Let’s not wait for new leadership
Why my hope lies in us to lead the change
My dad has a portable radio with chrome stripes, two dials and an antennae that keeps falling down. When it is time for news, the two of them are inseparable. Last month our family hunched over the radio to hear Cyril Ramaphosa, the newly elected president of South Africa, deliver his inauguration speech. After years of disillusionment with the government’s failure to model and create a just society, we are hungry for change.
South Africa is also gripped by a drought. On the same day that Mr. Ramaphosa was elected, it rained and rained. The rain and his election filled us with tender hope that things will be okay. I witnessed this same sprout of hope when Nelson Mandela was elected as president of South Africa, ending the barrenness of apartheid, promising to unite us the “Rainbow Nation.” I danced and sang in the streets, holding hands with people I’d been separated from.
Fast forward fifteen years after Nelson Mandela became our leader and the dream of a Rainbow Nation was still mostly just that, a nice thing to ponder. I lived a largely segregated life and could see little evidence that we were indeed transforming. I needed answers.
A search for answers elsewhere
In 2009, my search took me to the United States of America where its history of slavery became my teacher.
One evening I saw a play about the end of slavery. The sparse stage of raw timber construction became a slave ship docking on American soil, then a dusty auction selling off slaves, and later a blazing plantation field. Then we reached the end of the Civil War. Two slaves were standing in a pool of light, filled with hopeful anticipation. Slavery was over. In their hands they held their long-awaited freedom and my heart was buoyant with theirs.
These two people, having spent their lives enslaved, were hopeful that they would be granted support for this new chapter. Maybe their previous owners would thank them for building up their farms and support them in building a life for themselves by giving them some cash or chickens, some seeds and a patch of land to start a life of their own. But they received nothing. “It is over,” the white man said. “Slavery is now over.” The white man turned around, closing his door behind him.
The white slave owner believed that a societal system of oppression and the trauma of a nation could end through a change in law or leadership. But he was wrong. The right to own slaves did end, but the system of oppression lived on. It lived on in labor policies that allowed him to pay people barely enough. It lived on in segregated neighborhoods and schools and in systems like healthcare and education that treated whites as worthy and blacks as backwards. It lived on inside his own heart — expressed in dismissive gestures, demeaning remarks, and inauthentic conversations that continued the pretense that things are okay.
Slavery is over for America. In 2008, America had a significant shift in leadership: its first black president! But still there are still two Americas. The white America where white people talk to white people and read media procured by white people. In the eyes of this world the problem lies with black folks who “should work harder and, for goodness sake, get over their anger.”
Then there is the experience of black America… Now and then the voice of black consciousness, like the Black Lives Matter movement, rises up, breaching the silence as white brows arch. But largely, the majority of white people seem to swerve away from discomfort, from anger, from what reminds them of their unresolved past and unjust present.
South Africa today: what time is it?
When you visit Freedom Park, a memorial to the hardship and pain that people endured in the struggle for the liberation of South Africa, you walk through seven chapters of our history. The second to last chapter is apartheid, and it ends in 1994. After that comes a chapter called “Nation Building.” In my mind, this is where we get it right. This is where our segregated nation becomes the Rainbow Nation, “at peace with itself and the world.” This is where we break the cycle of oppression and create a world that embodies the dignity and respect our constitution extends to all.
Three responses to the challenge of nation building
1. Things are fine, build your own life
I am not proud to say that after 1994, I did not engage with nation building as best I could. Instead, I focused on “life-building.” I built a career, started a business, and renovated a home while trying to keep my marriage intact.
I know that I am not alone in doing so. In conversation with a person of color on the attitude of white people after apartheid, his comment hit home hard. He said: “After apartheid you Afrikaans and other white people did what you are so good at, you circled your wagons into a laager. You turned your attention inward, preserving your own white culture and lifestyle as if what happens in the rest of the country is none of your concern.”
When we focus only on our own wellbeing we postpone the labour of working through our trauma, inequality and difference and pass this on to future generations. The dangerous edge of this choice is that it can polarize our thinking, relationships and lives so much that we lose touch with one another. When we lose touch, it becomes easy to hate, harm and ultimately annihilate.
2. Things are not ok, we need to help
The “good” thing that I did do and many people I know do also, was to create jobs and to care financially for others. While it is of utmost importance that we use our privilege in service to others, the orientation to help runs the risk of perpetuating the “us vs. them” divide. Our relationship can become transactional where I give and you receive, but our innermost experience, pain, struggle and joy stay hidden from one another. When we can enter honest conversations across our color and economic divides and share our most vulnerable selves, we start to see each other and be seen. When we feel seen, we can feel like we belong, when we feel like we belong we have a reason to come together as equals, share power and co-create a world where this continues to be true.
3. I am part of the problem, and the solution
America gave me a gift: a realization that another story is possible. When I look at the activists, white allies and programs of transformation, I see that we don’t have to pretend that it’s all okay when it is clearly not. Neither do we need to feel overburdened with care. We can live and participate in the transformation of ourselves and our world.
And THIS is where my hope lies. It lies not in great leaders, but in people like you, people like me who are waking up, saying: “I am part of the current societal dysfunction. I have been raised inside an oppressive system. It lives inside of me and I participate and benefit from it every day. I want to change, I want to heal. I want to become part of the better future.”
What about you? When it comes to mending our racial and economic divide, what growth awaits, what gifts might you bring to this question?
Let’s continue learning!
We don’t change by ourselves, we change in relationship with each other. I desire to participate in the transformation of our world and coevolve with you. These monthly writings are me sharing my experience and learning with you as we continue on the difficult but oh so satisfying journey of transformation. A journey where we change into the leaders we’ve been waiting for and create the world our hearts yearn for.
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