I think this institute in particular has tried to keep this debate alive. But I suspect that it took some real life examples to open it up in a way that ordinary citizens, key decision makers of the past and key decision makers of today can enter into some kind of debate about what is the balancing point between Justice and the needs for Reconciliation.
We have said that, our vision for the Western Cape is that it becomes a Home for All, n tuiste vir almal, ikhaya lethu sonke. When the President visited us just under a month ago, for the Imbizo programme, he said "I was in the Western Cape, but I have not really thought about the vision of a home for all. But when I was sitting with the representatives of the 15 areas that have been identified as the 15 areas with the greatest poverty, the greatest unemployment, the greatest underdevelopment, the greatest problems in crime, in drugs, in gangsterism and social dysfunctionality, I began to see the importance of idea of a home for all".
I went to a place like Lwandle and I listened to people speaking about the needs, for houses, for water, for electricity, for jobs and other pressing needs. I listened to leadership from the Western Cape, from all communities and I heard how there were Coloured leaders who believed that Africans were getting everything, and Africans who believed that the Western Cape is still a paradise for Coloureds.
So, how do we understand our movement towards a home for all when part of our problem in the Western Cape is that we miss each other in that discussion about unity we are not able to acknowledge each other in the debate. No one is prepared to use the President's words to "put themselves in each other's shoes". No one is prepared to stop a person from Mitchell's Plain who sees an African from Lost City and calls him a Kaffir. But we are not saying we should tolerate that language, but if we were to put ourselves into that person's shoes what would we experience? Why does that person think that Africans are the threat to her as a Coloured? Why does that person think that the Africans take their jobs, their houses and all those kinds of things?
How do we deal with it in the same way when someone from Gugulethu believes that Coloureds are getting everything? How do we put ourselves into the shoes of that person from Gugulethu in order to understand their experiences and how they feel? How do we put ourselves into the shoes of white people who retire behind big walls, has to install alarm systems in order to increase security measures because they feel unsafe? How do we put ourselves in each other's shoes?
I think that is probably one of the very important challenges in the Western Cape, it is to put ourselves in each other's shoes, simply to try and understand the view point of someone else because I think that is the starting point towards beginning to make the Western Cape a home for all.
Some people seem to believe that the only problem with apartheid was that, it divided people and it denied Black people the vote. And now having constitutional equality and the vote given to Black people, that we essentially solved the problem of Apartheid. There are those who go so far as to say that if you try and open up the past and not to live with constitutional equality that we have now by opening old wounds, that we are engaging in an unnecessary exercise. They are also saying that this will recreate conditions for tension amongst different groups.
That perspective also moves very quickly to implying that that now that we have constitutional equality, we can deny that fact that our people are still divided, that we have thus far not been able to have this discussion in a way that would bring us closer together. They also want to assume that we do not need other measures to underpin that constitutional equality.
And so, to large extent, we have understood that not only must we create a vision of home for all, we have to actively undermine the perspective which says, that constitutional equality and the right to vote is enough. And that is why we have underpinned the vision of a home for all with a Growth and Development Strategy that we call Ikapa elihlumayo, the Cape that we grow and the Cape that we share. Meaning, it is not enough to grow the Cape, we have to share it as well.
And that is where your role comes in. That is where we begin to speak to each other through mechanisms for sharing to overcome the past, through affirmative action which tries to rectify the past, affirmative budgeting to try and give more money in some areas where there have been depravation employment equity to get Black people fast tracked with regard to skills and jobs and Black Economic Empowerment to get ownership and participation in the economy. These are mechanisms not only to grow the Cape but also to share the Cape.
The truth of the matter is, we are doing fairly well as a Western Cape Government in terms of some of the material things that we are getting right. This is a Province where our people have access to water, to sanitation, to electricity, to telephones and other services. From all the communities, rural and urban, African, Coloured, Indian and White, we have an average of 96% of our people having access to basic services. Meaning, that only 4% of our people in the Western Cape do not have access to those basics and services. We have the highest matric pass rates although the quality of it in something that we have to continue to interrogate. We've got the highest access, again to Social Services, pensions, grants, health care etc.
We have the lowest unemployment, although the concentration of unemployment is amongst the young black people, particularly Africans. We have a high housing backlog and that is particularly because of the history of the Western Cape. But the fact of the matter is that, on schooling, on health care, on welfare, on basic services and even on access to work, the Western Cape does fairly well, with exception for all its communities.
That begins to tell me that the restlessness that we feel, the suspicion of other, the calling of names, the division amongst us, sometimes the racism amongst us, the identity challenges that we all face, it begins to tell me that this home for all, cannot be based only on material well being. Meaning that, while we have to get the material things, moving for our people, and while we have got to continue to grow and share the Cape materially, we must also find ways in which to rid our people of the suspicion, the intolerance and of the habit to reject.The point is, we also have to look almost into the soul of our people, where much of that restlessness that we feel sits. We need to look back as well, we need to go into our memory and what I think we need to understand, is that it is not only the continuities in our memory, the things that we remember, we also need intensively to look at the discontinuities in our memories. The things that we have forgotten, that we were made to forget, where memory has been distorted, abused, suppressed and violated. Because maybe it is in both in the continuity as well as the discontinuities of memory that we will find the answers for healing and reconciliation.
I think that we have to look very clearly where these discontinuities come from, in our memory? What are some of these discontinuities? I think just very simply, given the fact that a key victim of colonialism and apartheid was also religion. Islam was banned in the Western Cape and suppressed for 200 years. Christianity was distorted in order to justify both colonialism and apartheid. Although there have been enormous claim backs in that both Islam and Christianity were used for liberation. But we are infact more united than we realize.
In the first Epistle of John, which starts, "who lives in love lives in God and God in them" and then it ends up by saying, "this much you must know, I have given you of my spirit". The Quran contains a similar scripture. While there maybe a continuity in memory of our religion, we must examine where there is a discontinuity in memory about spirituality and divinity, that is very important because we do not seem to recognize the Divine in each other, we do not seem to interact with each other, as if each one is carrying a part of the spirit of God. And so I raise that, as the first illustration of both the continuity as well as the discontinuity of memory, because I believe, it may be part of our problem that it is difficult sometimes for Africans, Coloureds, Whites and Indians to see each other as carriers of the spirit that each of us have been given by Divine law.
The second area of discontinuity is the fact that a large part of Cape history has been defined by slavery. Slavery by itself is the violence dislocation of people not only from the countries, not only from geographical spaces but also from their cultures, from the people, from the values, from what they hold dear. So what was carried forward except the fragrance of memory that these things happened and how have they impacted on society today?
Thirdly, the genocide of the Khoi and San. That is the killing of an entire community. They exist only as exhibits in the museums, a valley of the past. What discontinuity in memory comes in? What interruption in memory happens with slavery and the genocide? Also, the killing of an entire language that was spoken in the Western Cape, the language spoken by the Khoi and the San?
If the South African National Symbol did not rescue a part of it, and give it respect, we would even have thought that there was an entire language that has been killed of and if language is the carrier of culture, is the carry of tradition, is the carry of values, what is the impact of a discontinuity that comes with the killing not only of a people, but also of a language? What is the discontinuity that comes for Africans? Xhosa speaking people for example, when an entire Province is pro-claimed a Coloured labour preference area, where Africans are seen as intruders with a false notion that only those whose labour are required, are allowed here, but families are left behind.
That is the particular history and even the 13 years into democracy, we do not have the kind of budget to make up for the systematic denial of African's right to come into Western Cape with for example, a housing budget or an Education budget. What does that mean in terms of discontinuities of memory? So what I thought, that I wanted to do hopefully, to stimulate on further thinking for the institute for Justice and Reconciliation is to progrematize this notion of memory because the default position in memory is the continuity and we often think that in the position you have to iron the few wrinkles of disposition. And you've got to keep it alive, and you've got to memorialise it.
I'm saying that, in our search of the Western Cape to become a home for all, we may have to deal a lot more with the discontinuity of memory because in that line some of the answers to the persistent problem today. When you go around to places in the Western Cape and you speak about the origins of people and in particular in the Coloured community, we speak about our white father. Now it may be amusing at one level, but the fact of the matter is what violence went into that? The White father fathering a child, what violation of the mother took place? What violence went into slavery to create that discontinuity?
Genocide and the killing of the language but itself is a violent act, the denial of African's right, for African mothers and children to be with the father in Cape Town resulting in the bulldozes, the shootings and so forth in KTC and Cross Roads, Endabeni and to many other places? The removal of people from where they lived. What violence went into it? And in trying to understand our role in the Western Cape but particularly in the 15 areas that we are speaking about that are the epidemic of drugs, of crime, of gangsters and other kinds of social pathologist. How much of needs to be traced back to the discontinuities in our memory to understand the origins of violence that persists today?
The fact that we do not have a culture of problem solving except through beating of our wives, that we do not have an inherited set of values that informs right and wrong. And so, in a very real way, we've got to be able to manage, not only the continuities in memory, and to memorialise but I think we need a very intensive process to piece together the discontinuities because I suspect that in the violence that created much of the discontinuities in our memories, we may find the origins of much of pathologist that we try to deal with in the Western Cape, whether they manifest themselves as violence against women, intra community violence on the Friday night at the Shebeen, the murder statistics that we have in the Western Cape, the need for gangsters to be your bonding mates, the need for drugs to deaden your soul and all of those kinds of things.
I suspect that we must also find ways in which to deal with not only the continuities of our memory, but particularly the discontinuities in our memory.
Thank you
