In this country, I found that it is easier to point fingers and to blame one other. Our orientation has been able to distort who we really are, even to ourselves.
As South Africans of every race, we have good reason to believe why the other is better than the other.
Those reasons are race, education, class, background, how we speak and much more. I acknowledge that in some personal spaces, this is not happening.
Globally though, we see it in the events that engulf us.
Where then is our hope? What is the solution? Is it an acceptable truth to all South Africa to liberate us and that before colonisation there was exceptional farming by the indigenous South Africans?
Can we openly speak about the impact of labour migration on the social and family fibres of us?
Not taking away accountability from any person, especially those in power, why do we only talk about the tax payers’ money when disgruntled about a situation and never about when traffic lights are driven over almost every weekend in our suburbs?
What is our truth, as South Africans?
Can we look at each other with acceptance of who we are and not who we perceive each other to be?
Can we acknowledge the need for redress, in our minds and hearts about who we are as a society, without pointing fingers and blaming the other for this and that?
Can we take things a step further and agree on who we ought to be ideally?
Do we want to know each other? Do we desire a better state of living? Or is prejudice going to define us and our children, where neither one of us is willing to speak the truth about who we are?
Let us have strategic conversations to free us from misconceptions about each other, whose foundations are colonies, apartheid, slavery and oppression.
The truth about South Africa is that its been fought for by Africans with the British, the British with the Boers, the Boers with the African.
I don’t know about you, but I personally don’t know what the recent fight is about, but I see the wheels reinventing themselves and us not reaching a peaceful state except at personal levels.
Can we fight a new fight? A fight of not fighting but complete acceptance of who we are as a country, accepting one another and co-creating our future. In communities, in schools, in our companies and organisations?
I raise this subject, as someone who runs strategic conversations workshops to encourage honest conversation that lead to co-creation of a society in every space.
I apply mostly, the principles of the art of participatory leadership, systems thinking, anthropology and many years of management experience.
I therefore, call on all South Africans to be activists for a new South Africa, reflecting beautiful rainbow colours from one light – our identity.
