When your mother is a journalist and your sister and best friend are media studies students, a healthy appreciation for freedom of speech is socialized into your DNA. As a South African, the bombardment of the protection of information bill, the media tribunal and the Spear saga keeps this debate and appreciation alive and hale.

But the recent violent riots and protest spurred by the amateur anti-Islam film "Innocence of Muslims" makes me question the absoluteness of freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech protects the right to advocate your beliefs, no matter their ethical interpretation, if they do not violate the rights of others. Under this right, people are allowed to advocate certain immoral beliefs freely, if they do not slander or do harm to others.

The film Innocence of Muslims depicts the life of the prophet Muhammad, portraying him as a child abuser and womanizer. The 14-minute length “film” is filled with such Islamophobic propaganda, mocking the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud.

This film is clearly more than just offensive and immoral – it is irresponsibly hateful. But when does freedom of speech transcend into the incitement of violence?

For this classification to be legally valid, the material must encourage the partaker to commit a violent act towards another party. If Charles Manson writes a manifesto, encouraging his followers to take up arms and start an apocalyptic race war, that is incitement to violence. Unfortunately, it does not restrict the use of hateful provocation by parties that leads to retaliation.

Upholders of this argument state that parties cannot be held responsible for the irrational reaction of others, and that any material could elicit a retaliatory response. Individuals could decide to take offence at Richard Dawkin’s denouncement of creationism. If they violently attack him, was he inciting violence by merely speaking against their opinions? Is this a misapplication of “incitement of violence”, or does the provocation justify retribution?

No, it does not.

But neither is it responsible or fair to provoke an already volatile environment. It is reckless to wield your right to freedom of speech by slandering a sensitive issue, which is known to incite a passionate or divisive response. Hate speech is not a constructive form of social criticism, especially where religion is concerned.

I am an advocate of freedom of speech and expression. I will, however, never condone the abuse of this right in sensitive environments which can lead to violence. Volatile issues should be treated with the necessary sensitivity, respect and diplomacy.

American schools, embassies and citizens have globally been under attack since the film went viral. Four American were killed in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. The free speech of a select few Americans has incited the violence of protesters, across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Most of the countries with the severest riots are countries that have far more suppressive environment than the United States, with more restrictions on freedom of speech and expression. The difficulty is to emphasize that this act of hate was by individuals, and does not represent the view of the United States’ government or populace at large. Most of thee countries do not have a culture of free speech, so acknowledging the right of people to speak in hateful opposition to their beliefs is incomprehensible.

We have seen this level of outrage before, in the response to Salman Rushdie’s work, as well as the publishing of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in Denmark and the burning of the Quran. When we know the potential or precedent for violence our actions provoke, I believe it is our responsibility to weigh the consequences against our need to express ourselves freely.

If it had been a factual film, documenting the civil war in Syria, it is another matter. But this film was a personal attack by a group of individuals. The filmmakers were not critically analysing the Prophet Muhammad’s legacy. They did not intend to explore any relevant theme, or deliver social criticism. The nature and motivation of the film does not warrant protection as freedom of speech. It is hateful, irresponsible and should be condemned as such by all, along with the violence of the retaliation.

If we are to advocate harmony and peace, we need to condemn both the act and the response.

I have always prided myself on being a flexible person mentally. As an inquiring and analytical mind, I have always sought justification for behaviours and opinions. As a scientist, I sought cause for reaction. I believed this made me tolerant (and I still do) of other’s perceptions and angles of thought.

I am a great devotee of the Sherlock Holmes school of thought: observation and deduction. Though I am very much an extrovert at first sight, I love to sit central or at the fringes of a conversation and map out personalities and mindsets. I observe and then I put on my deerstalker thinking cap and deduce the motivations behind what was said or implied.

Two years ago I made a very conscious decision to “broaden my horizons”, as the clichéd adage encourages. I chose to veer of the road more travelled. I chose to find the strangest and most foreign conversations and platforms I could to assimilate from. I went on a quest to understand, not only myself but people.

An abstract and ambitious journey, one would think.

I do believe I’m very much the product of nurture, not nature (I do however subscribe to the wonderful world of epigenetics). I was raised in a wonderful, loving home where I was encouraged and supported to better myself through education and experience. As I entered high school, I realised that the people surrounding me were not representative of our country alone. I felt like I needed new influences in my life; I wanted to learn more about mindsets and cultures and individuals.

My education at the University of the Western Cape did a lot to make me fall in love with my quest for expanding my reference base. I met new people; people whom I normally would not have crossed paths with. I got to work with them, learn from them, laugh with them and appreciate how what they taught me unknowingly shaped my views.

I applied to SAWIP because I fell in love with my fellow South Africans. I wanted to be equipped to empower my community and the society. It was in this incredible time in my life that I met my colleagues and friends, the SAWIP team of 2012, and was privileged enough to journey through four months of the SAWIP experience by their sides.

I quickly learnt I was not as flexible as I thought. I would sit at a table, while fourteen different people reached fourteen different conclusions on a matter with fourteen different trains of thought. I reached my own, following my own process of thought. I could argue from a moral point of view, but legal and economical implications never jumped into my mind. Also, I would not always consider every culture or individual’s objection to the matter based on beliefs, purely because I did not know.

One of the team members gave me one the greatest compliments I have ever received after our three months together: he told me he could no longer push my buttons, though I still have one or two left.

Because in the three months of the SAWIP journey, I have been exposed and educated on so many subjects and methods of thought that I no longer believe my views are supreme. I no longer stubbornly defend my beliefs, without considering the opposition’s motivation. I am a feminist and believe every woman should be the equal of a man, but I now understand the cultural implications of trying to impose this view on others. I still stand by my beliefs, if I find them truthful; I just understand the opposition and can make allowances in my actions for this difference of motivation or mindset. And this openness of mind has also led me to challenge every belief I had, and change a great deal of them.

SAWIP has been mental yoga to me. I have stretched my mind to consider all implications in an argument: legal, economical, moral, historical, social and political. Having a team of bright minds in each sector to peer-educate me and to guide our problem solving minds has truly allowed me to become flexible mentally. The rich diversity of the team and their friendship and support has also guided me to understand that tolerance should not be the objective, but acceptance; Acceptance based on an informed understanding of what justifies behaviour and opinions.

I hope to continue the legacy of my SAWIP journey, by always valuing curiosity to overcome ignorance, exposure to diversity to shape opinions and acceptance, encompassing tolerance, to guide my choices and behaviour. If I honour this, I may one day truly have no more buttons to push.

“Homosexuality is a western disease”: We have often heard the argument, posed by some hostile and ignorant leader who tries to blame the West’s “unnatural” sexual practices for their AIDS or STI statistics.

Robert Mugabe branded homosexuals un-African. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said homosexuality did not exist in his country. Indian Minister of Health Ghulam Nabi Azad claimed that homosexuality was a disease spread to India by foreigners.

The cruel irony, pointed out to me by one of our esteemed speakers during our human rights curriculum week, is that homosexuality is not the introduced culprit. Homophobia is the true western disease.

The law that criminalized homosexuality in India, known as Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, was legislated during the British rule of India. In other words: homosexuality was not imported; the hatred was.

Advocates for the unconstitutionality of section 377 say that the Indian society, pre-British rule, was more accepting of homosexuality than their conservative Victorian colonisers. They argue that Section 377 was purely a moral imposition of the British and that it was contrary to Indian tradition and principle of inclusiveness. Section 377 was created to set behavioural standard for the colonies that they might “reform” morally.

The Delhi High Court had decriminalised consenting homosexual sex in 2009; a decision upheld in the Supreme Court this year. Surely this is a progressive triumph for LGBT rights; yet Human Rights Watch notes that more than 50 percent of the remaining homosexuality criminalization laws globally were modelled on the Indian penal law. And these laws of hatred have been entrenched into society.

Because even though the disease of homophobia might be foreign, the indoctrination with time into society has been complete. Many civil and religious organisations had opposed the decriminalization act in India on the ground that homosexuality was immoral and unnatural. To be gay is still taboo in India. Even though homosexuals can no longer be prosecuted for their sexual behaviour, they are ostracised from society. NGO’s advocating for LGBT rights in India say that there have been cases where individuals have been denied medical treatment based on their sexual orientation, as of 2012. There have been tales of suicide and disinheritance; of violence and hate speech.

The shift from the sin stigma is yet to be realized, in a society not generally open to dialogue regarding any form of sexuality. But the acknowledgement of the courts that Indian culture is an inclusive and tolerant culture that will not bear the moral imposition of “western diseases” is a progressive step in the right direction.

The team recently started sharing their favorite poetry via the blogs. Though I adore Byron and Keats, Owen and Yeats, Cummings, Dickinson, Eybers, Opperman and Serote, no poem has spoken as truly to me as "A Brave and Startling Truth", by Maya Angelou.

Maya Angelou wrote this breathtaking humanist journey through the collective human soul, psyche and history in celebration of the 50th birthday of the United Nations. She dedicated it "to the hope for peace, which lies, sometimes hidden, in every heart."

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet

Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

When I tell people I study biotechnology, I get a range of reactions. Some praise its scientific innovation; some sprinkle me with verbal holy water for being a cloner or a GM condoner. A relative even asked me if biotechnology was a type of washing machine. But here is the answer I normally spin: biotechnology is the future.

Is this true? Do the advantages of biotechnology's progresses out weigh the negatives? Lets consider this briefly (and narrowly) in agricultural biotech:

Recent studies released by the United Nations have claimed that the world population will have reached and exceeded 9 billion by 2050. This large projected growth implies that great measures will have to be taken to supply this additional populace with food, shelter and medicine.

Biotechnology can be defined as the science of using and manipulating living organisms in industrial processes. The National Centre for Food and Agricultural Policy in Washington DC has assembled a report based on nine case studies that conclude that agricultural biotechnology can lead to a supplementary yield of 8.5 billion kilograms of crops in Europe alone, this extrapolated in the year 2003. Advances likes these towards mass food production are why biotechnology is important for progress in our modern era.

One of the many biotechnological projects working towards addressing modern predicaments is the golden rice project, working towards eradicating malnutrition. This project has genetically engineered ordinary rice plants to produce β-carotene in their endosperm. Each grain of rice then contains provitamin A, a nutrient that, when lacking, causes blindness and immunodeficiency. Rice is a staple food group, eaten by the marginalised in great numbers on a daily bases. Now with every 100-200g of golden rice, they receive their daily requirement of vitamin A. The scientists behind the project calculate that 3 000 000 children can be saved every year by just ingesting a sufficient amount of vitamin A.

Another study showing the necessity of biotechnology for modern progress is the case of Bt field corn and its modified pest-resistant nature. Bt Corn is a genetically modified crop that has had genes from a soil bacterium incorporated into its genome, producing a cry protein that is especially effective in warding off lepidopteron insect attacks. With reduced losses due to insect attack, Bt corn had a supplementary yield of 66 million bushels in 1999. Thus biotechnological processes have increased food production and decreased the amount of pesticides needed as the plant produces its own pesticide in the form of the cry protein. The compiled studies of NCFAP have shown that 14.4 million fewer kilograms pesticides will be used every year thanks to these inherent pesticides. Fewer pesticides reduce the level of dangerous toxins assimilated by consumption, which has great health benefits. If fewer pesticides are needed, production costs of farming will decrease: herbicide for rice can cost up to R2500 per hectare. Biotechnology has yielded rice plants that require only 10 kilograms of herbicide per hectare, decreasing costs by 50%.

Yet there are many people who do not view biotechnology as the solution to our modern problems. Many regulatory agencies have expressed concern and criticism about the protein allergens in GM food. Dr Arpad Pusztai created great controversy after he stated that GE foods cannot be accurately pronounced safe as regulations do not require long term studies . Pusztai conducted a study of GM potatoes at the Rowett institute, investigating whether potatoes modified to produce plant proteins named lectins had an effect on the immune systems of rats. The study concluded that consumption of the GM potatoes led to the suppression of the immune system in rats and that their growth was stunted after a period of time equivalent to 10 human years. There is no post-trial surveillance for allergic reactions to GM food in the USA, as of 2011. The European Food Safety Authority’s guidelines for GM food allergens do not require further research if the novel protein does not structurally match any known allergen. Together with the lack of post-trial surveillance, the lax research requirements imply that GM food can be introducing new allergens to people without scientists or consumers being aware of it because there is no follow up research. Scientists also do not have to proceed with testing a protein if it is not a known allergen. This can lead to slow acting agents in the long term.

An astounding 96% of world investment into agricultural biotechnology in 2001 was concentrated into industrialized countries. This means that developing countries like South Africa only receive 4% of world funds to develop agribiotechnology. They do not have access to the improved methods and technologies and can thus not produce at a competitive rate due to high production costs. Dr. Alfredo Tolón-Becerra of the University of Almeria conducted a study in 2011 to see how biotechnological processes had affected the soybean farming sector on the Pampas region. The study stated that household incomes dropped 59% per hectare, in comparison to the 1990’s. It also concluded that the 12 000 rural workers lose their jobs annually. This can be explained by the intellectual property right in the biotechnology sector Private sector firms that develop GMO’s can have them patented as intellectual properties. They then have a market monopoly and can sell the rights to firms and farmers at a very high cost. So, as seen by the Argentinean sector, small commercial farmers cannot afford these biotechnological intellectual property rights. And so developing countries reap almost no investment or benefit from agricultural biotechnology.

For biotechnology to be the science of the modern era, it must address the key issues faced by our growing population. Foremost of these is the need for mass producing food for an overpopulated Earth. Biotechnology, through GM foods, allows us to produce higher yields, with no seasonal variety, with nutrient density and in abnormal conditions. For the progress made to feed 9.2 billion people, biotechnology truly is the answer for our modern era.

Warning: the following blog may contain traces of morality, caution is advised.

Under the facilitation of some of our members, the SAWIP team recently entered a dialogue on human rights and immigration. In preparation, our facilitators recommended we read up on the theories of Hannah Arendt.

For those who don’t know (I numbered amongst the uninformed merely a week ago): Hannah Arendt was a political philosopher, inspired by her German-Jewish heritage and flight from the Nazi regime in 1933 to write about political justice, civic engagement and representative democracy, amongst other titanic subjects.

Statelessness is also one of the main focuses of her work; understandable given her background, having spent eighteen years as a stateless refugee. The Nazi regime used the sovereignty of state to deny collective citizen and human rights to entire ethnic groups. It is no wonder Ms. Arendt wrote that statelessness denies one the “right to have rights”. Without a state to implement one’s rights, who shall do so? When no country legally claims you, who should provide for you? Protect you?

But the question that truly resonated with me was not primarily one of the above, as vital as they are. The question that snuck hauntingly into the back of my mind, guided by our reading, was: by what right are you a citizen of a specific country?

I anticipate the legal minds and ask them not to bludgeon me with jargon and precedent. This argument is not one restricted to black and white or literal thinking. I restate: this is a moral interpretation of the argument.

By what right am I a South Africa citizen?

To satisfy the lawyers’ need for precedent: 98 percent of citizens worldwide acquired citizenship in the country of one or both of their parents birth, or acquiring it in the country of their own birth.

Morally, this arrangement is flawed. Citizenship to a specific country moulds the circumstances in which you develop and live. The social capital, health benefits and legal protection the state affords you shapes the standard of your living.

A child born in Afghanistan has an average life expectancy of 44.6 years. If that child had been born in Japan, he or she would on average live to 83.2 years. What if that child had been born in Canada, where more than 50% of the population has a tertiary degree, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)? Would that child not have an enormous advantage over children in developing countries, where tertiary degrees are scarce and a luxury?

Why should the second-case child be doomed to grow up in an underdeveloped social infrastructure, just because his/her mother gave birth at certain GPS co-ordinates?

Even worse: a child born to a country in conflict. Should the child be nursed in a world of chaos, or allowed to develop in a country with stability and resources even though he was not born there?

Naturalization processes around the world takes many years, attempts and administration costs. States around the world have been given the right to refuse entry and legal protection to individuals that are not citizens. States have been given the power or right to withhold rights, in the form of citizenship. I understand the need for these regulations, supported by arguments regarding national security and organizational provision of resources. But is it moral?

There is a school of thought that advocates for citizenship to be made available to all who choose to live in a country. The implications of this liberal argument are, however, the establishment of a global state where citizens can move in and out of countries as they so please. The advocates argue that certain residency requirements will regulate the sovereignty of regional states, but the practical implications of this argument is just too unrealistically concrete for me to be supportive of the concept. Morally, of course, it appears correct.

Others argue that citizenship should be awarded to all who are subject to the laws of that state. If these individuals have to live by the laws, they need to be represented in the political processes of the state that shape said laws and policies. Or that citizens should be those who economically or socially contribute to the society of the state. If you play a role in developing the state, they argue, you must be granted the protection of said state.

Which school of thought do I support?

Firstly, I believe statelessness denies you a collective identity. It makes you vulnerable, to poverty and violence, as you are under no state’s legal protection or provision. It condemns you, in some cases, to the life of a refugee, where your opinion or actions have no credible effect or agency. Arendt actually says: that within a “completely organized humanity” the “loss of home and political status becomes identical with expulsion from humanity altogether.”

I agree to a great extent with Hannah Arendt when she says that “the only human right is the right to citizenship.” This right, after all, affords you many other rights. Do I then believe that power to restrict citizenship and the rights associated with it should be left to the sovereignty of states? With 32.9 million displaced people globally in 2006 alone, I do question the structure of citizenship application and implementation. The obvious solution would be for all of these stateless people to be granted nationality in the various states they currently live in, or could be provided for.

But unfortunately, this argument is not merely a moral one. It is a racial, regional, economical, political argument. States not willing to legally absorb these refugees to establish them in communities conducive to growth are instead moving towards a so-called containment strategy. This involves the use of mass repatriation and internment camps, including emergency and holding stations. These states may legally exclude these individuals from their territory for whatever reason.

By what right are you, and not the stateless, citizens of a country?

Going by the place of birth of your parents or yourself seems feudal and primitive. Giving everyone license to roam free seems like a recipe for resource misdistribution. The one thing I do believe is that the processes of naturalization should be simplified, as to make transition easier for citizens. In the era of globalization, this only seems logical. Also: if an individual needs to be an economic agent contributing towards the state to be a citizen, what becomes of the marginalized who cannot do so? I believe that the individuals subject to the laws of a state give the state legitimacy. This seems a fair basis for citizenship, to my amateur mind.

The other thing I know is that sovereignty of state is failing us in addressing the problem of statelessness. Did Hannah Arendt have a solution for the problem?

No. Nor do I. Yet.

According to statistics by the National Treasury, 42% of South Africans under the age of 30 were unemployed in 2011. The same statistics show that employment of youth aged 18-24 years has decreased by 20% in the interval of December 2008 and 2010, due in parts to aftershocks from the global recession. The overall decline was 6.4%.

Youth unemployment is one of the many shackles that restrain South African growth. 42% of my peers are not employed. They have no formal means to raise an income; but not only are they losing their income, they are not granted an opportunity or a platform to contribute to our society or economy. They are not being equipped to become independent and innovative citizens. They are being moulded as a burden on our government, dependent on social grants and promises from politicians. In ten years the beneficiaries of state social grants have increased from 3.5 million to 15.1 million. AS ANC MP Prof Ben Turok said: "South Africa is becoming a charity rather than a developmental state".

Our youth is unemployed for various reasons. Firstly, our education system fails to equip them with basic skills. Secondly, 66% of our unemployed youth have no job experience, a vital asset for an individual seeking employment. Both these factors make employing our youth a very risky investment, when there is such a large discrepancy between start-up salaries and level of productivity.

Late former chairperson of the Centre for Policy Studies, Professor Lawrence Schlemmer, believed that economic and social disempowerment leaves the youth psychologically vulnerable to gangster/criminal culture as well as “the activism of slick political entrepreneurs”. This has spurred many thought leaders to consider whether the Arab Spring would extend to our frustrated youth.

Political and Trend Analyst JP Landman recently presented a compilation of the core environment that support’s an “Arab spring” to the BoE Private Clients. The countries where the movement gained foothold were all middle-income nations with high rates of inequality and poverty. The demographics also showed a “youth bulge” with 30-32% of the population aged between 15-29 years and citizens were allowed very restricted political and civil rights. Grading South Africa according to these categories, South Africa exhibits 4 of the 5 traits that inflame a country to the “Arab Spring” movement: our economy is classified as middle-income; we have extremely high rates of poverty and one of the highest rates of inequality worldwide; 28% of our population is aged between 15 and 29, but Landman considers this high enough to categories as an environment to promote the Arab Spring movement.

With 4 of the 5 conditions met, would South Africa experience a youth mobilized revolution to overturn the current government?

Many thought leaders would answer in the negative. Our media sector has not yet been disempowered; they are allowed to police our government and hold them publically accountable for misjudgements and misbehaviours. Whether we will retain this right is another story. The judiciary system is independent and constitutional, they argue. South Africa has an opposition party to give voice to counter-arguments and criticisms of current government. A survey done by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in late 2011 reports that 66% of respondents indicated that they trust the national government to deliver basic services. If that seems incredible, survey statistics of late 2011 by Ipsos Markinor reflect that 56% of our population has confidence in our government. These surveys would indicate that the majority of citizens are not as dissatisfied with our government as to rise up in mass protest to force regime change.

And yet the number of service delivery protest has increased from 2 in 2006 to 111 in 2010, according to the city press. And between January and May of 2012 there has been an astounding 372 service delivery protests, according to national police spokesperson Colonel Vishnu Naidoo. Political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki has even come out and proclaimed that the current government will have lost power by 2030 and that an Arab spring-like revolution would very likely be a contributing factor. He said we shared several characteristics with countries of the Arab spring movement: our populace was educated to an extent and had high expectations that were not being met economically and socially. He believes the people will grow sick of the political elite feeding only their own consumption.

ANC treasurer-general Matthews Phosa even spoke to warn against disgruntled youth turning on the current government. He said the Arab Spring was a lesson to other countries not to neglect their frustrated youth. The National Planning Commission estimated that the chances of an individual entering employment without experience after 24 years of age is minimal. Thus 60% of our generation will spend most of their lives without formal employment.

Is that a fact we can ignore? Is that a fact the government can ignore?

Reflecting back on youth day to our courageous previous generation, I see the same distancing between leadership and a disgruntled youth today. Not fuelled by the same issues, but neglected and almost as disempowered. Will this lead to a South African Arab Spring? Do we need an Arab Spring to address these issues? Do we need to march on the union buildings, mass-mobilized and driven by anger? Or do we need a non-politicised platform, where the leadership of this nation enters dialogue with the youth to be held accountable and responsible for their actions and promises? Where we are empowered to seek innovative solutions; where we encounter each other and try and find solutions locally and nationally? A think-tank for entrepreneurs, to solve youth unemployment, combined with the support and investment of the government; a network of young minds who wish to claim our country and have a hand in steering it. The direction the current generation steers it in will after all determine our starting point: whether, ten years from now, we just continue building on a strong foundation or whether we have to demolish and try to salvage something amongst the ruins.

“Hope has wings; butterfly wings”.

The words are inscribed on a plaque as you enter Butterfly House, instilling in you an immediate understanding of what drives this dynamic organisation. Hope.

The SAWIP team had the privilege to join the Drakenstein Palliative Hospice and Butterfly House in celebrating Hospice week. While marching through the streets surrounded by singing and poster-waving children, a young lady of 6 years old struck up a conversation with me about the cat running across the road.

She proudly informed me that she treated cats. Thoroughly amused, and slightly confused, I asked her if she was a vet, only to be informed that she was a doctor. Or that she was training to become one and would one day look after me if I was ill. I could feel my heart stir, and not just from sympathy for the neighbourhood cats.

This young girl had hope.

Charles Snyder, pioneer of positive psychology, defines hope as: “the sum of the mental willpower and waypower that you have for your goals”. Willpower is, of course the drive to achieve a goal; waypower is the strategies and mental roadmaps crafted for goal achievement.

This young girl certainly displayed willpower, a gift Butterfly House has certainly given her. A SAWIP team member remarked that he did not see a marginalised mindset in the children. They did not feel oppressed by their environment or see how it should necessarily restrict their future lives; a beautiful, freeing mindset. But as an employee of Butterfly House reflected, realistic goals keeps hope alive.

One of the values Butterfly House tries to instil in these children is self-confidence. The staff and volunteers treat these children with such loving care and provision that the children of Fairyland feel valued. The children I saw marching through the streets were proud of their Butterfly House and Hospice; they felt worthy and loved.

This sense of worth and self-confidence will have children dreaming, planning brighter futures as they value themselves. It will give them willpower, the core component of hope.

The other component is waypower. Butterfly House nurtures these children holistically. They provide health education as well as health care professionals. Play-therapy affords psychosocial support. They also assist the families of children in sustaining a hale and healthy life. For the older youth they teach life skills, of justice, ethos, ethics and accountability. They have skill development programs and they even teach the children ballroom dancing and singing and art; means of self expression and coping mechanisms.

These children are taught how to handle life’s knocks as best they can. That is waypower.

Hope, to me, is energy. It is the final spurt of power that you get in the face of adversity by knowing you have the willpower and the waypower to overcome. It is the vigour with which you tackle not only troubled times, but your everyday life when you have the anticipation of victory or accomplishment. Hope breathes activity into your life; dreams into your mind’s heart.

That is why the personification of the butterfly image is so beautifully appropriate: the butterfly needs to struggle to achieve metamorphosis. Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho retold a story at a recent book launch, entitled “The Lesson of the Butterfly”.

The narrative speaks of a man who watches a butterfly struggle to break free from its cocoon. After hours have passed the cocoon was scarred only by a small hole, the exhausted butterfly still trapped inside. As the creature becomes absolutely still, the man tries to open the cocoon with a pair of scissors. He finds the butterfly crumpled and wrapped in wrinkled wings. The man waits for the butterfly to spread its wings, hoping it would come alive and fly away. It did not. It’s shrunken body merely shuddered, incapable of flight.

What the man did not understand was that the butterfly has to struggle to emerge viably from the cocoon. The struggle was nature’s way to strengthen its wings. It prepares them for the troublesome life that would follow its brief fight.

Hope sustains that fighting energy in us. As life is strengthening the wings of the children of Fairyland, Butterfly House is working to keep them energetic and struggling to achieve metamorphosis. Butterfly House is equipping them with willpower and waypower to emerge from the cocoon.

And spread their wings.