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Collective Unfreedom in South Africa
Lawrence Hamilton
Professor of Politics, University of Johannesburg
Affiliated Lecturer in Political Theory, Department of Politics (POLIS) and Faculty of History,
Cambridge University
Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University
Editor-in-Chief of Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory
Collective Unfreedom in South Africa
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Abstract
This article submits, with Mandela, that despite political freedom and a lauded liberal constitution,
South Africa remains collectively unfree, especially if freedom is understood as power across four
economic and political dimensions. Although G. A. Cohen’s notion of the ‘collective unfreedom’ of
the proletariat is not perfectly analogous to the situation of South Africans in general, this article
maintains that it is still very useful in understanding the extent of unfreedom in South Africa. It
argues that there are four main reasons for the condition of collective unfreedom in South Africa:
poverty; inequality; the electoral system; and macroeconomic policy. In the end, though, the article
contests Mandela’s claim regarding the force of our moral duty to others to enhance their freedom;
rather, it argues that it is the realization that our individual freedom depends upon the freedom of
others that would motivate all citizens to secure the freedom as power of all South Africans.
Keywords: freedom; power; collective unfreedom, poverty, inequality, representation, South Africa
Collective Unfreedom in South Africa
In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela (1995, pp. 616-7) says the following about freedom in South
Africa:-
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Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them; the chains on all
of my people were the chains on me. It was during those long and lonely years [in the struggle for freedom]
that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and
black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the
oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the
bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom,
just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike
are robbed of their humanity. When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed
and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that is not the case. The truth is
we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have
not taken the final step of our journey but the first step on a longer even more difficult road. For to be free is
not merely to cast off one’s chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
Mandela, I submit, is still right. He is right that freedom depends on liberating the oppressor and
the oppressed.1 He is also right that South Africans are not yet free, especially if freedom is power
in the ways I maintain here. What I call ‘real modern freedom’ is identified with and as power, in
that it is a combination of my ability to determine what I will do and my power to do it, that is, bring
it about. In particular, I argue that my freedom is relative to my power to: a) get what I want, to act
or be as I would choose in the absence of of either internal or external obstacles or both; b)
determine the government of my political association; c) develop and exercise my powers and
capacities self-reflectively within and against existing norms, expectations and power relations; and
d) determine my social and economic environment via meaningful control over my economic and
political representatives (Hamilton 2012). I submit here that South Africans are unfree across all of
these dimensions, and I argue that therefore, although some South Africans are freer than others,
taken together they are collectively unfree.
The notion of ‘collective unfreedom’ comes from G. A. Cohen’s account of freedom and the
condition of the proletariat under capitalism. He argues that although individual members of the
proletariat are free to escape the proletariat, given that capitalism requires a substantial hired
labour force and that this would cease to exist if more than a few did escape the proletariat, this
freedom is conditional on none of the other members (or at least not all of them) exercising their
similarly conditional freedom. He goes on to contend that the fact that the freedom of each is
contingent on the others not exercising their similarly contingent freedom, gives rise to a great deal
of unfreedom: even though each is individually free to escape the proletariat, each individual
member of the proletariat suffers with the rest from what he calls ‘collective unfreedom’ (Cohen
1 Before Mandela, Rousseau saw this with greatest clarity: ‘One believes himself the others’ master, and yet
is more a slave than they’ (Rousseau 1997, p. 41); see also Hegel (1977) and Marx (2002).
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2006). Although Cohen’s analogy does not work all the way down, I maintain that it is still very
useful in understanding the extent of unfreedom in South Africa. I argue that there are four main
reasons for the condition of collective unfreedom that prevails in South Africa: poverty; inequality;
the electoral system; and macroeconomic policy. The conjunction of these four main features of life
in South Africa mean that most South Africans find they are unable to act freely across most, if not
all, of the four dimensions of freedom outlined above. The power relations that obtain within South
Africa generate situations of domination that persist across all of these four dimensions.
This claim is likely to surprise readers from right across the political spectrum because it flies in the
face of a number of evident truths about South Africa that many feel safeguard the freedom of
South Africans. Some will point to South Africa’s recent political liberation, other will lavish praise
on its liberal constitution, and others still will highlight the fact that while a poor South African is not
empowered and is thus unfree in many ways, the same cannot be said of wealthy South Africans.
In response, here I marshal two related arguments. First, even if, say, one has freedom as power
across three of the four dimensions of freedom I discuss, one’s lack of power in only one is
sufficient to make one unfree. Second, and more importantly, group or class unfreedom often has
the effect of making another group or class unfree. For example, although the effects of poverty on
the poor is stark and obvious in that it imposes a series of material and psychological obstacles to
their freedom as power, the effects of high levels of poverty and inequality is similarly, if not
equally, disempowering for wealthy South Africans: the levels of crime, jealousy and fear that high
levels of inequality and poverty generate in any society lead the wealthy either to disempower
themselves by shutting themselves off from the wider community behind barbed wire and high
walls or become disempowered by the anxieties, phobias and illnesses these conditions generate.
Either way, while the poor South African under current conditions remains the real loser in terms of
freedom as power, it is a mistake for the wealthy to think that they can secure their freedom simply
by means of removing themselves physically or mentally from the society in which they live. Just
as in the case of the religious retreat, reality bites at some point and when it does the folly of
thinking about freedom in either purely private or mental/spiritual terms comes home to roost,
either directly, by way of crime, or indirectly, by way of a whole series of debilitating psychological
and physical responses to being exposed to and by the lives and threats of the less wealthy. In
other words, I defend the idea that South Africans remain unfree for reasons slightly different to the
ones suggested by Mandela, but in doing so I maintain that his general claim is a valid one. And, in
contrast to Mandela’s emphasis on moral duty, I go on to propose that it if we follow my argument
regarding freedom is power through to its logical conclusion in the case of South Africa, it becomes
unambiguously clear to any realistic observer that it is not our sense of duty to the freedom of
others that will enable South Africans to be free; rather, it is the realization that our own individual
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freedom depends upon the freedom of others in our society, and that it is in each of our own
individual interests to help secure the freedom (as power) of all members of our society.
Poverty and Inequality
There is little doubt that South Africa has come a very long way since the release of Mandela and
the overthrow of apartheid. It has liberated its people from the shackles of a regime based on racial
segregation, domination and oppression, it has successfully consolidated representative
democracy, the rule of law is upheld by an independent judiciary and a highly progressive and
laudable constitution, and it has (in the main) stabilised and grown its economy to an extent
inconceivable during the late 1980s and early 1990s. To cite only a few indicators: until 2008,
South Africa had 14 years of uninterrupted growth – with rates exceeding 5% between 2004 and
2007; GDP now stands at $600 billion, which puts South Africa in the same league as the
Netherlands, Poland and Argentina; with only 6.5% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, South
Africa produces 37.3% of its GDP; since 1994 the government has built close to 3 million houses;
and more than 13 million people now receive social grants (de Klerk 2010).
However, as regards poverty and inequality the picture is much bleaker. Since 1994 any systemic
attempts that have been made to alleviate absolute levels of poverty and unemployment and the
extent of inequality have failed dismally. In fact in some instances conditions have worsened. Strict
unemployment, for example, increased from 20% to 25.5% from 1994 to 2007 (South African
Institute of Race Relations 2008). There have been small fluctuations but up until the present
approximately 25% of the population have been unemployed: according to Statistics South Africa,
the latest figure stands at 24.3% of the population (Statistics South Africa 2010, p. 3). It is
important to note, moreover, that the strict definition of unemployment does not include
discouraged work seekers. These are people who are able and willing to work, but have given up
any hope of finding employment. In other words the real figure as regards the percentage of
unemployed is likely to be much higher, anywhere between 30-40% of the population. Moreover,
the highest rates of unemployment are found amongst young adults, those between the ages of 18
and 24, a very worrying trend for the future. In some countries this is offset by a large and efficient
tertiary education sector that keeps this cohort in education and trains them for skilled jobs in the
future. In South Africa the situation is bleak indeed: currently only 16% of those eligible for tertiary
education in fact find places in existing institutions of tertiary education; and, even more worryingly,
of the 2.8 million South Africans between the ages of 18 and 24 who were (in 2007) not in
employment, education and training, two million (71%) had not achieved grade 12 (final school
year), and of these 0.5 million (18%) had not progressed beyond primary school (Metcalfe 2010).
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As regards absolute poverty, according to the South African government, in 2007 the total number
of people living in conditions of extreme poverty, that is, living on or below R250 per month or
approximately US$1 per day, stood at just over 11 million individuals or 19% of the total population.
The proportion of people living just above this extreme, that is on or below R365 per month or
US$1.5 per day, stood at 41% (The Presidency Republic of South Africa 2008, pp. 26-27). This
general trend is corroborated by two further studies from a year earlier and a year later that provide
evidence to show that between 30% and 40% of the population are unable adequately to meet
their basic needs, 17.6% are illiterate, 43% experienced a food shortage and 10% experienced a
food shortage always or many times in the twelve months ending May 2009 (Statistics South Africa
2008, Leatt 2006, Poverty Net 2008, Afrobarometer 2009, pp. 5-6). In terms of housing, between
2002 and 2008 there was slight increase from 13.1% to 13.4% in the proportion of families with
households in informal dwellings (Statistics South Africa 2009, p. 5). And, in the twelve months
ending May 2009, 37% of South Africans experienced a shortage of clean water and 15% of South
Africans experienced a shortage of clean water always or many times (Afrobarometer 2009, p. 6).
As regards general health, according to the UNDP report of 2007/2008, 31% of South Africans
face the probability of not surviving past the age of 50, which is a measure of the poor state of
healthcare provision, lack of universal access to existing provision, the consequences of the
HIV/Aids pandemic and the associated effects of the Thabo Mbeki led African National Congress
(ANC) government denial regarding HIV/Aids and their subsequent very slow roll-out of a national
treatment campaign. Child mortality rates have not improved in South Africa since 1990. Finally,
black South Africans experience poverty at over three times the rate of white and Indian
respondents (Afrobarometer 2009, p. 8).
The problem, however, is not just a matter of absolute poverty; it is also about inequality. South
Africa is one of the most unequal societies on earth. The Gini coefficient is a widely accepted
summary measure of income (or wealth) inequality that ranges from 0 (perfect equality in the
distribution of income or wealth) to 1 (perfect inequality in the distribution of income or wealth).
South Africa has a Gini coefficient of 0.72, one of the world’s highest, along with Brazil. This
unequal distribution means that large parts of the South African population is unable to benefit
equally from economic growth: the poorest 40% of households which comprise 55% of the South
African population are responsible for just below 10% of national consumption expenditure, whilst
the poorest 10% of households (17% of the population) are only responsible for 2% of
consumption. This is in stark contrast to the richest 10% of households (which account for only 6%
of the population) that are responsible for 45% of consumption (Armstrong et al. 2008; cf. The
Presidency Republic of South Africa 2008, p. 25).
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As is apparent from the figures regarding unemployment, poverty, health and education in and of
itself poverty has dire effects on the well-being, life expectancy, general health and education of a
large proportion of South Africa’s population. Under current economic conditions a life trapped in a
cycle of poverty is a life without power and thus a life without freedom across all four dimensions:
without the financial means to satisfy properly my vital needs, I do not have the power to do or be
as I would otherwise do or be (in extremis my situation forces me to act in certain ways in order
often to stave off starvation, but even above that floor, if all my resources are directed towards the
satisfaction of my vital needs, I have no surplus to use for my empowerment); and nor do I have
the time, education or power to determine who represents me, to take part in actively resisting the
norms and practices of my society or to control those representatives that determine my economic
environment.
However, the effects on power and freedom of absolute poverty are only exacerbated and
exaggerated when they occur alongside extreme inequality, as is the case in South Africa. The
very high levels of inequality in South Africa not only mean that a large proportion of the population
struggle or are unable to meet their vital needs and thus enact the power necessary for freedom,
they also skew the relative power and thus freedom of different sectors of society. I will elaborate
on only two here. First, relatively poor citizens are left out of the economic loop in two ways: a) they
fail to prosper from a generally prosperous economy; and b) they therefore have relatively little or
no means of influencing their political and economic representatives, in particular with regard to the
macroeconomic decisions that will affect whether or not they could be free and active economic
agents in the future. They therefore become trapped in a cycle of unfreedom. By contrast, the
relatively affluent not only benefit directly from any positive national economic outcomes, they are
also able to determine their future prospects by dint of their greater influence over macroeconomic
policy, not only as a consequence of their greater purchasing power but also their direct and
indirect links to policy makers (see section on representation below).
However, the relatively wealthy are not exempt from the negative effects of high levels of
inequality. They too are adversely affected in a number of ways. These are varied in number and
kind but all have the effect of disempowering citizens and thus making them less free. South
Africa’s high levels of inequality give rise to a very high incidence of social ills that affect everyone,
even the most wealthy and protected. It is not just the poor and deprived in isolation who suffer
from the effects of inequality, but also the bulk of the population. In the most extreme and direct
way, this is felt in the form of crime in general and violent crime in particular. Although the poor in
South Africa are often the victims of crime, and as regards certain forms of crime, such as rape
and murder, this is overwhelmingly the case, in no way whatsoever are the wealthy free from
violent crime. In fact, they are often specifically targeted as a result of their wealth – armed robbery
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in South Africa occurs at very high levels in seemingly highly protected, wealthy suburbs and
neighbourhoods.2 Latest national crime statistics (for 2008-2009) show a recent surge in house
robberies (an increase of 27%), an overall increase in crime in general, and a slight drop in the
murder rate; but despite the latter it is still the case that in South Africa about 50 people are
murdered a day – slightly more than in the USA, which has six times South Africa’s 50-million
population (Mail & Guardian 2009, South African Government Crime Statistics 2009).3 And, there is
much evidence in South Africa and across the world that there is a direct and robust causal relation
between high levels of inequality and crime (Wilkinson 2005, Wilkinson and Pickett 2009; cf. Time
Live 2009, South African Police Service 2010).
However, the severe social damage caused by inequality does not stop at violent crime. The high
levels of inequality in South Africa also cause less direct, if equally damaging, effects on the whole
population. These take the form of general stress, mutual distrust, conflict, violence, bad health,
short lives, mental illness and low productivity. The lived experience in South Africa further bolsters
some relatively new literature on the effects of inequality on the general health of populations.
Despite the incredible success of South Africa’s relatively non-violent transformation and the
rapidity with which many of its citizens have embraced Mandela’s clarion call for the creation of a
‘rainbow nation’, the persistent high levels of material inequality make the wealthy, in particular,
very distrustful of the poor, very protective of their precarious positions of relative wealth and often
plagued by high levels of fear regarding their own and their family’s health, safety and security. In
this way and others, inequality breeds stress across the full spectrum of society, not just among the
down trodden, and this leads to a high incidence of syndromes such as depression, phobias of
different sorts and basic anxiety. For example, incidents of mental illness are 500% higher across
the whole population spectrum in the most unequal societies than in the most equal ones
(Wilkinson 2005, Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). If these and other studies are correct – that there is
a direct causal link between inequality and poor health, that is, mental and physical illness – there
is little doubt that there exists a causal relation between high levels of inequality and power. If one
is consistently having to struggle against poor health, one will accordingly lack the power to do or
be as one would otherwise do or be, to take part in the selection and control of ones’
representatives and to resist the norms of one’s society. It follows therefore, that if one conceives
of freedom in terms of power, the high levels of inequality experienced in South Africa severely
curtails the freedom of all of its citizens. The second way therefore in which inequality skews
societal power relations and thus undermines the freedom as power of most of the population is
through these causal links between inequality, crime, fear, mental and physical illness and thus
2 Sandton, one of the wealthiest suburbs in South Africa, had the most cases of house robberies in the
country during 2009-10 (The Star 2010).
3 In 2009-10 there was a slight decline in murders, hijackings and sex crimes, while house and business
robberies increased again (The Star 2010).
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freedom as power. It is not for nothing that many people in South Africa often speak about how
important it is to be ‘free from fear’.
In sum, then, given the levels of inequality and poverty in South Africa, a large proportion of the
population are faced with a continuous struggle to meet their vital needs and thus do not have the
time or power to be free; and only a relatively small proportion of South Africans are able to act as
they would otherwise choose or, more ambitiously, with the power to influence South Africa’s
macroeconomic policy. However, under the conditions prevalent in South Africa today, even these
relatively powerful individuals remain unfree as a consequence of being constrained by crime, the
fear of crime and associated phobias and anxieties. A cycle of poverty for some when associated
with high levels of inequality has become a cycle of unfreedom for all.
Proportional Representation and Public Debt
The dawn of democracy in South Africa has fulfilled its promise to produce a consolidated
representative democracy. Although many years of ‘jobless growth’ have left early promises
unfulfilled, the dark early morning clouds of violent upheaval, division and enmity have been
replaced by the bright signs of reconciliation and a shared vision of the future. This spirit of
reconciliation and co-operation are the results not only of the much lauded Truth and
Reconciliation Commission. They are also a direct consequence of a negotiated settlement
between old and new political and economic elites, which created new forms of commercial and
political representation that ensured against economic stagnation and political turmoil.4 The formal
process of negotiation occurred over the substance of the Constitution, which was initially called
the Multi-Party Negotiating Process and began on 1 April 1993 at the World Trade Centre,
Kempton Park and ended with the ratification of the South African Constitution on 10 December
1996 at Sharpeville (the scene of the Sharpeville Massacre on 21 March 1960, when the South
African police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters, killing 69 people ) (Davenport and
Saunders 2000, pp. 559-72, Spitz and Chaskalson 2000, p. xiii). Despite sharp disagreement and
fraught negotiations over a number of central issues, for example, whether the constitution should
include a bill of rights, and whether that should itself include a right to property, the final outcome
was a very progressive document founded on human rights and dignity for all with a bill of rights
that does include a right to property (Du Plessis 1994, van der Walt 1996, Spitz and Chaskalson
2000, Hamilton 2003, Hamilton and Viegi 2009).
4 By ‘informal’, ‘economic’ or ‘commercial’ representation I mean what Siéyès means by ‘commercial
representation’, and by ‘formal’ or ‘political’ representation I mean what he meant by ‘political representation’,
here representation within the political structures of South Africa’s representative democracy, in particular
parliament; and both can take the form of principal-agent representation, representation as trusteeship,
representation as identification or aesethic representation, or any combination of all four, as discussed in
chapter 4 of Hamilton (2012).
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During these constitutional negotiations, mainly between the National Party (NP) and the ANC,
South African political and economic leaders seemed to have little option but to compromise on a
number of fundamental matters. As has been argued elsewhere, even the framework itself was a
very significant compromise, particularly in the light of the ANC’s avowed positions and the
substance of its Freedom Charter (the statement of core principles of the ANC and its allies,
officially adopted on 26 June 1955 in Kliptown):5 at a time of rapid historical transformation the
constitution immunized against change a bill of rights, judicial review, and a number of extra-
legislative institutions known as the ‘chapter nine institutions’ (extra-parliamentary institutions for
‘supporting democracy’, such as the Human Rights Commission, whose structures and goals are
outlined in chapter nine of the 1996 constitution) (Hamilton 2006). However, here I argue that it is
the two least-discussed compromises that are the most telling for freedom in South Africa today,
and both involve forms of representation.
The first is the decision regarding the best electoral system for a free, democratic South Africa.
Ultimately, following much negotiation, both major parties decided that it was in their interests to
opt for a party-list system of proportional representation as opposed to either the first-past-the-post
Westminster model or a mixed proportional representation system, in which a specified proportion
of members of parliament are chosen by parties and the rest are directly elected by constituents,
as is the case, for example, in Germany and Ireland. This decision has had dire consequences for
political representation in South Africa. A party-list system of proportional representation
undermines the power of citizens to determine who governs and in particular how they govern. It is
an electoral system that does not give citizens sufficient power over their representatives (as
representatives of constituencies or otherwise) and therefore cannot provide them with the relevant
power over how they represent them; and nor does it enable a plurality of reflections of the
electorate from which the latter can choose and about which it can judge. The resultant corruption,
lack of service delivery and ever-increasing levels of mistrust and discontent in South Africa are
manifestations of this lack of political freedom.
Some have argued that this is an inevitable consequence of the nature of representative
democracy, that is, that representative democracy inevitably creates a ‘democratic deficit’
(Gutmann and Thompson 1996, Dryzek 2000). Whether or not these arguments can be sustained,
the ANC has been unbowed in its attempts to overcome the alleged structural shortcomings of
representative democracy, or at least the form it felt disposed to adopt. They have responded to
the consequences of this decision – lack of participative control over representatives and service
5 This document was the culmination of a process that started with the ANC sending out fifty thousand
volunteers into townships and the countryside to collect ‘freedom demands’ from the people of South Africa.
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delivery and related political discontent and apathy – with a number of measures, especially at the
level of local government. They have instituted local level citizens’ councils (ward committees) and
‘popular evaluation’ in the Programme of Action (Barichievy et al. 2005), and they have
encouraged civil society organizations and popular activism and education. Raymond Suttner
argues that this is part and parcel of the ANC’s attempts to pursue the ‘National Democratic
Revolution’ (NDR), that is, to continue ‘a process of struggle that seeks the transfer of power to the
people … where all organs of the state are controlled by the people … [which] requires
participatory democracy, a democracy that is driven by the people’ (Netshitenzhe 1996, p. 2,
Suttner 2004).
But this is to view real politics in South Africa through rose-tinted spectacles. First, especially within
systems of proportional representation that use party lists, where individual representatives are not
linked to geographical areas, as is the case in South Africa, representatives very infrequently
represent citizens’ articulated interests because there are no institutional means for citizens to
articulate their interests to the representatives except when they vote in national and provincial
elections. Admittedly, this is also a problem within constituency-based systems, in both their
proportional representation and first-past-the-post varieties, as the interests of parties often trump
those of citizens. In parliament, if the demands and avowed interests of constituents conflict with
the interests of parties, the former very infrequently outweigh the latter. However, this tendency is
compounded within a system of proportional representation that completely severs representatives
from constituents and geographic areas. Second, the ANC’s attempt to resolve this through the
creation of ward committees amounts to nothing more than window dressing, as it is the case
throughout South Africa that within ward committees citizens are not given any voting rights or any
say in legislative decision-making. They may be able to access the discursive evaluation of local
interests, but ultimately, for obvious reasons of efficiency and accountability, representatives make
the final decisions regarding legislation and policy behind closed doors. Third, direct political
activism ultimately takes the form of ‘private’ legal action against government focused on particular
parts of existing law that is in conflict with constitutional law; and the combination of ‘private’
activism and unelected court officials can significantly skew the agenda under conditions of little or
no representative accountability.
Parallel to this formal debate around the creation of a new constitution, there was a semi-formal or
informal debate in which national economic power and the new political elite defined an economic
constitution that would characterize the new South Africa. This forum generated a problematic form
of commercial representation of the main economic powers and interests in South Africa that had
dire consequences for both economic growth and transformation in South Africa. This is the
second under-discussed compromise and form of representation that I maintain determines to a
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significant degree the extent to which South Africans are free today. Given the transformation in
political power, it was clear to most of those involved in the negotiated settlement that the interests
of the existing economic elite, at least initially, would not be represented in parliament. Although
the constitution of 1996 provided a legal safeguard for the general interests of the economic elite,
in the form of a right to property, in and of itself it did not ensure that the main economic powers
could retain effective control over the economy. This was secured or at least bolstered by means of
an informal agreement between these parties, that is, between the new political elite and the old
economic elite. This agreement was made possible by the fact that it became obvious very quickly
to all involved that the old economic elite held a vital card: they constituted the majority of the
existing creditors for the South African state and their credit was a basic pre-requisite for a stable,
if transforming South Africa.
In 1994 the new South African government inherited an economy in disarray and the new political
elites had before them three possible options (Hamilton and Viegi 2009, pp. 198-207). First, they
could default on apartheid debt. Second, they could refinance existing debt with more debt from
international institutions to address the urgent issues of income redistribution and economic
transformation. Third, they could stabilize the economy and reduce public debt via the adoption of
an austere fiscal programme. They chose the third option. This choice was made in order to gain
greater policy independence from creditors and portray an image of sound fiscal management to
potential international investors, and thus inspire increased Foreign Direct Investment. In
accordance with the predominant economic orthodoxy, the new South African political elite
assumed that a combination of secure institutions of representative democracy and ‘prudent’ fiscal
management would enhance the state’s credibility and thus make it less expensive for them to
finance the transformation of South Africa’s economy.6 However, the consequences of the decision
were quite the opposite. The South African government’s austere response to debt made its bonds
more attractive: an austere and conservative macro-economic response to debt management and
‘transformation’ made the value of its bonds more predictable, more valuable and thus more traded
amongst international creditors. This has generated a concomitant shift in the ownership profile of
South Africa’s creditors: from being nearly completely domestically owned in 1994, more than a
quarter of South Africa’s public debt is now owned by international creditors. This
internationalisation of South Africa’s debt has meant that the ANC in government has become
more, not less, dependent on the constraints of creditors, that is, more subject to investor scrutiny
and sentiment (Hamilton and Viegi 2009).
6 State credibility is defined as the perceived likelihood that a current or future government will honour debt
contracts (Stasavage 2003, p. 23, North and Weingast 1989).
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And, yet, the brutal irony is that, in the eyes of investors, South Africa still lacks creditworthiness
and remains a relatively risky place in which to invest, and thus, relative to other young
representative democracies, the servicing of South Africa’s public debt remains expensive
(Hamilton and Viegi 2009). In other words, both of the two main pillars of this informal agreement
failed to sustain the conditions for the attainment of the intended objectives of the original decision
regarding public debt. South Africa’s creditworthiness has not improved and the new South African
government does not have greater control over policy formation. Rather the prudent management
of public debt and the policy priority given to equilibrium and fiscal and monetary discipline simply
safeguarded the interests of the existing creditor class (and the interests of potential investors) to
the detriment of social spending, redistribution and transformation.
The quick and sorry demise of the ANC’s ‘Making Democracy Work’ policy is indicative of the way
in which the behind-the-scenes agreements, assurances and concessions that occurred during this
period sacrificed many of the ANC’s stated goals for the perceived absolute priority to ensure that
monetary and fiscal policy would not undermine the interests of those who had the financial
potential to continue to act as creditors for the South African state. ‘Making Democracy Work’ was
a policy proposal produced by the ANC sponsored Macroeconomic Research Group (MERG) in
November 1993. As an attempt to turn the general promises of the Freedom Charter – for housing
and health care – into practical policies, it was the most important research base for the ANC in the
early stages of its unbanning (Macroeconomic Research Group 1993). But it only operated
between 1991 and 1993 and most of its policy proposals never saw the light of day. The whole
project was dropped as part of the horse-trading that constituted the negotiations between the
representatives of the old economic elite and the new political elite (Nattrass 1994). (The same fate
befell the first economic policy of the ANC government, the Reconstruction and Development
Policy, a document that had been heavily influenced by MERG.) Some have argued that the ANC
leadership was simply outmanoeuvred in these negotiations (Klein 2007, pp. 200-206, Gumede
2005), which may, in part, be true, but even as they do so they provide evidence for the ANC’s
active involvement in this process. Take, for example, the central role played by Thabo Mbeki, who
made several key revisions to the ANC’s economic programme to address the concerns of top
business people and industrialists, such as Harry Oppenheimer (Gumede 2005, pp. 33, 39, Habib
and Padayachee 2000).
In terms of representation, the main economic agents – the top business people and industrialists
– essentially act as informal representatives of existing and potential national creditors (and
owners of capital more generally). In other words, those individuals who have the means to
purchase South African government bonds identify with the main economic agents and thus feel
that their interests are being represented by them. What is peculiar in the case of South Africa is
13
not the presence of this kind of representation, but the fact that this group of representatives is
relatively homogeneous and that it was not and did not expect to be represented within the
democratically elected ruling elite. It may have courted and been courted by these political
representatives, but it could not assume that its interests would find secure political representation
within the main political institutions of democratic South Africa. The power of these economic
agents operates therefore as purely economic power. It is not represented formally within the
existing political institutions and by means of political representation. And it is thus a constraint on
political power rather than part and parcel of the structure of political representation.
South Africa’s negotiated settlement has therefore given rise to two important forms of
representation and two related and often competing sources of political power. First, the previously
disenfranchised majority is now represented, at least formally, in the new parliament by means of
the ANC’s electoral dominance. Second, the interests of the old economic elite, whose continued
support and presence as creditors are vital for economic stability, are still represented informally by
the small number of relatively homogeneous economic agents at the helm of South Africa’s
economy. However, unfortunately for South Africa, these forms of representation do not give rise to
the levels of credibility that the South African state has sought ever since the demise of apartheid.
This is the case mainly because the economic elite are not directly represented in parliament,
despite the fact that they are in the process of being partially transformed by the Black Economic
Empowerment (BEE) initiative. South Africa’s inability to gain the levels of creditworthiness that
ought to have been the result of constituting representative democracy is explained by one of the
main consequences of the negotiated settlement: the fact that the economic elite does not enjoy
formal, political representation and thus does not control a ‘veto point’. In other words, it does not
have strict veto power over political decision-making.7 International investors also thereby lack a
‘veto point’, as the domestic economic elite represent their interests, and thus they deem South
Africa a risky place in which to invest.
All governments need creditors, even under conditions of austerity, and so creditors are in a
privileged position as regards the formation of fiscal policy. They retain the power to discipline
government by dint of the fact that the state cannot function without their credit. If their interests are
accorded formal, political representation in the country whose debt they own they control a veto
point; if not, that country will be deemed less creditworthy than those that do, which in itself
provides a strong incentive for the formal political representation of their interests. South Africa is
no different. This suggests that at the very least the orthodox argument regarding public debt and
7 ‘A ‘veto point’ is a political institution, the holder of which, as specified by a country’s constitution, has the
power to block a proposed change in policy (Tsebelis 2002, Stasavage 2003).
14
representative democracy must be augmented. The orthodox argument holds that representative
democracy is a necessary (and in some instances even a sufficient) condition for credibility, that is,
that its institution reduces uncertainty and thus increases the value of a state’s bonds, which
means it becomes less expensive for a government to finance its activities (North and Weingast
1989, Stasavage, 2003, Macdonald 2006). The experience in South Africa undermines this
received theoretical opinion. The new South African political elite followed the mainstream
economic orthodoxy of the day to the letter to ensure the credibility of the new South African state;
in particular, it successfully consolidated representative government, ensured against violent
political upheaval and followed a strict monetarist equilibrium economic growth path. However,
none of these near perfect policy moves can substitute for one undoubted necessary condition for
state credibility: the formal, political representation of a state’s national creditors. The associated
negotiated settlement between old and new political and economic elites (formally codified in the
constitution of 1996) left the interests of the main economic elite without clear, formal political
representation in parliament, and it is this fact, rather than the presence of consolidated
representative democracy, that explains South Africa’s continued lack of creditworthiness
(Hamilton and Viegi 2009).
There is in fact a strong and weak version of this argument against the orthodox position. The
weak version accepts that the orthodox position is partially correct and argues that both
representative democracy and the formal, political representation of a state’s national creditors
together constitute necessary conditions for credibility. The stronger version of this argument
requires that we discard the orthodox position entirely: it is that the main necessary condition for
state credibility is the formal, political representation of its national creditors, irrespective of the
exact form of its regime. If the latter is correct, and the South African evidence supports it, it is no
exaggeration to say that within modern representative democracies the clamour is no longer ‘no
taxation without representation’, but ‘no credit without representation’.
But either way, the result is still the same: in general within capitalist representative democracies
the power of the creditor class, or at least the power of their representatives, far outweighs that of
any other class or group, which is a direct result of the fact that under conditions of global
capitalism states have a constant need for affordable credit as has been made clearly evident in
the aftermath of the recent global credit crisis; and, in particular, the management of public debt in
South Africa during and following its period of negotiated transition from apartheid has only
reinforced these power relations and exacerbated their effects. Thus the mainstream economic
orthodoxy coupled with the structure of these power relations creates a condition of domination
that severely affects the freedom of the poor in South Africa, and also the wealthy, for the reasons
discussed in the previous section.
15
This is clearly evident with regard to the right to property. Although the constitution provides a
comprehensive list of individual entitlements or rights that the framers determined would be
necessary for transformation, the ability to actualize these rights depends upon resources and their
distribution. For example, in order for a new citizen without property to make proper use of these
enshrined rights, in particular the right to property, they must first acquire property. The constitution
stipulates a right of access to property, but this is weak in the face of a similarly enshrined right to
property (both in clause 25 of the Bill of Rights) as well as a well-entrenched property-owning
status quo. The only realistic means by which a new citizen without property can acquire property
is if fiscal policy ensures the redistribution of property (or resources). However, if the nation’s debt
and wealth are concentrated in the hands of a small group of property-owners whose interests are
likely to be directly affected by this kind of policy, as is the case in South Africa, they are likely to
make use of their unique position of power to hinder the process of property redistribution. This
entails acting in a manner counter to transformation and the general actualization of rights: the
creditors own the debt and ensure that fiscal policy follows an equilibrium path, which they
themselves define. In other words, so long as they retain the debt and thus retain the power to
discipline government by dint of the fact that the state cannot function without their credit, they reify
the situation of domination that exists in South Africa.
In a national context, therefore, the only way to transform under these conditions is either to default
on debt; expropriate property and distribute; or gain a modicum of independence from national
lenders by reducing indebtedness. The South African government chose the last, most
conservative option, with the goal of eventually placing sovereignty in the hands of all of the
citizenry. But in doing so it surrendered the only effective means of enabling the rest of society to
actualize their rights, for without redistribution they remain in a condition in which they lack the
resources to do so. The hope is that the process of ‘transformation through austerity’ would
generate, ‘in the end’, sufficient growth to eliminate any distributional constraint. But this depends
on two unstable variables – growth and continued economic sovereignty. And, as Keynes (1971-
1989) famously put it: ‘The long run is a misleading guide to affairs. In the long run we are all
dead.’
The alternative options of reneging on apartheid debt and accessing aggressively international
official financial institutions to finance economic and social reform were not considered feasible.
However, the choice of cautious reform is actually quite unique in the context of dramatic political
and economic regime change. At least since the French Revolution, history is replete with
examples of shock therapies, often involving reneging on debt, radical land reform, nationalization
(or privatization) of natural resources, in general radical and fast changes in economic and political
16
institutions. In the case of South Africa, the imposition of shock therapy would have been to
disregard the constraints imposed by the existing economic constituency and promote economic
equality through land reform and debt cancellation. The price may have been economic isolation
and stagnation for a considerable period of time, although the chance that this would have been
the result must be tempered by odious debt considerations and the fact of significant international
goodwill following the end of apartheid in South Africa.8 Moreover, the potential benefits of this
admittedly more risky option would have been so great that they would have outweighed the risks.
The ‘prudent’, conservative choice of option three, in contrast, constituted a decision in favour of
stability, internationalization and delegation of economic oversight to a yet to be transformed
economic elite.
The folly of this ‘prudent’ choice is highlighted by the experience of at least eight rapidly growing
Asian economies between 1960 and 1980, all of whom achieved their rapid growth on the back of
a significant narrowing of inequality, with regard in particular to land ownership and income
distribution (Birdsall et al. 1995, World Bank 1993). In fact, contrary to the received opinion, at the
same time the new political elites in South Africa were making their decision, there existed a whole
range of studies including these East Asian examples, a study of at least nine OECD countries,
and two worldwide studies of sixty seven and seventy different countries respectively that show a
robust causal relationship between greater equity and growth and, conversely, that wider income
and ownership differentials are associated with slower growth. All show furthermore that the
direction of causality was from equality to growth. Moreover, the second of the larger studies noted
above, carried out by Alesina and Perotti, found that investment tended to be higher in countries
with narrower income differences and that this was because income differences reduced
investment by contributing to political instability (Persson and Tabellini 1994, Alesina and Perotti
1993 cited Wilkinson 1996, p. 225).
If this latter finding is coupled with my argument regarding creditor representation, the message
rings only too true for South Africa. Had South Africa’s economic and political leaders bothered to
take notice of these experiences and findings (or if they did know about them then at least take
them seriously), South Africa might have learnt a lot from them and undertaken their strategy of
generating growth, employment and investment in exactly the opposite way to the one they chose:
to redistribute wealth and opportunity first and then watch as growth and investment followed.
8 ‘Odious debts’ are debts that have been incurred by a government that was not democratically chosen, and
the borrowed money may even have helped a brutal regime stay in power. Given this, considerations of
situations of odious debt marshal the associated moral case for debt forgiveness, maintaining that the
citizens of countries under these regimes, especially once they are no longer in power, ought not be saddled
with the debt incurred by these regimes, e.g. Mobutu’s regime in Congo, Pinochet’s regime in Chile and that
of apartheid South Africa – in other words, there exists a strong moral argument that South Africa in
transition had no moral obligation to repay the debts incurred under apartheid (Adams 1991, Stiglitz 2007).
17
Instead, as I have argued, the decision regarding the management of public debt was undertaken
as a consequence of a desire to attain two goals – autonomy from national capital and greater
independence from international financial institutions – both of which have backfired. This flawed
decision may have been motivated by an even more flawed nationalist sentiment that created a
spurious link between the achievements and dreams associated with liberation from apartheid to
complete sovereign autonomy from any external interference.9
From the outset therefore these two important decisions regarding how to arrange political and
commercial representation within the new South Africa were instances of poor political judgement
regarding long-term macro-political and macroeconomic policy. These two decisions, more than
any others, have entrenched inherited and existing forms of domination and thus made the majority
of South Africans less rather than more free, i.e. less free than they could have been had different
choices been made. Not only do the formal forms of representation not enable South Africans to
express their needs and interests and ensure that their representatives act to satisfy them, but the
existing informal kinds of representation effectively maintain the status quo of high levels of poverty
and inequality. Representation, participation and control are therefore important not only because
they enable power within these domains of freedom, but they also enable individuals to empower
themselves through the meaningful determination of their needs. Moreover, there is now little doubt
that the extent of poverty, unemployment and inequality in South Africa, as outlined above, is a
direct result of the adoption of these two forms of representation and the associated decisions that
followed, for example, the decision in 1996 to substitute a strongly redistributivist and
interventionist Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) economic policy for the more
fiscally conservative and monetarist policy of Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR)
(Lodge 2002, p. 26). It follows therefore that these various domains of freedom are not only inter-
related but also that freedom from poverty and inequality depends, at least in part, on the power to
control the economic and political environment via meaningful control over one’s political
representatives. Freedom in South Africa, as elsewhere, therefore depends on the relatively equal
power of influence that all South African citizens wield over macro-political and macroeconomic
decisions via meaningful control over their political representatives. This is not possible under
prevailing economic and political conditions and orthodoxies, determined as they are by an
electoral system that privileges the interest of parties above the needs of citizens and a debt
management system that puts ‘prudence’ and the interests of creditors before redistribution and
empowerment.
9 In the words of the current governor of the Reserve Bank, Gill Marcus, who as chair of Parliament’s finance
committee played a central role in stabilizing the NP-bequeathed debt-ridden economy and persuading her
party comrades that they did not have a blank slate from which to work: if South Africa’s ‘huge debt’ and
‘massive tax shortfall’ were not addressed ‘it [South Africa] was likely to land up in the hands of the IMF…
[and] we certainly had not worked this hard for our liberation to hand it over to the IMF’ (Green 2009).
18
Collective Unfreedom and Resistance
The anatomy of contemporary South Africa should by now have removed all doubt in the mind of
the reader that Mandela is right to claim that South Africans are not yet free. Mandela is wrong,
however, if by going on to maintain that freedom in South Africa depends on each of us living our
lives ‘in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others’ he means that we all have a duty
(Christian or otherwise) to actively aid others in the attainment of their freedom, and we will only be
free if we act in accordance with this alleged duty or obligation. This laudable notion is not only
unrealistic, especially under modern conditions, but it does not tell the full story. Our being free
does depend on the freedom of others, but not in the sense Mandela suggests.
Our freedom depends on the freedom of others in the sense that we live in complex,
interdependent modern states, within which our power to do as we would like, to conform or
transgress and to determine who governs and how they do so, especially with regard to economic
policy, depends ultimately on the power of all citizens across the four domains outlined at the start
of this article. Freedom is possible only when all citizens are able and willing to exercise their
powers across all four of these dimensions of freedom as power. Without these substantive
political and economic achievements and ideals, even if some citizens have enough resources to
do as they would otherwise like to do, the existence of other citizens that do not will mean that
South Africa remains collectively unfree.
As already noted, the notion of ‘collective unfreedom’ comes from Cohen’s account of freedom and
the condition of the proletariat under capitalism. He argues that, given the nature of capitalism,
though each is individually free to escape the proletariat, each individual member of the proletariat
suffers with the rest from ‘collective unfreedom’. He suggests, moreover, that there are at least four
reasons why individual members of the proletariat may not therefore try to escape: lack of desire,
laziness, diffidence and solidarity. The first three are based in what a person wants and fears as an
individual and the fourth emanates from the fact that sometimes when people share a common
oppression they care about the fate of similar others (Cohen 2006). What follows from this he
reasons convincingly is that ‘there is collective unfreedom whether or not solidarity obtains’; the
proletariat is collectively unfree in the sense of being an ‘imprisoned class’; and that the best form
of liberation from this condition is not just escape from the working class, but freedom from class
society.
The analogy between South Africa and the proletariat may not be perfect, but it is helpful both in
terms of external and internal ‘escape’ from the condition of collective unfreedom in South Africa.
19
As regards external escape, it is a well known fact that many South Africans with the power and
desire to do so have left South Africa to escape from the levels of crime, fear and anxiety created
by the social, economic and political ills described above. Many have also left for reasons of
outright racism, a deep-rooted prejudice that must be overcome. Many of those who have left may
have found greater freedom elsewhere, but there is little doubt that, like in the case of the
proletariat, there ‘escape’ will not do much to change the collective unfreedom that exists within
South Africa, unless of course their ‘escape’ has meant an overall reduction in the amount of
racism left in South Africa, which would undoubtedly make South Africans freer. In any case, as
with the individual proletariat, those that have ‘escaped’ have not displayed much solidarity for the
cause of the new South Africa; and those that are left behind are in South Africa either out of lack
of desire to leave, or laziness, or diffidence about their chances of leaving, or solidarity for the new
South Africa, or they simply do not have the resources to do so (something Cohen omits from his
account of collective unfreedom amongst the proletariat because, ultimately, he does not conceive
of freedom in terms of power). In any case, the status of those that have left is of no consequence
as, if they have taken up citizenship elsewhere, they are no longer South African, or at least not
uniquely so; their freedom is now determined by the material conditions of their new place of abode
and the powers and freedoms that obtain there.
As regards the possibility for internal escape, given the foregoing account of the various
dimensions of unfreedom in South Africa, by parity of reasoning we can conclude that South
Africans are collectively unfree for two related reasons: a) even if some know they can escape the
poverty trap, all know that that all cannot and thus all know that some must remain unfree; b) the
four forms of unfreedom discussed above mean that the cycle of poverty for some quickly
translates into a cycle of unfreedom for all; or in, other words, humans living under collective
conditions are free only if other members of the collective are also free because if any of them
remain unfree they tend to create unfreedom in others. This is the case because the lack of power
of the unfree may force them to act in ways that impair the freedom of those who have sufficient
power and freedom. This is when reality bites and it comes in the form of powerlessness, violence,
crime, fear and anxiety, all the result of living in a highly unequal society. This is also where the
case of South Africa highlights the stark inadequacies of the orthodox liberal account of freedom as
equivalent to being ‘free from interference’ or ‘free from politics’. To assume that you are free
because you can ‘do what you want’ in your ‘private sphere’, secure behind high walls, security
fencing and protected by private police forces and with sufficient resources to meet all your needs
and wants is to misunderstand gravely the nature of freedom.10 Even for the most ‘secure’ reality
10 Thus the Freedom Charter of 1955 is eerily prophetic (and very far form being realised) when it proclaims
in its penultimate section entitled ‘There Shall be Houses, Security and Comfort’ that ‘Fenced locations and
ghettoes shall be abolished’, although of course those that composed these lines had in mind those without
adequate housing, etc. It is a great irony of history that now the seemingly secure and comfortable have
20
bites in the form of crime, either over the high walls or outside of the ‘private sphere’. To live in a
society in which large swathes of the population do not have the power to exercise their freedoms,
where a smaller but economically more powerful proportion of the population either completely
miscomprehends freedom or is too ‘corrupted’ (in Machiavelli’s sense of the term) to identify it, is to
live in an unfree society and thus be collectively unfree.
This is also the point where the analogy with Cohen’s account of proletarian collective unfreedom
breaks down: that the individual impoverished South African may decide to act in ways that impair
the freedoms of others, that is, act illegally finds no equivalence in Cohen’s account. Nor, of
course, is this kind of action equivalent to acts of solidarity – strikes, say – that may characterise
the actions of the proletariat, though of course the use of these forms of collective action are
utilised frequently by workers in South Africa. The fact that the levels of fear and anxiety I have
discussed are created by the real potential for illegal actions only highlights the severity of the
situation in South Africa and the fact that a significant portion of the population is not organised for
collective action, civil disobedience or resistance because of the very high levels of unemployment,
the very scourge that generates so much unfreedom for the unemployed themselves.
This brings us full circle, historically: for Livy, for example, Libertas or ‘being in one’s own power’ is
neither a matter of the autonomy of the will or being able to do what one wants; rather, it depends
upon being mindful of other people’s freedom no less than one’s own, which itself depends upon
the acceptance of the law and respect for the freedom of others (Livy 2005, Bk 7, Ch 33, 3 and Bk
23, Ch 12, 9). Likewise, freedom for Mandela depends upon living ‘in a way that respects and
enhances the freedom of others’. Two things regarding these very similar versions of freedom
follow from the account of collective unfreedom in South Africa submitted here.
First, the desire and capacity to respect the law and the freedom of others depends not only on the
law (and its enforcement) but also on the extent to which any society is able to provide for the vital
and agency needs of its citizenry and thus enable sufficient power for the them to act freely. Their
desire or capacity to respect the law and respect and enhance the freedom of others does not
ultimately depend upon their moral rectitude or response to a ‘universal’ duty or obligation to do so,
but on their power to act as they would otherwise do, resist the norms of their society and control
their economic and political environment via their representatives. Particularly as regards
resistance, Flathman puts this insight well: ‘Having resisted and partly freed themselves from the
received, the conventional, and the authoritative, they are themselves free in a distinctive sense
and their feeling, thinking and acting sometimes enlarges and enhances the freedom of others’
fenced themselves in to the extent that they could be said to have ghettoised themselves. I thank James
Furner for reminding me of this passage in the Charter.
21
(Flathman, p. 169). In other words, as was also argued by the likes of Montaigne, Marx, Nietzsche,
Foucault and Hampshire, if we have any obligation regarding freedom it is first and foremost to free
ourselves: ‘[A] person’s cultivation of her own individuality is a good, not a duty owed to others’
(Flathman, p. 155). The substance of conceptions of individuality and freedom will vary from
person to person, so if there is anything that we owe others it is to encourage their cultivation of
their own individualities and ‘free-spiritedness’ and to respect their freedom to pursues these goods
as long as doing so does not hinder others in their achievement and maintenance of their freedom
and individuality. The constant enactment of our freedom therefore depends upon certain political
conditions that enable both the individual ability to constantly assess the norms and laws of our
society and respect for the freedom of other members of one’s society to be involved in the same
project of individual action and judgement.
Second, once this is understood it becomes possible to see that it is not just in the interest of the
powerless that their power be enhanced, but also the interest of the powerful and seemingly free.
To them too we can say that it is in your interest to respect, encourage and enhance the freedom
of others, that is, to empower them, since the more freedom as power they have the more likely
they are to respect your power and freedom. This provides the more powerful with a much greater
incentive to enable the freedom of the less powerful than an argument based on moral injunction
alone. The veiled, credible threat that underpins it, and that South Africans of all classes feel every
day, is a much greater spur to action than either the motivating forces of moral imperative or
solidarity. So, we might reformulate Livy and Mandela as follows: to be free is to live in a society in
which our obedience to the law gives us the power to do what we want and reflect critically on the
norms of our society and act on the power we must have over our economic and political
environment and representatives.
Conclusion
In sum then I have defended the idea that South Africans remain unfree for reasons slightly
different to the ones suggested by Mandela, but in doing so I maintain that his general claim is a
valid one. In contrast to Mandela’s emphasis on moral duty, I go on to propose that it if we follow
my argument regarding freedom is power through to its logical conclusion in the case of South
Africa, it becomes unambiguously clear to any realistic observer that it is not our sense of duty to
the freedom of others that will enable South Africans to be free; rather, it is the realization that our
own individual freedom depends upon the freedom of others in our society, and that therefore it is
in each of our own individual interests to help secure the freedom as power of all members of our
society.
22
South Africans are not yet free and they will remain in this condition until all South Africans are
empowered across the four dimensions of freedom outlined here. This will not depend on goodwill,
charity or duty, or the complete realization of existing political and civil liberties, though these may
help, but on courageous leadership, active and sometimes disobedient citizenship, good
macroeconomic policy formation and implementation and radical redistribution of wealth and
opportunity.
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