SIPHESIHLE MVUNDLA | SA’s progress has never come from unquestioning obedience to power

There is a tired accusation that surfaces every time communities resistpollution, challenge mining licences, oppose gas projects or question government decisions. This accusation is that community and non-governmental organisations are “anti-development”. It is designed to delegitimise dissent.

To suggest that those raising concerns about health, livelihoods, land, water or democratic participation are obstacles to progress. But SA’s own history tells a very different story. In fact, many of the rights and freedoms people enjoy today exist because civil society organisations refused to remain silent when silence would have been easier and politically convenient.

To understand the role of civil society in SA, one must first understand what the constitution was meant to do. The constitution was never written to comfort the powerful. It emerged from the violence and exclusions of apartheid as a system where law itself had been used to deny dignity, land, healthcare, movement and political voice to the majority of people.

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The democratic constitution therefore carried a deeper responsibility: not only to establish democratic institutions but also to protect ordinary people from abuses of power, whether by the state or private interests. At its core, the constitution is meant to serve those most vulnerable to exclusion. Rural communities.

People living next to mines, refineries and industrial zones. Those denied healthcare, clean water, decent housing and meaningful participation in decisions affecting their lives. It recognised that freedom without dignity and material justice would remain incomplete.

This is why the role played by theTreatment Action Campaign(TAC) remains one of the defining examples of democratic civil society in post-apartheid SA. The TAC did not invent rights. It gave life to rights that already existed on paper.

At the height of the HIV/Aids crisis, when denialism and political paralysis cost lives daily, the TAC organised communities, educated the public and challenged the state in court to force the rollout of antiretroviral treatment. At the time, activists were accused of embarrassing the government, creating instability and undermining authority. Yet history has since rendered its judgment on this matter quite clearly. Had the TAC remained silent in the name of political convenience or “stability”, countless more South Africans would have died waiting for treatment already proven to save lives.

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