Congressional Forum Speech

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This is a copy of the speech that I delivered at the Donald M Payne Congressional Forum.

Goeie naand dames en here. (Afrkaans for Good evening ladies and gentlemen)

My name is Phillip van der Merwe and I am an African. I stand here before you tonight truly humbled and truly excited. Humbled because this opportunity is something I never would have dreamed about and excited because it allows me to dream even bigger.

I grew up in the leafy suburbs of our capital city, Pretoria. A place where people walk their Labradors on broad sidewalks of neatly cut grass and children play cricket in their backyards and scream in joy as they jump into swimming pools in the summer. My life has been sheltered and privileged and I could easily not have had any reason to pursue a change of the status quo.

But I do.

A small black Ndebele woman with a kind face and a big heart entered our house in 1990, the year in which I was born. Her name was Lena Msiza. Lena bathed me, fed me, walked me to school and became my second mother. She became part of my family and she taught me about love and kindness and respect. She came from a Township called Mamelodi just north of Pretoria and she is the reason that I applied for the South African Washington International Programme (SAWIP).

This is because every Monday morning when she arrived at my house after an hour-long commute in a cramped minibus taxi, I started to be aware that over the walls and electric fences that protect the palaces of the suburbs there are sprawling townships where indigent South Africans have little defense against disease, crime and weather. When I was just a little boy and her son came over to play, I began to understand that there were children in many parts of South Africa that don’t have the opportunity to go to school. When she couldn’t help me with my reading homework I was reminded of the good people of my country that are illiterate because of apartheid policies. She made the realities of South Africa real for me and she made me want to change things.

Because, as Nelson Mandela rightly described, while the transition to democracy was a mammoth stride towards freedom in South Africa, it didn’t remove the inequalities that were created by apartheid. As he said:

“A simple vote, without food, shelter and health care is… to create an appearance of equality and justice, while by implication socio-economic inequality is entrenched. We do not want freedom without bread, nor do we want bread without freedom. We must provide for all the fundamental rights and freedoms associated with a democratic society.”

Changing things to do this, however, is easier said than done, and when you are constantly bombarded by news of poverty and governmental mismanagement it’s easy to get disillusioned with your ability to make a difference. It makes you want to stay on the beaten track, get a mundane job and hold on to the little bit of individual prosperity that you can manage for fear of losing your position in the middle class. It makes you want to give up.

But that is not the African way. And that’s what Lena taught me. She taught me that it’s not only the political giants and captains of industry that need to work to make communities better but also ordinary people across South Africa.

So when I applied for SAWIP I knew I wanted to help families like Lena’s, where a dozen children and young adults were dependent on financial support from one 60 year-old domestic worker. I knew I wanted to live in a South Africa where freedom came with bread. I knew I wanted to live in a South Africa where everyone could aspire to happiness – where my house in the suburbs wasn’t just a place where your mom cooks and cleans but a place where you too could live and raise a family.

A funny thing happens when you put 15 passionate young South Africans on a plane and send them to a city halfway across the world for 6 weeks and have them meet with extraordinary people. As my fellow team members can attest to, you find yourself talking less about the latest pop culture and more about the issues that affect your country. You start thinking less about the problems in South Africa and more about the solutions. You stop giving up and you start dreaming bigger. You realise that you possess something that could potentially change the world.

And that something could be something as simple as being young. Because when you realise that you are young and that you don’t have to be fast-tracked to be the next senior partner at a large law firm, you know that you can fall and get up again. When you realise that you’re allowed to fail you stop looking for risks and start looking for opportunities.

I believe that all of us that are part of the SAWIP team of 2013 will contribute to a South Africa where freedom comes not just with bread but also with access to quality education and dignified health care. And as the part of our journey in the land of opportunity comes to an end, I believe that we can start another journey in our own land of opportunity.

Because in the words of former president Thabo Mbeki, today is a good day to be an African.