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Parly has lost the right to convene meaning-making talks. It’s up to us

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South Africans must continue talking about the big issues.Picture: iStock
South Africans must continue talking about the big issues.Picture: iStock

While we celebrated the past month, with a good dose of nostalgia, the legacy of the man who personified for us the ultimate democratic spirit, one must reflect that it doesn’t feel like Madiba’s South Africa at the moment.

In the nineties our conversations were much more focused on common ground and common good. People on different sides of South Africa’s many divides exemplified the willingness to listen, to negotiate and win together.

There was indeed something of Mandela’s own philosophy woven into this when he said: “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”

Isn’t this what we miss at the moment when we listen to the noise in the political marketplace and observe the ideological hard lining that undermines the possibility of solution seeking conversations across the boundaries of difference?

Instead of becoming better partners, in the Mandela sense of the word, we seem to be moving in the opposite direction.

Memory takes me back to the early eighties. South Africa then was a rough place in which political power met up with civil resistance.

While the ruling party was fighting for survival and the white community was deeply divided and pervaded with division and distrust, the rest of the nation was suffering the consequences.

Déjà vu?

It was under these circumstances that Professor Robert Tusenius, a former director of the University of Stellenbosch Business School, decided to start a new conversation, called the youth leadership forum.

His purpose and philosophy was simply to bring young leaders from opposite sides of the historical, political and racial spectrum in South Africa together to meet and talk about that which is important for them and for the country.

And so, between black and white and from different sides of apartheid’s dividing lines, we were able to discover that what we have in common was far more precious than anything that divided us.

I will never forget an input made by one of the University of the Western Cape participants.

The Golden Acre was the shopping centre of Cape Town in those days. I so clearly still remember him pointing out how different our patriotic associations with the Golden Acre might be.

He pointed to us who were white and said that our sentiments would more likely be informed by the intellectual and capital investments embedded in the structure and beauty of the building while they, who were black, associate the same with the sweat and blood of their fathers, uncles and brothers mixed into the concrete of which is was built.

In later years it was my own special privilege to facilitate storytelling in communities and organisations composed by different groups of people.

There was the occasion in Lichtenburg, in the local Methodist Church, where white congregants asked black ones to explain the student protests of 1976 to them.

The black were astonished by the question and the whites by the answer, but afterwards there was a sense of shared meaning which they never had in common before.

On another occasion I worked with a group of white and black ministers in KwaZulu-Natal and once again there was a pivotal moment when the black participants asked the white ones whether they viewed the assassination of Chris Hani in the same light as that of Hendrik Verwoerd.

Again we stood on the sacred ground of history, again worlds were brought together, and again there was an opportunity to unlock mutuality and meaning.

A good friend, with whom I have co-facilitated many such storytelling processes, always reminds me to allow the question to be our teacher.

Why? A good question creates an invitation to reflect, to probe for understanding and to make room for multiple perspectives on common issues.

A sincere and inviting question has the potential to open access to information that we otherwise would not have had. As a result adversaries may turn into partners and move them from opposition to collaboration.

The South Africa of the moment is again in need of convening spaces where we can have the conversations that really matter. The ultimate question of the moment is not about whether or not the president should step down.

The answer to that is too obvious to waste much more speculative conversation on.

The ultimate question for now is about the South Africa on the other side of the disillusionment; on the other side of the empty clamour of political speak, on the other side of self-interested power games and ideological solutions.

We now need to start talking about the possibility of re-imagining our country.

The problem is that the house that should be our ultimate convener of meaning-making conversations, namely Parliament, has lost the right to be that place.

For now there is no Madiba to personify our ideals and because of whom we can avoid the discomfort of facing each other.

We are now faced with ourselves and with one another and we need to engage with the questions that matter and open ourselves for the perspectives and experiences of others.

The time has come for ordinary South Africans, once again painfully aware of our differences and divisions, to entertain questions around our common future and the ideals and values that we are willing to work and live for.

We need to do this in communities, our churches, our schools and universities and our businesses.

In doing so we need to suspend judgment, step into the shoes of the other, talk through the tough questions and allow distrust and enmity to make place for partnership and collaboration.

If we do not do it, the next generation will have to pay the price in the same way that the children of apartheid had to.

Professor Arnold Smit is head of social impact and associate professor of business in society at Stellenbosch Business School.

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