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MAR

LEVERAGING UBUNTU TO TRANSFORM SOUTH AFRICA

Keynote Address at the SAMEA Conference, Johannesburg


Thank you for the honour of your invitation to join you in your deliberations and celebration of the work you do. You are the rear-view mirror that is essential to governance and navigation of complex situations. A good driver uses both the rearview mirror and focuses on the road ahead.


We are standing at a crossroads as a country. We have the huge potential to become a thriving constitutional democracy if we learn from the mistakes and failures of the first 30 years of our life as a society in transition towards the future of our dreams. We owe it to those who gave their youth and lives to this cause. The reality we must face up to is that we have failed to make democracy come alive in the lives of the majority of our fellow citizens.

There is a wise saying that when you are lost, go back to the beginning. We are lost as a nation that used to be regarded as a beacon of hope, and an example of national reconciliation. Our own national statistics speak of unprecedented youth unemployment, crime and violence, gender-based violence worse than all countries, except war torn societies. Why? The questions you have asked me to address 30 years after the dawn of our democracy are most revealing of the state of our nation. What is missing in a country that has so much promise, and the resources to achieve the goals we set for ourselves in 1994?

Let me share with you a few observations to help us address the questions before us:


1)        Political Settlements without Socio-Economic Transformation are hollow.

In 1990 when Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was preparing to be released, he asked me as a then researcher at UCT and activist, to help assemble a Team of experts to advice those who would be negotiating our transition to democracy. His words to me were: “We are coming back to a country we no longer know. Decades in prison, and in exile, have created a gap between the country we left and the one we are coming back to. We need help to close that gap.”  What was needed in his view was socio-economic expertise not only from academia, but also from experience on the ground by civil society activists. It took less than a few days to assemble no less than 16 names of committed citizens prepared to offer their services for free to pave the way to a future we all desired.


Sadly, when Mandela put this proposition to his fellow ANC comrades, he was told that they had their OWN people who knew what was needed. The rest, as they say, is history. So many missteps that could have been avoided. Niel Barnard, the chief Apartheid Intelligence boss who steered the negotiation process, boasts in a 2015 book entitled The Silent Revolution, that the National Party and its business partners were amazed at how little was demanded wro socio-economic transformation. They had expected demands for restructuring to effect socio-economic justice, instead of Affirmative Action and BEE. It should come as no surprise that fully 72% of land in private ownership – the foundation of wealth – remains in white hands.


Our political settlement however laudable, without the fundamental transformation of the inherited colonial and apartheid social-economic system, designed to perpetuate the marginalisation of the majority by a minority, has inevitably continued to fuel poverty, inequality, and inequity. The ANC’s embrace of a neoliberal system that has been shown the world over to be an engine of enrichment of a few at the expense of many. The choice of the dominant neoliberal economic system that is extractive fuelling planetary emergencies, such as climate change, wars and conflicts, was not inevitable.


Our society could have been different had our political leaders been willing to learn and listen to alternative viewpoints. Countries such as Scandinavia, and post-Berlin Wall Germany, have demonstrated the power of inclusivity in unleashing the collective talents of all to be contributors to futures of wellbeing for all.  Raymond Aaron’s caution that too great a degree of inequality makes human community impossible, was ignored by our political leaders.  The tragic results are evident everywhere in our beautiful land.

 

2)        A Capable State is an Essential Building block for Prosperity

No country in the world has ever succeeded in transforming itself, and governing effectively, equitably, and in an environmentally sustainable way, without a competent, ethical, and accountable public service. 30 years of cadre deployment with gay abandonment of competence and skills as a requirement across the board in our beloved country, has undermined the dream spelt out in the Preamble of our Constitution.


My travels across our continent, and the world, points to a huge gap between what we committed to and where we are as a society.  We tend to look down upon other African countries, but they are in many respects ahead of us.  The key difference is their deployment of people in the public service from local, provincial, and national, who are highly educated, and skilled. These countries invest in quality education and skills development, quality health care, and they treat their citizens as sovereign the people on whose behalf they serve. Did you see the story of Mpumalanga only now distributed tablets and textbooks to schools in poor communities? What drives this irresponsibility and lack of compassion? Consequence management!  Ubuntu values are being actively suppressed to enable self-enrichment.

African values of Ubuntu are not unique to Africa. Humanity could only have evolved into who we are through the understanding that the essence of being human is to be relational – interconnected and interdependent within the web of life. Humans are at our best within the warm circle of loving relationships. As people migrated out of the Cradle of Humankind, they took these values with them, and now express them within their particular cultural settings. Indigenous people in the Americas, and in Asia invest time and energy to promote the values of their versions of Ubuntu – that there is no Me without the We. But they pay equal attention to inter species relationships within the web of life that sustains us.


The fault-lines of our society lie in our failure to live the Ubuntu we espouse. Can you imagine State Capture thriving in a country where a competent, accountable, and compassionate public service, is deployed? Never! As a society we have all the institutions we need to promote a capable state. The countervailing power of party loyalty undermines the values we profess of accountability and ethical professionalism. The emergence of a capable state can only be possible if this malignant loyalty is abandoned. The investments we are making in legislative and institutional mechanisms, including M&E in the Presidency, will not give us the returns we need unless party loyalty is subordinated to loyalty to the state.

A major stumbling block to living the values of Ubuntu is that we built a constitutional democratic governance system on the untransformed foundations of a colonial and apartheid state. The colonial state is in essence a captured state. It owed its loyalty to the imperial mother country: The Netherlands and later Britain. The apartheid system owed its loyalty to the National Party to protect and promote a segment of society seen as the chosen people on a colour coded template. The ANC embraced much of the template of a captured state of funding itself from state coffers through front organisations such as Chancellor House. It also used BEE to reward its cadres for their loyalty over the last 30 years.


You have a huge opportunity to turn things around as professionals. The current Auditor General is doing a great job in calling it like it is.  Your role as M&E professionals if exercised in a robust independent manner, could put state capturers and incompetent political actors at all levels of government, on notice. Mayors, Premiers, Cabinet Ministers, and the Office of the President, need to be placed in the spotlight. You need to ensure that your reports do not gather dust year in and year out.


The rhetoric of commitment to transparency needs to be translated into action on the ground at all levels of government. There is nothing better than sunshine to keep the environment clean. How do you manage the risks that come with reporting wrongdoing? Is there solidarity amongst you to strengthen your resolve and support one another to do only the right things?

 

What’s to be done?

You have the power as the generations 18-55years, to shape the future you would like to inhabit and to bequeath to your grandchildren. As Mandela said towards the end of his life: It is in your hands.


What are your assets?

-              You are the largest most educated cohort that has ever graced our country. According to the not so reliable 2022 census, the 15-55 age group is more than 50% of the total population of nearly 59 million.

-              Never underestimate what a small group of committed people can do to change the world. We were a small group of less than 20 in the late 1960s when we liberated ourselves from being called non-whites and non-Europeans! This under a brutal regime. What it took was for us to recognise that no one, however powerful, can dominate you without your acquiescence. Self-liberation frees the inner person to become an unstoppable change agent. We declared ourselves black and proud, and used our professional skills as teachers, doctors, social workers, nurses, etc. to inspire even the poorest communities, to liberate themselves from the humiliation of being treated as less than others. We modelled the future we wanted to see in all aspects of our lives. The result was the student uprising of June 16th  1976 driven by self-liberated secondary and high school students who rejected inferior education.  A national movement was ignited. Citizens refused to collaborate with a government that afforded them no dignity nor representation.

-              Language carries culture.  SA is anglicised in a manner that excludes most citizens. SA one of the few African countries that has no common indigenous language.  Names we carry and give our children tell a lot about who we are. We changed our names to reconnect with our ancestors.

-              What about your generation? You have more skills, more mobility, more resources, and the power of information technology, to organise yourselves into a solidarity of professionals driven by Ubuntu to serve the public. In addition, you have the power to act as accountable ethical citizens in the choices you make in your own lives. My generation understood that the personal, professional, and political choices we make, need to be driven by the same values of Ubuntu. What about you?

 

The future you desire is in all your hands!

Thank you.

8/10/24

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