In search of a shift moment
If you’re wondering what SA needs today to rekindle hope, you should look to a moment that took place in the high-octane period before SA’s first democratic election. At the time, violence was ripping through KwaZulu-Natal, and the volatile Vaal Triangle appeared to be perpetually on the brink of a civil war. Then it all got much worse.
At 10am on April 10 1993, right-wing extremist Janusz Walus climbed out of a red Ford Laser and fired four shots at Chris Hani in the driveway of his Boksburg home, killing him. Hani, at 50, was probably SA’s secondmost-popular politician after Nelson Mandela. At that point, the country could have gone either way.
Then came that “shift moment”. Mandela, who was not yet SA’s president, stepped up to calm everyone. All the SABC channels were cleared so that he could address the country. Amid heated calls from within his own party to withdraw from negotiations with FW de Klerk, Mandela appealed “to all our people to remain calm and to honour the memory of Chris Hani by remaining a disciplined force for peace”.
Over the course of the next week, ANC leaders including Mandela, Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale channelled the outrage and fury into marches and demonstrations.
I believe this was the sort of “shift moment” that transforms a country s trajectory. Had Mandela not acted as he did, there was frightening potential for SA to’ erupt into even more bloodshed. Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, in her book Confidence, uses this as an example of how Mandela’s leadership eschewed populism in favour of confidence-building.
In July 1995 there was another example of a “shift moment”, again involving Mandela, but this time as the country’s president, when he arrived at Ellis Park wearing a No 6 rugby jersey, a replica of that worn by Springbok captain Francois Pienaar. On that day, the Boks defeated the All Blacks to win their first Rugby World Cup. Mandela helped change rugby from a symbol of whiteness to something that could unite SA.
There have, of course, been other shift moments over the years. One example is De Klerk’s transforming of SA’s fortunes when he suddenly announced the release of Mandela in February 1990, after 27 years of political imprisonment. The adoption of the constitution is another.
Today, though, the country stands at another crossroads. In May, Ramaphosa who took over as president early last year after Jacob Zuma was forced out was returned to power in national elections. This triggered a spirit of hope and much talk of how a “new dawn” would inspire the country to great things.
Sadly, a slew of bad news in recent months (partly around Eskom and crippling unemployment) has led to the dominant talk in dinner-time conversations devolving to a discussion of: what happened to this new dawn? The ink was hardly dry on the ballot papers before the complaints began that “we’d just been sold dreams”.
The question we should be asking ourselves is: whose job is it to translate this new dawn into a bright day?
We, as South Africans, need to take ownership of where we are and appreciate that we weren’t “sold dreams but when we voted, we made a promise to ourselves.
If we could find another “shift moment”, which I believe we need, it would entrench our sustainable democracy and rule of law.
It’s unclear where this could come from. Some believe the social media campaign #ImStaying has some potential to move the needle, especially when it comes to defusing racial polarisation.
At a recent Stellenbosch University Social Justice Café, I spoke to four (all white) colleagues, who felt this could indeed shift the sentiment. But I was a little surprised that they said that such a shift could be made far more significant if it was accompanied by people admitting to the impact of their past privilege, and voicing a commitment to reversing the legacy created by that. It was the turn of the white people, my colleagues said, to emulate Mandela.
As a potent example of what can be done they cited actress Charlize Theron’s acknowledgment that she benefited from white privilege during apartheid, an admission that she leverages to advance social inclusion.
While it’s true we have a constitution that establishes the foundation for “healing the divisions of the past”, that’s a healing tool not a magic wand. The onus should be on us as citizens to engage in deliberate efforts to keep our promise to ourselves.
To do so, we’ll need to rid ourselves of three insidious pathologies that have held us back.
The first pathology is this notion that the only thing that derailed our path was Zuma, and that all we must do is reclaim the trajectory we were on before he was elected in 2009. This isn’t true.
Zuma slipped through only because of the fightback from those people left behind, and the structural racial disparities that had festered for years unattended. This is the real problem not one man.
The second pathology is that Zuma was removed from power last year because he was pushing for radical economic transformation to fix poverty and inequality. This is just as false. Zuma did nothing for social justice except pass the buck for #Fees Must Fall and land restitution to Ramaphosa on his way out the door.
Zuma left poverty at 55% with poverty among black people at 64.2%, against 1% for whites. Equally, “radical economic transformation” was often used as a guise for rampant corruption and, for good measure, white business was made the scapegoat for all that was wrong.
The third pathology is that Ramaphosa must deliver our new dawn. Obviously that can’t work. It takes a village to succeed.
I believe we can find a new “shift moment”. The recent Social Justice Summit in Stellenbosch presented many glimmers of hope.
Ben Turok, a struggle stalwart and economist, wrote of how magical it was that speakers from such contrasting backgrounds (from the JSE’s former CEO Nicky NewtonKing, politicians including Helen Zille and Jackson Mthembu, academics like Adam Habib and Jonathan Jansen, and government officials) actually reached a consensus on what needs to be done.
“I expected total discord and anticipated complete disagreement on such critical issues as employment, human rights and the rest ... [but] what was different this time was the consensus that emerged in discussion in the most diverse of panels,” wrote Turok.
Everyone, including government and business, endorsed the social justice M-Plan, which I put together, aimed at finding ways to leverage social capital for justice.
The only way, I believe, to get out of our current mess is to join hands to accelerate social justice, good governance and nationbuilding efforts.
I believe it’s the kind of social pact that can provide just the sort of “shift moment” to make a difference to the country’s trajectory.