Madiba dream deferred: we have to be clear about the SA we want

Mandela Day has shone a spotlight on the former president’s legacy – and how far SA has come to realising his dream and vision. But according to experts, people can’t honour him “with Mandela-era thinking, but by emulating his intellectual ability for creativity and innovation”.

As South Africans reflected on Mandela’s wisdom and ethics yesterday, Stellenbosch University futurist Dr Morne Mostert said on his 90th birthday, Mandela handed over the baton to citizens to create a new future – and many held on to the vision, but lacked the intellectual ability.

“One of the mistakes some leaders have made [is] instead of creating a new future, they held on to the past; the thinking of the past; the structures of the past; and the behaviour of the past,” he said. “Tata Madiba demonstrated not only this incredible empathy, but also his intellectual ability. He had a certain mindset, which leaders of today can learn from.”

Mostert said SA needed a leader with a new mindset of creativity, innovation. “What are the visions we have for a future SA? What is the foresight?” he asked. “So, how we can respond to this by honouring Mandela is to be crystal clear about the kind of SA we want, rather than the kind we don’t want.

“We are forever fighting poverty and combating racism. It’s not the way Mandela worked. He had a positive approach: he sketched a picture of what we do want, not what we don’t want. He said education is the key, but we have completely ignored education.”

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Economist Chris Hart said some of the biggest problems facing SA were rising inflation and rising unemployment. He said while the Mandela Day concept was to do good, it was not more people being able to help the few in need, but rather less people who were able to help with more – and more people in need – “and that’s going backwards”.

“In other words, for Mandela Day to work from a true upliftment point of view, you have to have a working economy.

“And the government has really done huge damage – we need to make progress.”

Political analyst Ongama Mtimka said, like elsewhere in the world, there will always be people who are poorer than others, which means there was a need for people to continue to give.

He said the uneven scale in society as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer was not what Mandela had envisioned.

“And if Mandela Day serves as a reminder, those who are relatively in a better position compared to others have a greater responsibility to their fellow human counterparts,” he said.

reitumetsem@citizen.co.za