The time has come for social activists generally and ANC activists in particular to impose a new agenda on the country: rebuilding communities brick-by-brick. Thus they will find that while they sloganeer and talk hot air the majority of citizens are fighting for survival out there. What are they doing?

Maslow and other social scientists, including Karl Marx have always underlined that people first have to satisfy basic physiological needs before they are able to really engage in the matters of the soul. First and foremost they must have food, water, shelter and sex. Despite the affluence all around them the majority of people today find themselves barely surviving, with unspeakable numbers dying of hunger and preventable diseases.

It is criminal that leaders romanticize the liberation struggle, bus people to "celebrations, hand out T-shirts, chant divisive slogans, and then retreat to their cozy mansions while their followers go back to see their children die from poverty everyday. The liberation struggle had nobility.

Mass demonstrations were around basic popular demands in the face of an intransigent regime. Activists organized citizens to demand houses, roads and public transport, better wages, and street lights because they had no voice in government. They had no vote. Mass mobilization was about the strength and the protection otherwise powerless communities could find in numbers. The liberation slogans and songs were about building the spirit of united resistance and not polarizing communities.

Among the deadly irritations of the Apartheid Security Establishment was the use of spies and turned cadres who had trained with us in exile to identify combatants who had infiltrated the country. As a response we distributed a leaflet from underground calling for spies to be killed. When the leadership became aware of this they ordered us to stop the distribution of the leaflet because it could cause indiscriminate lynching of supposed spies. Similarly when the so-called neck-lace killings started the leadership dissociated the ANC from this and we had orders to discourage it wherever we could.

Indeed in the majority of cases our people have refrained from chanting divisive slogans and songs. Racialism and tribalism were taboo in the ranks of the liberation movement, as was factionalism. They still are. When I first heard the new rendition of Hamba kahle Mkhonto at the funeral of Solly Makwela in Limpopo ten years ago I felt something die me. I could not sing along although I could relate to the sentiment that Sizimisele ukuhlala nawo, wona lamabhunu. I still have to grit my teeth to sing Die Stem now worked into the National Anthem. Rebuilding South Africa however demands no less of us.

The current phase of the struggle is about engaging communities in working through democratic organs of government to tackle social and economic challenges. It is perhaps good that we demobilized the organs of struggle like the street committees of the 1980s. It is a failure of leadership however that we have not really managed to use the new, constitutional civic structures to galvanize the citizens around development programmes. Indeed we use civic and Party structures as instruments for self-enrichment in corrupt ways.

Civic gatherings should be about crafting community solutions for tackling community problems and not about whipping up hatred about individuals and groups we do not like. They should be about organizing the unemployed youth to do voluntary productive work in the community, even if it is for no pay rather than idling and destroying their souls with Nyaupe and Tik; about getting them to engage in sports and other cultural activities; organizing free skills development interventions, including how to start and manage small businesses. In the process they grow and hone skills for bigger endeavours.

The chants and songs should be to foster this civic spirit and positive living. This is also what the priests and pastors should be preaching in churches, just as we implored them to preach liberation before 1994. Journalists also should rethink their role. There is journalistic virtue also in shaping national conversation around building a new society. The corrupt elements of today after all do not define the new society anymore than the traitors, spies and collaborators defined the struggle society.

This is what we did during the liberation struggle. When the youth came up with the slogan No Education without Liberation. I can remember Mac Maharaj briefing Ignatius Mthebule and Revel Nkondo and through the underground network the likes of Joe Phaahla to reframe this so that it did not mean the youth should abandon school, but that they should engage in the freedom struggle while going to school. Indeed the ANC was mobilising resources from the international community to support education especially for those unable to go to school because of persecution by the Apartheid regime. The ANC would never call on demonstrators to trash their own towns.

Revolutionaries are not anarchists. They are the most responsible and the most disciplined members of society. Ababona osiyayinyofa. They build communities, not destroy them. Even as they seek to destroy oppressive governments they are building strong organs of popular rule. They are training leaders, not rabble-rousers and howlers. They build better societies and therefore shape their strategies and tactics with that in mind. It is time we singing about the New Patriot, and building the New Patriots.

Nearly all the participants in violent community demonstrations against the government are members and supporters, and even leaders of the ANC. The violence therefore constitutes the failure of ANC leadership in these areas.

What goes wrong?

Real grievances are at the root of the mass demonstrations by residents. Lack of housing in the urban areas, high electricity tariffs, lack of water and sanitation, lack of public transport, lack of education and health facilities and lack of public safety are some of the deprivations the poor people live with day by day. Yet these are precisely the areas that the democratic government addresses with diligence. The undisputed figures tell a story of huge improvements in access to public goods and services since 1994. The characterization of the demonstrations as service delivery protests therefore obscures than elucidates.

The poor quality of services experienced by the citizens in public hospitals, schools, public documentation offices, police stations, courts, and other service delivery points is legendary. For most citizens a visit to these institutions is extremely unpleasant. The output of these offices in terms of school passes, preventable infant mortality because of poor care, repeated and futile visits to documentation centres, and frequent water and electricity cuts, are only too real experiences of the public. Government services are better for the majority of citizens since 1994 but there are systemic faults that impair effective and sufficient delivery, including the competence of staff.

Citizens become angry because the government they have elected lets them down. It lets them down not only by not delivering the services quickly and professionally but also by taking them for granted, treating them with condescension and disrespect. They are angry because their leaders move up to the good life while they continue to wallow in poverty. They are frustrated also because there is no credible alternative political formation they can turn to. They have to force their ANC to listen.

The solution is simple. All activists need to heed the words of Gauteng Provincial Chairperson, Paul Mashatile to the Ekurhuleni Regional meeting recently: "Governance is not the sole responsibility of executive mayors and counsellors, but the entire ANC family because the party is in power. We must all worry if teachers are not teaching, because we have a responsibility to build a better South Africa for all".

The role of the social activists in a democracy is to enable the citizens to exercise their right to govern their own affairs in a responsible manner. It is to create spaces and provide tools for people to govern themselves through active participation in the institutions of government. Democracy also means that all activists regardless whether their party is in power put the interests of the citizen above party interests. Political contests are barren when they are only about advancing personal and factional agendas rather than serving the citizens with humility and respect.

Service delivery is about political parties leading the citizens in effective and efficient production and delivery of public goods and service. Political parties, including ruling parties have no goods and services to deliver to citizens. They only have policies and practices to deliver public goods and services with the participation of the citizen, as well as the political will to do so effectively and efficiently. Party activists must always serve the citizen with respect and humility.

>> Vuso Shabalala is an ANC branch member at Ward 96 in Queenswood and a surviving member of June 16 uMkhonto weSizwe Detachment. This article first appeared in ANC Today, the weekly online newsletter of the African National Congress.

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