Last week, South Africa marked Freedom Day. At a shopping centre, I overheard a group of seemingly intoxicated students debating: “We are free, but what does that freedom mean?” one asked. “Other than the fact that racial laws are gone, I don’t see much change,” another replied.
I was not sure whether their words were genuine or blurred by alcohol. One of them added: “We are free indeed! During apartheid, Blacks weren’t even allowed to drink alcohol. Imagine a world without brandy, wine or spirits!” They burst into laughter, listing expensive liquor brands as if freedom meant the right to binge.
That was when I stepped in. “Gentlemen, do you really think freedom is about drinking without restraint?” My intervention ruffled feathers. One retorted: “The problem with you old men is that you think you’re smarter than us. We live in a fast world. Back in your day, you wrote letters to girlfriends and waited five days for a reply. By then, the appetite was gone!”
Their laughter rang out again. I remembered the old idiom: “Don’t argue with a fool, or else people may not notice the difference.” I walked away, leaving them behind, still mocking me.
Later, I phoned the same lecturer who had previously spoken to me about universities becoming “marriage test grounds”. I shared my encounter. He laughed heartily: “Ha! Ha! Ha! That’s just a taste of what we deal with daily, my friend.”
Then his tone turned serious. “My brother, apartheid was evil, but some laws — though harsh — were grounded in moral values. Respect for elders was sacrosanct. Mocking an elder was taboo. Biblical principles were instilled in us through that very system. Yes, many laws were cruel, but let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Corporal punishment, for example, was rooted in ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’. It instilled discipline. Since its repeal, look at the consequences: teenage pregnancies, HIV and AIDS, drug abuse and violent crime. Discipline has collapsed.”
He sighed deeply before continuing: “Education is almost free now through NSFAS. Yet unemployment remains stubbornly high. Students graduate but sit at home, restless and hopeless. So I ask: are we truly free? Did free education liberate our minds from oppression, or did it simply remove fees without changing our thinking?”
To illustrate, he recalled a Freedom Day party organised by NSFAS-funded students. They rented sound systems, bought alcohol in bulk and celebrated until dawn. By morning, two were hospitalised after a violent fight, and another was arrested for drug possession.
“This is what worries me,” the lecturer said. “Instead of honouring the sacrifices of those who fought for freedom, many students waste opportunities. They confuse liberty with licence.”
VKRA Reflections
Freedom Day should remind us of the blood, sweat and tears shed by generations before us. Yet when students misuse free education, indulge in reckless living and fail to grasp the pain endured by activists, it is as if they spit in the faces of those who fought for liberation.
The 1976 generation used classrooms as battlegrounds for justice, discipline and vision. Today’s generation risks turning classrooms into playgrounds of immorality and despair.
True freedom is not the repeal of racial laws alone — it is the liberation of the mind, the discipline of the heart, and the responsibility to honour sacrifices with purposeful living.
Will today’s students rise to honour freedom with discipline and vision, or will they squander it until history judges them as the generation that betrayed liberation?