Politics reaches into every crevice of our country, including the climate crisis

South Africa is plagued by high levels of unemployment and violence. As the nation grapples with the high unemployment rate, violence especially against women and children, failing infrastructure and a failing healthcare system, the climate crisis does not feature high on the country’s list of priorities.

However on Wednesday night, as part of Climate Diplomacy Week, the EU in partnership with the SA Institute of International Affairs tackled this issue when it hosted a panel discussion on the climate crisis at Wits University in Johannesburg.

The panellists included Tashmia Ismail-Saville, YES4Youth CEO, author and activist Kgotsi Chikane, Mondli Makhanya, City Press editor-in-chief, Wits professor Bob Scholes and Akhona Xotyeni, a young environmental activist. The discussion was on how to get South Africa to tackle the climate crisis.

When asked by Simon Cardy, director of climate change, environment, science and technology at the department of international relations and cooperation what messaging would work to get a movement against the climate crisis to happen, Makhanya said what was needed was political will.

“Politics reaches into each and every crevice of our country. Making the climate crisis part of our politics is an effective way to ensure that there is action,” Makhanya said.

“What we need to do is to get political buy-in, we need to get politicians in the country to take it as seriously as activists are taking it.

“As media, we need to give voice to those who are involved in this fight. We need to give voice to different constituencies, agricultural communities, villages and to most especially young people who are going to inherit this world we live in,” he said.

Akhona Xotyeni says that instead of overlooking youth movements in the climate challenge, people should put them at the forefront. Picture: Sthembiso Lebuso

Xotyeni, who is a volunteer at the SA Institute of International Affairs, said that instead of overlooking youth movements in the climate challenge, people should put them at the forefront.

“People are putting a lot of pressure on governments and businesses to take on the climate crisis, they are looking down on young people’s movements because they think young people are destructive,” Xotyeni said.

“I believe that there is a lot of change that we can still make. I believe we’ve proved ourselves. Young people are leading the biggest movement against climate change.

“We should be used, mobilised especially for awareness, education and how we are able to use social media. Use pop culture, celebrities. People love incentives, use incentives as that’s the best way to get young people involved,” Xotyeni said.

She used the Global Citizen event, which was held in Johannesburg last year, as an example of how to get youth involved and at the same time share the message.

“It got young people who wanted to see Beyoncé go out to do service work and share the messages about various social issues on social media for tickets.”

Scholes, a Wits professor in the Global Change and Sustainability Research Institute’s School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, said that people should not be worried about saving the world.

“The world is going to be just fine. It is us [humanity] that we have to worry about.

“The world will go through huge changes in the next century. The question is that are they the changes that we want, that we come out in a good place or tumble over into a bad place. We have a choice and the alternative is much worse,” Scholes said.

Wits professor, Bob Scholes says that people should not be worried about saving the world. “The world is going to be just fine. It is us [humanity] that we have to worry about. Picture: Sthembiso Lebuso

He said the time for small actions such as changing light bulbs and saving a little bit of paper at the photocopying machine has come and gone.

“We have to stop fiddling around with little things. We need to think about what will lead us into a transformative sustainable future,” Scholes said.

Activist Chikane, author of Breaking a Rainbow, Building a Nation, shared an incident that happened earlier this year when he spoke to a group of young people on how failure to shift youth unemployment, income inequality, poverty and gender-based violence would mean that South Africa hasn’t changed. A young woman stood up and asked the question: “Why does all this matter when all this [world] is coming to an end?”

“[The] climate crisis is forcing us [to think about] how we engage the politics of the country with government. The way we look at youth unemployment will fundamentally alter in the next 15 years because of [the] climate crisis. No climate change will happen in this country unless there’s a fundamental re-examination of what politics means for young people in this country.

“How we go back to grassroot mobilisation and redirect it back to conversations around the climate crisis. Talking about all the issues which are at the top of the country to-do list doesn’t matter if we don’t deal with the climate crisis. It’s not an either/or discussion, it is about including the climate crisis in whatever you are advocating for. It underpins how much time you have to change an issue in society,” Chikane said.

Sthembiso Lebuso Journalist | City Press

+27 11 713 9001 Sthembiso.Lebuso@citypress.co.za Media Park, 69 Kingsway Road, Auckland Park

Rise above the clutter | Choose your news | City Press in your inbox

City Press is an agenda-setting South African news brand that publishes across platforms. Its flagship print edition is distributed on a Sunday.