Councillor Eulanda Mabusela, MMC for Health and Social Development, City of Tshwane
Professor MD Rocky Ralebipi-Simela, CEO of the National Library of South Africa
Mr Mandla Matyumza, Director, National Library of South Africa - Centre of the Book
Ms Zukiswa Ncunyana (Strategic Executive Director, Research and Innovation, City of Tshwane
Mr Abuti Rams, President, Agape Youth Movement
Youth leaders
Invited guests

The weather reports predict a very cold Gauteng today. But here in Tshwane, at the National Library of South Africa, I feel the warmth. I am happy to be here and it gives me great pleasure to be your keynote speaker at this Tshwane Youth Leadership Talk 2015. Thank you for inviting me.

Tomorrow will be 20 days before the celebration of Nelson Mandela Day. A popular quote of Nelson Mandela was when he said that “I am not a liberator, the people are their own liberators”.

The significance of this lies in the fact that young people should not socially construct heroes but find heroes within themselves. To identify an external human being or institution as a hero as an agent to champion your vision, your goals and your life aspirations is to disempower yourself and kill the innate leader within you.

We always say that the youth of ’76 were oppressed. Yes, they lived under the brutal system of apartheid.  But what we forget is that their liberation and empowerment began when they took to the streets against the system of apartheid.

Their first step was to undermine the ‘supernatural-imposition’ of the Verwoerdian system of apartheid and to de-legitimise it as an institution. They empowered themselves to fight it thereby taking its power and presence in society. That was true leadership.

The refusal to be oppressed, to be bound in chains, to live under racial oppression, to declare war against the system that encroached on their freedom in the classroom, homes and streets is in itself leadership, freedom and power.

This is important because philosophy teaches us that ‘freedom is the realisation of necessity’ and that realisation comes if we provide leadership to our own struggles. No individual, no matter how powerful they were, including Nelson Mandela, could have mastered the struggle against apartheid and won.

The struggle had to rely on the leadership of young people in the streets of Soweto in ’76 and in ’86 during the State of Emergency.

We have seen the rise of secular and cult leadership as the creation of young people resulting in the externalisation of power and leadership, in recent times.  We forget that we are not leaders of tomorrow but leaders of today.

We occupy different leadership positions, and should not allow people to play God with our hopes and aspirations as though we are incapable of leading ourselves, and of realising our own freedom.

The moment we apportion one amongst us as a superman or superhero, we take a part of ourselves and our abilities and hand them over to that person or institution.

We end up disempowering ourselves. To liberate ourselves, we have to be anti-heroes, we have to free ourselves from the tentacles of heroes, no matter how powerful they believe they are.

The popular narrative in our society is that leadership failure in Parliament or in the State, constitutes failure in society. We subject political leaders, rightly so, under a magnifying glass and scrutinise their every action. Through the ballot we seem to have externalised our power and leadership.

We raise our hands in despair when they fail, and build monuments for them if they succeed as though they possess some supernatural powers that we believe we do not have. We make them into heroes whose success further affirms their godly status, and their failure we regard as our own failure and therefore an anti-progress.

We waste time looking for political heroes when we are supposed to be preoccupied with transforming and democratizing the spaces which we occupy and lead.

But in the process we also exonerate other leaders in society, religious, business, school, university, stokvels, civil servants and many other leaders whose decisions affect millions of our people and sometimes act in reverse of the progress made by the political leadership. Why have we abandoned our own leadership?

If we look at Marikana, there were leaders of the trade unions, the management of Lonmin, leadership in the police, community leaders and many others who could have prevented the tragedy.

Those leaders may escape prosecution of responsibility simply because we hoped that the political leadership should take responsibility and be brought to book. Yes, those who are politicians and took part, if there is reasonable doubt, should take responsibility, but does it mean that everyone else should be exonerated from taking responsibility?

This notion of leadership, of course, arises out of our history of the struggle against apartheid and colonialism. At moments in the epoch of our struggles arose men and women who took the centre stage and sometimes became martyrs of our struggles.

Chief Bambatha, Sekhukhune, Tshwane, Nelson Mandela, Chris Hani, Steve Biko, Solomon Mahlangu, Barney Molokoane, Oliver Tambo and many others who assumed the centre stage and also became the targets of the colonial and apartheid regimes.

They took the bigger risk, they put their heads on the block and some even died as a result. But they could not have had their names etched in the annals of history had they not been confident that they have the support of the majority of the oppressed behind them.

Society is structured in such a way that we can only have one priest for the parish, one biological father and mother for the child, one bishop for the denomination, one chief of staff for the army, one commander for the battalion, one king or one queen for a nation or tribe, one captain for a sports team or a ship, one president for a country or a golf club.

All of these people are nothing without the collective wisdom and strength of those whom they lead.

This reminds me of the poem, Questions from a Worker who Reads, by Bertolt Brecht:

Who built Thebes of the 7 gates?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times?
In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?
Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them?
Over whom did the Caesars triumph?
Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants?
Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it,
The drowning still cried out for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar defeated the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War.
Who else won it?
Every page a victory!
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every 10 years a great man!
Who paid the bill?
So many reports!
So many questions!

The challenge for our generation is to shed our shoulders of the heavy load of heroes and cult-personalities. We have to believe in the power that we have and realise that they are dependent on this power. They are feeding of it like parasites only to use it at our expense.

One of the many beauties about the actions of the youth of ’76 was that their sacrifices was intended to empower us to be able to take further the ideals which they fought for.

The hallmark of our constitution, and the Freedom Charter, was to put power into the hands of our people. Sometimes, we tend to negate this power, transfer it into the hands of politicians or other institutions with the hope that they will come, donned in their cape, to liberate us, even on issues which we should be taking leadership on.

With some of the biggest challenges facing young people being alcohol and substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, poor pass rates in schools and universities, taking forward our own ideas and innovative skills.

A common excuse is that we are faced with these challenges solely because the government or so and so does not help or support us. We have to take leadership and control for the furthering of our dreams. After all, nature does not allow co-dreaming.

There are responsibilities that those in power should take. We obviously cannot make excuses for government failure. People participate in elections and elect governments and pay their taxes mainly because we expect government to take certain responsibilities with the powers, laws and resources they have in their control.

But the government, given the nature of our transition, may not be able to do things without the support of our people and their application of the power that they have in their midst. If we want transformation in the spaces that we occupy, we need to take a lead.

If there is still racism, gender exploitation, ageism and other forms of backwardness that are remnants of apartheid or the results of new forms of exploitation, we have to confront these.

Let us take the Curro School example, the MEC of Education can only do so much, but the legislated and regulated power that the parents of those learners have is the catalyst for transformation and to confront the resistance towards change.

Some of the political parties, mainstream media and other institutions that have positioned themselves as anti-state can only succeed to push the narrative that the ANC government has failed solely because we have also agencified the state as the only institution of power that can pursue our own development and progress.

In 1994, Mandela hammered the idea that we were not yet free, and that voting was only the beginning for the battle for freedom. By this, he meant that only if people may not interpret voting as equal to reversing the long and many years of apartheid and colonialism, and see themselves as part and parcel of the struggle for freedom, and as collective leaders.

The slogan power to the people, means that the state cannot apportion all the power unto itself and be the ultimate institution that delivers freedom. Power to the people means empowering people to be able to take charge of their own destinies in the spaces that they occupy.

In schools, churches, social clubs, workplaces, hospitals, libraries, ward committees and every institution of peoples’ power through organs of self-rule. This is at the centre of the challenges that faces our generation, and no matter what government we elect, and what hero we construct, our challenges will still remain.

Good leadership is about taking responsibility. We exercise good leadership by taking responsibility to make sure that things go right in our own lives, in our communities, in our organisations and in our country. Bad leadership is the abdication of responsibility. We outsource this responsibility to super heroes and institutions, we sit back and watch from the side-lines.

It is time that we as youth leaders took responsibility. It is time that we truly exercise people’s power in our communities and organisations. Young people must be at the forefront of pushing for positive social change. And to do this, it requires youth leadership.

So my challenge to you as young people - don’t outsource your responsibility to lead. You must lead.

Let me conclude with the words of the poet William Ernest Henley, who wrote in his poem entitled, Invictus:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

I thank you.