This week, South Africans celebrated two public holidays: Freedom Day on 27 April and Workers’ Day on 1 May. While South Africa is certainly a freer country than it was before 1994, for many of our fellow countrymen true freedom remains elusive, while millions still find themselves without work.

The winners write history

As a nationalist movement, the African National Congress (ANC) sees the elections of 27 April 1994 as the culmination of its just struggle against apartheid. In doing so, the ANC has cast itself as the founder of South Africa’s democracy and the guardian of the new constitutional order.

While the ANC certainly played a critical role in ending the apartheid system, it was by no means the only actor.

ANC revisionism has demonised and delegitimised the significant role that other black political organisations like Inkatha, the Pan-African Congress (PAC), and the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO) have played throughout South African history.

These movements also bore the brunt of the ANC’s political violence during the so-called “peaceful transition”.

As Anthea Jeffery of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) documented in her 2019 book People’s War, more than 20 000 (mostly black) South Africans died between 1984 and 1994.

Jeffery’s research reveals that these victims were not at the hands of a state sponsored “Third Force” but were the direct result of the People’s War campaign of terror unleashed by the ANC in townships and rural areas.

White opposition groups like the Liberal Party and the Progressive Party – the predecessor to today’s Democratic Alliance – spent decades opposing apartheid only to be vilified by the ANC in later years.

Ultimately, the apartheid system began to buckle under the weight of its own internal contradictions from the mid-1970s.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 – much lamented by the ANC, which was dependant on the Soviet Union for resources and ideological cover – created conducive international conditions for change to occur in South Africa.

But change also required bold leadership from within.

FW de Klerk, the last President under the National Party, paved the way for negotiations when he unexpectedly announced the unbanning of the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the PAC in his famous speech to Parliament on 2 February 1990.

Without De Klerk’s leap of faith, South Africa might have gone down an even bloodier path. His legacy has also been smeared.

Later, during the constitutional negotiations, the influence of civil society groups like the Free Market Foundation (FMF) and other role-players led to the inclusion of a private property rights clause in the current Constitution among other freedoms.

Much of this history has been conveniently forgotten by the ANC, which considers itself the sole agent of South Africa’s liberation.

Freedom Day without freedom?

Three decades on, as the corruption scandals have piled up and the ANC has become synonymous with governmental incompetence, the party is compelled to harken back to its glorious past to distract from its present failures.

Today, the ANC struggles to fill stadiums with supporters on one of the most important days in its political calendar. This is a reflection not only of its declining electoral fortunes, but also of its waning legitimacy as an organisation of national importance.

And as the ANC’s power diminishes, it becomes more desperate to reassert control. It does this by inflaming public discourse around race and by limiting the freedoms of South Africans through confiscatory policies that dilute or threaten private property rights.

Examples abound:

• •The Employment Equity Amendment Act, which imposes race and gender quotas on the workforce;
• •The Expropriation Act, which makes provision for below market compensation (down to zero) for property expropriated by the state.;
• •The National Health Insurance Act, which seeks to nationalise private medical schemes; and
• •The latest draft Capital Flow Management Regulations, published by National Treasury last week, which threaten to ban self-custody of crypto assets.

The ANC-led government is willing to trade the freedom of South Africans for its own power and privilege.

Workers’ Day without work?

When the ANC and its Tripartite Alliance partners celebrate Workers’ Day, they are demonstrating their commitment to their socialist ideology and the stated objectives of the National Democratic Revolution.

They are also showing fealty to their constituency of unionised workers, whose interests are diametrically opposed to those of the unemployed. Most of these unionised workers are employed by the state, which has steadily expanded under ANC rule while the industrial sector has declined.

Decades of restrictive labour policy have resulted in millions of poor people being locked out of the labour market through legislative force. You are simply not free to voluntarily contract with another party on terms of your choosing when it comes to your employment arrangements.

The most obvious example of this is the National Minimum Wage Act, where the government prohibits you from working for a wage less than what it deems to be “decent”. It is coercion under the guise of compassion.

As a poor person lacking in skills and social capital, the only thing you may have going for you is your willingness to work. A minimum wage deprives you of the one chance you may have of lifting yourself out of poverty.

Another example is collective bargaining agreements that are extended to non-parties. Here big business and big labour thrash out wage settlements in bargaining councils that are involuntarily imposed upon small businesses across the entire sector – even if they were not party to the agreements.

The result of these policies is an invisible opportunity cost of thousands of jobs that were never created in the first place. It is simply not worth it for many employers to take the risk on hiring somebody new.

To add further to their humiliation, the existence of the poor is then used to justify further encroachments on liberty through more forced redistribution – all in the name of addressing inequality and historical injustice. A vicious cycle.

The FMF’s solution to unemployment is simple: enable employees to voluntarily opt out of restrictive labour policies by adopting a Job-Seekers’ Exemption Certificate (JSEC).

Lose the conditions

Freedom is not contingent on the actions of politicians – nor anybody else for that matter. You don’t even need elections to be free.

Freedom is innate and intrinsic to every human being. Any infringements or limitations on these rights necessarily entail coercion and need to be carefully justified.

This week, celebrate Freedom Day by defending your freedom and mark Workers’ Day by asserting your right to work. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Ansara is CEO of the Free Market Foundation.