Last week I attended the One Young World (OYW) Summit in Bangkok for the third time. It’s an incredible event.
A total of 1 400 young leaders from 196 countries came together to discuss the world’s most pressing issues, and how they are going to create positive change. Only the Olympic Games bring together a larger number of countries.
I gained invaluable and unique insight into the war in Afghanistan by sitting with a young man from Kandahar who works in media. I was made to question all I know about the ebola outbreak by a Cameroonian, who fought to keep it out of her country. I spoke to a survivor of mental illness and learned why it is such a difficult issue to fight in our society.
And true to form, our own South African delegation – one of the largest at the summit – did not let us down. Instead of writing my own piece on economic development I decided to post the question to them: “What do we need to do to encourage inclusive growth in South Africa?”
Asithandile Rangile works at Investec Property. He believes that the greatest barrier to progress is the lack of honesty, the lack of acknowledgement for past injustices and how that affects us today. It is not an emotional acknowledgement or a “payback” that he advocates, but rather a deeper analysis and admittance of how past structures are still holding us back.
For example, enterprise development is still suffocated under the rules of the past. To gain access to finance you need assets, but this is not a traditional custom in South Africa, and it promotes injustice between those with and without wealth. As Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus – a regular counsellor at the OYW Summit – showed in Bangladesh, micro-finance can work without the need for collateral.
Another problem is the exclusion of many people due to the lack of exposure to opportunities. Growth is dependent on being close to the economic hubs and in order to progress, people need to travel, creating further disparity within our population. Rangile said that to have a vibrant society we needed equality.
Some people are still hanging on to the past (both white and black people), and have hazy goals for the future of South Africa. They only think about themselves. All sides need to acknowledge what happened and how that affects us today, in order to move forward in the right way.
Another delegate who used to work for the Economic Development Department (EDD), but who asked not to be named due to her current employer’s policies, said that we needed consensus on what South African policy wanted to achieve. The EDD, the National Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry all pull in different directions in terms of what they want from growth, and how they want to achieve it. The National Development Plan (NDP) – while riddled with errors – is helping to bring clarity to policy formation, but we need more consensus.
She said we have a good policy-making culture, but we do not have a good culture of implementation. “When policy doesn’t work, we change the policy instead of changing the ineffective implementation of that policy. I left government to learn about policy implementation skills that I can hopefully one day bring back to government.”
Her main concern is how she can drive change without being inside government.
Rangile added that for progress to take place decision-making needs to come from individuals, companies and the government. This is the difference between national governance and the government. “We all just sit back and wait for government to do it.”
The ex-EDD employee supports this view, saying that progress takes place where the three role-players in governance come together. Even where companies and civil society are taking action, they rarely do it working with the government.
Rudo Dune, who also works at Investec, shares the frustration of not being able to create engagement between people and the government. “Yes, I can get the people to rally, but soon people forget about the major issues. All government has to do is play the waiting game until everyone’s attention is redirected at some other problem. For things to be right, the government needs to listen.”
These were just a few points that came up in a series of deeper discussions with our young leaders. While opinions were diverse, all were respectful, balanced, insightful, deeply thought out and spoke of unity and equality. If this is our leadership of the future, we are in good hands.
* Pierre Heistein is the convener of UCT’s Applied Economics for Smart Decision Making course. Follow him on LinkedIn /in/pierreheistein.
** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.
BUSINESS REPORT