom is an ongoing battle.
Poverty
For him, the most dire threat to freedom for South Africans today is poverty.
"The most important challenge we face is to see that the Bill of Rights, which is the foundation of our freedoms, is now applied to all our people," said Asmal. "But our people who are crippled by poverty cannot avail themselves of the Bill of Rights.
"Every term of the bill of rights is violated by poverty."
According to Asmal, urgent problems such as crime would be solved once social problems were addressed.
"We must ensure that there's no economic injustice in our country," said Asmal.
"With that you can deal with murderers, with crime, criminals and everything else and not take populist positions," he said in the wake of controversial comments by deputy minister of safety and security, Susan Shabangu, that police should shoot to kill.
He dismissed voter apathy, saying that far more South Africans vote than Europeans, despite voter registration being voluntary.
"People vote to the extent of which elections matters in their lives," said Asmal.
South Africans will go to the polls again in 2009.
- News24