But how do we – while not ignoring the many deep challenges and often ghastly horrors of day-to-day life in our country – ignite hope and truly believe that South Africa will not fail?
Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa – In her latest column in City Press entitled “There is Hope for SA”, Professor Thuli Madonsela gives us a host of reasons why we should be hopeful.
She cites her recent Social Justice Summit in which a broad community of powerful stakeholders ratified her social justice M-Plan and where proverbial lions lay down with lambs: Former President FW de Klerk and Professor Ben Turok agreed on the catastrophic legacy of apartheid; Helen Zille and Wits Vice-Chancellor Adam Habib shared a vision for our country; students from Rhodes and Fort Hare held constitutional dialogue sessions with no hint of the vitriol we see in our politics.
We have come so far, and yet our South African narrative is so massively skewed towards the negative.
Living with hope
The piece that is missing from Prof Thuli Madonsela’s powerful exhortation, only we can scribe. And the question we must consider is this: How do we wish to live our lives in SA? With hope or without it?
Madonsela has clearly decided how she is going to live: Hopeful and actively involved (of course these are two sides of the same coin).
But how do we – while not ignoring the many deep challenges and often ghastly horrors of day-to-day life in our country – do the same? We know that to live with hope, whatever the circumstances are the only way to lead a happy and productive life. Yet amidst the relentless noise of bad (often fake) news and the constant, resulting barrage of negativity, it can be so hard to find flickers of hope. To cope, many of us settle for cynicism. It’s a way to survive.
But I invite you to consider this:
Taking the high road
There are two roads in this country. You might imagine them as a flyover suspended above a highway.
The flyover is used by scores of people each day; good people who are busily making this country work. They are hard-working; they don’t do corruption; they don’t spread lies, fake news or negativity; they have integrity and are passionate about seeing our country succeed. They are school principals, policemen and women, businessfolk, politicians, parents, domestic workers, engineers, NGO workers, advocates, judges, religious leaders, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, taxi drivers, admin clerks, labourers, entrepreneurs. They ensure that the single-story that South Africa is failing is a false narrative.
Then there are the ones on the low road. The media has much to say about them. Contrary to News24, braai-talk and social media, my lived experience of our country is that this is the quieter road.
Madonsela’s implicit challenge is this: Which road do you and I want to travel on? This is a choice that only we can make, knowing that if we choose to join the high road, it will take work and a constant commitment to fanning the flames of hope into being, for a better future for SA.
South Africa won’t fail
But it will be worth it because here’s some exciting news that most serious thinkers locally and abroad know but that gets very little airtime: Africa is rising – it is the next big thing.
And South Africa is not going to fail.
Join me on the high road.
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