As the country heads to the polls on 29 May 2024, President Cyril Ramaphosa has warned that threats, intimidation and undemocratic actions by people who want to undermine the electoral process will not be tolerated.
Speaking at the Human Rights Day commemoration in Sharpeville on Thursday, the President said the regularity, peacefulness, fairness and integrity of the elections are achievements that must be dutifully protected.
“In just over two months from now, South Africans will go to the polls to vote in the 7th democratic election for national and provincial government. We must not tolerate the threats, intimidation and undemocratic actions of those who want to undermine our electoral process.
“But we must go beyond the right to vote. We must create more space and open up more opportunities for all citizens to have a say in the decisions that affect them,” the President said.
He said citizens will be exercising one of the defining rights of democracy, the right to freely and in secret choose the people who will represent them in Parliament and the provincial legislatures.
In opening up more opportunities for all citizens to have a say in the decisions that affect them, the President said “we must do so by strengthening the processes of consultation in government, in Parliament, in legislatures and in municipalities, making them more meaningful and inclusive”.
At the same time, he called for unity in working together to build people’s power at the grassroots level.
“We must support community-based organisations and initiatives, religious formations, women’s organisations and youth bodies.”
Parents must be encouraged to participate in school governing bodies and community members to get involved in community policing forums.
“Democracy thrives when we have an active citizenry – when people are fully exercising their rights to freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom to demonstrate, picket and petition.
“Democracy thrives when people use the rights guaranteed to them to determine their own future. This means, among other things, that people must be able to enforce their rights. They must have access to justice and to be sure that they will be treated fairly and impartially,” he said.
As the country looks back on 30 years of freedom as well as decades of struggle for basic human rights, the great strides that have been made must be acknowledged.
“Working together, as a nation united, we have built a democracy that recognises the equal worth of every person.
“We have built a society in which everyone has an equal expectation that their rights will be respected and upheld. We have travelled this long journey together.
“But we still have further to travel and much more to do before everyone can equally exercise the fundamental freedoms that are rightfully theirs. On this Human Rights Day, let us pledge to ourselves and each other that we will travel that road together,” he said. – SAnews.gov.za
