The generation of leaders that Tambo and Mandela led into the opportunity desert that South Africa was, seem to have or is collapsing into despair and panic over and over in moments of crises. Broken by encumbrances they carry in the system, and as an establishment, including shocking revelations of what some amongst them have contributed in the corruption cesspool engulfing our moral fibre, they seem incapable of breaking free of improvidence, cowardice, factionalism, and nostalgic worship of their struggle credentials.
Some of them are the once celebrated 'Mandela mandarins' that have crafted the liberal democratic order we are supposedly stuck in its quicksandy patches They are the men and women who may be sitting with 'how-to-manuals' written in a grammar our liberation vocabulary cannot navigate through, some have crossed the proverbial Jordan in respect of a better life for all, some are suffocating in the race to jump at all costs. In their at all costs pursuit, pilferage is what follows them. Deceit and corruption is a footnote their legacy will be incomplete without.
There is therefore an obligatory responsibility to raise a new generation that has to take up the baton and recalibrate the grammar of opportunity to accommodate the liberation vocabulary written in economic emancipation parlance. If there is a proverbial pillar of cloud that guided us by night out of the opportunity desert created by our in-bondage conditions, it is the very liberal constitution we have. Following this cloud into a proverbial Canaan we want cannot be led by those that went into the opportunity desert, but by those born in and of it.
The story of Canaan in the Bible is filled with lessons for humanity, and is time South Africa looks at it differently. First, Egyptians were left in Egypt, they were left to recalibrate their lives without Jewish slaves. With what they were left with, they built Egypt into a place that would later host Jesus Christ as a student in one of their post adolescent learning institutions, otherwise referred to as a university in today's parlance.
Secondly, the Israelites stayed in the wilderness for a full generation, to be exact 40 years. Those that were in Egypt did not reach Canaan, or were not allowed to be in Canaan, save for Joshuas and Calebs of the nation. It was the 'slave DNA' in them that would have defined Canaan differently. It would have been their credentials of fighting the Amalekites in the dessert that would have made them claim a status of being 'Canaanites of a special type', including the expecting their survival instructed corrupt lives they lived in the wilderness to be what defines Canaan. Their concept of State would have been Pharaonic, and less of what was promised, as we saw them defaulting into worshiping Egyptian-type gods in the dessert when the journey demanded resilience of them.
Thirdly, Canaan was reached by those who believed in the dream of creating it in its own image. Elders of the new Canaan were youth born in the wilderness, all they knew is transitioning into the new that is Canaan. Canaan could not have encumbrances of Egypt, for those who were in Egypt 'died in and with the wilderness', and those that were born in the wilderness rose with the vision of jumping the Jordan. Canaan became a hive of newness and innovation.
The Egypt that we are supposed to have left is to us mental, the Egyptians are human, the Pharaohs are diffused into our power centres, those who were slaves in our proverbial Egypt might be in positions they have an image of Pharaoh about. The ambience of our freedom still has hierarchies of control established in a pharaonic context.
As some of us, who should have died or are dying in the wilderness, start to sound the proverbial cry of 'was it because there were no graves in captivity that you brought us to die in this opportunity desert or Canaan', we need to start unmasking the fearful amongst us, and raise leadership that understands what has unfolded in South Africa as a rebuke that must shape a new character we want as a nation.
We must create a leadership cohort built around persuasions of human service. We must promise to live our national lives in lockstep with the values that will make us a globally competitive society. We must share the good and the bad, the joys and sorrows, the history and dreams, of each other as though we created them as a collective.
This we can best do, if we think beyond the crises, and borrow to future generations whatever is left of our costly thinking time. This is a call for us to always answer the questions 'what now' 'what next', 'what is our beyond plan', 'who should do what, when, and at what level'
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela
🤷🏽♂️Be ngisho nje
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