Poverty, Crime and Racism pose serious threats to human rights in South Africa

As South Africa celebrates Human Rights day tomorrow, the SA Human Rights

Commission warns about the threats posed by poverty, crime and racism

on the country’s long –term stability.

Poverty and deepening levels of inequality are the gravest human rights concerns that we face in South Africa. Continued and unacceptable levels of poverty, as well as growing inequality, have entrenched South Africa’s unenviable status as one of the world’s leading societies of contrast. According to Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, the challenges of human rights, development and security are so closely entwined that none can be tackled in isolation.

South Africa cannot talk of long-term stability when there are many people who are still without access to food, shelter, jobs and health care services. In this regards the Commission wishes to express its concern about the possible negative impact of the proposed 60% electricity tariff hike by Eskom will have on the poor. To further this objective the Commission has, as part of its Human Right Month campaign, been engaging with business on their human rights obligations. The Commission believes that business should not only be responsible in their practices, but responsive to the contextualised challenges which specific communities may face.

Crime- One of the major challenges in dealing with our response to crime will be to make sure that our crime-related objectives, policies and processes are channeled more directly and effectively towards human rights goals such as the eradication of poverty and ensuring greater equality. As such, it will be important that we translate human rights norms into concrete guidelines as how to respond to crime within our policy contexts and national circumstances.

It is common cause that violence and brutality, coupled with discrimination and victimization, seriously threaten the consolidation of our democracy. We also seem unable to progress towards the consolidation of individual and collective rights. It is therefore imperative that our response to crime and its effects deal with these contrasts, lest we kill our very impulses towards further political and social transformation.

Racism. Racism is still alive and well in South Africa, and its about time that South Africans began to deal with this scourge head on. In 1994 South Africa had to contend with two complimentary imperatives - that of reconciliation and that of transformation, those were wholly compatible in that reconciliation properly understood would not only include apologizing for the past but also committing to making good the ills of the past. This would fit quite squarely with the objectives of transformation.