It is my pleasure to be invited to this conference.
I have been asking myself what qualifies me to be the keynote speaker. In my quest to find the correct answer, because I know there are many another incorrect answers, I stumbled on the fact that I like controversy. Controversy is to an academic what a forest is to adventures.
The conference invite opened with the following words with the changing political landscape in South Africa a new phenomenon dubbed “service delivery protests”, which appears analogous to the pre-1994 “protests against apartheid”, is emerging and is beginning to dominate the public intellectual space’.
Whilst I thought it is over it went on to say ‘This phenomenon is becoming ubiquitous aspect of our changing political landscape’, and this is where I knew the crux of the conspiracy is. However I was neutralised by the fact that two critical questions were then asked, and these are;
• Are our institutional architecture and policy framework appropriately geared to enhance state capacity in its pursuit to enhance service delivery?
• Where is the missing link in the service delivery chain?
I am normally neutralised by questions when contestable statements are made, for it is in the questions that ideological and philosophical contests are settled albeit without an answer to the very questions. You will therefore agree with me when I say ignorance is peaceful, and knowing is beyond peacefulness.
I have been asked to keynote this conference, and in the words of Nelson Mandela ‘I come to this conference today in all humility, conscious that I am standing’ before an educated sample of our people from which knowledge will and should be generated. It is through your synthesised knowledge that our freedom will be completed.
James Cone teaches us that ‘to sing about freedom and to pray for its coming is not enough...because...freedom must be actualised in history by the freed peoples who accept the intellectual challenge to analyse the world for the purpose of changing it’.
It is for this reason that this conference should be contextualised as ‘forum to reflect, discuss and plan how best to respond’ to this ‘ubiquitous aspect of our political landscape’; service delivery protests.
We must in this forum have the discipline to honestly ‘grasp the structural and institutional processes that have disfigured, deformed and devastated the African intellectual such that the resources for collective and critical consciousness, moral compliment and courageous engagement are vastly underdeveloped’.
We are called by our historical destiny to procure for ‘serious strategic and tactical thinking about how to create new models of governance and to forge the kind of public service cadre to actualise these models. We should in this context be weary of a posture that aggregates us into what Henry Kissinger called ‘a constituency of experts with a vested interest in commonly held opinions; elaborating and defining its consensus at a high level’.
Our intellectual heritage as a country, particularly black intellectuals, has liquidated the morality of apartheid colonialism. Though the complete obliteration of apartheid is certain, ‘it can only come about under pressure of nationalist awakening and an alliance of progressive forces which hasten its end and destroy its conditions of existence’. The integrative intent of this awakening should ‘seek to introduce a new intellectual order’ that will unite our public officials towards specific and definite goals.
We must interrogate, without fear, our silent assumptions about African governance and leadership to the extremes of unravelling the meaning of some of the iconic figures in our not distant historical past. In performing this task we will be reclaiming our space as human repositories ‘of the different kinds of shifts going on in the world as expressed intellectually’. Because most of us originate, physically and otherwise, from subjugated communities, we are the most qualified to execute an ‘insurrection of subjugated knowledge’ into the RSA intellectual space.
Let me now redirect myself to the service delivery questions this conference is dealing with. I have to indicate that the intellectual context I referred to here is informed by a belief that when the fundamental concerns of intellectual life are differently conceived, intellectualism will reveal a different bias.
Conceptually, I have a problem with the characterisation of the current wave of protests as ‘service delivery protests’. Although this is a discussion for another forum, I think it is a misnomer and an uninformed labelling by our often not so fundamental journalist community.
If we accept the AIDS statistics for the past ten year as being statistically correct, it follows therefore that in those communities where AIDS is reported to be killing adults, a condition of child and teenage headed families is prevalent. If we also accept that as a society we have a low mortality rate with the majority of the population living on average up to the age of 45, it follows that the population is getting younger and younger.
Political demographic studies have over the past decade revealed that ‘countries with younger populations are especially prone to civil unrest and are less able to create or sustain democratic institutions’. Further to this it has also been found that ‘the more urbanised countries with younger populations become the more prone to anarchic violence and Dickensian poverty.
Younger populations are known to be relatively stable when economies are thriving. However, ‘sprawl and impoverishment makes such communities vulnerable to crime lording, gangsterism (often disguised as organised protest formation; the Jerusalema phenomenon) and petty rebellions’. It can thus be concluded that, and in this context, rapid urbanisation and outside formal schooling modernisation of the developing world brings with it, in exaggerated form, problems akin to urbanisation and modernisation.
These problems manifest themselves as ‘cyclical employment, inadequate policing, limited sanitation and education, often spawned widespread labour strife, periodic violence, and sometimes-as in the early 1800 Europe- revolutions’.
Notwithstanding, this does not mean that there are no real problems in South Africa. Our condition was aptly characterised by President Mbeki in 2008, interestingly at a World Bank forum when he said “The immediate reality is that all of us know that the poor are knocking at the gate. If this gate does not open, because we who have the key are otherwise involved, the masses will break down the gate”.
Despite these, the governance architecture of South Africa remains one of the best in the World. It provides for the best government-to-community interfaces and institutions. Town and development planning is regulated by law to be community based. In fact, the Constitution provides for local government ‘to encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in the matters of local government’.
It also provides that municipalities have the developmental duties to ‘structure and manage its administration and budgeting and planning processes to give priority to the basic needs of the community and to promote the social and economic development of the community’
The fact that “each historical period defines specific challenges of national progress and leadership” our strategic and historical challenge is more about creating a national capacity to change before the case for change becomes desperate. The fact that the Department of Corporative governance and Traditional Affairs is mega phoning society about a local government turnaround strategy should ring alarm bells.
Since a turnaround, ‘despite it being always celebrated, is both a testament of an institution’s lack of resilience, and/or transformation that is tragically delayed’, we should as practitioners and academics brace ourselves for environments that may redefine models we thought are absolute and theoretically immortal. We must embrace the fact that ‘the era of having to only work hard for success has now been complemented by a growing imperative to be different not at our core but our governing essence.
Despite the political landscape redefinition realities of the ANC’s 52nd Conference in Polokwane, the socio-economic exigencies of South Africa are changing the template within which our politics will be packaged. The post-liberation one-party dominance is not only dwindling as a consequence of voter apathy and benevolent dictatorships, but also as a result of the sustained mass democratic nature of the South African polity.
The democratic space created in Polokwane has reignited what ‘we’ referred to as peoples power in the ancestral policy documents of the broader liberation movement. Society is fast understanding it power and strength, albeit outside the institutionalised mechanisms such as courts and voting.
The dichotomy of mass insurrection and the fact that “the people of South Africa chose a profoundly legal path to their revolution” remains a political challenge of our democracy. Whereas there are “those who frame and enact constitution and law as the vanguard in the fight for change” there is an underdevelopment induced constituency of persons that still advocate mass action.
It is in this dichotomy that the missing link is nurtured.
[Slide presentation]
I would like to conclude by quoting Dr Van Zyl Slabbert and Former President Mbeki when they said
“when I look towards the future I am fearful of the long darkness that may await us all. I am saddened by the (human) potential we have squandered. But we here in South Africa have problems to solve for which the rest of the world has found no solution. That in itself is a great challenge” (Van Zyl Slabbert)
“After a long walk, we too have arrived at the starting point of a new (and long) journey. We have you, academics, as our nearest and brightest stars to guide us on our way. We will not get lost.” Thabo Mbeki 1999 on the occasion of President Mandela’s farewell
I thank you
I have been asking myself what qualifies me to be the keynote speaker. In my quest to find the correct answer, because I know there are many another incorrect answers, I stumbled on the fact that I like controversy. Controversy is to an academic what a forest is to adventures.
The conference invite opened with the following words with the changing political landscape in South Africa a new phenomenon dubbed “service delivery protests”, which appears analogous to the pre-1994 “protests against apartheid”, is emerging and is beginning to dominate the public intellectual space’.
Whilst I thought it is over it went on to say ‘This phenomenon is becoming ubiquitous aspect of our changing political landscape’, and this is where I knew the crux of the conspiracy is. However I was neutralised by the fact that two critical questions were then asked, and these are;
• Are our institutional architecture and policy framework appropriately geared to enhance state capacity in its pursuit to enhance service delivery?
• Where is the missing link in the service delivery chain?
I am normally neutralised by questions when contestable statements are made, for it is in the questions that ideological and philosophical contests are settled albeit without an answer to the very questions. You will therefore agree with me when I say ignorance is peaceful, and knowing is beyond peacefulness.
I have been asked to keynote this conference, and in the words of Nelson Mandela ‘I come to this conference today in all humility, conscious that I am standing’ before an educated sample of our people from which knowledge will and should be generated. It is through your synthesised knowledge that our freedom will be completed.
James Cone teaches us that ‘to sing about freedom and to pray for its coming is not enough...because...freedom must be actualised in history by the freed peoples who accept the intellectual challenge to analyse the world for the purpose of changing it’.
It is for this reason that this conference should be contextualised as ‘forum to reflect, discuss and plan how best to respond’ to this ‘ubiquitous aspect of our political landscape’; service delivery protests.
We must in this forum have the discipline to honestly ‘grasp the structural and institutional processes that have disfigured, deformed and devastated the African intellectual such that the resources for collective and critical consciousness, moral compliment and courageous engagement are vastly underdeveloped’.
We are called by our historical destiny to procure for ‘serious strategic and tactical thinking about how to create new models of governance and to forge the kind of public service cadre to actualise these models. We should in this context be weary of a posture that aggregates us into what Henry Kissinger called ‘a constituency of experts with a vested interest in commonly held opinions; elaborating and defining its consensus at a high level’.
Our intellectual heritage as a country, particularly black intellectuals, has liquidated the morality of apartheid colonialism. Though the complete obliteration of apartheid is certain, ‘it can only come about under pressure of nationalist awakening and an alliance of progressive forces which hasten its end and destroy its conditions of existence’. The integrative intent of this awakening should ‘seek to introduce a new intellectual order’ that will unite our public officials towards specific and definite goals.
We must interrogate, without fear, our silent assumptions about African governance and leadership to the extremes of unravelling the meaning of some of the iconic figures in our not distant historical past. In performing this task we will be reclaiming our space as human repositories ‘of the different kinds of shifts going on in the world as expressed intellectually’. Because most of us originate, physically and otherwise, from subjugated communities, we are the most qualified to execute an ‘insurrection of subjugated knowledge’ into the RSA intellectual space.
Let me now redirect myself to the service delivery questions this conference is dealing with. I have to indicate that the intellectual context I referred to here is informed by a belief that when the fundamental concerns of intellectual life are differently conceived, intellectualism will reveal a different bias.
Conceptually, I have a problem with the characterisation of the current wave of protests as ‘service delivery protests’. Although this is a discussion for another forum, I think it is a misnomer and an uninformed labelling by our often not so fundamental journalist community.
If we accept the AIDS statistics for the past ten year as being statistically correct, it follows therefore that in those communities where AIDS is reported to be killing adults, a condition of child and teenage headed families is prevalent. If we also accept that as a society we have a low mortality rate with the majority of the population living on average up to the age of 45, it follows that the population is getting younger and younger.
Political demographic studies have over the past decade revealed that ‘countries with younger populations are especially prone to civil unrest and are less able to create or sustain democratic institutions’. Further to this it has also been found that ‘the more urbanised countries with younger populations become the more prone to anarchic violence and Dickensian poverty.
Younger populations are known to be relatively stable when economies are thriving. However, ‘sprawl and impoverishment makes such communities vulnerable to crime lording, gangsterism (often disguised as organised protest formation; the Jerusalema phenomenon) and petty rebellions’. It can thus be concluded that, and in this context, rapid urbanisation and outside formal schooling modernisation of the developing world brings with it, in exaggerated form, problems akin to urbanisation and modernisation.
These problems manifest themselves as ‘cyclical employment, inadequate policing, limited sanitation and education, often spawned widespread labour strife, periodic violence, and sometimes-as in the early 1800 Europe- revolutions’.
Notwithstanding, this does not mean that there are no real problems in South Africa. Our condition was aptly characterised by President Mbeki in 2008, interestingly at a World Bank forum when he said “The immediate reality is that all of us know that the poor are knocking at the gate. If this gate does not open, because we who have the key are otherwise involved, the masses will break down the gate”.
Despite these, the governance architecture of South Africa remains one of the best in the World. It provides for the best government-to-community interfaces and institutions. Town and development planning is regulated by law to be community based. In fact, the Constitution provides for local government ‘to encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in the matters of local government’.
It also provides that municipalities have the developmental duties to ‘structure and manage its administration and budgeting and planning processes to give priority to the basic needs of the community and to promote the social and economic development of the community’
The fact that “each historical period defines specific challenges of national progress and leadership” our strategic and historical challenge is more about creating a national capacity to change before the case for change becomes desperate. The fact that the Department of Corporative governance and Traditional Affairs is mega phoning society about a local government turnaround strategy should ring alarm bells.
Since a turnaround, ‘despite it being always celebrated, is both a testament of an institution’s lack of resilience, and/or transformation that is tragically delayed’, we should as practitioners and academics brace ourselves for environments that may redefine models we thought are absolute and theoretically immortal. We must embrace the fact that ‘the era of having to only work hard for success has now been complemented by a growing imperative to be different not at our core but our governing essence.
Despite the political landscape redefinition realities of the ANC’s 52nd Conference in Polokwane, the socio-economic exigencies of South Africa are changing the template within which our politics will be packaged. The post-liberation one-party dominance is not only dwindling as a consequence of voter apathy and benevolent dictatorships, but also as a result of the sustained mass democratic nature of the South African polity.
The democratic space created in Polokwane has reignited what ‘we’ referred to as peoples power in the ancestral policy documents of the broader liberation movement. Society is fast understanding it power and strength, albeit outside the institutionalised mechanisms such as courts and voting.
The dichotomy of mass insurrection and the fact that “the people of South Africa chose a profoundly legal path to their revolution” remains a political challenge of our democracy. Whereas there are “those who frame and enact constitution and law as the vanguard in the fight for change” there is an underdevelopment induced constituency of persons that still advocate mass action.
It is in this dichotomy that the missing link is nurtured.
[Slide presentation]
I would like to conclude by quoting Dr Van Zyl Slabbert and Former President Mbeki when they said
“when I look towards the future I am fearful of the long darkness that may await us all. I am saddened by the (human) potential we have squandered. But we here in South Africa have problems to solve for which the rest of the world has found no solution. That in itself is a great challenge” (Van Zyl Slabbert)
“After a long walk, we too have arrived at the starting point of a new (and long) journey. We have you, academics, as our nearest and brightest stars to guide us on our way. We will not get lost.” Thabo Mbeki 1999 on the occasion of President Mandela’s farewell
I thank you
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