26/04/2026
SAFTU STATEMENT ON THE 32nd ANNIVERSARY OF FREEDOM DAY – 27 APRIL 2026
“Between Freedom and Crisis: The Unfinished Struggle for Economic Emancipation”
1. Freedom and Democracy: Real gains worth defending
Thirty-two years after the historic breakthrough of South Africa’s first democratic elections, we must begin with clarity: political freedom was a decisive rupture with colonialism and apartheid barbarism.
The right to vote, organise, protest, and speak without fear was not given—it was won through generations of struggle.
The democratic state dismantled the legal edifice of apartheid and replaced it with a constitutional order grounded in dignity, equality, and freedom.
Beyond material gains, we must also recognise the many freedoms and liberties now taken for granted, flowing directly from the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, including:
• Socio-economic rights such as access to housing, healthcare, water, food, and social security
• Political rights including free expression, association, and assembly
• Labour rights, including collective bargaining and protection against unfair dismissal
• Legal rights guaranteeing equality before the law and protection from discrimination
These constitutional guarantees remain a cornerstone of democratic life and a terrain of ongoing struggle.
Millions have also gained access - however uneven to:
• Housing, water, and electricity
• Social grants that sustain over 18 million people
• Expanded access to education and healthcare
• Labour protections and workplace rights
These gains are real. They are worth defending.
As Desmond Tutu reminded us:
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
These gains are not guaranteed. They are contested.
Today, there are conservative forces and small but vocal groupings seeking to roll back these hard-won freedoms—whether by undermining constitutional rights, attacking progressive laws, or exploiting social frustrations to weaken democratic institutions.
The progressive movement must be clear and resolute: we must defend the democratic gains of 1994 without hesitation.
Our frustrations with inequality, unemployment, and poverty are justified. But we must not allow that anger to be manipulated into rejecting the very freedoms that workers fought for.
We must not, in our anger, throw the baby out with the bathwater.
They are rooted in the vision of the Freedom Charter, which declared that South Africa belongs to all who live in it.
But even at the height of the liberation struggle, it was understood that political freedom alone would never be enough.
2. The promise betrayed: From Freedom Charter to neoliberal Vulindlela
The democratic breakthrough carried a bold promise: that political liberation would be economic emancipation.
The Freedom Charter proclaimed:
• The people shall share in the country’s wealth
• The land shall be shared among those who work it
And crucially:
“The mineral wealth beneath the soil shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole.”
At the ANC Morogoro Consultative Conference, this was sharpened into a strategic warning:
“In our country — more than in any other part of the oppressed world — it is inconceivable for liberation to have any meaning without a return of the wealth of the country to the people as a whole.”
This was not rhetoric. It was a prophecy.
Yet the post-apartheid state moved in the opposite direction.
The Reconstruction and Development Programme was abandoned. In its place came Growth, Employment and Redistribution, a decisive turn toward austerity, liberalisation, and privatisation. This trajectory continues through Operation Vulindlela.
Instead of the people owning the wealth beneath the soil, we have constructed a model in which:
• The risks of investment are socialised - carried by the state through guarantees and public resources
• The profits are privatised, captured by corporations and a narrow elite
In effect, capital has been allowed to nationalise risk while privatising profit.
This is the complete reversal of the promise of the Freedom Charter.
Instead of redistribution:
• They have entrenched monopolies controlling the economy
• They allowed deepened financialisation and capital flight
• They allowed the commodification of public services
• The elites now have austerity budgets that punish the working class and give massive rewards to capital
The result is devastating.
Over 12.4 million people are unemployed, 80% of who have not been employed for more than a year - condemned by policy, not fate, to lives of poverty and exclusion.
The Morogoro warning now stands confirmed: without the return of land and wealth, freedom becomes hollow.
3. The nightmare in the middle of our dream: A nation in a precipice
We now confront a deepening social and economic crisis - a nation standing at the edge of a precipice.
Unemployment, poverty, and inequality have combined into a profound human crisis:
• Millions go hungry and are forced to miss a meal a day – 10 000 children a year from malnutrition millions are stunted
• Public services are under severe strain
• Infrastructure is collapsing
• Violence, including gender-based violence, is widespread
This is the nightmare in the middle of dreams of generations.
Women at the frontline of precarity
The human face of this crisis is overwhelmingly young, black, and female.
Young women are concentrated in:
• Informal and precarious work
• Low-wage, insecure employment
• Unregulated sectors with no protection
They carry the burden of survival in an economy that excludes them from stable, dignified work.
At the same time, the crisis of teenage pregnancy continues to trap many in a vicious cycle:
• Early motherhood interrupts education
• Limited job opportunities reinforce poverty
• Economic dependence deepens inequality across generations
This is not a personal failure. It is a structural outcome of poverty, inequality, and a failing social system.
Youth facing exclusion and social crisis
At the same time, millions of black youth face exclusion:
• No access to decent work
• Limited opportunities for education and skills development
• Lack of recreational and developmental infrastructure
In this vacuum, destructive coping mechanisms take root:
• Drug abuse, including nyaope
• Alcohol dependency
• Crime and social instability
This is not about individual weakness, it is systemic abandonment.
A society under strain
We are witnessing:
• Rising xenophobia as the poor are turned against each other
• Deepening social fragmentation
• Declining trust in public institutions
A society built on inequality cannot sustain democracy.
Conclusion: Defend Freedom and complete
On this Freedom Day, we reject both empty celebration and hopeless despair.
We affirm:
• The gains of democracy must be defended
• But political freedom without economic justice is incomplete
The task remains to realise the full vision of the Freedom Charter:
• Redistribution of wealth and land
• Decent work for all
• A capable, developmental state
• Public control of strategic sectors
Freedom Day must be a call to action.
The struggle continues—not only for political freedom, but for real economic liberation.
