Talk shops won't work, ubuntu will

Building the country we want isn't the state's sole responsibility. People need to also take action and use the abilities they have to effect change

- Rudi Kimmie

Living in South Africa is like a David-versus-Goliath encounter. Just think, every day South Africans battle a depressed economy, stubborn unemployment, corruption, high crime, and there's no respite in sight.

Navigating the complexities of political uncertainty, no growth economy and social decline has crippled us with fear, confusion and fuelled disillusionment. Many citizens either plan to leave, or “quietly quit”, meaning they withdraw into an insular, depressed and unproductive state of mind.

Hence it’s understandable why President Cyril Ramaphosa’s proposal for a national dialogue has evoked a public outcry. Besides the excessive cost (estimated at R700 million), which is difficult to justify in these depressed economic times, what South Africans are really tired of and cynical about are the endless talk shops and commissions of inquiry with no penalties for those implicated. The nation has had its fair share of these for about 30 years. And despite the expectation and hype that surrounds these events, they have yielded little or no value. What we need now are practical solutions with tangible consequences.

To build the nation we deserve, South Africans need to shift from thinking and talking to doing. We have the most progressive Constitution in the world, but we don’t live it. The National Development Plan, despite some ideological disagreements with it, was a well thought-out developmental roadmap. Instead, it’s stuck in limbo.

As Peter Kingsley, author of Reality (2003) said: “We have plenty of theories, endless discussions of problems about problems. But the simple fact is that through our minds we have not managed to understand one single thing. And the time for thinking and for reasoning is over now. They have served their purpose. The problem is that we know nothing.”