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The separate development of apartheid condemned the black majority to cheap labour, unfair discrimination before the justice system, poor underfunded education, poor health care services, and discrimination from other amenities. The combination of these and other factors that signified oppression and exploitation of the marginalised groups invoked from their ranks the fighting organisations to eradicate such a regime. Hence political parties, civic and labour movements conducted a struggle in their long walk to freedom.

The advent of liberal democracy in 1994 brought hopes for the previously disadvantaged people. For them, this moment represented a triumph against the inferior amenities they have received during the white minority rule, the super-exploitation, economic marginalisation and political oppressions.

27 years on, the Bill of Rights exists, as do ‘equality of opportunities’, equality before the law and all the political freedoms that have been legislated. We even have socio-economic rights embedded within our Constitution.

Despite this, ordinary people who rely on government still receive poor amenities, have their political freedoms curtailed by arrests and killings during protests, continue to live in squalor and poverty, cannot defend themselves in courts of law against rich people and corporates who have highly trained legal counsels. 

The Constitutional socio-economic rights clauses have proven helpful for rights to new-born children needing nevirapine, so they are not HIV+, and for halting evictions. But for those of us requiring dialysis treatment as did Thiagraj Soobramoney at Addington Hospital in 1997, or needing housing as did Irene Grootboom at Wallacedene in 2000, or hoping that water would flow to Sowetans as did Lindiwe Mazibuko and the Coalition Against Water Privatisation in 2009, the Constitutional Court left them dead, homeless and disconnected, respectively. 

In essence, this has led many to despair in the reality of the new democracy, that their pre-1994 aspirations have been dashed. In their despair, most have often attributed this to the “lack of political will”. It is true, that aspects such as the distribution of land for redress of land dispossession and the passing of this or that legislation are lack of political wills. However, the commodity regime lies at the heart of the failure to realise many freedoms which have been legislated, and neoliberal policies follow that regime as we see in so many government statements and the Treasury’s extremist austerity budgeting.

Commodity regime and individual freedoms 

Liberal democracy premises itself on the recognition of private property, freedom of enterprise, trade and ‘equal opportunities.’ In other words, this is thumbs up for the capitalist mode of production and exchange. In fact, beyond being a thumbs up, liberalism is a political regime given birth by a fledgling capitalism in late 18th century. 

The capitalist mode of production and exchange rests on top of commodification of goods and services. It imbues in each good commodity properties and harnesses every good for exchange purposes. In this sense, all goods produced by the capitalist enterprise are commodities that can only be consumed by consumers through a transactional exchange.

For ordinary people to access the basic goods and services that come in the form of commodities, they must have an income. Income usually comes in the form of remuneration, a decent remuneration if ordinary people must afford the basic goods and services. 

But the capitalist economy has barred many from accessing work and generating a form of remuneration. The booms and burst that characterise capitalism have led to massive job shedding in times of burst. However, even during booms, the capitalist economy has found ways to keep many out of work because of its structural unemployment. In 2020, the economy’s contraction led to the massive shedding of jobs of over a million. From its low in 1995, unemployment rose two-fold from 16% to 42% (inclusive of those who have given up looking for jobs) in 2021.

Those who succeed in finding jobs, are usually remunerated anything less than poverty wages. Even though we campaigned for a living wage of R12 500, which must be revised given the increasing inflation, 70% of the South African workforce earns less than a modest R6 570 which considered a living income. The quarterly employment survey for 2020 has shown a year-on-year decrease in the share of workers’ wages by R22.8 billion.

The combination of these factors: unemployment which virtually means no income for most working age groups, and the meagre wages for those who are lucky to find employment, has meant many people in this country cannot realise most of their freedoms and rights. The laws that pass of different freedoms to individuals in a liberal democracy are effectively constrained by commodification, unemployment and poverty wages. For instance, the right and freedom to life is constrained by the fact that a human being cannot access food unless they have means to buy them. They must work in order to generate money to buy food. Without jobs and (adequate) income they must either survive on parcels, pursue a life of crime or die in poverty. Thus, crime and violence are high in this country, and homeless people who feed from the rubbish hips are too many.

Government as catalyst for realisation of human rights and freedoms 

To evade or delay its eventual overthrow by the dissent, the economic captains of capitalism harness the state to provide services to those who cannot afford the transaction and maintain discipline, forced or consented.

The state must provide social services and goods to the ordinary working-class majority to alleviate conditions of revolt. Hence it has been the objectives of the state to ensure water provision, sanitation, shelter, health care and education. The provision of these services is not only for the benefit of the ordinary working people who cannot afford, but also to subsidise big business’ operating costs. 

However, let us recall that water is now – according to Water Minister Lindiwe Sisulu – less available than it was at the end of apartheid, because so many systems and pipes are broken, both in supplying clean water to our taps, and in removing sewage thus destroying our environment. We still have more than two million housing units that are considered substandard: urban shacks or rural huts. Our health care is in crisis. Our education system is turning out young people considered among the world’s worst prepared for maths and sciences in the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution. 

So while big, medium and small businesses are firing our working-class people at a record rate – 1.5 million last year – the state’s supply of services to our workers logically reflects how little the capitalist state is willing to do for us. Our social wage has become merely tokenistic. 

The endeavour to provision services, is an attempt to practically realise the freedoms and rights of human beings enshrined in the liberal democracy, without which its legitimacy will be challenged. 

The commodity regime inherited by the liberal democratic government of 1994, neoliberalism, is even more savage. It sees and harness every sphere of life for accumulation of capital and maximisation of profit. Thus, it has turned even these areas in which government ought to be legitimise the commodity regime as sites of accumulation, leading to further constraints for the realisation of human rights and freedoms. Consequently, it has limited the capacity of the state to provide such services and has been in perpetual state of decline. Hence the subsequent decline in the provision of services and the quality of those provided. 

One indicator of the state’s loss of legitimacy is the rise in apathy during elections, which again we will witness year. Another  is the rise in service delivery protests – which averaged 2.6 per day between 2013-19, but soared to 5 per day on average in 2020 after lockdown was eased, mid-year.

Economic freedom 

In situations created by the ailing education and health system, lack of housing and sanitation, many holds their problems are created by their economic dispossession. In search of answers for their economic dispossession, they have said, 1994 “brought political freedom without economic freedom”. Whilst the instinct embedded in this phrase is correct, it means different things to the sections of the previously disadvantaged groups. 

For the aspirant parasitic black bourgeois, the phrase is an expression of their frustration with their exclusion in the accumulation of wealth and their recognition that they feed on the crumps that falls off from the dining table of big capital who are predominantly white.  For the ordinary working people, the phrase expresses their position of destitute, unemployment and slave labouring. It also reflects the position of their deprivation and dispossession of land.

Regardless of their frustration, the parasitic bourgeois are as vicious as their big powerful counterparts. They exploit the frustration of the ordinary people at lack of services to rally support for state to create opportunities for them. It is these opportunities which enables them to loot through tendering in the SOEs and government departments. The unfortunate result has been looting from projects which ought to bring services to the poor, thus further depriving the poor from realising certain freedoms.

Working class fight for true liberation 

The raging protests by working class organisations in campuses and communities represent growing dissent to the poor level of service delivered and the commodification of provision of services. 

The state cannot afford to deliver services because is severed by the surge in prices of the resources required to deliver such goods and a crippling corruption. The parasitic bourgeois alongside their big capital, soaked in the ideology of neoliberalism, have turned the public sector into a site of accumulation. The little resources have thus been looted leading to crippling of Eskom, Prasa, Transnet, SAA, Denel, etc. The health department has collapsed resulting in more “horrors” in hospitals that has led to permanent disabilities and deaths of many people.

The commodification of higher education has seen students rising to fight back the exclusion that comes from this. Housing crisis, sanitation and lack of access to land by the dispossessed majority, has exacerbated the crisis and curtailed the rights and freedoms of many South Africans. In response, grassroots movements have emerged overtime to fight back the commodification, corruption and the limitation of their human rights and freedoms. The fight back has however been marred by arrests, police brutality and deaths. The deaths of Mthokosizi Ntumba, Katlego Monareng, Andries Tatane and the Marikana miners amongst others are a stark indicator of the curtailments of the rights and freedoms of ordinary people. It is against this background that we hold that there is nothing ordinary working people can celebrate about the 27th of April as a Freedom Day. 

If anything, working class organisations must increase their fighting capacity to resist the capitalist onslaught on the little gains which are being rolled back such as the legislation of the labour bills amendment of 2018 which limit the right to strike, and the passing of the Traditional and Khoisan leadership Act which trade off the freedoms of rural masses to traditional kings/chiefs for their loyalty.

We see the hunger of our society, to fight back, in myriad protests. The period ahead must, now, be different than the last 27 years, of disconnected protesting and expression of grievances. We must now unite across our communities, to find the anti-capitalist anger and post-capitalist visions that will ensure the commodity regime is replaced by a society and ecology where the forces of people and of planetary survival overwhelm the destructiveness of profits.


Issued by SAFTU