Is it not time that we have a conversation about the role of former heads of state's foundations to our nation building project. Ek vra maar net.

  A democracy is a manifestation of the society that created it. As an arrangement with which a society has agreed to reconcile its conflictual interests and priorities, a democracy is a reflection of the deeper dynamics in a society. It is in fact a referendum of the ideational emotions of society on how it imagines its future as abstracted by the type and quality of leaders it allows to stand in front of, and on its behalf. How that society creates a memory of its past is in most instances closely tied to the persons that led it at the time.

Developed societies, and socio-culturally self-determined democracies, have innovated a way in which they would curate the good of and about the eras or terms of office of its leaders into foundations. In curating legacies of its past leaders societies create cellular nodes whose connection establish a continuum of narratives out of which the interiors of approved legacy narratives could be weaved into one socially cohesive narrative of society. It is these legacy curating institutions that would collect various socio-cultural and ideational emotions of 'political networks and establishments' into national assets with which the 'sovereign soft power' of a nation is traded or exchanged. 

This growing approach of establishing foundations and institutes, including research chairs and schools at academic institutions, has had the advantage of neutralising the omnipresent threat of demagoguery to the stability of democracies. Constructed as 'beyond the individual' legacy creating institutions they provide an opportunity for past heads of state to have a platform to express views on nation-building without the burden and limitations of incumbency, yet with the responsibility sensitivity that still respects oaths to secrecy made. These foundations, and given the former heads of state do not cease to be national key points, are in essence public power possessing institutions that could, and arguably so, be classifiable as 'organs of state'.

It is this character of these institutions that generate the question 'is it not time that foundations established to curate legacies of former heads of state be watermarked into the soft power architectural edifice of the country', without compromising the legacy definition preferences of the former heads of state. Heads of State as nodal persons of political power and political economy networks that directed the allocative power of the state during their term of office, should be curated, if still alive, into convergence points at which 'new power networks' have an opportunity to consort with the exigencies of being a state along a continuum of creating  a common human legacy and experience. 

The transition from one head of state to another should be ritualised into a responsibility by the outgoing to visibly vacate the office in a manner that guarantees society a demonstrable resolve to abide by the decisions of the electorate. Unless in instances where the maximum allowable terms have not been reached, and somewhat legitimising postures showing intention to come back, the ritual should be compulsory to the extent that the decorum of relations defines unity for democracy's sake. In this ritualisation it should be society's expectation that the inner circle of the outgoing head of state will fade into these foundations and/or otherwise for posterity's sake.

This rendition interrogates therefore the extent to which existing foundations of former heads of state should be integrated into the soft power institutional edifice of the country. If at all a warning bullet was shot into the stability firmament hoovering over our democracy, the aftermath of the Jacob Zuma arrest and the 'welcoming prayer meeting', as well as the furore that followed the 'apartheid status as a crime against humanity discourse', were the loudest of such shots. The decision by former President Mbeki, or the institution he was inside, to pay last respects to Former President PW Botha is one such incident that procures for a institutionalised relationship between the State and these 'legacy curating institutions'.

In a celebration of Paul Kruger by the DITSONG Museum of Cultural History, at the Paul Kruger Museum, and co-hosted with the Russian Embassy, the relationship between the last Russian Tsar and Paul Kruger was a revelation whose impact has never been woven as soft power the way the Russian Embassy did. It created linkages between the various geopolitical interests of Russia in its Tsarist polity with Paul Kruger, Stalinist polity with Josiah Gumede and later a Breshnevian to GorbachevIan polity with Oliver Tambo, and lately a Putin polity with post-apartheid South Africa. These narrated linkages located the BRICS alliance as the epitome of the Non-Aligned Movement which was the state-based substrate of the anti-apartheid movement, arguably the biggest human coalition against 'a crime threatening the peaceful co-existence of humanity'. 

It is the curated institution of Paul Kruger in the Museum that created an opportunity for Russio-South African relations to be showcased in historical context. The institutional memory inherent in former heads of state foundations , and as a result of ritualised heroisms associated with the former President's networks, creates 'power nodes' that could be harnessed into a programmatic soft power optimisation conduits. The ambassadorial community that served under these leaders would, if appropriately harnessed by the private sector, be key to  in facilitating the penetration of a country's products and uniquely South African value propositions to nations that accepted their credentials. 

In a democracy like South Africa where an unfortunate practice of hounding former heads of state by those that ascend seems to be working itself into a normality, a conversation on how these individuals legacies should be curated in now overdue. It is true that some leaders may have, and as a result of what they did or represented during their term of office, evidence based stories that qualify their legacies to be dumped into the dustbin of history. What is also true about them is that the networks they affirmed into their legacy might be a political machinery capable of destabilising democracies, if the consistency of dumping into the dustbin of history is questionable, as we saw during the 'insurrection' . Curating history and legacy as a national past time should be about creating a continuous narrative of society as positive anchors with which future generations could identity with a past.

In South Africa this inability to curate a past as a national asset has had devastating effects on our ability to create one and continuous narrative of greatness as a nation. We are unable to curate out of our apartheid past those great historical moments that define our industrial, infrastructural, and geopolitical greatness as a nation in its present form. This has settled as a deficiency in our patriotism to levels where greatness is celebrated with race or some chauvinism as a vector of legitimation. To cite examples, the narrative of colonialism of a special type was a conceptual innovation that sustained the legitimacy characterise South Africa as an 'apartheid colonial state' after 1961. This innovation demonstrates the anti-apartheid struggle's ideational agility that has managed to catapult apartheid as a concept whose use in the world generates reactions befitting to treat 'crimes against humanity'. However, the 1961 declaration of South Africa as a Republic could in geopolitical terms be curated into an event that defined out geographical space differently to those that stayed colonised. It will be how our narrative as a nation is curated away from the conquest nuances and biases dominant in how certain sections of this nation want it presented. 

It is fascinating to note how South African business schools and schools of government parade the 'Asian' tigers as paragons of effectual business administration, and ignore the African Lion that South Africa had been during the same phase of history. The organisational prowess of the apartheid state, and how it established state owned entities that became commanding heights of an apartheid economy are interestingly ignored case studies. The resilience of the country's economy to withstand global financial exclusion and being constrained to operate in global value chains is one other knowledge whose absence in academia indicates our weakness in curating out collective greatness. These feats of greatness, notwithstanding the truth of them having occurred on the back of an excluded and legally oppressed African majority, require of us a beyond grudges crafting of a greatness narrative. 

Carving out negative aspects of an era that defines our various present in specialised fields could be easy if we could have a deliberate strategy to curate the good that happened. It should however be cautioned that the use of history to legitimatise corresponding templates of economic dominance of those that want to be presented as conquerors can only propel resentment by those that experience the dominance in a context that defines them as the conquered. Without sounding as having a brief to the destruction etched character of South Africa's protest communities, especially the relationship that people have with public amenities or assets that anchor our economy, there is subtext if 'these don't belong to us' that permeates the burning of libraries, clinics and schools. 

The pinnacle of this came through when a member of the national executive argued the insignificance of the value of the rand to legitimise an otherwise important economic asset such as the rand, she declared "when the rand falls we will pick it up". This attitude found various expressions in how the 'core tax paying' community of South Africa was treated to cultivate the voter prowess of the unemployed. These are issues that former heads of state, and notable contributors to the socio-political fabric of society, could, if they are curated soft power assets of society, pronounce on.

This subject is properly embraced in policy  pathways of South Africa would make the risk of former heads of state 'pissing into the tent covering this democracy from outside' or simply 'becoming curated irritants' justified by the stature they built up at the instance of the public power we borrowed them. South Africa needs to cultivate a nation that submits to one narrative about its greatness, and be rescued from the investment paths it is taking to build a nation that is expected to comply to its manufactured history of greatness. 

Despite what we think of them, what former heads of state utter, matters. Their utterances carry the potential of creating scapegoats to legitimate one behaviour or another. In fact scapegoating calibrated out of their potential discontent may "make their constituencies feel that there is an identifiable and surmountable problem (which is reassuring to many, even if the solution to the problem is unclear or unethical); distract their support base from their own successes and failures; and may appeal to their emotional truths rather than objective evidence". Cut!!

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