How does a continent decline? Corruption. Misappropriation of funds. Leadership, where leadership, the
leaders of South Africa, or the leaders of a particular individual African country, where there is a continual
struggle for power, for ownership. In my mind, the struggles, our burdens are as follows. Control, and
self-control amongst politicians, dictatorships, no succession plan, genocide, civil war. It even points to all
the men and women we call the visionary-leaders. The servant-leader. Then there is power in the wrong
hands. Financial woes. Citizens voting politicians into power who mess up monumentally. Power struggles
amongst parties, coalitions. Poor mental health which leads to poor thinking, mistakes, poor
decision-making. Poor decision-making stems from poor mental health. If the leaders of a control are
mentally well, we will prosper. Then there is the majority of the world. This is affecting the online global
platform as well. Digital, print media. Both the corporate and the public sector.
Sectors of industry, of transport, and foreign policy. Policy is key. We know this. We know the art of the
deal. We also know of corruption. Of Cronyism. Suffering from mental woes, every depression, every
malady, every mood, every brain disorder in the book. Taking medication for it. The sleepless nights. The
insomnia. What drives the progress of a united and totally emancipated Africa? We must understand all of
that. It has taken us centuries, but we have reached the perspective of understanding. Now we must
progress even more. Enlightenment? Ask, how does a continent progress from the objectification, of the
subjugation of poverty, to the level-headedness of greatness, to knowledge, and beyond. To not only build
visionary-leaders, servant-leaders, industrialists, leaders of industry, but philosophers in the vein of
Nietzsche, psychologists like Freud, Adler, Jung, teachers like Montessori. The Greeks Aristotle,
Hippocrates, and Homer had it. Chutzpah. The Greek teachers, scholars.
We must not forget our composers like Moses Molelekwa. Nobody ever dies in vain. There is always the
legacy, the succession plan, who will come after, who will take up the mantle, and rewrite history. Even
the dead speak. The powers that be in this century are basically the same that we were facing when the
Dutch came, and then when the Settlers came. Indoctrination followed; churches and mission schools
were built. The Khoi were educated about God. They learned to pray. They were taught about the cross,
Calvary, and the resurrection. Indigenous homesteads were broken down. Farms were built. Land was
taken. Class, hunger, disability and poverty are problems not unique to one individual country in Africa.
Hunger is the greatest scourge that we as mothers, grandmothers, fathers, grandfathers, sons and
daughters are facing in the Northern Areas. I speak of the Northern Areas, of the Eastern Cape, of South
Africa. We can look at the shocking statistics. but it is symptomatic of Africa itself. It is greater than
Africa.
Hunger is linked to mental health. Education is linked to mental health. Our children are gifted beyond
measure. At this point in time, I will look at South Africa in particular. At the Northern Chapters I will
sometimes discuss. This is important. We are dealing with those Africans of mixed-race descent.
Descendants from the Dutch, English, the Europeans, the Portuguese, the French, the Khoi, the African,
Saint Helena, Cape Verde, Dominica. Slaves as far back as the English India Company, and thereafter the
Dutch East India Company. Yes, yes, we must all be recognised. The Coloured must be recognised. The
Coloured identity must be recognised. The Coloured intelligentsia is in crisis. We must recognise the
greater scheme of things. From time to time, I will talk about the Northern Areas. Their families. Their
schools. Their workplaces. A kind of emotional and financial security that goes beyond just job-security
must also be discussed in the plainest terms possible when it comes to the Northern Chapters.
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The Northern Areas which are found all over Africa. All this time men, gifted, gifted men. Young men
have been living like outlaws on the fringes, the fringes of society. They are ignored, killed, murdered, land
in jail, with no possible future of rehabilitation, where they can contribute positively to the society around
them. Truancy is linked to poverty. A lot of the social problems in South Africa. How do these young
men, to their families, become a father figure to their children? Education and discipline can both free
your mind from the perspective that you are only learned, you are only intelligent, I can only hire you if
you have a university degree. You can only open up a business if you studied finance, or economics, or
accountancy, or if you’re going to inherit the family business. These days even families, generations, have
something to inherit if they are the indigenous peoples of South Africa. This ideal of a unified Africa is a
beautiful dream, but there is a lot of work still to be done. The problems we are experiencing are teachers.
Teaching is the noblest profession in the world. But do we even dare discuss mental health and the
teaching profession, the workplace, the church, our schools, the hierarchy found in the business-arena in
the same breath. Businessmen want to talk business, business ventures, hedge funds, the economy, the
global recession and how that is going to affect the JSE, and African economy, the world economy at the
end of the day. Changes. We need to see changes; we need to see transformation in every sphere of our
country. We need to recognise class. We need to understand what it is. Why the dichotomy between the
working classes, the poor, the middle class, and the upper middle class exist. We live in an era filled with
tech. Everywhere you look. Everywhere you use an app, or WhatsApp, or your tablet, or your cell phone.
Virtual space, technology, the digital divide, affirmative action, broader based black empowerment. We are
all leaders and citizens out of touch with reality. The reality we are living in is a non-reality.
If we are aware of our problems, financial, security, emotional, mental health, what is class? Where do all
our problems fit in with prizewinning, all of our elegant solutions. The rich think they have it. Prosperity.
Education. Wealth. Considerable wealth. There’s a fault line, but with who, which sector of government is
the fault lying with. We are living in a new era. We Africans are not totally conscientized to the fact that
because we live on this incredible continent, we do not lack resources. Africa is still plundered to this day.
I said to myself that someday someone might be looking for this, or, rather asking what the key to
knowledge is? How does undergraduate at a university prepare themselves for the great unknown. The
workforce. The workplace. They go for interviews, they hand in the resumes, the panel asks them
questions about their education, background to get to know them better. Knowledge. Knowledge is
power. Knowledge is the key to all-understanding. We learn from our collective experiences in life.
From the time we are born, our entire childhood. Education is a lifelong learning experience. You never
stop learning, questioning, asking. You never stop communicating. This inter-connectedness we have as
Africans is lifelong. We have to have faith in each other that Africa will go the distance. At finding
solutions. One of the problems that we are dealing with right on the continent is that there was a
genocide in Rwanda between the Hutus and the Tutsis. One solution we must, must discuss is virtual
space. We must discuss practicalities. Entrepreneurship. To build, create, sustain prosperity, wealth,
progress in Africa. When describing oppression, the oppressed female, we must also take cognisance of
the fact that we should also be empowering young women, raising them up to uplift, and then to
empower the next generation of women to come into the political arena, into education as teachers,
administration, the corporate sector and the public sector. Recognise an African woman’s chutzpah,
intelligence, as equal, as noble equal.
Why would we say that we know who we are as Africans, what, and who we represent when clearly, we
don’t even recognise those of mixed-race descent. We are not overcoming the severe problems that every
individual African has faced basically on every level, and every and each phase of its own development.
There is poverty. There are squatters. There is homelessness. There is disability in this poverty, amongst
squatters, and amongst the homeless. There is the even bigger Pandora’s box of feeding millions. Of
hunger, which is a huge undertaking. Then there is the leadership-question. Often men in leadership roles
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often serve in a patriarchal system. It is theirs and theirs alone. Roles of leadership in Africa should be
open to both men and women. Let us come to a topic not spoken about often. Our loneliness. In Africa
there is loneliness amongst races, amongst people of different faiths. Corruption is taking what does not
belong to you in the first place. Cronyism is the function whereby you increase favour and wealth.
Prosperity and influence amongst your own. Then we come to the debate of political powers. Political
leaders should be held accountable for the mistakes they have made in their position. We must ask, every
Northern Chapter, every Northern Areas across the diaspora, all Africans must ask the following. What
am I contributing to Africa, to African society, to the communities, status quo, norms and values of the
Northern Areas? The Eastern Cape is one of the most undeveloped areas in South Africa. Many live in
the rural countryside, townships are over-populated, racial discrimination is rife, the areas in the Northern
Areas are crime-ridden, poverty-stricken, the youth are disadvantaged, marginalised. They are in need of
knowledge, education, employment, work opportunities, skills, and expertise. Also, the self-awareness to
understand their lineage, their cultural background, their heritage and traditions. We must look at the scale
of hunger. The landscape of poverty as it exists for the majority of Africans.
Hunger is the key issue holding us back from Africa’s progress, our prosperity. What will Africa be
remembered for one day, the sibling rivalry between Dinga and Chaka? What will Patrice Lumumba be
remembered for one day, Kwame Nkrumah, Stephen Bantu Biko? Black Consciousness must become the
consciousness of every individual African. Remember Ruth First, remember Dulcie September, Dennis
Brutus who mentored the poet Arthur Nortje, our intelligentsia, the intelligentsia Neville Alexander,
Fikile Bam and George Bizos. Forward thinkers. Thought-leaders. Visionaries. Every African intellectual
that has walked in this world, we must take hold of the lesson. We had great leaders of integrity, who
understood the difference between civil disobedience. Now we must look at both the inherent
psychological framework of Africa, the African, because that is where the root, the cause, the issue of
faith, of our social ills, and our political problems arise from. Now in this era, we know where we are
going.
African leaders, her visionaries know the direction in which we are progressing. The era, reaching the
nexus of the middle of the African Renaissance. Now our writers must begin to write. Where is our
female Chinua Achebe, J.M. Coetzee, Wole Soyinka, Onyeka Nwelue. There was our Doris Lessing. There
was our Nadine Gordimer. There is our Thuli Madosela. Our Winnie Madikezela-Mandela. Where is our
Susan Sontag, our Virginia Woolf? What is the difference between consciousness and becoming
conscientized? Apartheid and colonialism, genocide and civil war will mark our attitudes until Kingdom
Come will always be a part of our collective consciousness of who we are as Africans. We must break
down our stereotypes, and use this era of our Renaissance, our African Renaissance to move forward. Not
hold African, the youth, the next generation accountable, responsible, for the sins of our past. The only
way to wash away those sins is to use the tradition we have always had, storytelling. We speak about
diversity, ethnicism.
We must continue to speak about diversity, the multi-ethnic groups in Africa, throughout Africa, that exist
in the totality of this novel sensibility, this almost spiritual sensibility (yes, we are making progress,
progress is there for all of us to familiarise ourselves with, now we must work towards not only equality,
but the emancipation of women-figures). Build women into political leaders, business leaders,
entrepreneurs, artists. Gender diversity still exists. What is wrong with that scenario? Is it wrong? Gender
equality will progress in its own time, and as we know time in Africa heals everything. Everything. Timing
in Africa is a spiritual concept. Dealing with divinity. Then we come to the aspects of healing, oral
storytelling. Healing from the genocide Africa has witnessed, apartheid, xenophobia, colonialism,
prejudice, it is going to be a completely natural process. In films, we are still portrayed as having still this
slave-mentality. We are the colonised native working the land, planting the cotton, working on plantations.
We are Hottentot.
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Prejudice, prejudice, slave-mentality no more, nor more. No more. For this is a new era, our era, the nexus
of the African Renaissance. We must, we must look to solutions not just for the individual, male or
female. Grasp them as if our very life depended upon it, Africa’s very livelihood, the younger folk, that
generation has a belief, a mandate, a commission. In time, we will understand that every generation has a
mission to fulfil. We need to discover a novel belief in the changes taking place across a broad spectrum
in Africa. What we are struggling with are what previous leaders struggled with too. Liberty, our liberties
as a socialised, central Africa. An absolute emancipation from oppression. The youth want what the
adolescent Mandela wanted when he left the Eastern Cape for Johannesburg. Ask yourself this, was it
really freedom, or was it destiny whispering sweet nothings in the first democratically-elected, first
president of the majority of this continent. It was like that for all of us. It is like that for this generation.
This generation of future leaders, future visionaries. Visionaries in every field, every area, in every arena.
Mentorship. We need mentorship. Strong and dynamic mentorship. Mentors are leaders too. To be an
apprentice, to want to be an apprentice in the era of this African Renaissance, but specifically not looking
at African storytellers, African artists, photographers, novelists, the canon of African literature. Then there
are our African scientists, our African mathematicians, our African administrators’. I say African, because
that is our identity at the core of our intrinsic personality, at the heart of our character. We are being, but
we are collectively an Africa, not in stasis, but marked for freedom. It will come not only with
independence from colonialism, and apartheid, racial discrimination and xenophobia, it will come with
our personal freedom. Look, we must understand what it means to be African. Not accepting it as
phenomenological, we are looking at African visionaries, we are looking at the emancipation of our
female leaders.
No longer will they be put away from sight, in a Pandora’s box. Women have a voice that speaks to the
millions on this continent. The chapter is just beginning.
