It is time that the country’s leaders listen to South Africans and heed their cry, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday.

“This is a time to listen, and be in conversation with our people. This is not a time to display arrogance and ignore the people. This is the time to heed everything people are saying,” Ramaphosa said at the third commemoration of former president Nelson Mandela’s death in Johannesburg.

He said protesting students demanding free higher education, as well as the demands of workers fighting for better wages and communities going for days without water needed to be heeded. It was time for leaders to put people’s needs ahead of theirs.

“Yes, we need to listen to those veterans of our struggle who believe that we may have gone astray, it is time to listen at what they are saying,” Ramaphosa said.

“Only through united action can we be able to counter the effects of patronage, corruption, deal with the prevailing sense of entitlement and the unrestrained scramble for positions and resources. If we are to succeed as leaders, those of us in the congress movement need to be united.”

Recent times also called for the renewal and restoration of the values and character of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), he said.

“As we tackle the current problems, we must make a concerted effort to correct some of the bad tendencies that have infiltrated the society and our movement. This moment calls for the renewal of the structures of our movement so that they no longer serve as a means of self-enrichment, but of fundamental social change…it is in such a moment that the nation turn to Madiba for inspiration, guidance because Madiba embodied so much of what we seek in a leader. He was humble, never arrogant and devoid of any sense of entitlement,” Ramaphosa said.

“Unless we have leaders who are credible, listen and are inspirational…we would not only be unable to unite our movement but we will fail the whole nation.At the root of the many problems facing the country is the inability for South Africans to listen each other.

“They would make us believe that we are listening to each other but in reality we are not. From the benches of Parliament to the highest structure of our movement, radio stations, Twitter feeds…everyone is talking, but the key question is whether they’re listening to each other. We need to engage to national dialogue where each of us will give consideration to another and listen.”

He said Mandela found that it was through conversation and debates with other people where differences were reconciled.

Ramaphosa delved on the economy, and said that for as long as black people remained poor and white people still privileged, South Africa would not be united. The country’s wealth needed to be urgently redistributed, he said.

“There is an urgent need to redistribute wealth, so many of our people are way below the middle income level even if our country is categorised as middle income,” he said.

“A united South Africa requires the restoration of land to those who work it, it requires meaningful transfer of ownership and control over natural resources, the means of production to the people as a whole. These are wrongs that must be corrected, and this is what Madiba would have wished for and dedicated his life to.”

Monday marked three years since the death of the former statesman. He was 90 when he died.