INLSA

It's been 14 years since Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu held the youth hearings of the TRC.

Everybody who attended the latest Living Reconciliation Forum hosted by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation at UCT last week would agree that, far from being lost or misled, young South Africans are inspired and inspiring.

The voices of the young people present at this panel discussion with human rights champions Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, business leader Sipho Pityana, City Press editor Ferial Haffajee and Professor Bernard Lategan, director of Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, reached beyond struggle rhetoric to create a vision of a non-racial, more equal and caring South African society that is in sharp contrast to the populism of a Julius Malema.

We should take a moment to listen more carefully to what they said and how young members of the audience received it. It would be foolish to ignore the huge potential behind it.

It is more than 14 years since I spent my first morning in South Africa, in Athlone, when Archbishop Tutu was opening the youth hearings of the TRC in May 1997. After having been denied access to the country during apartheid years, I will never forget this first intense encounter with South African youth.

In a packed community hall, hundreds of pupils listened with their teachers to the statements of courage and woundedness by the young witnesses. It was something new, then – the tangible hope that finally the marginalised and discriminated against were being respected and that things would change radically and forever.

In 2001 I moved from Amsterdam to Cape Town and became founding co-director of Hokisa, an organisation supporting children and youth living with HIV/Aids, mainly in Masiphumelele. In 2006 I was elected in the same position for a residents’ housing organisation after one of the worst shack fires in this community.

Almost one and a half decades have passed since this TRC Youth Hearing in Athlone. The hope has not only faded, but made space for despair and anger – the most fertile ground for populism.

Populism is addressing exactly these fears, but without allowing proper analysis and inclusive solutions. The education system – one of the most important foundations of change, and job creation – has failed a few generations since then, in part because the teacher’s union, Sadtu, is dictating to the MECs for education what happen in schools.

Back then, there were leaders, such as Nelson Mandela and the Arch, who didn’t need populism, but led by example. Now there is deafening silence by government ministers to the call to trade in their luxury cars and share. And, on the other hand, there is an outcry of protest against the call for a wealth tax by many who might, instead, consider the matter with more compassion and wisdom.

And this is this point at which the four young people entered the UCT panel discussion last week under the motto: “A moral imperative to speak: What does civic responsibility mean in our troubled times?”

While Juju continues to play the role of the “young lion” with remarkable success among many of those young people who have good reasons not to trust the old guard anymore, Amanda Ngwenya, a student at UCT, pointed out that there was nothing to be gained from making her fellow white students feel guilty when the real challenge was to work together in developing a new concept of being human – not black, white, coloured or Indian, but as human individuals who are respected as such. While being fully aware that being an individual is branded by many as being egoistic or even capitalistic she made clear that only strong individuals will be able to speak out and make a difference.

Rayne Moses pointed out that we have too easily forgotten our own spiritual development – to reflect and meditate can be a strong weapon against following certain “leaders” blindly. Jan Greyling from Stellenbosch won many hearts by starting his statement in fluent Xhosa and Zulu, which prompted Archbishop Tutu’s response: “It does not always require money to show we care.”

Jan confirmed his biggest concern was the bad state of education and unemployment among youth.

Nonceda Bulani, a young community organiser from Khayelitsha, reflected the views of those who never have a chance to go to university and who, after 17 years of freedom, still go to bed hungry.

“We don’t need to be taught how to write a business plan,” he said, “but to speak out in our language and based on our experience. When Juju says he is poor, I can only laugh.”

When asked why people still voted for the same government in which too many enriched themselves, she responded: “Ah, then we think of Madiba ... and as long as he lives, we can’t disappoint him.”

I don’t have the space to convey all that was said in the debate by the students or the older speakers, but three points

are worth highlighting.

First, there are new voices among young South Africans, and they need to be heard.

They do not only appeal to a mostly academic young audience, but also to youth from marginalised backgrounds. When I asked our teenagers at the Hokisa Children’s Home in Masiphumelele to join us, I was worried that some might be turned off by an academic conversation. The opposite was true: all of them listened most attentively, trying by all means to get the meaning of each statement, helping and confirming each other to follow what was being said. Nondoda, 17, photographed with his cellphone all panelists and noted their names. Thwali, 17, smiled at the setting of the hall: “Looks like we are parlamentarians ourselves here.” Xolelwa, 16, remarked on the way home that Amanda Ngwenya had become her new role model. There is such a hunger beyond the fast food of populism among our youth.

Second, the archbishop has done us a favour by reminding us that there is enough wealth in this country – what is missing is caring and sharing. Those who jumped on the term “wealth tax” should help to develop this concept rather than resisting the spirit in which it was raised.

It is correct, as the archbishop has said, that the government needs to come forward with gestures of its own. But who can argue against a non-racial wealth tax earmarked for example for education, health or housing (supervised by independent auditors)?

There are no grounds for assuming that big companies will flee the country as a result. They won’t – as stable conditions are more important than more and more strikes and riots about service delivery. It seems, though, that many South Africans need to coerced into doing the right thing, as, sadly enough, few of them go much further than tokenism.

Of the R20 million we raised for our housing project in Masiphumelele, more than 90 percent came from private funders overseas and less than 10 percent from South African donors. That should and can change – not least because several overseas donors have got tired of pumping money into a generally rich country.

Finally, there’s a point to be made that we need a structured way to share our wealth. Goodwill is not enough. We don’t need charity, we need structures which clearly encourage and, if necessary, even demand, the overcoming of the obscene disparity between rich and poor in this country. Being rich comes with certain obligations.

Ferial Haffajee remarked in her closing statement that it is great to go home with good feelings and a new hope after such an evening, but we finally need to learn from our mistakes, not least our too light-hearted optimism after 1994.

Hope is not enough. We need to develop legal structures in our society to drive sharing and caring, not as a feel-good activity, but as a condition to overcome our troubled times. The present time bomb will not tick forever without exploding.

l Dr Lutz van Dijk is co-director of the Hokisa Children’s Home in Masiphumelele, author of A History of Africa and Themba, which was made into a movie in 2010.