Esterhof youth offer a new vision

As the National Dialogue unfolds, these young South Africans outline challenges and practical steps forward, underscoring that meaningful change depends on communities listening and acting. By Deon Snyman

- By Deon Snyman

This year, South Africa has embarked on a bold and complex journey of national reflection. In June, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a nationwide "National Dialogue of South Africa", described as a people-led, society-wide process intended to bring together all walks of life to reflect on the state of our country and to imagine its future.

The ambition: to forge a shared vision, a new national ethos and common value system, and a social compact driving progress to 2030.

Yet the process also carries many questions. Will it yield concrete change? Will the voices of ordinary young people be heard? Critics argue that the process risks being symbolic rather than substantive.

Meanwhile, in the small community of Esterhof near Riebeek-Kasteel in the Swartland, 15 young people aged 18 to 22 have been engaging in their own micro-dialogue. Facilitated through the Goedgedacht Trust's Critical Consciousness Programme, they met weekly for two-hour sessions with the trust's managing director, myself, to reflect deeply on three horizons: their neighbourhood (Esterhof), their country (SA) and the world. What they produced is not only compelling, it also offers a grounded counterpoint to the lofty national discussions.

The first of the youth reflections asks: "What is required for Esterhof to become the best place in the world to live?"

The young writers draw on childhood memories of writing down dreams on paper, of seeing around them a world that "didn't have to be that way". They imagine a community where dignity, fairness and love define relationships; not buildings or money alone.

They identify racism - overt and covert - as a wound that still haunts the everyday: "Sometimes it's hidden in the way people talk, in the jobs that are offered to some but not to others, or in how we still see 'them' and 'us."

Their vision is bold: