His Excellency, Mr J G Zuma
President of the Republic of South Africa
Inkosi Simphiwe Zuma of Mpendle
Inkosi Bhekumuzi Zuma of Nkandla
The Honourable MEC for Safety and Security, Mr Willies Mchunu (who
is representing the Honourable Premier at the event)
The Honourable MEC for Social Development, Dr Meshack Hadebe
The Honourable MEC for Health, Dr Sibongiseni Dlomo
His Worship, the Mayor of UMvoti Municipality
The Honourable Justice Isaac Madondo
Distinguished Amakhosi
Honourable councillors
Leaders of business and industry
Ladies and gentleman
Comrades and friends
I feel greatly honoured and privileged to have been invited by the Zuma Royal House, to deliver the third Inkosi Matomela Memorial Lecture on the theme: "Education and Development: Reaching Out To Rural Communities."
From the little information at our disposal, thanks to the organisers of the lecture, we came to understand that Inkosi Matomela was a contemporary of, and enjoyed a cordial relationship with, King Shaka kaSenzangakhona, the great founder of the Zulu nation. This gave me a fair sense of the era of existence of Inkosi Matomela. I, then, started searching for a great event of his time; an event which, in my mind, could best serve the purpose of this lecture. The second part of my conversation relates to contemporary events, which cry for bravery, one of Inkosi Matomela's qualities.
The first part of my conversation with Inkosi Matomela is a long one about the big event of his time, which has been drawn from a text on economic history by one David Landes (1998, reprinted in 2007): The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. It is a conversation from which we draw the question: "If Inkosi Matomela were to arise from the "Otherworld" tomorrow, would he find his people living in better social conditions than those in which he left them? ‟ I quote: “In June of 1836, Nathan Rothschild left London for Frankfurt to attend the wedding of his son Lionel to his niece (Lionel’s cousin Charlotte), and to discuss with his brothers the entry of Nathan’s children into the family business. Nathan was probably the richest man in the world, at least in liquid assets. He could, needless to say, afford whatever he pleased.
Then fifty-nine years old, Nathan was in good health if somewhat portly, a bundle of energy, untiring to his devotion to work and indomitable of temperament. When he left London, however, he was suffering from an inflammation of his lower back, towards the base of his spine. (A German physician diagnosed it as a boil, but it may have been an abscess). In spite of medical treatment, this festered and grew painful. No matter: Nathan got up from his sickbed and attended the wedding… For all his sufferings, Nathan continued to deal with business matters, with his wife taking dictation. Meanwhile the great Dr Travers was summoned from London, and when he could not cure the problem, a leading German surgeon was called in, presumably to open and clean the wound. Nothing availed; the poison spread, and on 28 July 1836 Nathan died.
Nathan Rothschild died probably of staphylococcus or streptococcus septicaemia – what used to be called blood poisoning. In the absence of more detailed information, it is hard to say whether the boil (abscess) killed him or secondary contamination from the surgeons' knives. This was before the germ theory existed, hence before any notion of the importance of cleanliness. No bactericides then, much less antibiotics. And so the man who could buy anything, died of a routine infection easily cured today, for anyone who could find his way to a doctor or a hospital, even a pharmacy.
Medicine has made enormous strides since Nathan Rothschild’s and, of course, Inkosi Matomela's time. But better, more efficacious medicine - the treatment of illness and repair of injury - is only part of the story. Much of the increased life expectancy of these years has come from gains in prevention, cleaner living rather than better medicine. Clean water and expeditious waste removal, plus improvements in personal cleanliness, have made all the difference. For a long time the great killer was gastrointestinal infection, transmitted from waste to hands to food to digestive tract; and this unseen but deadly enemy, ever present, as reinforced from time to time by epidemic microbes such as the vibrio of cholera.
The best avenue of transmission was the common privy, where contact with waste was fostered by want of paper for cleaning and lack of washable underclothing. Who lives in unwashed woollens – and woollens do not wash well - will itch and scratch. So hands were dirty and the great mistake was failure to wash before eating.
The answer was found, not in changed religious belief or doctrine, but in industrial innovation. The principal product of the new technology that we know as the industrial revolution was cheap, washable cotton; and along with it mass-produced soap made of vegetable oils. For the first time, the common man could afford underwear, once known as body linen because that was the washable fabric that the well-to-do wore next to their skin. He (or she) could wash with soap and even bathe, although too much bathing was seen as a sign of dirtiness. Why would clean people have to wash so often? No matter. Personal hygiene changed drastically, so that commoners of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century often lived cleaner than the kings and queens of a century earlier.
The third element in the decline of disease and death was better nutrition. This owed much to increases in food supply, even more to better, faster transport. Famines, often the product of local shortages, became rarer; diet grew more varied and richer in animal protein. These changes translated among other things into taller, stronger physiques. This was a much slower process than those medical and hygienic gains that could be instituted from above, in large part because it depended on habit and taste as well as income.
Advances in medicine and hygiene exemplify a much larger phenomenon: the gains from the application of knowledge and science to technology. These give us reason to be hopeful about the problems that cloud present and future. They even encourage us toward fantasies of eternal life or, better yet, eternal youth.
Yet these fantasies, when science-based, that is, based on reality, are the dreams of the rich and fortunate. Gains to knowledge have not been evenly distributed, even within rich nations. We live in a world of inequality and diversity. This world is divided roughly into three kinds of nations: those that spend lots of money to keep their weight down; those whose people eat to live; and those whose people don't know where the next meal is coming from.
Along with these differences go sharp contrasts in disease rates and life expectancy. The people of the rich nations worry about their old age, which gets ever longer. They exercise to stay fit, measure and fight cholesterol, while away the time with television, telephone, and games, and console themselves with such euphemisms as “the golden years" and the troisième âge. “Young” is good; “old”, disparaging and problematic.
Meanwhile the people of poor countries try to stay alive. They do not have to worry about cholesterol and fatty arteries, partly because of a lean diet, partly because they die early. They try to ensure a secure old age, if old age there be, by having lots of children who will grow up with a proper sense of filial obligation.
From this first conversation we could draw courage from the fact that the government’s New Growth Path has identified and targeted all three elements of modern civilisation which account for improvements and increases in life expectancy: improved hygiene, industrial innovation and good nutrition. Regrettably, though, these three elements are virtually non-existent in most rural households! Last Saturday the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform was in Msinga to switch on lights for 760 households, and we were proud of it.
However, if that figure is compared with the 9 000 households which constitute Msinga, it is utterly insignificant! Yet, a young school girl was interviewed ironing her school uniform, proudly using an electrical iron at her home! We visited a water reservoir which the department has just completed constructing in Ndaya Village, from which people over there will draw clean piped water, at their door-step, for the first time in their lives!
This is the emerging story of rural communities in today’s South Africa. However, the answer to the question about Inkosi Matomela, which we posed at the beginning of the first conversation, is a big yes, he would recognise his former homestead, because there has not been much social change since his departure from it. We have a long, long way still to go to fundamentally change the lives of our rural population. But, the first step has been taken! As the Chinese say: "A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step‟.
The second conversation relates to our political life and times, in a text by one Jim Wallis (1994). The Soul of Politics: Beyond “Religious Right” And “Secular Left.” This fascinating text is about life in the most developed society in the world, the United States of America. It is about our time and world; time and world fast becoming consumed by desperation and pessimism, as epitomised by the author’s opening statement in this second conversation! I quote: “The world isn’t working. Things are unravelling, and most of us know it.”
Tonight, the urban children of the world’s only remaining superpower will go to bed to the sound of gunfire. Bonds of family and community are fraying. Our most basic virtues of civility, responsibility, justice, and integrity seem to be collapsing. We appear to be losing the ethics derived from personal commitment, social purpose, and spiritual meaning. The triumph of materialism is hardly questioned now, in any part of our society. Both domestically and globally, we are divided along the lines of race, ethnicity, clan, gender, religion, culture, and tribe, and environmental degradation and resource scarcity threaten to explode our divisions into a world of perpetual conflict!
Our intuition tells us that the depth of the crisis we face demands more than politics as usual. An illness of the spirit has spread across the land, and our greatest need is for what our religious traditions call "the healing of the nations.‟ The fundamental character of the social, economic, and cultural renewal we urgently need will require a change of both our hearts and our minds. But that change will demand a new kind of politics – a politics with spiritual values.
Several decades ago, Mohandes K Gandhi warned against what he called the seven social sins: politics without principle, wealth without work, commerce without morality, pleasure without conscience, education without character, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. These social sins today provide an apt description of our leading institutions and cultural patterns; they are the accepted practices of the life of the nation.
Several thousand years ago, the writer of the Proverbs warned, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” That ancient warning also applies to our contemporary situation. Without a vision, we are indeed perishing.
Politics is the discourse of our public life. There are real limits to what politics can provide to improve the human condition. But politics can make a difference, for good and for evil, in the ways that we live together. Political leaders can appeal to people’s best instincts (as when Martin Luther King Jr proclaimed: “I have a dream”) or manipulate their worst impulses (as when George Bush exploited the case of Willie Horton). Which values or fears are awakened or appealed to is, perhaps, the best moral test of politics and politicians.
It is possible to evoke in people a genuine desire to transcend our more selfish interest and respond to a larger vision that gives us a sense of purpose, direction, meaning and even community. Real political leadership provides that very thing; it offers to lead people to where, in their best selves, they really want to go.
Ladies and gentleman, honourable guests and the Zuma Royal Council, we may not openly agree with Jim Wallis’s diagnosis of our world and time; a world and time proclaimed by us as modern and civilised, led by the USA! Yet, the truth is, indeed, the world is not working! Leaders of the world today, unlike the likes of King Shaka kaSenzangakhona and Inkosi Matomela, lack collective vision and political courage, with the result that too many people are dying of fraud and corruption induced hunger, poverty-related diseases, war-induced famine, political conflicts, and of natural disasters induced by environmental degradation, such as excessive carbon gas emissions, led by the developed and industrialised nations of the world. The greatest tragedy is that rural communities the world over are the hardest hit by the consequences of this poverty of vision and political courage!
It is unfortunate, but true indeed, that if Inkosi Matomela were to arise today, he would find that in most rural areas, not much has changed since his departure more than 150 years ago; that is, there is a still lack of, or no access to, good nutrition, basic health care, decent housing, clean water and sanitation. Indeed, his people are exposed to debilitating illnesses and certain death due to preventable diseases, social crimes and physical abuse, as well as what Mahatma Gandhi refer to as the "seven social sins".
It is for this reason that meeting basic human needs is one of the three fundamentals that enshrine our approach to rural development in South Africa. The ANC-led government has, through the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (the CRDP), initiated numerous projects throughout the country, as part of its endeavour towards realising the vision of vibrant, equitable and sustainable rural communities. In KwaZulu-Natal, the government, through the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, working together with sister departments and provinces, has erected infrastructure in Msinga, Vryheid and Nkandla, ranging from housing infrastructure (903 units in Ward 7, Vryheid), water services, sanitation, crèches, fencing, irrigation infrastructure (kwa-Nxamalala), renovated school class-rooms, and installed electricity (Kwadolo).
In Sisonke, the department is facilitating the transfer of 15 000 hectares of state owned land to the Impendle community, and 19 000 hectares to the Makhuzeni communities. It has, through the household profiling undertaken in these communities, emerged that urgent government assistance is required, in order to improve their living conditions. The most urgent needs identified thus far, are that of housing and sanitation. The department is further proposing the establishment of an agri village in Impendle, to support and sustain the community, as well as the revitalisation and development of agricultural activities for both communities.
In Nkandla, the department, working with sister departments and the Masibambisane Community Development Trust, are finalising the design for a boarding school that will include a science laboratory, library and sports facilities, as part of the “Smart Village” concept. It is envisaged that this facility will be completed during the 2012/13 financial year.
The department is in the process of engaging the Department of Basic Education, in signing a Memorandum of Understanding, that will put in place an agreement for an all encompassing and integrated rural school infrastructure development programme, which will include amongst others, the renovation and building of schools, early childhood development centres, laboratories, libraries, and sports facilities. This will ensure that rural schools enjoy the same, if not better, facilities to those in urban areas.
Social cohesion and development is the ultimate goal of the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP) Social cohesion is integrally linked to the provision of all deserving services in rural communities. The greatest enemy of development is haste; the urgent desire for immediate results.
This is the enemy of development. One of the eminent scholars of development theory and practice, David Korten (1980) puts this point gently, when he says: “The excessive pressure for immediate results, as measured by goods and services, drives out attention to institution building, and makes it difficult to move beyond a relief and welfare approach to poverty. The distribution of food is a lot faster than the teaching of people how to grow food.”
Ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing romantic about underdevelopment and its socio-economic manifestations: poverty, unemployment, income inequality and cultural backwardness. It took three basic elements to lift Europe from cultural backwardness to modern civilisation: personal hygiene, industrial innovation and good nutrition. Rothschild was not killed by poverty, income inequality or unemployment, no. He was the world’s richest man at the time he succumbed to a boil or abscess! He was, arguably, killed by cultural backwardness: medical science and technology had not yet advanced to the stage they are at today; and, there was less attention paid to basic cleanliness or hygiene, as a preventative measure against contagious diseases.
Our rural people need these services, and much more – food, clean piped water, sanitation services, transport, roads, energy, recreation facilities, and decent housing. That is why meeting these basic human needs is the top priority in the CRDP. Working together, we can overcome the challenges facing rural communities. It can be done!
I thank you.
The third Inkosi Matomela Memorial Lecture, presented by Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, GE Nkwinti (MP) Greytown, KwaZulu-Natal
