On the 5^th of August 2012, the SAWIP Team attended a presentation by Ruenda Loots who is a project coordinator in the sustainability department of the Stellenbosch School of Public Leadership, and who has a deep passion for conserving our natural environment. The presentation title was “One Plant: Many Futures”.

In Ruenda’s presentation, a part that interested me a lot was the discussion on the global polycrisis. The way in which I understand it is that the global polycrisis is a combination of key challenges that the earth faces in the 21^st century. These challenges are global warming, oil peak, material flows, inequality, urban poverty, food security and ecosystem degradation. A sentence that Ruenda said during the presentation and that got many of us thinking was that “We only have one earth…if we don’t take care of it; we will destroy ourselves and other organisms”. This was quite a scary thought to think about, and the reality is that more damage to the earth, than any other time in history, has been done in the last forty years and humans have been the cause.

Looking at all the global polycrisis challenges, one can notice that money is the root of the majority of problem: Global warming- large factories release dangerous fumes into the air during production of goods to be sold for profit, Material flows- we abstract natural resources and plants from the earth to manufacture products to sell to growing consumer demand, Inequality- our countries have capitalist economies which benefit the rich and systematically excludes the poor, Urban poverty- many people are moving to cities to find employment in order to make an income to support their families, and Ecosystem degradation- land is becoming non-farmable due to being contaminated by chemicals and waste released into nature by mines and factories during their production processes.

In the world we are living in, we all need money to survive, but it seems that we human beings have become so money hungry (greedy) that we aim to make maximum profit at whatever the cost is to nature and to our fellow human beings. Thinking about the recent incident at Marikana, Lonmin mine, here in South Africa; perceived inequality was one of the major contributing factors that encouraged the workers to strike for better wages. In a book I am currently reading, The Spirit Level- Why Equality is Better for Everyone by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket, it is said that ”Almost all problems which are more common at the bottom of the social ladder are common in more unequal societies.” These problems include violence and poor health.

Solutions to the global polycrisis challenges are complex and can never be easy to formulate, and overcoming them will require cooperation between governments, private sector, and most importantly, civil society. No country on earth is immune to the global polycrisis problems; therefore this means that we as the human race need to collectively start thinking of innovations for increased environmental sustainability and work towards creating economic structures that are more inclusive of everyone. In Ruenda’s words, “We only have one earth…if we don’t take care of it; we will destroy ourselves and other organisms”.

In one of our early dialogue session after returning from Washington, we were fortunate to meet Janine, one of South Africa’s soulful and inspirational singers.

Born on the Cape Flats, Janine has grown up being exposed to many challenges and has experienced many of them herself. Janine has been raised in an area that is filled with crime, gangsterism, and drug abuse. Lucky for her, she was born by principled and deeply loving parents, who strived to provide all they could for Janine and her brother.

From a very young age, Janine noticed all the wrong and the difficult circumstances that people in her community were living in. At the age of 12, she started to experience frustration as many people around her never seemed to understand her when she tried to explain the dire living conditions in her society. With a dream and vision of a better living environment, Janine then turned to poetry to try and tell the story of her community, her family and her own personal issues.

Because of a musical influence at home- parents liking blues music and her brother a hip hop lover, Janine soon started to express her thoughts about the challenges faced by the Cape Flats community through music. Being home trained and without any formal study of music, Janine began using music for social change and has joined and supported many local NGO’s, to encourage young people to have a positive attitude in life, and to express themselves in any art form they are passionate about.

Today, Janine’s stage name is Blaq Pearl. What makes this phenomenal musician special is how she has come to realize and has established her true identity as a Khoisan and not a coloured. This resulted in her shaving all her hair and dressing in authentic African wear.

Showing us her wisdom, during the dialogue session, Janine shared a story of how one is viewed a ‘better class’ when the person speaks English to the teller at her local supermarket; when one speaks Afrikaans (home language), they are viewed as ‘lower class’. Janine urged us not to look down on our culture and language, and to be proud of who we are and where we come from, no matter where we are. Janine Van Rooy is truly an phenomenal African woman and an inspiration for a

A life story is a story filled with both happy and sad or painful memories. It gives one a wonderful feeling remembering all the good moments of the past; the painful memories are never pleasant to think about though and often bring tears to one’s eyes. Well, with the good and the bad, here is my life story.

My name is Thamsanqa Tembani. I was born 9 December 1989, at Red Cross hospital, in Cape Town. I am the only child of my mother, Nosipho Gladys Tembani. For the first two and a half years of my life, I grew up with an aunt of my father, at NY 150 Gugulethu (in Cape Town). When I was three years old, my mother took me to Transkei, in the Eastern Cape (E.C), to live with my grandmother in a village in Cofimvaba, named Qitsi.

I spent two years living in the small and rural village of eQitsi. Though I can’t remember much from this period of my life, things that I do remember is the love and care I always received from grandmother, and how she always made my favourite meal, mpokoqo. One thing she always shouted me for was that I always came back home dirty, after playing with other children. Growing up in Transkei, a boy has to take out cattle, sheep and goats for grazing in the field and bring them back home in the evening for milking. Though I cannot clearly remember doing this, with my love for animals and farming, I am sure I accompanied my elder cousins when they did this chore. When I was five years old, I moved to a small town in E.C named Tarkastad, where my mother worked as a teacher.

In Tarkastad I lived with mother and three cousins, in Zola Township. I started crèche in 1995 and in 1997 I went to Tarkastad High School (has classes from grade 1 to grade 12), where I started grade one. I studied at the school up to grade 2 and then I moved to Cape Town and studied grade 3 and 4 at Chapel in Woodstock. After two years of living without mother, I missed her, and I went back to Tarkastad and finished the rest of my schooling there.

Though Tarkastad is a small town, divided into a town and a township, it exposed me to many of life’s realities. Because I went to a ‘white’ crèche and a model c school in town, I had many white friends. As I visited many of my white friend’s homes in town, I realised how they had everything and how people living in the township were struggling to survive. One thing I also realised from my friends homes is that they lived with both their parents; many of the homes in the township were headed by single mothers, and this was the case in my home.

Seeing that my friends had fathers in their homes, I started to wonder where was mine. I remember asking mother and her reply was simply that he is not here and he does not care about us. At the time, mother said this in a light-hearted manner, and it never really bothered or hurt me. As I grew up and matured, the words stuck with me and they started to hurt. Time passed and I got to know that my father lives in Cape Town and is a manager at Edgars (clothing) store. Growing up I thought he could not live with us because he was struggling financially, but after I got to know what work he does, I realised that he is just a man who could not take responsibility for his own actions and that he had fathered many kids before and after I was born. Till today, I have never received a call or had any visit from the man who is my father.

Growing up in Tarkastad with mother and many cousins, it was always difficult to make ends meet on a small teacher’s salary. Mother was the only provider for everything and she always strived to ensure that we had everything we needed. Because she wanted to see our family educated, mother took the children of other family members who were struggling and educated them.

Though we never had everything, growing up with many people at home, there was never a dull moment. The house was always filled with fun, laughter and love. Mother has been and still is the backbone of our family.

On 28 May I attended a dialogue on The Role of Education and Entrepreneurship in Advancing Social Transformation, hosted by The Community of Mandela Rhodes Scholars. After doing some readings, I feel this topic is too complex for me to look at from all angles, due to time and space constraints. Based on that, I decided to write about this topic from a generic and simple angle of the role education plays in advancing social transformation. I have also touched on some South African examples. Though a non-South African reader of this blog might seek more of a local context; this blog is aimed at making all of us reflect deeply about the educational role homes, institutions and the community- something we often take for granted, can and should play in advancing social transformation.

It is said that education is the key to success, and today I would like to also say that education is the key to advancing social transformation. My definition of education is “the teaching or passing on of values, knowledge and skills to others”. To many of us, the first thing that probably came to mind when reading the word “education” in the topic of the above-mentioned dialogue, was schools and universities. Nowadays, it seems that we have forgotten that education not only happens at school or in university but also at home, at church, in the community and in the organisations we work in. Home, school, community, university, church and the organisations we work in, all have a significant role to play in the education of people to advance social transformation.

To me, the most important place to start social transformation is at home. Here is where we spend most of our time and where we supposed to be taught values such as respect, integrity, and appreciation, just to mention a few. Also, the one interesting thing about values is that we do not need any money to teach or to know them.

The role of schools in social transformation is that they are supposed to teach learners life skills, work skills and reinforce the values taught to learners at home. The case in many South African schools is that they are still battling with curriculum challenges and caught up in political activities, that the working skills taught to learners are poor and a subject such as life orientation which teaches life skills, is seen by learners as unecessary and a 'waste of time'. Faced with these challenges, many schools in our country have very little or no chance at all to reinforce values learnt by some learners at home.

To contribute to advancing social transformation, students at school and university level should be taught and encouraged to not only use their skills to make a living and better themselves, but also use them to contribute to developing their communities. Students must be made aware of that by doing so, they will be contributing to building a better country.

Even though many of us might not give much thought of a community as an institution, but quite interestingly, many of the things we learn, particularly when growing up as kids, come from observing and hearing things in our surrounding or community. Communities are made up by the people that live in them, and the communities we grow up in have a strong influence on our value system and our outlook on life. In the past in South Africa, particularly in the Xhosa culture, any parent could reprimand a child which was misbehaving. But nowadays, all of that has changed. Children in our communities seem to have less and less respect for elderly people, and have a ‘can’t tell me anything’ attitude.

For a community to have positive influence on the people that live in it, homes, schools, universities, churches and the organisations we work in, need to teach skills and good values that will create people that can positively influence others.This will contribute to advancing social transformation and creating a better country.

One thing which is quite important once we have learnt good values is that we do not lose them as we grow older, and that we do not use our learnt skills for unethical purposes, as all of this does not contribute to positively advancing social transformation.

When I first heard about Brand South Africa, I asked myself, what brand? Is South Africa a brand? Whose brand is it- who is responsible for this brand?

With an excellent speaker, Leo Makgamathe, who is a Program manager of Civil Society of Brand South Africa, the 2012 SAWIP Team yesterday had a dialogue about South Africa as a brand. And through the questions above, I will share my thoughts on the dialogue. But before I do so, let me tell a bit about Brand South Africa: Brand South Africa is an organisation established in 2002 and one whose sole purpose is to create a positive and compelling brand image of South Africa. Two key focus areas of the organization are tourism and investment, which are two of the key drivers of gross domestic product of the country.

As tradition, before any SAWIP dialogue or workshop, us SAWIPers have to do some readings on the topic of the day in order to have deeper knowledge about the topic and to participate effectively in the talks. With great love for reading and knowledge, I dug deep into the web to find as much information about Brand South Africa as i possibly could. While reading through many websites and reports, I was surprised and embarrassed at the same time, when I realized how little I know about the great things about South Africa. At the dialogue, I was even more surprised to hear other great successes of our country, such as that we are rated 36 by Anholt-GFK Roper Nation Brand Index and that we are rated 1st in the world for regulation of securities exchanges. The reason for my surprise was that many times we only hear about the negative stories about South Africa and we tend to think of it as not being a great country.

In sharing my thoughts about the brand South Africa, I would like to first look at the meaning of a brand. According to Phillip Kotler, a brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these that distinguishes and differentiates a product or service from other sellers. In South Africa’s case, our brand that differentiates us from other countries is our beautiful flag, which by the way is the third most recognised flag in the world! And also Brand South Africa’s (new) slogan “South Africa: Inspiring New Ways”. Also significant to a brand are the people that represent it i.e. the citizens of the country.

On the question now of whether South Africa is a brand? I know that the answer is a straight “yes”. But a concern I have is that I wonder how many people in our country know and perceive South Africa as a brand? For Brand South Africa to effectively promote our country internationally and to promote it with full confidence, we as South Africans need to perceive our country as a valuable brand, be patriots and be aware that our individual actions make up the image that international markets have of our country. Brand South Africa cannot sell our country to other people, if we South Africans do not ‘buy-in’ to our own story. And in my opinion, a brand can never achieve great success, unless the people who represent it perceive it as valuable.

As mentioned before, Brand South Africa is responsible for strategically marketing our country to the international market. But quite importantly, we as the people of South Africa need to fully recognize our responsibility in promoting our country. Representing a population of more than 50 million, Brand South Africa cannot do the job of promoting our country all on its own. We as the people need to take some responsibility in promoting a positive and honest South African image to the rest of the world. This may sound like a difficult task, but it actually is not. Each of us, whether from rural or urban area, have a beautiful story to tell about our country, and at every chance, we should share this beautiful story with visitors who come to South Africa.

In thinking that every one of us has a role to play in marketing our country, I am also aware of some of the great challenges of poverty, unemployment, inequality and crime facing the country. A person who is unemployed, living in poverty and who perceive the country to have great inequality might have very little motivation to speak about South Africa in a positive light. Crime on the other hand contributes negatively to promoting a good South Africa image, and this may be a difficult hurdle to overcome, for both Brand South Africa and ordinary people, when promoting and sharing the South African story.

Also, what we as the people should all be aware of is that in promoting South Africa, we are not only contributing to an international positive image of our country, but we are also contributing to attracting investment, which in turn can help overcome some of the country’s key challenges.

Let us all contribute to marketing South Africa to the international market by sharing our positive and honest South African story. No one can tell the South African story better than its people. By doing a simple but yet powerful thing such as sharing our story, we will be taking an active role in promoting our country to the rest of the world. Having spoken about the South African story, now I would like to end with a question, what is your positive and honest South African story?