(this piece first appeared in The Herald on 15 June 2016, under the "Title SA freedom being circumscribed)
My 1997 Toyota is currently propped up on bricks in my backyard.
You see, I’m waiting for my small time mechanic “guy” to find a specific part
that is being reconditioned by his small time parts supply “guy”. I have though still managed to get around town
regardless of this challenge and regardless of this week’s province wide taxi
protest. This, partly thanks to Uber and partly thanks to the luck that I do
not rank in the number of the struggling poor compelled to live in the far
flung periphery of our sprawling metro. So, as I have zipped around town as a passenger
in the last few days I have had a little more time to follow what my “friends”
are saying on Facebook. Much of my feed is clogged up with pictures of cats
sleeping in laundry baskets or heart wrenching messages about how not sharing
this picture of a goat means that I don’t care about people dying of cancer. There
was, though, some interesting talk about what people think of the taxi protest.
Most of the talk was about the fear of the protest getting violent or how
unfair it was that students could not get to class to write their exams. Yes, I feel for the students. I feel for the mall
bound housewives’ stuck in traffic jams. But, to be honest, I’m more interested
in what this protest is really about; and as far as I can understand, it’s
really is about the delay in the provincial government’s issuing of “operating licenses”.
Because, you see, the state has decided that it is criminal for a hardworking
person to make an honest living transporting people from A to B without their
permission. Really!? Perhaps there is something that I am not getting here? But
my real worry is that so many of us are completely content with the idea that
the state somehow has the right to tell us what we can and cannot do and that
we need their “permission” to do an honest day’s work. This state bullying is
not just in the transport sector, it’s all over the economy!
I work as an Architect.
In this industry the state has decided that they do not trust the judgment of
those who chose to do business with me. I am therefor required to remain “licensed”
by the state. For an Architect to work without a license is a criminal offence.
I go to jail! I mean, can we not be trusted as ordinary citizens to choose for
ourselves who to employ to give us a lift to work or to draw up plans for the
extensions to our patio? Do we really
need armies of faceless civil servants employed with our tax money in Pretoria
or Bhisho to help us with this level of decision making? Perhaps the reason we
tolerate this intrusion is because we have not paused to think about it?
In the late eighties
many of my friends, like me, were caught up with the idea of “freedom” and of “power
to the people”. It seems though that as time has passed that ideal has evolved
rather to us being content with changing the complexion of the state rather
that questioning whether it was ever necessary for the state to take away our
individual freedoms in the first place. The Apartheid state was unapologetic in
taking away freedoms in the pursuit of “Law and Order”. At that time, citizens
felt it was absolutely OK that there would be laws stopping us from selling
flowers on pavements, brewing Umqomboti in the backyard or playing guitar for loose
coins at the bus stop. It was just understood that the state was in control and
it was the job of each and every citizen to “stay out of trouble”. But somehow
we have allowed that apartheid mindset to move with us 20 years and beyond into
the “free” South Africa. The obsession with “statism” seems to be held equally
by political parties to the left and the right. The political debate is generally only about
what category of additional state control can be forced upon its citizens.
Since apartheid times, the excuse used for state bullying
has moved from “Law and Order” and “Suppression of Communism” to our new
regime’s talk of “Health and Safety” and “Transformation”. We need though to
wake up the very real possibility that our freedoms are being taken away for no
reason other than to allow huge monopolies to step in and take control of the
country. Putting in place “licensing procedures” on top of layers and layers of
compliance requirements makes it more and more difficult for any but larger and
larger institutions and corporations to keep up. State capture is not a single
event, not just the Guptas, not just one corrupt politician. It is a tendency
that has come with us since before we agreed in 1994 that freedom is what each
and every citizen deserves and is entitled to.
So I urge each and every one of us, from today on, to free our minds and to become openly and
vocally disgusted whenever we encounter the smallest attempt on the part of the
state to tell us that we are not free.
As long as we are not harming anyone, it should not be any of their damn
business!
