Silent cohort called to build and restore
Iam an executioner,” declared a well-built, brown-haired man in a plain suit. This has to be one of the funniest moments I have had interviewing potential employees. I am pleased to report that laughter was successfully suppressed.
Putting the niceties of diction aside, one can understand the man’s pride in his capability. In a society where service sector call centres can turn you into a monster, waiters have no peripheral vision and a government department can drive a person to suicide (a job-seeking man denied an ID killed himself in 2009), the ability to get things done is nothing to scoff at.
An honest tagline for SA could go something like: lofty ambitions, shoddy execution.
In the public and private sector alike, there are serious breakdowns in the ability to deliver services at an adequate level. Many explanations pin this record of poor implementation to low skill and education levels, but that does not explain why it seems there are no consequences for poor performance. Every day, the bar slips lower and not enough people speak up.
As my peer group approaches middle age in the next few years, I wonder if our contribution to the national project is to become — to make my humble contribution to our English language — supreme executionists (and definitely not attentionists). Mine is a “silent cohort” in many ways.
I see a distinct peer group of those who were born in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We were teenagers when apartheid fell. We imbibed the aspirations of the transition.
We are the ones who sat teary-eyed in front of our television sets when the nation’s new flag was unveiled. But we also know the harsh reality that came before. I know the terror of walking outside the State Theatre in the late 1980s after Barend Strydom had mowed down black people.
We have also gone through the policy frameworks. The Reconstruction and Development Programme I read during one hot school holiday in Hammanskraal. Gear came across my desk in university. The scandals also began seeping into our awareness: Sarafina, the arms deal and a steady stream of troubling headlines ever since.
The “Fallist” cohort is not free from the reach of apartheid, as statistics on poverty and unemployment constantly remind us. But they don’t have the first-hand experience of the wreckage we emerged from. We run out of words to explain the horror, humiliation and absurdity that was apartheid.
They also seem susceptible to grand visions. I have been stunned, in interactions with student leaders calling for free education, by the stance in the dominant sections of the movement that they do not need to concern themselves with questions of funding and implementation.
The work of following through, paying attention to details and navigating risks is not glamorous. Yet we sorely need a new movement driven by people (of all generations) who are passionate about getting things done.
One of the many manifestations of our backslide into a low-trust, low-confidence society is that it has become risky to invest dedication and care when it seems those in power are getting away with looting.
The next generation of leaders must rebuild the belief in people that their efforts matter and that society rewards those who develop capabilities to perform, not just the well connected.
The mission of my cohorts, and the broader generation we belong to, is to fix the plumbing and wiring of a grand mansion that threatens to collapse. Architects are not obsolete, but it is the builders who must lead us now.