High murder rate: South Africans are not truly free

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(Parliamentary debate on Heritage Day: “Celebrating the lives of our heroes and heroines who laid down their lives for our freedom”)

Every nation has its own historical heroes and heroines who will always be close to their hearts and whose legacy will remain special. Today’s heroes are equally important, though. 

In South Africa, these modern heroes are the 70 people who are murdered daily and who will never experience true freedom.

For the Freedom Front Plus (VF Plus), true freedom is very close to the heart – it is, after all, central to the party’s name.

For the diverse people of South Africa, the liberation struggle did not start on the same date for everyone. Afrikaners’ most notable fight for freedom was against the mighty British Empire.

These were the wars referred to as the Anglo-Boer Wars, and later the South African Wars. Afrikaners refer to them as the First and Second Freedom Wars.   

Many Afrikaner heroes emerged during these freedom struggles. Two of them are specifically commemorated on Heritage Day, namely Lizzie van Zyl and Danie Theron.

Lizzie, a frail and delicate girl barely seven years old, was born in April 1894 and died on 9 May 1901 of malnutrition and enteric fever while detained as a prisoner in a British concentration camp in Bloemfontein.

She, and others whose fathers were Bittereinders (fighting to the bitter end) in the war against the British, received only half rations. She starved to death. She gave her life for freedom.   

The other hero is the renowned Captain Danie Theron.  

He was a fearless fighter who also sacrificed his life for freedom when he single-handedly held off a group of British soldiers, firing 48 shots, before being killed in a bombardment.

Even the British revered him as legendary. The commander of the British forces in South Africa, Lord Roberts, referred to Theron as the “sharpest thorn” in the flesh of the British Empire. He was just 25 years old. 

That was then. Who are today's heroes?  Who are the ones laying down their lives for freedom today?

They are the 70 people who are murdered in South Africa every day. More than 25 000 every year. What meaning does freedom have for them? Should our country, through its utter lack of law and order, really rob so many people of their freedom?

The fact that South Africa’s Constitution guarantees the right to life for all means absolutely nothing to these people.

In the previous dispensation, the Freedom Front Plus were Bittereinders and in the current dispensation, we are ushering in a New Beginning to make a success of South Africa – a country where everyone enjoys genuine freedom and can wholeheartedly celebrate it on a day such as Heritage Day.