A compelling vision for South Africa
We are in a recession and South Africans are yearning for leadership.
Our country needs a compelling vision to inspire us to work together for a better future.
Right now, we’re in a recession, when we should be achieving a 5 per cent growth-rate and lifting our people out of poverty. Instead, our President will clown around until the end of his term and his opponents are going to tip-toe around the issues, trying not to upset any of the factions they depend on for a ticket to the Union Buildings, while the opposition is going to obsess over possible options for a coalition government. In so doing, they’ll all miss the moment – that South Africans are yearning for leadership.
South Africa does not lack leaders. It lacks leadership. South Africans are waiting – and this apathy has to stop.
Leadership is a rare commodity. Unlike coal or platinum that destroys the environment and pollutes the water when you mine it, true leadership turns everything around it into a resource for the common good. Just imagine if the leaders in our society woke up tomorrow and decided to act the part. Imagine what would happen if every business leader said, “I want to do my part in fulfilling the promise of a better South Africa.” Imagine if every community leader said, “Enough is enough, I am going to insist that this community is worthy of the people who live in it.” Imagine if every faith community leader said, “Not in my name and not on my watch – I will not allow the pillaging of the people’s purse and the violation of the their hard-won freedom.”
So in the absence of any political leadership to speak of, here is a stab at a compelling vision for South Africa. Instead of a 400-page plan such as the NDP, it’s a three-sentence promise we make to ourselves and one another: • Promise One: Every child receives a quality education.• Promise Two: Every young person has a job opportunity.• Promise Three: Every parent can feed his/ her family.
What will it take for every child to receive an education? Someone suggested banning all private schools as a way of fixing education. While I think the idea is absurd, the point is well taken – if the affluent had to see their children come home from school without experiencing a meaningful day of learning, they simply wouldn’t accept it and would get involved and fix the problem.
What would it take for every young person in South Africa to have a job opportunity? A few hundred more farms? A few thousand factories? A few billion dollars invested in infrastructure of all kinds? What would it take to give every person access to basic health care and the means to feed their family? These are things within our reach.
I believe in the ingenuity of South Africans. It would take a mere two decades to transform this country. Five years to fix education. Five years to expand our infrastructure. Five years to transform our food security system from a small pool of highly consolidated players to a tapestry of localised suppliers to address both the need for jobs and the strategic food security risk we now face. Another five to decentralise and massively expand our industries and become the call-centre experts on the continent.
This is not a call for government to get its act together. This is a call for South Africans to do what we do best – make a plan. Decide that we will succeed as a country in spite of our politicians, not because of them.
Just imagine if being South African meant a commitment to the three cardinal thing listed above. Surely that’s the right place to start? We would not be reaching for the stars, but we would be laying a foundation on which to build – and we have to start somewhere.
* Letter shortened for publication purposes.
