struggling on
We were victorious over our oppressor. Nearly 13 years ago, South Africa staged its first democratic elections; the peacefulness of the event might as well have been spit to the face of the apartheid government - the country did not degenerate into civil war.
Not long after voting stations had shut their doors after two days of the memorable 1994 elections, it became indisputably apparent even before the final vote count was in: the people had spoken - the African National Congress (ANC) with President Nelson Mandela at the helm will lead us. “Never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another,” he said. With these words we turned our backs on nearly three decades under oppressive rule. Celebrations lasted for weeks, and we unofficially renamed ourselves The Rainbow Nation, because after years of suffering unspeakable discrimination and violence, we just wanted to celebrate our difference for a change.
We achieved freedom with our hands tied. In those seminal days of the Struggle, as we dubbed our cause, these tied hands threw petrol bombs - our version of the Molotov cocktail. On the streets, Shell’s catch phrase at the time: “Go well, Go Shell� became “Throw well, Throw Shell.� These tied hands clutched stones and transformed into fists of defiance challenging the enemy in armoured vehicles. These hands locked arms to form human barriers - row upon row of thousands of protestors marching for freedom. At one stage these tied hands even shook hands with the enemy as they brokered and bargained and bickered – through a State of Emergency, curfews, a suspension of schooling, burning tyres, teargas, freedom songs, detention without trial, political isolation, cultural strangulation…
“Allahu ghatyatuna. Allah is our goal. Wa Rasoolu za-imuna. And the Prophet is our leader. Wa Quraanu dusturuna. And the Quran is our Constitution. Wa jihadu moutu fisabillilah asmaa ama-ina. And fighting and dying in the Path of Allah is the highest of our aspirations,� was the ubiquitous refrain of the Islamic Youth Movement during the unrest. Muslims imprisoned on Robben Island, in exile, under house arrest, the amount of Muslim ministers in the first democratically-elected government… were evidence of our active role against apartheid – which, ironically, was the catalyst for a camaraderie that might never be witnessed again.
Because as the fight continued with black alongside coloured, Muslim alongside communist, white liberal alongside militant leftist, united by the common vision of liberation, everyone was a comrade. On the flatlands and in townships – where the people of colour were condemned to and segregated by the Group Areas Act after decades of co-existing harmoniously in multiracial communities - almost everyone’s door was open when someone needed to lie low, almost any house was a portal to the underground…
For years the fight continued against the odds – David against Goliath. Freedom fighters ventured as far afield as the then-USSR and Japan, among others, for guerrilla training only to return and find they remained no match for the oppressive regime’s sophisticated military and security police, who waged a war of psychological terror and with biological warfare. They divided and conquered. They plundered and uprooted. They opened fire indiscriminately. They raped and tortured. They staged blackouts and then committed untold evils in the name of oppression.
By the power of Allah - as hindsight reveals how an armed struggle and bloodshed constantly hovered in the background during negotiations, on the other side of a handshake, compromise, integrity and the willingness to change - we attained freedom. Jittery with euphoria of this new reality, we slowly started crossing the shaky bridge towards reconciliation. Towards healing. A process that proved painful beyond words.
Most of the time, however, we just basked in the miracle of victory. But too much sweetness has made us sick: A constitution so all-inclusive and democratic, giving us more rights than we care to have; as gay marriage has become legal but marriage by Muslim rites is yet to be fully recognised by our Civil Unions Bill; rights, rights and more rights - when people need houses, jobs and Aids drugs, when poverty is the unwanted guest at many a table, when the new enemy is even more sinister.
As I watch this fledgling democracy enter its teenage years, and I have my fill of freedom to eat and equal opportunities to choose from, I realise that the enemy has morphed.
Every day I wonder how I’ll ever succeed in raising my children as Muslims who’d be able to spot the enemy. For the one lying in wait for the next generation seems less tactile and dictatorial. It’s almost imperceptible. Invisible. Yet more cunning than ever - this enslaving consumerist culture; media bombardment and manipulation; slick and power-hungry politicos; this insidious apathy that is muzzling activism, blinding us to continued injustice, drowning out the cries of those still being oppressed.
How will I teach them to spot the camouflaged wolf? To make a difference?
Three things drum in my head as I struggle with the weight of my task:
“Best among people are those who benefit mankind.�
The Prophet (pbuh) said: “Whosoever of you sees an evil action, let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart; and that is the weakest of faith.”
And the words of a Palestinian sister, who once said: “We give birth to martyrs.�
There remains much work to be done for these hands that I now find untied. But by the power of Allah, let me fight as if they were still bound.
