A challenge to turn our destiny around

Human behaviour is sensitive and shaped by its environment – but social revolution is not beyond our power

IS SOUTH Africa a country of prosperity and hope, or is she a sinking ship that warrants abandoning? Max du Preez, a respected veteran journalist, provocatively questions whether freedom is just not a word when everything is at stake.

The realisation that our country and its people are being seriously challenged by a dark cloud of disparate agencies pulling and pushing in discordant directions is of concern.

Racism, sexism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism embedded in a foundation of crime, corruption, poverty and unemployment have produced a generation of disillusioned citizens who are now expecting government to deliver them from their miseries.

Is there, in the words of Malcolm Gladwell, “a tipping point”, a critical sociological mass, to our mutual fate? Is there enough positive sociological impetus to move the tectonic plates of our nation towards saving ourselves from destruction?

There is some compelling evidence to suggest we may just be able to pull it off if we try hard enough. I was among a group of privileged women to receive embargoed news well before the South African public when Nedbank hosted its private clients to a breakfast last week.

The guest speaker was none other than Debora Patta, a fearlessly robust investigative journalist who is a major irritant to errant politicians. She bore the breaking news story of Homo naledi and we knew then that the whole world was fixing its gaze on South Africa once again.

We are indeed newsmakers for our outstanding achievements in the arts, literature, medicine and the sciences and now with our latest palaeontological finds we have truly become the cradle of civilisation for all of humankind.

What a remarkable inheritance. Yet when we flip the coin over, what we find is a disturbing picture of a near-failing economy, corruption, uncontrollable crime and a flawed president supported unquestioningly by party hacks and enrichment seekers.

But then we have had a Mandela and now we have a Madonsela, both voices of conscience. Which side of the coin one chooses to see will depend on where we are located in the broad spectrum of South African life.

Right now South Africa is a damsel in distress and she needs every opportunity to salvage her mercurial image. If you had an opportunity to be born anywhere in the world would South Africa be your first choice?

For Debora Patta it would be, despite all of our social and political problems. Patta was painting a comforting view of her adoptive country and no one could refute her claims coming from a credible critic.

But much as we may admire the guts of this sharp investigative journalist her painting of South Africa is flawed by the stupidity of our bureaucracy.

With the rand in free fall at R14 to the dollar and over R21 to the English pound one would expect South Africa would be an attractive destination to international tourists. Instead, says Rob Rose of the Financial Mail, we are sabotaging ourselves at every turn.

From June this year our government has promulgated a ruling making it compulsory for anyone travelling to South Africa to carry an unabridged birth certificate for their children. In another bureaucratic debacle, the issue of dual citizenship is being threatened in an increasingly seamless world of constant human movement.

You can’t legislate against disloyalty to one’s country. You have to create conditions to make one proud of one’s country.

Neither can you target one group over another because in doing so, you create divisions among your populace. So what are the indices of hope for South Africans?

According to Patta, it’s our heritage of the Madiba magic that the world admires.

We are a courageous nation. We are a nation that perseveres. We are a nation that refuses to give up. Courage, said Mandela, is not the absence of fear, but how we choose to deal with it.

On a daily basis, South Africans are being killed, maimed, robbed, raped and harassed by a troubled, restless, hungry and violent mass, yet the feeding and social upliftment schemes for the poor are a touching indictment of our humanity.

South Africans through a spate of religious and community organisations are trying their level best to address the poverty of their fellow men and women at their doorsteps.

When little children raise funds to help others less fortunate than themselves we are surely creating a caring nation.

South Africa is a damsel in distress and she needs every opportunity to salvage her mercurial image

We certainly know how to give and share. Much as we may not believe it, we also have an entrepreneurial edge over many other countries in our development of the CAT scan, the Kreepy Krauley which is being used to clean over a million pools worldwide, barbed wire, Q20, Pratley’s putty, used in the Apollo mission to the moon, and the list goes on.

We have produced seven Nobel peace prize winners. We are a continent with rich resources and a functioning democracy with a great constitution.

We have a cohort of highly creative people whose skills can give rise to a social epidemic. Economists term this the 80/20 principle which is the idea that, in any situation, roughly 80% of the work will be done by 20% of the participants.

They are the connectors who are able to create social networks of high influence across economic, cultural and political circles to effect dynamic changes.

Then there are the mavens whom Gladwell describes as information specialists who accumulate knowledge which is shared throughout the marketplace.

They are information brokers who delight in spreading news to effect positive change. Human behaviour is sensitive and strongly shaped by its environment. If we can cultivate the right fodder for a social revolution to occur, we may be able to turn our destiny around. This is a challenge to every South African.

Rajab is a psychologist and a former dean of student development at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.