On 1st April 2012, the Steve Biko Centre, an Initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation, invites you to a family picnic at the King William's Town Botanical Gardens.
Activity: Family Picnic
Date: 1st April 2012 (Sunday )
Where? : King William's Town Botanical Gardens
Time:12:00 to 17:00
Friday, March 30, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
A Testament of Hope, book signing session.
You are invited to join Dr. Sam Motsuenyane at the book signing of his autobiography, A Testament of Hope.
Author : Dr. Sam Motsuenyane
Book Title : A Testament of Hope
Venue : Maponya Mall - VanSchaik
Book Store, ( Soweto )
Time : 11:00 - 14:00
Date : 31 March2012
Author : Dr. Sam Motsuenyane
Book Title : A Testament of Hope
Venue : Maponya Mall - VanSchaik
Book Store, ( Soweto )
Time : 11:00 - 14:00
Date : 31 March2012
History Comes Alive
On the 19th March 2012 the Steve Biko Foundation and the Amathole Museum hosted an Information Session with history educators from Alice, Fort Beaufort, Idutywa, East London, Stutterheim and King William’s Town. The seminar started with a tour of the Eastern Cape Legislature, House of Traditional Leaders, The Steve Biko Garden of Remembrance and The Steve Biko Monument. After the site visits the session was held inside the museum followed by views of archival materials including a rare interview given by Bantu Stephen Biko, the Cry Freedom Trial Scene and a Max Du Preez-TRC Interview about Biko.
The session was held in order to;
• Create a platform for Educators teaching Grade 12 to familiarise themselves with heritage sites situated in and around King Williams Town;
• Give an opportunity to the educators to share their own personal experiences in teaching history and heritage;
• Introduce them to the Provincial History Planner Miss Y. Nciza and two Senior Markers Mr. Rebe and Miss L. Fili who also shared their experiences and offered advice on how to master history teaching and prepare for examinations.
The session is a partnership between the Steve Biko Foundation, the Amathole Museum and the Eastern Cape Department of Education, under the Legacy Support Programme. Further sessions are in the initial stages of planning.
The session was held in order to;
• Create a platform for Educators teaching Grade 12 to familiarise themselves with heritage sites situated in and around King Williams Town;
• Give an opportunity to the educators to share their own personal experiences in teaching history and heritage;
• Introduce them to the Provincial History Planner Miss Y. Nciza and two Senior Markers Mr. Rebe and Miss L. Fili who also shared their experiences and offered advice on how to master history teaching and prepare for examinations.
The session is a partnership between the Steve Biko Foundation, the Amathole Museum and the Eastern Cape Department of Education, under the Legacy Support Programme. Further sessions are in the initial stages of planning.
“Ukuvuselela ubuntu eluntwini” “Resurrecting Village Spirit”...The Steve Biko Centre’s 2nd Annual Ginsberg Easter Festival
From April 6th to 7th 2012, the Steve Biko Centre, an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation, will host the second Ginsberg Easter Festival, “Resurrecting the Village Spirit” around the streets of Ginsberg Township, King William’s Town.
The Steve Biko Centre’s Ginsberg Easter Festival is an annual program of the Centre’s Performing Arts and Culture Programme. The Festival is designed as an event to promote community participation and to build the bonds of community by raising the spirit of communalism among the audience.
The festival will take its audience on a journey of self-realization and discovery, a process described by Steve Biko himself as the quest for a true humanity. The production is shaped by popular symbols, images, and communal voices. The voyage will explore the collective stories, popular memories and history of the region; using them as a platform for reflection on today’s pressing issues, by resurrecting the spirit of the Eastern Cape from its historic landscape to the contemporary urban village.
Alongside dialogues, dance, images, poetry, and evocative movement will be a storytelling session for children. Interdisciplinary and site specific performances presented by leading local artists. The festival is presented in partnership with the British Council of South Africa, the Ginsberg Taxi Association, Lovedale College Drama Department (Alice –Campus), the Remix Dance Company, Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, the South African Police Service, the Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council, Township Times and Trufm
For further information please contact the Steve Biko Foundation on 043-642 1177 or via email at jongi@sbf.org.za or visit www.sbf.org.za.
Below are photographs from the 1st Annual Ginsberg Easter Festival.
The Steve Biko Centre’s Ginsberg Easter Festival is an annual program of the Centre’s Performing Arts and Culture Programme. The Festival is designed as an event to promote community participation and to build the bonds of community by raising the spirit of communalism among the audience.
The festival will take its audience on a journey of self-realization and discovery, a process described by Steve Biko himself as the quest for a true humanity. The production is shaped by popular symbols, images, and communal voices. The voyage will explore the collective stories, popular memories and history of the region; using them as a platform for reflection on today’s pressing issues, by resurrecting the spirit of the Eastern Cape from its historic landscape to the contemporary urban village.
Alongside dialogues, dance, images, poetry, and evocative movement will be a storytelling session for children. Interdisciplinary and site specific performances presented by leading local artists. The festival is presented in partnership with the British Council of South Africa, the Ginsberg Taxi Association, Lovedale College Drama Department (Alice –Campus), the Remix Dance Company, Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, the South African Police Service, the Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council, Township Times and Trufm
For further information please contact the Steve Biko Foundation on 043-642 1177 or via email at jongi@sbf.org.za or visit www.sbf.org.za.
Below are photographs from the 1st Annual Ginsberg Easter Festival.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Old Mutual Facilitates a Basic Financial Management Workshop
On March 23, 2012, The Business Incubator, an initiative of the Steve Biko Centre, hosted a workshop on Basic Financial Management in. The workshop was facilitated by Old Mutual at the Steve Biko Foundation Offices in King William's Town.
Below are some photographs from the event.
Below are some photographs from the event.
Monday, March 26, 2012
The Business Incubator hosts a Micro MBA Workshop
On March 26-30, 2012, The Business Incubator, an initiative of the Steve Biko Centre, invites you to a workshop on Micro MBA to be held in King Williams Town.
Facilitator: Lungile Sululu from the Steve Biko Foundation
Date: 26 - 30 March 2012
Time: 10:00 – 12:00
Venue: The Steve Biko Foundation Offices, 40 Eales Street, King Williams Town, Eastern Cape
Cost: R200
For more information contact Mr. Lungile Sululu on 043.642.1177 or via e-mail at lungiles@sbf.org.za
Facilitator: Lungile Sululu from the Steve Biko Foundation
Date: 26 - 30 March 2012
Time: 10:00 – 12:00
Venue: The Steve Biko Foundation Offices, 40 Eales Street, King Williams Town, Eastern Cape
Cost: R200
For more information contact Mr. Lungile Sululu on 043.642.1177 or via e-mail at lungiles@sbf.org.za
Thursday, March 22, 2012
The Steve Biko Centre's Abelusi Collaborate with Grafitti Artist Falko
The Steve Biko Centre, an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation, has launched its collaboration with Falko, an internationally recognized Graffiti artist from Cape Town. The collaboration started with a visit with Falko to The Steve Biko Centre on the 17-18 March 2012 and a meeting with The Steve Biko Centre's Abelusi. This forms part of the run-up to the Steve Biko Centre Ginsberg Easter Festival which will take place on 6th to 7th April in King Williams Town. This joint venture is in partnership with the British Council and part of many scheduled projects running in the Arts and Culture programme of the Centre.
Dr. Ramphele... Is The Constitution at Risk?
Steve Biko Foundation board member and founder of Letsema Circle Dr. Mamphele Ramphele delivered this speech at a Dispatch Dialogue on March 20, 2012 discussing the judiciary and perceptions that the supremacy of the Constitutional Court is under threat.
Is The Constitution at Risk?
There is enough concern about the utterances by ANC leaders and government officials to suggest that not all is well in our constitutional democracy. There is a clash of values between those who believe in the sanctity of our constitutional democratic foundations and those who see them as an obstacle to the “second transition.” At the heart of the issue is lack of clarity about the difference between the workings of a Parliamentary vs a Constitutional democracy. It is my firm view that we are paying the price of our failure to educate for democracy. We assumed that a people who have never experienced life as citizens of a democracy would simply assume the rights and responsibility of one as sophisticated as ours.
It does not seem to have sunk into the minds of many in government (and probably not even in the minds of the majority of the people of South Africa) that our governance system is a Constitutional Democracy and not simply a Parliamentary Democracy. The Constitution is sovereign and can only be changed by a 75% majority in Parliament.
The implication, as Prof. de Vos concludes, is
that (in the absence of a coup d’état) President Zuma’s wish that the powers of the Constitutional Court should be reviewed and amended is never going to fly. He will just have to take his chances in the courts (as he has done on many previous occasions, often with great success) when various cases that could affect his corruption and bribery prosecution comes before the judiciary. Meanwhile, he should really think before he talks.
Historical Context
To place the current onslaught on our Constitution in its historical context, it needs to be remembered that as a result of its experience of the abuse of power by the then minority-parliamentary state, the ANC, in its Harare Declaration of 1989, insisted on a Bill of Rights as a cornerstone for negotiations about the future. In a democratic South Africa it said,
All shall enjoy universally recognised human rights, freedoms and civil liberties, protected under an entrenched Bill of Rights. South Africa shall have a new legal system which shall guarantee equality of all before the law. South Africa shall have an independent and non-racial judiciary.
When he inaugurated the Constitutional Court on February 14 1995 former President Mandela made the now famous remark about the role of the Constitutional Court:
The last time I appeared in court was to hear whether or not I was going to be sentenced to death. Fortunately for myself and my colleagues, we were not.
Today I rise not as an accused, but on behalf of the people of South Africa to inaugurate a court South Africa has never had, a court on which hinges the future of our democracy.
Our current president is betraying the legacy of his own party - the ANC. Unfortunately he is not alone in this betrayal. We can rightly assume that because it is the President who uttered these words, he has the support of his cabinet and/or the leadership of the ANC.
In fact, in September last year, Gwede Mantashe, the Secretary-General of the ANC accused the Constitutional Court judges of being “hostile to us, of being driven by selfish interests and of threatening the stability of government “
In November of last year Manyi, then the Presidential Spokesperson, announced that the government would be examining how Constitutional Court decisions have affected the lives of ordinary South Africans and how they have influenced socio-economic transformation and reform of the law.
What is clear is that there is a conflict of values taking place – it’s about transformation and about who is best able to defend the spirit of our Constitution.
There is nothing wrong with looking at whether or not poor people have access to justice, to what extent the judiciary has been implementing the letter and spirit of the Constitution - the question is how this is done – the devil is clearly in the detail.
Recognizing that the Constitution is the cornerstone of our young democracy, but at the same time, that it is not perfect, I, together with other publicly known South Africans, participated in the founding of the Council for the Advancement of the Constitution (CASAC). The word Advancement was deliberately chosen above words such as Defence because “progressive constitutionalism” is a pivotal founding principle. The other principles are as follows:
1. As the supreme law of the land, the Constitution provides a framework for the social and economic transformation of South Africa, and for a deliberative, participatory and inclusive democracy. This framework together with its underlying values and founding principles needs to be protected and advanced.
2. The constitution itself must be subject to on-going critical appraisal to assess its efficacy as the needs of the country change. There may be a need to debate and lobby for constitutional and legislative reform to enhance the legitimacy of the democratic political process. The Constitution must be a living, not a static document that evolves to deepen democracy.
3. The principle of the rule of law is a critical building-block in the pursuit of the concept of constitutionalism; public and private power must be exercised within the law in order to retain legitimacy and to enhance a culture of responsibility and accountability in order to guard against the arbitrary use and abuse of power and authority.
4. If it is to dispense justice that promotes substantive equality as well as procedural fairness, judicial independence is an indispensable element, if not a pre-requisite for the rule of law and the integrity of the court system.
CASAC thus upholds the South African Constitution as a platform for democratic politics and the transformation of society. It also upholds the core principles of the Constitution such as the promotion of socio-economic rights, judicial independence & the rule of law.
One organization cannot on its own accomplish all of this. The advance and defence of [To both advance and defend] our constitution requires the involvement of active citizens who defend our so-called first generation rights such as security, privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of movement and residence and so on, as well as to actively work for second generation rights – universal access to housing, health-care, food, water and a healthy environment.
A major problem is that the vast majority of South Africans are passive ‘subjects’ rather than active ‘citizens’. We sit back and expect government to ‘deliver’, and if it doesn’t, our only recourse, it seems, is to protest by (at best) marching in the streets and (at worst) burning the local clinic or school.
Together with Prof Njabulo Ndebele and Mr Bobby Godsell, we have formed a Trust called the Citizens Movement for Social Change - which aims to engage all South Africans who are willing to embark, on a journey of transformation “from subjects to citizens” - so that together we can create the just, prosperous, inclusive and equitable South Africa that our Constitution was designed to promote.
WHAT DARK CLOUDS ARE GATHERING ON THE HORIZON?
The Traditional Courts’ Bill
• Empowers traditional leaders to single-handedly make and apply customary law;
• That no one (not even a passerby) is allowed to opt out of customary courts;
• That traditional leaders are empowered to impose severe punishments – eg forced labour, loss of customary entitlements;
• That people (even criminal accused) would not be entitled to legal representation and women not guaranteed self-representation.
Where will this Bill Apply?
• Short answer: only in the former Bantustans – and wall-to-wall within them
• Creates a separate and authoritarian legal regime for the areas of South Africa where poverty is most concentrated, and the majority of residents are women (59% according to the census)
• Effectively strips people living in those areas of their citizenship rights and returns them to the status of ‘tribal subjects’
• A recent example is a case of a widow from Cadu. She has been punished by the local headman for daring to call the police to report house breaking episode in her home! She is running an HIV/Aids prevention project as well as a self-help sewing entreprise. For her temerity she was fined a sheep, 2 Bottles of Bandy, 2 Cases of beer, 2 Large containers of Juice. The community has been instructed to ostracise her because she is “a spoilt” woman without a husband who will spoil other women and teach them not to respect male authority.”
Violation of Separation of Powers
• And traditional leaders are given the power to make the law, implement the law and decide disputes arising from their own administrative actions
• Anyone who disputes their actions or authority can be summoned before them and stripped of her land rights
Balance of Power
• Now we have a Bill that makes it a criminal offence for anyone within those controversial tribal boundaries to refuse to come when summoned by the chief
• Even people who have long contested his authority over them - such as private land owners, people dumped there by removals, or those with older historical rights who refused to co-operate with Bantu Authorities - would no longer be able to ‘opt out’.
What kind of Chief needs such a law?
• The question in my mind is what kinds of chiefs want this kind of autocratic power?
• We are told that customary law is ‘consensual’, provides for ‘direct democracy’ and enjoys support
• If so, why have chiefs lobbied for laws that re-impose the Bantustan boundaries and create draconian powers within them?
Where did this Bill come from?
• This is not just some aberration that appeared from nowhere
• It is a Bill that was approved by the ANC Cabinet and the state law advisors and strongly defended by the Dept of Justice in Parliament in 2008
• It forms part of an integrated package of new laws about the powers of traditional leaders that began with the Framework Act in 2003
Women and Traditional Courts
• We have heard that despite women’s strong submissions to the Law Commission, the current Bill explicitly allows men to represent women in traditional courts ‘according to customary law’.
• This means that the very male relatives who are poised to steal the property of widows are handed carte blanche to represent their ‘victims’ in court.
Custom and Tradition?
• This is justified on the basis of upholding custom and tradition
• However the forced re-imposition of the Bantustan boundaries indicates their coercive nature
• They build on colonial and apartheid distortions rather than enabling ordinary rural women and men to freely debate and develop custom in line with the Constitution
Back to the Bantustans and autocratic chiefly power
• Millions of South Africans fought long and hard for the end of the Bantustans and equal citizenship for all South Africans
• That victory is betrayed by these new laws
• Which are all the more shameful for targeting the poorest, most vulnerable South Africans
• How could an ANC Cabinet approve the TCB?
• The passing of this Bill into law will be the ultimate betrayal of the values and principles of our constitutional democracy and a betrayal of the struggle from freedom.
“Government is throwing us away”
• Rural people complain that with these new laws government is ‘throwing us away. It does not care about us because we are poor’.
• In effect the new laws outsource the governance of 17 million South Africans to traditional leaders under a separate and despotic legal regime
Why Equality is Better for All
• South Africans are wounded by the legacy of apartheid.
• The Bill adds salt to wounds instead of healing the divided past.
• This Bill robs South Africans of the talents, creativity and energy of rural citizens who would be officially designated “subjects” of unelected traditional leaders instead of engaged productive “Citizens”
• South Africa’s poor performance in post-apartheid era is due to increasingly “Dead Capital” by ignoring the promotion of the development and utilization of the brain power of all citizens.
WHAT CAN CITIZENS DO
No democracy anywhere in the world survives without active citizenship. South Africans have yet to recognize the importance of their roles as the custodians of the constitutional democracy we enjoy today. Part of the reason for this lack of attention is that we assumed that because we have won our freedom we will be able to govern and live in it without any effort to educate ourselves to become stewards of this freedom.
The Citizens’ Movement for Social Change has been formed to correct this error. The focus of this movement is:
- Educating for democracy –how many South Africans are familiar with our Constitution and its principles?
- Developing a Citizen Charter clarifying Rights and Responsibilities of citizenship
- Mobilizing South Africans to confront their passive acceptance of the benefits of freedom without ensuring that they assume the responsibility of holding those in public office accountable for good governance
- Mobilizing South Africans to undertake the Journey from being subjects to become citizens who are active stewards of the constitutional democracy. This journey starts with conversations about values and principles that are appropriate to a human rights culture and constitutional democracy and how the choices we make at the personal, professional and political level must be in harmony. We must be the change we want to see.
CONCLUSION
It is a truism that we get the leaders we deserve. It is up to each one of you here today to commit to become active citizens to protect and advance our constitutional democracy. The future expects nothing less from us.
Mamphela Ramphele
Citizen Movement for Social Change
20/3/2012
Is The Constitution at Risk?
There is enough concern about the utterances by ANC leaders and government officials to suggest that not all is well in our constitutional democracy. There is a clash of values between those who believe in the sanctity of our constitutional democratic foundations and those who see them as an obstacle to the “second transition.” At the heart of the issue is lack of clarity about the difference between the workings of a Parliamentary vs a Constitutional democracy. It is my firm view that we are paying the price of our failure to educate for democracy. We assumed that a people who have never experienced life as citizens of a democracy would simply assume the rights and responsibility of one as sophisticated as ours.
It does not seem to have sunk into the minds of many in government (and probably not even in the minds of the majority of the people of South Africa) that our governance system is a Constitutional Democracy and not simply a Parliamentary Democracy. The Constitution is sovereign and can only be changed by a 75% majority in Parliament.
The implication, as Prof. de Vos concludes, is
that (in the absence of a coup d’état) President Zuma’s wish that the powers of the Constitutional Court should be reviewed and amended is never going to fly. He will just have to take his chances in the courts (as he has done on many previous occasions, often with great success) when various cases that could affect his corruption and bribery prosecution comes before the judiciary. Meanwhile, he should really think before he talks.
Historical Context
To place the current onslaught on our Constitution in its historical context, it needs to be remembered that as a result of its experience of the abuse of power by the then minority-parliamentary state, the ANC, in its Harare Declaration of 1989, insisted on a Bill of Rights as a cornerstone for negotiations about the future. In a democratic South Africa it said,
All shall enjoy universally recognised human rights, freedoms and civil liberties, protected under an entrenched Bill of Rights. South Africa shall have a new legal system which shall guarantee equality of all before the law. South Africa shall have an independent and non-racial judiciary.
When he inaugurated the Constitutional Court on February 14 1995 former President Mandela made the now famous remark about the role of the Constitutional Court:
The last time I appeared in court was to hear whether or not I was going to be sentenced to death. Fortunately for myself and my colleagues, we were not.
Today I rise not as an accused, but on behalf of the people of South Africa to inaugurate a court South Africa has never had, a court on which hinges the future of our democracy.
Our current president is betraying the legacy of his own party - the ANC. Unfortunately he is not alone in this betrayal. We can rightly assume that because it is the President who uttered these words, he has the support of his cabinet and/or the leadership of the ANC.
In fact, in September last year, Gwede Mantashe, the Secretary-General of the ANC accused the Constitutional Court judges of being “hostile to us, of being driven by selfish interests and of threatening the stability of government “
In November of last year Manyi, then the Presidential Spokesperson, announced that the government would be examining how Constitutional Court decisions have affected the lives of ordinary South Africans and how they have influenced socio-economic transformation and reform of the law.
What is clear is that there is a conflict of values taking place – it’s about transformation and about who is best able to defend the spirit of our Constitution.
There is nothing wrong with looking at whether or not poor people have access to justice, to what extent the judiciary has been implementing the letter and spirit of the Constitution - the question is how this is done – the devil is clearly in the detail.
Recognizing that the Constitution is the cornerstone of our young democracy, but at the same time, that it is not perfect, I, together with other publicly known South Africans, participated in the founding of the Council for the Advancement of the Constitution (CASAC). The word Advancement was deliberately chosen above words such as Defence because “progressive constitutionalism” is a pivotal founding principle. The other principles are as follows:
1. As the supreme law of the land, the Constitution provides a framework for the social and economic transformation of South Africa, and for a deliberative, participatory and inclusive democracy. This framework together with its underlying values and founding principles needs to be protected and advanced.
2. The constitution itself must be subject to on-going critical appraisal to assess its efficacy as the needs of the country change. There may be a need to debate and lobby for constitutional and legislative reform to enhance the legitimacy of the democratic political process. The Constitution must be a living, not a static document that evolves to deepen democracy.
3. The principle of the rule of law is a critical building-block in the pursuit of the concept of constitutionalism; public and private power must be exercised within the law in order to retain legitimacy and to enhance a culture of responsibility and accountability in order to guard against the arbitrary use and abuse of power and authority.
4. If it is to dispense justice that promotes substantive equality as well as procedural fairness, judicial independence is an indispensable element, if not a pre-requisite for the rule of law and the integrity of the court system.
CASAC thus upholds the South African Constitution as a platform for democratic politics and the transformation of society. It also upholds the core principles of the Constitution such as the promotion of socio-economic rights, judicial independence & the rule of law.
One organization cannot on its own accomplish all of this. The advance and defence of [To both advance and defend] our constitution requires the involvement of active citizens who defend our so-called first generation rights such as security, privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of movement and residence and so on, as well as to actively work for second generation rights – universal access to housing, health-care, food, water and a healthy environment.
A major problem is that the vast majority of South Africans are passive ‘subjects’ rather than active ‘citizens’. We sit back and expect government to ‘deliver’, and if it doesn’t, our only recourse, it seems, is to protest by (at best) marching in the streets and (at worst) burning the local clinic or school.
Together with Prof Njabulo Ndebele and Mr Bobby Godsell, we have formed a Trust called the Citizens Movement for Social Change - which aims to engage all South Africans who are willing to embark, on a journey of transformation “from subjects to citizens” - so that together we can create the just, prosperous, inclusive and equitable South Africa that our Constitution was designed to promote.
WHAT DARK CLOUDS ARE GATHERING ON THE HORIZON?
The Traditional Courts’ Bill
• Empowers traditional leaders to single-handedly make and apply customary law;
• That no one (not even a passerby) is allowed to opt out of customary courts;
• That traditional leaders are empowered to impose severe punishments – eg forced labour, loss of customary entitlements;
• That people (even criminal accused) would not be entitled to legal representation and women not guaranteed self-representation.
Where will this Bill Apply?
• Short answer: only in the former Bantustans – and wall-to-wall within them
• Creates a separate and authoritarian legal regime for the areas of South Africa where poverty is most concentrated, and the majority of residents are women (59% according to the census)
• Effectively strips people living in those areas of their citizenship rights and returns them to the status of ‘tribal subjects’
• A recent example is a case of a widow from Cadu. She has been punished by the local headman for daring to call the police to report house breaking episode in her home! She is running an HIV/Aids prevention project as well as a self-help sewing entreprise. For her temerity she was fined a sheep, 2 Bottles of Bandy, 2 Cases of beer, 2 Large containers of Juice. The community has been instructed to ostracise her because she is “a spoilt” woman without a husband who will spoil other women and teach them not to respect male authority.”
Violation of Separation of Powers
• And traditional leaders are given the power to make the law, implement the law and decide disputes arising from their own administrative actions
• Anyone who disputes their actions or authority can be summoned before them and stripped of her land rights
Balance of Power
• Now we have a Bill that makes it a criminal offence for anyone within those controversial tribal boundaries to refuse to come when summoned by the chief
• Even people who have long contested his authority over them - such as private land owners, people dumped there by removals, or those with older historical rights who refused to co-operate with Bantu Authorities - would no longer be able to ‘opt out’.
What kind of Chief needs such a law?
• The question in my mind is what kinds of chiefs want this kind of autocratic power?
• We are told that customary law is ‘consensual’, provides for ‘direct democracy’ and enjoys support
• If so, why have chiefs lobbied for laws that re-impose the Bantustan boundaries and create draconian powers within them?
Where did this Bill come from?
• This is not just some aberration that appeared from nowhere
• It is a Bill that was approved by the ANC Cabinet and the state law advisors and strongly defended by the Dept of Justice in Parliament in 2008
• It forms part of an integrated package of new laws about the powers of traditional leaders that began with the Framework Act in 2003
Women and Traditional Courts
• We have heard that despite women’s strong submissions to the Law Commission, the current Bill explicitly allows men to represent women in traditional courts ‘according to customary law’.
• This means that the very male relatives who are poised to steal the property of widows are handed carte blanche to represent their ‘victims’ in court.
Custom and Tradition?
• This is justified on the basis of upholding custom and tradition
• However the forced re-imposition of the Bantustan boundaries indicates their coercive nature
• They build on colonial and apartheid distortions rather than enabling ordinary rural women and men to freely debate and develop custom in line with the Constitution
Back to the Bantustans and autocratic chiefly power
• Millions of South Africans fought long and hard for the end of the Bantustans and equal citizenship for all South Africans
• That victory is betrayed by these new laws
• Which are all the more shameful for targeting the poorest, most vulnerable South Africans
• How could an ANC Cabinet approve the TCB?
• The passing of this Bill into law will be the ultimate betrayal of the values and principles of our constitutional democracy and a betrayal of the struggle from freedom.
“Government is throwing us away”
• Rural people complain that with these new laws government is ‘throwing us away. It does not care about us because we are poor’.
• In effect the new laws outsource the governance of 17 million South Africans to traditional leaders under a separate and despotic legal regime
Why Equality is Better for All
• South Africans are wounded by the legacy of apartheid.
• The Bill adds salt to wounds instead of healing the divided past.
• This Bill robs South Africans of the talents, creativity and energy of rural citizens who would be officially designated “subjects” of unelected traditional leaders instead of engaged productive “Citizens”
• South Africa’s poor performance in post-apartheid era is due to increasingly “Dead Capital” by ignoring the promotion of the development and utilization of the brain power of all citizens.
WHAT CAN CITIZENS DO
No democracy anywhere in the world survives without active citizenship. South Africans have yet to recognize the importance of their roles as the custodians of the constitutional democracy we enjoy today. Part of the reason for this lack of attention is that we assumed that because we have won our freedom we will be able to govern and live in it without any effort to educate ourselves to become stewards of this freedom.
The Citizens’ Movement for Social Change has been formed to correct this error. The focus of this movement is:
- Educating for democracy –how many South Africans are familiar with our Constitution and its principles?
- Developing a Citizen Charter clarifying Rights and Responsibilities of citizenship
- Mobilizing South Africans to confront their passive acceptance of the benefits of freedom without ensuring that they assume the responsibility of holding those in public office accountable for good governance
- Mobilizing South Africans to undertake the Journey from being subjects to become citizens who are active stewards of the constitutional democracy. This journey starts with conversations about values and principles that are appropriate to a human rights culture and constitutional democracy and how the choices we make at the personal, professional and political level must be in harmony. We must be the change we want to see.
CONCLUSION
It is a truism that we get the leaders we deserve. It is up to each one of you here today to commit to become active citizens to protect and advance our constitutional democracy. The future expects nothing less from us.
Mamphela Ramphele
Citizen Movement for Social Change
20/3/2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
The Steve Biko Centre launches its collaboration with Tru FM
The Steve Biko Centre, an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation, has launched its collaboration with SABC youth radio station Tru FM, in the Eastern Cape.
This joint venture is part of many projects running in the Arts and Culture programme of the Centre. The collaboration started with a Young Writers Workshop on March 13, 2012.
Presentations included;
Mandla Mbothwe (Artistic Director at the Steve Biko Centre)
• The art of storytelling/ makings of a great story;
• Effective expression and communication for actors.
Julia N Malone (Executive Producer: Drama SAfm)
• Script writing and writing for radio;
• Copyright and livelihood through writing.
Mandla Nkuna (Head writer)
• Script presentation and formatting
Things to look out for;
• Plot and character development
This joint venture is part of many projects running in the Arts and Culture programme of the Centre. The collaboration started with a Young Writers Workshop on March 13, 2012.
Presentations included;
Mandla Mbothwe (Artistic Director at the Steve Biko Centre)
• The art of storytelling/ makings of a great story;
• Effective expression and communication for actors.
Julia N Malone (Executive Producer: Drama SAfm)
• Script writing and writing for radio;
• Copyright and livelihood through writing.
Mandla Nkuna (Head writer)
• Script presentation and formatting
Things to look out for;
• Plot and character development
The Business Incubator Workshop: Vat Intermediate
The Business Incubator, an initiative of the Steve Biko Centre, invites you to a workshop on Intermediate Vat to be held in King Williams Town.
Facilitator: SARS Representative
Date: 20 March 2012
Time: 10:00 – 12:00
Venue: The Steve Biko Foundation Offices, 40 Eales Street, King Williams Town, Eastern Cape
Cost: Free
Facilitator: SARS Representative
Date: 20 March 2012
Time: 10:00 – 12:00
Venue: The Steve Biko Foundation Offices, 40 Eales Street, King Williams Town, Eastern Cape
Cost: Free
Monday, March 19, 2012
Dispatch Dialogue to discuss the judiciary and perceptions that the supremacy of the Constitutional Court is under threat.
On March 20, 2012, The Daily Dispatch, the University of Fort Hare and the Steve Biko Foundation, present Dr. Mamphela Ramphele to discuss the judiciary and perceptions that the supremacy of the Constitutional Court is under threat.
When: 20 March 2012, 6:45pm
Where: Guild Theatre, East London
Entrance: Free
To follow the livestream broadcast visit www.dispatch.co.za
When: 20 March 2012, 6:45pm
Where: Guild Theatre, East London
Entrance: Free
To follow the livestream broadcast visit www.dispatch.co.za
Nkosinathi Biko on the relationship between blacks and poverty
Nkosinathi Biko, CEO of the Steve Biko Foundation, shared his thoughts on the relationship between blacks and poverty with Brazilian newspaper A TARDE during his visit to Brazil last week.
Friday, March 09, 2012
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Steve Biko Foundation visits Lula Institute in Brazil
Nkosinathi Biko, CEO, and Obenewa Amponsah, Director of Fundraising and International Partnerships of South Arica’s Steve Biko Foundation, visited the Lula Institute on Monday 5 March. During the exchange, a formal invitation to the former President of Brazil was extended for him to present the annual Steve Biko Memorial lecture in South Africa, and an agreement of collaboration between the Steve Biko Foundation and the Lula Institute was drawn up.
“The cooperation with the Steve Biko Foundation will be very important to us because one of the missions of the Institute Lula is to enhance relations between Brazil and Africa," says Celso Marcondes, Executive Coordinator of the Institute.
Nkosinathi Biko is the eldest son of Steve Biko and CEO of the foundation that bears the name of his father. Steve Biko, a student leader and an activist against apartheid who died at age 30, after being arrested and brutally tortured by police in South Africa in 1977, founded and was the first president of the South African Students Organisation (SASO). Steve Biko was also involved in several initiatives against the apartheid regime in his country, including inspiring the Black Consciousness Movement.
Founded 14 years ago, the Steve Biko Foundation works in the areas of knowledge dissemination, policy dialogue and leadership development. "Our work differs from other NGOs because we deal with intangibles, such as the preservation of memory, history and spread of democratic values," said Nkosinathi Biko.
As the Lula Institute in Brazil is involved in the design and construction of the Democracy Memorial in Brazil, the Steve Biko Foundation is nearing completion on the construction of the Steve Biko Centre, a museum, archive, library, community centre, performing arts and conferencing venue with restaurant and retail outlet in Ginsberg, Eastern Cape Province.
The representatives of the Steve Biko Foundation are in Brazil this week. Currently in Sao Paulo, they will also travel to Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, where they will meet with the Steve Biko Cultural Institute.
This article is edited from one first published on the Instituto Cidadania websiteon March 6, 2012.
Click here http://www.institutolula.org/2012/03/steve-biko-foundation-visita-instituto-e-convida-lula-para-encontro-na-africa-do-sul/#more-962
to be directed to the original article.
“The cooperation with the Steve Biko Foundation will be very important to us because one of the missions of the Institute Lula is to enhance relations between Brazil and Africa," says Celso Marcondes, Executive Coordinator of the Institute.
Nkosinathi Biko is the eldest son of Steve Biko and CEO of the foundation that bears the name of his father. Steve Biko, a student leader and an activist against apartheid who died at age 30, after being arrested and brutally tortured by police in South Africa in 1977, founded and was the first president of the South African Students Organisation (SASO). Steve Biko was also involved in several initiatives against the apartheid regime in his country, including inspiring the Black Consciousness Movement.
Founded 14 years ago, the Steve Biko Foundation works in the areas of knowledge dissemination, policy dialogue and leadership development. "Our work differs from other NGOs because we deal with intangibles, such as the preservation of memory, history and spread of democratic values," said Nkosinathi Biko.
As the Lula Institute in Brazil is involved in the design and construction of the Democracy Memorial in Brazil, the Steve Biko Foundation is nearing completion on the construction of the Steve Biko Centre, a museum, archive, library, community centre, performing arts and conferencing venue with restaurant and retail outlet in Ginsberg, Eastern Cape Province.
The representatives of the Steve Biko Foundation are in Brazil this week. Currently in Sao Paulo, they will also travel to Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, where they will meet with the Steve Biko Cultural Institute.
This article is edited from one first published on the Instituto Cidadania websiteon March 6, 2012.
Click here http://www.institutolula.org/2012/03/steve-biko-foundation-visita-instituto-e-convida-lula-para-encontro-na-africa-do-sul/#more-962
to be directed to the original article.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
The Business Incubator invites you to the FNB Business Banking Workshop in King William’s Town.
The Business Incubator is an initiative of the Steve Biko Centre which seeks to:
• Play a leading role in development and growth of the local and national economy through the development and support of SMME's and job creation projects.
• Achieve its main purpose through the creation and provision of an enabling and conducive business environment that will see to it that the local businesses are initiated, developed, supported and that capacity is built within the enterprises to ensure quality performance and sustainability.
Facilitator: Catherine from FNB
Date: 08 March 2012
Time: 10:00 – 12:00
Venue: The Steve Biko Foundation Offices, 40 Eales Street, King William’s Town, Eastern Cape
Cost: Free
For more information contact Mr. Lungile Sululu on 043.642.1177 or via e-mail at lungiles@sbf.org.za
• Play a leading role in development and growth of the local and national economy through the development and support of SMME's and job creation projects.
• Achieve its main purpose through the creation and provision of an enabling and conducive business environment that will see to it that the local businesses are initiated, developed, supported and that capacity is built within the enterprises to ensure quality performance and sustainability.
Facilitator: Catherine from FNB
Date: 08 March 2012
Time: 10:00 – 12:00
Venue: The Steve Biko Foundation Offices, 40 Eales Street, King William’s Town, Eastern Cape
Cost: Free
For more information contact Mr. Lungile Sululu on 043.642.1177 or via e-mail at lungiles@sbf.org.za
Monday, March 05, 2012
The Business Incubator, a project of the Steve Biko Centre, invites you to a P.A.Y.E Workshop.
Through The Business Incubator Initiative the Steve Biko Centre seeks to:
• Play a leading role in development and growth of the local and national economy through the development and support of SMME's and job creation projects.
• Achieve its main purpose through the creation and provision of an enabling and conducive business environment that will see to it that the local businesses are initiated, developed, supported and that capacity is built within the enterprises to ensure quality performance and sustainability.
Facilitator: SARS Representative
Date: 06 March 2012
Time: 10:00 – 12:00
Venue: The Steve Biko Foundation Offices, 40 Eales Street, King William’s Town, Eastern Cape
Cost: Free
For more information contact Mr. Lungile Sululu on 043.642.1177 or via e-mail at lungiles@sbf.org.za
• Play a leading role in development and growth of the local and national economy through the development and support of SMME's and job creation projects.
• Achieve its main purpose through the creation and provision of an enabling and conducive business environment that will see to it that the local businesses are initiated, developed, supported and that capacity is built within the enterprises to ensure quality performance and sustainability.
Facilitator: SARS Representative
Date: 06 March 2012
Time: 10:00 – 12:00
Venue: The Steve Biko Foundation Offices, 40 Eales Street, King William’s Town, Eastern Cape
Cost: Free
For more information contact Mr. Lungile Sululu on 043.642.1177 or via e-mail at lungiles@sbf.org.za
UVUKO!…RESURRECTION
The Steve Biko Centre, a project of the Steve Biko Foundation and Remix Dance Company, an integrated dance company now collaborate a piece under the directorship of Mandla Mbothwe.
Two performances
40mins piece
Performed at the Cape Town Station and its suroundings
Infecting The City Festival: “Uvuko Resurrection” a 40mins Performance on the 07th and 09th March 2012 at 15:15pm at Cape Town Train Station Square.
Performed by The Steve Biko Centre’s Abelusi and Remix Dance Company
Dramatic and Magnetic! Performers lead a procession through the streets of Cape Town, conjuring up the deep-seated local stories that lie dormant, pulling us inexorably to a sacred space.
This 40mins performance will also be influenced by the site chosen and shaped by the participant’s narratives through the creative process’ helping hand, Jazzart and choreography by Ina Wichterich.
Thus said, The Steve Biko Centre, Remix Dance Company and the creative team, welcomes audiences to a Public Art Production that will trigger emotions and provoke audiences to ask questions they are too uncomfortable to confront.
Two performances
40mins piece
Performed at the Cape Town Station and its suroundings
Infecting The City Festival: “Uvuko Resurrection” a 40mins Performance on the 07th and 09th March 2012 at 15:15pm at Cape Town Train Station Square.
Performed by The Steve Biko Centre’s Abelusi and Remix Dance Company
Dramatic and Magnetic! Performers lead a procession through the streets of Cape Town, conjuring up the deep-seated local stories that lie dormant, pulling us inexorably to a sacred space.
This 40mins performance will also be influenced by the site chosen and shaped by the participant’s narratives through the creative process’ helping hand, Jazzart and choreography by Ina Wichterich.
Thus said, The Steve Biko Centre, Remix Dance Company and the creative team, welcomes audiences to a Public Art Production that will trigger emotions and provoke audiences to ask questions they are too uncomfortable to confront.