Our communities need to raise kids in traditional ways
IT’S CERTAINLY not too late for South Africa to change from its current path of passive accumulation and materialism to embrace a fresh path of robust learning and development. Our society now faces a distinct threat of disintegration. Different groups have started, in one form or another, toying with the dangerous idea of racial nationalism.
Our expensive investments in formal education, employment creation, black economic empowerment and social grants have not produced the expansive outcomes we sorely need. They have not been able to accommodate enough of the historically disadvantaged millions to allow the country to stabilise and begin the long and hard journey to prosperity.
We have not produced the cutting-edge leaders, hard-nosed implementers and intellectual guerrillas to simplify the complexities of our society. The sea-change we seek cannot take place if we do not provide conscientious mentors to our vulnerable. South Africa cannot go through another decade of socio-economic stagnation.
Any number you pick from the national annals, from the gross domestic product growth rate to productivity levels to unemployment rate and the quality of our matric passes, shows that we are a society built more upon promises than delivery. This mindset of learning and development must start within communities.
The change cannot be led by the government or business.
Black African communities need to return to their way of raising their kids, so that they can make progress in reversing the community disempowerment shenanigans of apartheid and colonialism.
Their challenge is to use communities as bases to mentor their children, kept back by disadvantaged upbringing, inadequate schooling and unrewarding occupations.
It is very tempting to say the people and institutions that destroyed black African communities must fix them. But history offers different lessons. Black African communities must prepare their children to lead effectively, and do so in very hard times.
Black African children who enter workplaces without having taken full advantage of ordinary opportunities in their communities of origin as they grow up, stand very little chance of achieving true success.
The world of employment is dominated by the worst forms of materialism. Only those cultured in community consciousness from an early age can enter workplaces and start helping to bend the arc of opportunity towards black African communities.
They are our nation’s hope of making communities and workplaces benefit equitably and concurrently from the talents of the people they share.
Being unable to find employment is a painful reality for many black African children. But being employed and alienated from their communities is no less painful.
A human being is an energy mix comprising five main energies, namely physical, emotional, mental, sexual and spiritual energies.
Critical factor
In real life, some human beings are more effective than others. A critical factor that drives this is the quality that goes into moulding these energies into individualities.
Quality work helps to produce people with growth mindsets, who commonly trust in God and find satisfaction from sharing their blessings with His people.
Shoddy work produces people with fixed mindsets, who tend to doubt God and think He does not have enough for everybody.
Fixed mindsets are accumulative whereas growth mindsets are developmental. A fixed mindset prevents leaders from doing right, no matter their intelligence, education, experience or background.
Two forces help to shape human beings as they grow up. Those forces are the individual’s own drive and the environment they exist within.
The environment, on the other hand, has two actors – namely the people who are on your side and can mentor or help you as well as those who are not on your side and can hurt your interests.
Black African leaders have allowed their communities to lose their ability to shape the lives of their children for a long time.
The capture of institutions has taken place on their watch. They have allowed individual families to capture entire communities, using the power of resources they steal from the same communities.
They have allowed millions of black African children to miss decades of learning and are generally letting South Africa down by failing to show enough mettle for the complex and tortuous leadership battles taking place in our society.
For us to achieve a turnaround and deliver on our vision of producing a critical mass of black African excellence that can contribute decisively to a reforming South Africa, a rising Africa and a redeeming Earth, black African communities require both credible leadership and responsible membership.
Disillusionment
The current turmoil within black African communities is not only about young people hungering for economic opportunities. It is also about the disillusionment of much older people having spent decades in the world of work without making progress in either alleviating their poverty or developing their spirituality.
Our second decade of democracy has been characterised by several structural barriers which prevent black African children from making socio-economic progress.
One of those has been a lackadaisical supervision that many black African children receive both at home and at work.
The socio-economic distress in black African communities is both systemic and deepening.
My own children’s generation is characterised by even more desperate environments.
It takes sides in their parents’ fight over their grandparents properties because it cannot provide alternatives, faces extreme unemployment and underemployment, openly disrespects older people, seeks refuge in social media celebrity statuses and drug abuse.
The black African child must knowledge up and knuckle down to provide their communities with a conscientious leadership that is creatively intrusive and courageously disruptive.
A leadership that is relevant, resistant and robust.
The widespread corruption in our society is a consequence of selfish and timid leaders who worry about losing their positions and lack personal integrity and competence to enforce accountability upon individuals and institutions.
No amount of technical mechanisms can replace personal integrity at the base of our society, if we are serious about progress.
A human being is an energy mix comprising five main energies, namely physical, emotional, mental, sexual and spiritual energies