When eldership seeks relevance, it must answer 'what would I have done differently'.

Africa, and South Africa as its abstraction in this rendition, has a wealth of experience and intelligence, or rather wisdom, that its development challenges are incongruent with the knowledge it commands. The nodes of influence of its past leaders at all levels, mainly those interior to its struggles, should be more recognised if not valued. In almost all countries, alumni of the first post-colonial governments are still of cognitive value and can answer the question, 'if I were given a chance again, what would I do differently'? Having not seen the 'resolutions of the ANC veterans league conference in July 2023, this rendition wonders if this question was ever considered by one of its commissions. 

In South Africa, which went through a colonialism of a special type, where the coloniser and the colonised lived not as settler and native, but nativity was part of the more significant contest, there are, therefore, elders of a special type too. In machine nomenclature, these types of elders would be called original equipment (or system) manufacturers. This means whatever was working for the benefit of humanity user a political order which was declared a crime against humanity has in the network of our non-racial national eldership original system manufactures that could also answer the question 'if I were given an opportunity again, and under conditions of the current constitutional order, what would I do differently. The converging catastrophes of system neglect can thus be reversed if these elderships, whose only commonness is membership to South Africa incorporated. This rendition explores. 

Except for books that have become grandparents of modern society, elders should be the natural history and mirror of the living past. It will be in our peril not to study them to brighten our life and future. As a collective, they should be an abstraction of the past we can extract our future from without vitiating the importance of our present. 

The presence and availability of teachings by elders is "an archetypal activity that has timeless elements which can connect us to the universal ground where (our) nature renews itself and our consciousness becomes reimagined". It is essential for the young and elder always to meet where the pressure of the future meets the presence of the past. The resultant arc should be bent so hard that its ends (comprising the infant to youth human cohort) meet the elders on the other hand to complete the circle that our humanism is. 

 

The celebration of the tenth anniversary of the EFF, the workshop(s) of the UDF40 initiative, and the ANC Veterans League's Conference deliberations in South Africa's political landscape have proven to us yet again that "old and young are opposites that secretly identify with each other; for neither fits well into the mainstream of politics". South Africa's interplay of knowledge, intellect, and wisdom was on overdrive. It is the passions that drove the various generations we still need to ask the question, so what? With each of the gatherings clamouring to display who amongst them is our political universe, we have yet to demonstrate if they are indeed in our actual world of politics. The end of another 'July' weekend gathering clarified that the playing field is levelling in favour of a future crying for an honest past to release it. 

 

The omnipresent assumption about any future is that (those it considers as) elders are typically regarded as capable of being neutral, credible and above the fray of the rough and tumble of contestations of the present. Because the future has an innocent relationship with the past, concerning levels of wanting to correct and relevance of its history, it (the future) yearns for elders that are frequent and aggressive advocates for ideas and ideologies. It has historically accorded elders the honour even to become brokers of (political) compromise where the exuberance of the present predominates contexts where only wisdom, understood as the interface of intellect and lived experience, rules. 

 

Because the liberation of Africa was necessitated by the immorality of (colonial) oppression, the imagined freedom is (still) trapped in the syntax of what the oppressor enjoyed. The idea of the state, leadership, politics, the political economy, economics, and even political ideology had as its originative context what the oppressor class defined as benchmarks. The character of laws, how they are adjudicated, how they are made, the power relations they institutionalise in society, the histories they carry, the interests they regulate, and the precedence they rely upon have not only defined freedom but have also characterised what eldership has come to be in African politics. 

 

In such context, the search for relevance by elders will be perpetually conflicted even if it is a genuine endeavour to answer the question, "If I were given a chance again, what would I have done differently". This question is not an invitation to return to when you were given a chance; it invites you to a now that expunges you from your past. It invites you to start by acknowledging your errors and leaving the present to praise you before you can point wrong. It is the most significant demand any present can expect from its past and a theatre the future is yearning to enter and marvel at what possibilities are there for it. Eldership should not be a proxy for revisionism. 

 

The South African eldership that sat At Birchwood over the weekend has a great lot to celebrate for its contributions to its people. To curate this credibility, elders must seek to maximise their independence and non-partisanship in matters of national interest. The protection and promotion of constitutional order they have bequeathed to South Africa in concert with elders in society other than the narrowed numbers they were at Birchwood should define whatever is left of the contributions they can make. The civil society landscape of South Africa allows them to be the 'teacher' to the many students that are around. 

 

South African political elders are among the few in the world to design a democratic order that ensures they can only become ancestors outside the order. In doing so, they institutionalised generational progression without declaring that those that lead will always be nodes of generations whose time has come. Therefore, the institutionalisation of the veterans league should be about tightening the screws of what makes up the template of our constitutional order. Internal to the ANC, veterans should be the ultimate think tanks to influence the liberation movement. They should seek to be modern grandparents by recording and writing about their experiences. 

The most significant contribution elders can make in any society is to die as their past selves and be born again as the future they can never be part of. This will require a suicidal relationship with the urge to dominate the present, save for monitoring the liberation promise template. A democracy's childhood ends when its elders become its unencumbered heritage. 

As Mamdani wrote, "South Africa is a (political) genocide that did not happen", but the encumbrances of its elders must not be the stirrings of a rich heritage genocide. Our elders must focus on answering the question, what would I have done differently if I were given the opportunity, space, and power again? They must write letters to the future and share their wisdom with it. CUT!!!