MARTINA BIENE: Freedom Day: a time for SA to consider how best to reach our dream deferred

• Published date: 26 April 2024
• Author: Martina Biene
• Publication title: Business Day: Web Edition Articles (Johannesburg, South Africa)

I wasn't in the country then. My first trip was three years later, in 1997, as a young theological student on an outreach project in Cape Town, but SA made an abiding impression on me

I remember the hope. If that candle had flickered in 1994 it was a bright, shining beacon when I arrived. The constitution was being passed in parliament, a marvellous document creating a road map of what this country could be.

The Truth & Reconciliation Commission was under way, there was a feeling of just what SA was going to achieve. This wasn't about fixing the hurts of the past as much as it was about becoming the best country in the world.

Fastforward 27 years and I am back in the country for a third time. This time it's different. There's a lot of despondency, some of it justified given the revelations of state capture that emerged from chief justice Raymond Zondo's commission.

But amid the doom and the gloom of loadshedding, spiralling unemployment and an economy that seems to be deindustrialising, there is hope. I see it every day in Nelson Mandela Bay in the Eastern Cape, where I live.

Despite the dysfunctionality of the local political scene — I think we've had eight mayors in the last nine years — there are also green shoots that give me great hope. They come from the community, which gives me great comfort because it is where the company I work for has invested so much of its efforts since the first VW Beetle rolled off the production line in 1951.

I am proud of what my predecessors achieved; we were the first in the automotive industry to recognise black SA trade unions, and one of the first to appoint black executives. I am grateful for the sense of volunteerism that runs through our staff in Johannesburg and Kariega, giving up their time to contribute to the community.

There is so much more to do, and we will do it. I think South Africans don't give themselves enough credit for what has been achieved. This is a remarkably cohesive country, despite what some of the politicians on the fringes might have us believe with their identify politics. There is a real culture of compassion and a real sense of empathy for different beliefs, languages, orientations and classes that you would be hard pressed to find overseas, even in Europe with its large diaspora communities.

We have smashed glass ceilings; we have women cabinet ministers; we have had a female deputy president. We have female combat commanders and fighter pilots. We have women CEOs and chairs of...