Democracy & Disability in South Africa: Still Three Nations
By Charlotte Vuyiswa McClain (cmcclain@sahrc.org.za)
The ushering in of a new democracy in 1994 was billed as a miracle. For the majority of South Africans it was their first time ballots were cast for a government of their choice. This exercise of political franchise brought hope, pride, and huge expectations. But for many this miracle had a long and painful history. A history characterised by inequality, discrimination, torture, abuse, segregation, exclusion and deprivation. The victorious national liberation struggle negotiated our democracy based on human dignity and equality.
Constitution
The new democracy brought with it the process of writing the supreme law of the land, the Constitution. This process was open, transparent and inclusive. It heard the voices of the people and considered them. People from all walks of life contributed to the Constitutional Assembly by way of submission, oral and written. They expressed what they thought should be registered in the nascent nation's birth certificate.
Bill of Rights
The inclusion of a Bill of Rights in South Africa's democratic Constitution was a concrete expression of key demands of the Freedom Charter. While the legal profession played an important role in the following decades in establishing the need for a Bill of Rights in South Africa, the main agency for finally creating a rights consciousness was popular struggle around the Freedom Charter.
"Two Nations"
Today a democratic constitution is now in place, with a Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedoms equally to all South Africans. Apartheid laws have been scrapped and are being replaced by a volume of progressive, developmental legislation. Many of the pre-1994 barriers have been broken down. But not all the barriers have been broken down. A point eloquently made by President Thabo Mbeki in a speech to parliament in 1998 when he characterised South Africa as a country of 'two nations'.
Or three nations?
There has been limited thought given to the intersection between race and disability. And the reality is that in many respects to disability we are still looking at three nations. The reality in South Africa is that people with disabilities still face unacceptable social and economic exclusion. Disabled people are disproportionately among the poorest of the poor and more likely than our able-bodied peers to be uneducated, unemployed or under-employed. The grim realities of life for South Africa's 2.5 million disabled people, particularly among the African community, have been highlighted in a nationwide study, which found an astonishing 88% unemployment rate among the disabled people. Better education and rehabilitation services seemed to have an impact on a person's ability to find employment but in this regard coloured and African disabled people are more disadvantaged than Indian and white disabled people.
"To hear and be heard"
Once the Constitution had been adopted and the inclusion of disability in the equality clause had been secured, the next front was the legislative and policy frameworks and the infrastructure. At about this time, I had been seconded to the Office of the Deputy President to assist in the development of a "White Paper" on disability. This process perhaps remains one of the most entrenched images of a people's democracy for me. The plan was grand, we conducted public hearings in all the nine provinces with the view of taking the issues to disabled people. I recall travelling by road, by air, many hours planning, strategising and reflecting on what should be contained in the integrated National Disability Strategy. In the Northern Cape, we held hearings in a community hall in a township on the outskirts of Uppington. It was freezing but the hall was abuzz with disabled people, in chairs, on crutches, in a bed, blind, with Sign interpreters. They had come to hear and be heard.
First class-action suit
The social grant system and the delivery of public services to disabled people requires radical transformation, particularly, in terms of administration and distribution and must be contextualized within a wider poverty-eradication and disability empowerment strategy. The inadequate system was, last August, subject of the country's first class-action suit under the Constitution and resulted in the reinstatement of thousands of disabled people illegally removed from the social grant system in the Eastern Cape and set a precedent for similar suits nationwide.
Typically, monitoring has been an area of conspicuous failure for most anti-poverty and development programmes. This is particularly true in the area of disability. We must ensure that programmes are monitored and properly evaluated.
Confronting discrimination
The way to combat discrimination is not to deny its existence or its systemic roots. Neither is it to trivialise its impact. Those who deny it must be challenged because it is such denial, which potentially entrenches our inherited inequalities. We need to strengthen and in some cases purify the capacity of our nascent democratic institutions to deal with the barriers that perpetuate social exclusion and discrimination on the grounds of disability.
This can be done in a number of ways. One is visibility of people with disabilities, also by creating fora at which people are able to exchange views and express themselves South Africa diverse in our strength. Educational programmes that popularise a rights-based approach to addressing discrimination should be developed for civil society but also for disabled people.
In addition we need to be calling for an integrated disability development approach that links prevention, rehabilitation and social safety nets with empowerment strategies and changes attitudes as articulated in the 1997 White Paper on an Integrated National Disability Strategy.
Needed changes
It is necessary to address discrimination and inequality in its many institutional and social forms. This includes changing the skewed distribution of resources through the equitable distribution of state funds, a programme of black economic empowerment (including women's economic empowerment), affirmative action, land reform and social development. It requires the transformation, in terms of composition, culture and focus, of institutions like the judiciary, public service, private sector, academia and parastatals. Essential to this are programmes to promote multi-culturalism, multi-lingualism and tolerance in all our educational institutions and other important sites of social development. There is a need to focus on the ability and not the disability.
Delivering the goods to the most marginalized
It is clear that much needs to be done by us to ensure that more peoples with disabilities rightfully enjoy their constitutional rights. The new agenda must deliver the developmental goods to those who are most marginalized. It must be a contract must be with all. We have chalked up some impressive achievements but there is much more to do. This will take a lot more than prayer and loving thy neighbour.
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