Today I would like to celebrate a South African who shamed us and made us proud. Her name was Irene Grootboom, and she was a hero who was not given her just dues in life.
She shamed us because we failed her terribly. She made us proud because she tested our constitutional provisions, casting in stone the principle that our constitution will look after the people — particularly the most vulnerable ones in our midst.
Like the millions of South Africans on the margins, we in the middle classes mostly ignored her as we went about living the life of the new republic. We in the media made a great fuss about her from time to time and then we would move on to sexier stories.
Those in academia used her name in their research papers and grand lectures. Civil society activists referred to her to advance their causes.
From Ivy League universities to multinational developmental agencies, the name Irene Grootboom was iconic.
But no one really knew her. She was just a name that we bandied about without really bothering much about the human being to whom that name belonged . Not much was known about her life history, her beliefs, her likes and dislikes and her quirks.
Yet we owe her much.
We first made a fuss about Grootboom in 1998 when she led her community in a struggle against a state that wanted to ride roughshod over them.
She came from the shack settlement of Wallacedene, about half an hour outside Cape Town.
Grootboom and her community were being threatened with eviction from a site that had been earmarked for housing development. The community resisted the eviction, and instead fought to have the council provide them with services and facilities on the site.
It was a tough battle, fought all the way to the Constitutional Court. Championed by the Legal Resources Centre, a doyen of resistance to apartheid and pre-democracy public interest law, the case was largely sponsored by the European Union.
The community won the landmark case in 2000 in a judgement which not only defined socioeconomic rights for South Africans, but which became a reference point in constitutional states throughout the world.
As former Constitutional Court Judge Richard Goldstone put it, the case would go down in history as “the first building block in creating a jurisprudence of socioeconomic rights”.
In its judgement, read by Justice Zac Yacoob, the court had this to say: “There can be no doubt that human dignity, freedom and equality — the foundational values of our society — are denied those who have no food, clothing or shelter. Affording socioeconomic rights to all people therefore enables them to enjoy the other rights ... ”
It was those rights which Grootboom wanted but never got to enjoy, because, as Sunday Times obituarist Chris Barron wrote this week: “About a month ago, she finally succumbed to the elements, the wind, the rain and the cold.” She spent the last week of her life confined to her shack.
The saddest thing is that, having won one of the most important legal victories in South African history and having established the constitution’s relationship with the people, her fate did not improve. Very little has been done to develop the shack settlement, which was renamed Grootboom by the community after the court victory.
The authorities treated the court with disdain and have been incredibly lethargic about implementing the ruling.
They kept promising the residents that things would happen.
When the Sunday Times visited the settlement in 2004 as part of a series of articles marking 10 years of the establishment of the Constitutional Court, we found that the only thing “the site of Grootboom has to show for that victory is the smelly ablution block, built over a donga that had served as a latrine for the squatters who went to court.”
“Leaking sewage and piles of rotting rubbish smell so bad in Grootboom that you can actually taste the stench. Most of this rotten air, which coats your tongue with a tingling sensation, comes from an ablution block the size of a small house in the centre of the settlement,” the report read.
A week before Irene Grootboom died, the Cape Argus interviewed her in her shack and she spoke of how she was still waiting for promises to be fulfilled.
She told the newspaper of her frustration and pain: “I was supposed to get a house a while back, but I’m still in a shack which I share with my sister-in-law and her three children. They keep promising us ... I’m sick and tired of the whole thing ...
“When it rains, water seeps through every crevice and the thing is submerged in water. I try to repair it but I can’t do much.”
She died in that shack less than a week later. She was just 39 years old.
There is no doubt that her living conditions killed her. And that those who failed to change her conditions bear some responsibility for her premature death.
In the next few months, South Africa’s political parties will be knocking on our doors — and particularly the doors of the poor majority— asking us to support them.
They will promise all sorts of things — houses, clinics, schools.
A pity it is that Irene Grootboom will not be there to ask them what happened to their last promises.
- The Times
She shamed us because we failed her terribly. She made us proud because she tested our constitutional provisions, casting in stone the principle that our constitution will look after the people — particularly the most vulnerable ones in our midst.
Like the millions of South Africans on the margins, we in the middle classes mostly ignored her as we went about living the life of the new republic. We in the media made a great fuss about her from time to time and then we would move on to sexier stories.
Those in academia used her name in their research papers and grand lectures. Civil society activists referred to her to advance their causes.
From Ivy League universities to multinational developmental agencies, the name Irene Grootboom was iconic.
But no one really knew her. She was just a name that we bandied about without really bothering much about the human being to whom that name belonged . Not much was known about her life history, her beliefs, her likes and dislikes and her quirks.
Yet we owe her much.
We first made a fuss about Grootboom in 1998 when she led her community in a struggle against a state that wanted to ride roughshod over them.
She came from the shack settlement of Wallacedene, about half an hour outside Cape Town.
Grootboom and her community were being threatened with eviction from a site that had been earmarked for housing development. The community resisted the eviction, and instead fought to have the council provide them with services and facilities on the site.
It was a tough battle, fought all the way to the Constitutional Court. Championed by the Legal Resources Centre, a doyen of resistance to apartheid and pre-democracy public interest law, the case was largely sponsored by the European Union.
The community won the landmark case in 2000 in a judgement which not only defined socioeconomic rights for South Africans, but which became a reference point in constitutional states throughout the world.
As former Constitutional Court Judge Richard Goldstone put it, the case would go down in history as “the first building block in creating a jurisprudence of socioeconomic rights”.
In its judgement, read by Justice Zac Yacoob, the court had this to say: “There can be no doubt that human dignity, freedom and equality — the foundational values of our society — are denied those who have no food, clothing or shelter. Affording socioeconomic rights to all people therefore enables them to enjoy the other rights ... ”
It was those rights which Grootboom wanted but never got to enjoy, because, as Sunday Times obituarist Chris Barron wrote this week: “About a month ago, she finally succumbed to the elements, the wind, the rain and the cold.” She spent the last week of her life confined to her shack.
The saddest thing is that, having won one of the most important legal victories in South African history and having established the constitution’s relationship with the people, her fate did not improve. Very little has been done to develop the shack settlement, which was renamed Grootboom by the community after the court victory.
The authorities treated the court with disdain and have been incredibly lethargic about implementing the ruling.
They kept promising the residents that things would happen.
When the Sunday Times visited the settlement in 2004 as part of a series of articles marking 10 years of the establishment of the Constitutional Court, we found that the only thing “the site of Grootboom has to show for that victory is the smelly ablution block, built over a donga that had served as a latrine for the squatters who went to court.”
“Leaking sewage and piles of rotting rubbish smell so bad in Grootboom that you can actually taste the stench. Most of this rotten air, which coats your tongue with a tingling sensation, comes from an ablution block the size of a small house in the centre of the settlement,” the report read.
A week before Irene Grootboom died, the Cape Argus interviewed her in her shack and she spoke of how she was still waiting for promises to be fulfilled.
She told the newspaper of her frustration and pain: “I was supposed to get a house a while back, but I’m still in a shack which I share with my sister-in-law and her three children. They keep promising us ... I’m sick and tired of the whole thing ...
“When it rains, water seeps through every crevice and the thing is submerged in water. I try to repair it but I can’t do much.”
She died in that shack less than a week later. She was just 39 years old.
There is no doubt that her living conditions killed her. And that those who failed to change her conditions bear some responsibility for her premature death.
In the next few months, South Africa’s political parties will be knocking on our doors — and particularly the doors of the poor majority— asking us to support them.
They will promise all sorts of things — houses, clinics, schools.
A pity it is that Irene Grootboom will not be there to ask them what happened to their last promises.
- The Times
1 comment:
Even Irene saw the arms South Africa bought...
We can go see this huge expense. Lying in the dry dock;
BUT
Where are the houses of equivalent value?
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