Programme director,
Ladies and gentlemen,
When I received the invitation to speak here this morning, my mind raced back in time to think about all the generations of youth in our country’s history that have played a decisive role to bring our country to where it is today.
South Africa’s history is littered with countless examples of youth heroism, many young people who gave up their youth and often their lives in the service of the nation.
This made me think that people often refer to the youth as future or tomorrow’s leaders.
But, the question ought to be asked, why should the youth be expected to wait until tomorrow before they assume leadership responsibility today!
Indeed, why should they sit idly and wait until they inherit a tomorrow they neither helped to conceptualise nor to construct.
I wish strenuously to contend today that I believe in the theme, “developing future leaders today!”
This would enable them to develop insight and practical experience in leadership so that when tomorrow shall come, they are not confronted for the first time with an unknown responsibility to have to exercise leadership when they have not developed the tools, the insight and, of course, the experience to meet this challenge.
It is when the youth are given responsibilities today and made to be part of constructing a vision of the future and of pursuing that vision that they will become even better leaders tomorrow.
The youth of today are both the inheritors of yesterday as well as the builders, the midwives of tomorrow. They constitute a critical bridge between the past, present and future.
Time and again, young people become the catalysts of the progressive change we seek, and through their death-defying daring, they help to make history.
The whole world has observed with awe the bravado and epoch-making feats of the youth of Egypt and Tunisia over the last few months, turning their reality and that of their peoples and the world upside-down, showing once more that the youth are capable of exercising tomorrow’s leadership today relying on their fearlessness and commit unimaginable feats to bend the arch of history yet again.
The mass uprising we have witnessed in North Africa, in which the youth played a catalysing role, must speak to us not only of the importance of democracy, but also of the important need to invest in young people as agents for progressive change.
We now know that the youth are a vital force for the future and that conditions permitting, they shake off their complacency as well as that of their nations to provide the most requisite leadership to their societies, today!
These youth reminded me of that golden generation of youth of 1944 that founded the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), led the defiance campaign, formed Umkhonto WeSizwe, went to exile, served in prison and the underground, and yet had the astonishing courage, foresight and leadership to hold the nation by the hand on a journey through reconciliation and nation-building.
Of this generation we can truly say that they lived in the future and by their deeds taught us what it meant to be youth, and how a youth generation should conduct itself in respect of their responsibilities as a generation in relation to their nation.
They distinguished themselves in the struggle by their heroism, bravery, sacrifices and sheer humanism and dominated South African politics for a period spanning over five decades.
We are correct today to regard their contribution to our struggle as having been extraordinary, not because they themselves were extraordinary, but because, ordinary as they were, their actions exceeded the bounds of the ordinary and performed became extra-ordinary.
Among the most eminent members of that generation was one Anton Muziwakhe Lembede from rural Mbumbulu in KwaZulu-Natal, who became the founding President as well as the foremost thinker on the philosophy of African Nationalism.
Lembede and his comrades were a product of what can be regarded as the third tidal wave of the struggle, the preceding two having been the anti-colonial wars and the launch of the ANC in 1912 following the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.
Lembede spent his entire productive energy trying to lead his generation to define a new vision for the struggle in a difficult period when confusion loomed large.
He was a steadfast believer in the course of Africans and Africa, was unapologetic in his convictions that Africans had to be free, and to free themselves by their own efforts and was tireless in his pursuit of the dream of African Nationalism.
Lembede and his generation did three critical things that helped to define their indelible contribution to the struggle; that is:
- First, they redefined the content of the struggle out of the confusion in which it had been plunged at the time by both objective and subjective conditions, by implanting into it a purpose and mission – a strategic objective
- Secondly, they interpreted the new conditions of the struggle emerging internationally and locally as a result of the war and the domestic situation, events which led to the eventual election of the National Party in 1948 and
- Thirdly, they re-energised the struggle by injecting it with new tactics which changed its course in the years that were follow, leading to the adoption of the armed struggle as a tactic and pillar of the struggle.
In all of this, what stands out is their remarkable bravery and clarity of thought.
Amazingly, as testimony to the greatness and interconnectedness of our course, almost three decades after his death, yet another young African patriot, great intellectual, pioneer and pathfinder, Steve Bantu Biko, was to re-kindle the lived experiences of the forties as then articulated by Anton Lembede.
What was the contribution of the generation of Steve Biko to the struggle?
To understand this, we must first remember that the seventies were the second decade of that period of extreme reaction that had started in 1960 following the Sharpeville Massacre, characterised by brutal and naked violence, the banning of the liberation movement, the exile of the leadership and mass cadres of the movement and the imprisonment of others.
In response, the liberation movement, both the ANC-led Alliance and the PAC had launched the armed struggle in order to be able to meet the regime’s violence with arms, as it became clear during the Sharpeville Massacre that the regime had come to a point where it could not understand the language of mass defiance and civil disobedience.
During the seventies when Steve Biko and his comrades made their indelible mark, the masses of our people seemed to have been totally demobilised by and succumbed to the repressive machinery of the regime.
What Steve Biko and his generation did was to revitalise the struggle and inject it with a new purpose and energy, implanting in the masses of the people the conviction that the regime was not as invincible as it had portrayed itself and that the masses themselves were not heartless cowards that the regime had tried to portray them as.
The masses needed to be re-injected with a belief in the superiority of their course and in the formidability of their militant united action.
As in the forties, black people had to be made to believe that they were inferior to no one, and that they had both to stand as proud equals to other peoples and to fight for that equality themselves.
Steve Biko and his generation redefined the content of the struggle out of the confusion in which it had been plunged by the decade-long banning of the liberation movement, the exiling of its leadership while others were in prison or the underground.
They interpreted the new conditions of the struggle emerging internationally and locally, in the period that followed the Durban workers’ strike, the heightening of repression and general retreat of the liberation movement.
They gave a new impetus to and re-energised the struggle by injecting it with new ideas and tactics which changed its course in the years that were follow.
In a very real way, the mass uprisings of the eighties owed a lot to the intervention of this generation of the youth of the seventies.
Steve Biko had played a catalysing and pre-eminent role in all of these developments, being the brains behind and chief organiser of it all.
Just as Anton Lembede almost three decades earlier had mobilised the African masses behind the rallying call of African Nationalism, Steve Biko mobilised them around the rallying call of Black Consciousness.
Yet again, as during the period of Anton Lembede, the South African youth rediscovered the meaning of their generation and essence, and defined their tasks around this mission.
Decades earlier, in a different period and struggle, but virtually similar context, an Algerian revolutionary, Frantz Fanon, had said:
“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it”.
Likewise, Steve Biko’s generation, as that of Anton Lembede and Frantz Fanon before them, sort out of relative obscurity to discover their mission, and chose to fulfil, never regarding betraying it as an option.
It was for this reason that Anton Lembede’s generation coined for themselves as well as the generations of youth that succeeded them the mission summed up in the slogan – “Freedom in our Lifetime!, which was to prevail until freedom was achieved.
Both Anton Lembede’s and Steve Biko’s generations regarded it as their birth-right to be free, and where that freedom had been taken away and denied their people, to mobilise their people to fight for it by their own efforts until it was achieved.
Every youth generation has grappled with these questions: What is our mission? What are the tasks attendant to this mission? What is the future they are prepared to sweat for and to determine by their own efforts?
It is often said that a society gets the leaders it deserves, but the question is, do leaders get the society they deserve?
The leadership that came from likes of Anton Lembede and Steve Biko in this context was a break from the melancholy acceptance of inferiority.
Life in South Africa at the time demanded acceptance of the contaminated environment of inequality, hatred and iniquity.
After all, it was within this destitute epoch where many women and men who believed in non-violence met violent ends; where women and men who stood for the ideas of an equal and inclusive society were removed from it to be secluded and isolated prisoners and exiles.
Leadership, in this context, was far from an offer of prestigious position, accolades and rewards; it was a guarantee of victimisation, subjugation and brutality, where there always loomed large the possibility of a brutish end.
Leadership as a career in regressive political battlefields of the past was in itself a life-limiting option.
Their stories of leadership and heroism are no longer popularly known to today’s beneficiaries of their selfless sacrifices, receding as they are into the past, but their dreams live on, surging us still onward ever to carry on the march to a better future.
These leaders, whether celebrated and forgotten, proposed more than what was given to them by society; they were pioneers of today’s reality; capturing under difficult and negating circumstances the true sense of leadership by fearlessly refusing to conform to the proposition of their predicaments.
They challenged the imposed proposition that they were inferior beings and undeserving of the opportunity to pursue freedom, happiness and self fulfilment.
Leadership is at its best when it is not guided by comfort and favour but motivated by conviction, principle and the unrelenting belief that better and humane conditions are achievable, that what we can become need not be confined to what we are due to fear, repression and the denial of opportunities.
Theirs was a leadership for a better world that rose in face of brutality; that transcended the conditions of their limitations to reach a pioneering and iconic level; indeed, a leadership characterised by what Chief Albert Luthuli described as “courage that rises with danger”.
Today, as we recognising and applauding South Africa’s future leaders, we must reflect not only on the past, but as well on the present moment of globalisation and the impact it has on democratic and popular participation and the role of the youth within it.
One of the predominant views during the process of globalisation as we have known it has been that the state has a minimal role in directing the affairs of nations, but instead, actual power resides with, or has shifted to, the market.
Countries, especially in the developing world, have been coerced and cajoled to adopt this paradigm without regard to their unique experiences.
Deviation from this paradigm, particularly during the period that followed the advent of the neo-liberalism, also known as market fundamentalism, has been severely punished.
In this arrangement, we have witnessed in many countries the shrinking of politics as the voice of citizens is usurped by the economic elites, and the citizens are turned into conforming spectators of the political processes in their own countries.
Most countries are products of popular uprisings or of popular democratic struggles, yet we have recently witnessed the tyranny of the market and economic elites aimed at silencing the popular voice of the people by demobilising them from participation in politics and democracy.
This has found more resonance among the youth who have in large measure become the greatest victims of this tendency towards diminishing participation in politics and in elections, the consequences of which have already been dismal.
Of course, the Egyptian and Tunisian youth have hoisted this tendency at its own petard.
The question is, are they going to sustain their popular participation in politics? When democratic elections are eventually held in these countries, will the youth participate or will they once more retreat into apathy?
How is the world’s youth going to respond to the example set by the Egyptian and Tunisian youth? Are we going to shake off our apathy and participate, and reject the notion that politics and decision-making is for the elites?
Are the South African youth going to participate in the upcoming local elections on 18 May?
As off-springs and proud descendants of a popular uprising ourselves, once mobilised by Anton Lembede and Steve Biko, will Egypt and Tunisia re-ignite our faith in popular participation, to encourage us to participate in our overwhelming numbers in local and future general elections!
We cannot afford to surrender our role as the midwives and builders of tomorrow.
Those of you in the corporate sector, leading both today and tomorrow, have an important obligation to help elaborate a vision of where our country and peoples should aim to be in 20 or 30 years from today.
You must develop a better grasp of the system of governance and accordingly assist the public sector to fulfil its responsibilities especially here, in a developing country that is in Africa.
There needs to be greater cooperation between future public and corporate sector leaders, based on mutual trust and a shared vision, rather than mutual and petty fears and suspicions, to pursue the goals which are shared, not just by our respective sectors, but our people as a whole.
Together, we can harness the immense potential of information and communication technology (ICT) and other such capabilities to enhance access by the citizen to what the system of governance is doing, to participate in all aspects of social development, to enhance transparency and accountability, indeed, to expand the frontiers of freedom and protect our democracy.
As we pondered some of the critical challenges of our sixteen-year old democracy, we have come to the conclusion that job creation through economic transformation ranks as a top priority.
One of the underlying assumptions of the New Growth Path is the capacity of the state to deliver on the agreed objectives. The New Growth Path is based on the rejection of the notion that the state has no role to play in the economy; that there is a Chinese Wall between the state, politics, and the economy.
One of the issues that has had to be pondered about, accordingly, is: does the public sector possess all the requisite skills for it to be able to deliver on the NGP commitments?
Further to this, we have to ask the question whether there is anything wrong or to lose, or put differently whether there is nothing to be gained, from involving the skilled professionals from the corporate sector in the public sector!
One of the great misconceptions of our time is that the public sector is constituted of lazy, unskilled and unprofessional people.
Yet the reality is that whilst there are some bad elements among those in the public sector, there are many, many more public servants whose dedication is beyond reproach, who are applying their skills, professionalism and energies way beyond the call of duty.
There are many people from the corporate sector who, upon joining the public sector with these misconceptions, have come to change their opinions as they realised that there are many diligent and hard-working public servants who disproved this thesis of laziness, lack of skills and lack of professionalism.
Many of these people from the corporate sector joined the public sector and soon realised that there is a lot of work in the public sector, requiring inordinately abnormal working hours with lesser incentives than are available in the corporate sector.
This notwithstanding, we must pose for ourselves the question whether we truly should not mobilise young professionals in the corporate sector, future leaders of corporate South Africa, to play a role in assisting to augment the public sector to deliver the services required of it, not because the public sector is not coping, but because of that crucial conviction that working together we can do more.
We must evolve a unique South African ethos in terms of which there is a strong inter-connection between the corporate and public sectors, so that our public sector can also benefit from the corporate sector skills and ethos.
If we can harness the collective spirit and skills of all South Africans in a vital push towards improving the lot of our people, we stand a better chance to address some of the gaps in the public sector and improve service delivery.
In our case, both to reverse the legacy of the past and to found a future predicated on the noble values of our Constitution, of social justice, we have to build a strong democratic developmental state that would lead and harness both the public and corporate sectors towards serving all the people of our country equally, especially those that are poor, unemployed and vulnerable.
The point we are making here is that the young leaders of the corporate and public sectors can enhance their skills immensely from exchanging experiences and knowledge, for the benefit of both sectors which they serve as well as the country as a whole.
We are duty-bound, as young South African leaders, one and all, to convert South Africa into an ideal society where freedom becomes the lived experience of all our people.
In so doing, future corporate and public sector leaders will contribute to the unfolding of the mission of the present generation of youth and live true to the legacy of the preceding youth generations of Anton Lembede and Steve Biko – pathfinders of a better tomorrow and midwives of our freedom.
I thank you very much.
Source: Department of Public Enterprises
