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Former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke.
Gallo Images / Daily Sun / Christopher Moagi
- Former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke says South Africa needs a “reset button” to progress after nearly three decades of government failure.
- Moseneke has listed corruption, land distribution, high unemployment and crime as some issues that hinder this progress.
- He says the judiciary and media have played a significant role in exposing these failures and ensuring accountability where it is due.
After nearly three decades of government failure, South Africa needs a “reset button” to achieve societal equality and effective governance, according to former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke.
Speaking at a South African National Editor’s Forum (Sanef) fundraising dinner on Friday night, Moseneke listed a litany of government failures that hindered South Africa’s progress since the advent of democracy.
These included high youth unemployment, economic inequality and land redistribution. He said the government failed to ensure equal land redistribution despite the Constitution’s provisions.
He said:
Nothing in our Constitution forbade equitable restitution and redistribution of land. If anything, it commanded the new government to procure equitable access to land. It did not happen. Look at the peri-urban crime, grime, bending poverty, and landlessness we have to live in and with. It was in our hands and remains so that we may lawfully procure genuine land justice.
Moseneke said not addressing these issues meant the government had failed to uphold the human rights of South Africans who expected change at the dawn of democracy.
“Government at all its spheres would be efficient, effective, prompt and responsive in pursuing the public good. The government would make accessible public goods such as public health, education, water, housing, transport and electricity. Our young would receive universal primary education and quality secondary tuition,” he said.
Moseneke emphasised the importance of an independent judiciary, without which South Africa would be “in dark ages”.
He commended the media for ensuring government accountability since 1994 and, more recently, during state capture.
He said:
As I read what you journalists often write, virtually every other state or provincial department is a site of pillaging, corruption, and crime against our people. Every other municipality is severely unable to perform its most basic statutory obligations. It cannot be that post-state capture revelations of misgovernance and accountability abound. Our circumstances of governance appear truly dire.
Moseneke also expressed concern about attacks on journalists on social media and governments who sought to silence them globally.
He said in the South African context, journalists’ rights to freedom of expression were enshrined in the Press Code.
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