It must certainly rank among the most painful aspects or experiences of human life. Many people in our society, especially those from its impoverished segments, discover the missions of their lives only when they no longer have the time needed to accomplish those missions. What makes this even more painful is that more often than not, it happens as a result of the society they are born into, rather than as a result of anything related to who or how they are.

Without sufficient consciousness about their individual lives and the environment around them, millions of people both young and old plod through life with little hope of ever fulfilling their potential. It is precisely for this reason that I have always found it difficult to believe that poor people protest because of poor service delivery. What makes poor people protest in the streets and everywhere else goes much deeper than mere poor service delivery. Ever since the last peasant was uprooted from their land and transformed into a dependent salary earner by South Africa`s process of industrialisation, many communities have never had the capacity to think and do things for themselves.

But they are becoming increasingly aware that the mostly hygienic factors associated with the country`s service delivery efforts will not necessarily lead to their ability realize the dreams they entered the democratic era with. Nobody is going to become Tiger Woods or Michael Jackson just because there is electricity or water in their house. Or because their municipality has built them a four-roomed house and has improved their sanitation system. Or because some private sector organisation has given them soup and blankets during winter. People want freedom to realize their God-given potential, which comes in the form of being given genuine life-changing opportunities.

The subject of time is important because anything else in the world depends on time and its availability. It is the lurking danger of time and its dire implications for individuals, families, teams and organisations that make poor people, who have come to realize how much of their lifetimes have been stolen from them, engage in activities that many of us frown upon. We need time in our lives to carry out our two main functions. The first one is to learn and the second one is to make a contribution or to implement our learning.

Sustained or successful performance is not possible without appropriate preparation or learning. But the first step in any serious learning endeavour is consciousness. I mean consciousness of both the self and the environment or context. Consciousness, when developed at the right time, allows people to write and live the scripts of their own lives and reduces their risks of becoming merely tools in other people`s hands or plans.

Among the most important requirements of our poor communities is that of a new type of citizen or community member, A type of citizen who will not be used by the political establishment as mere voting fodder. A type of citizen who will not be used by the economic oligarchy merely as an instrument of production. They need a type of citizen who possesses the intellectual and emotional consciousness required to fulfil their dreams as complete human beings. The type of citizen who understands that fifteen years after apartheid and its killing fields were replaced by democracy and accountability, the new and worst form of destruction is distraction.

No amount of demeaning and dehumanising service delivery that treats poor people as helpless consumers will ever be enough to pacify them. Poor people yearn for opportunities and freedom to do things for themselves instead of being kept captive by systems designed to make permanent dependents out of grown men and women. But many of them have their entire lifetimes mismanaged on their behalf before they even enter primary school. So they never realize their full humanity or come to enjoy the power of doing things for themselves.

For centuries economic forces in the country have kept and used poor communities as nothing but sources of cheap labour resources that deserved no respect. The emergence of political democracy has resulted in those communities now being used as both sources of labour as well as voting fodder. There is very little appreciation or acknowledgement that our communities are the backbones of our society. There is very little appreciation that what is allowed to go wrong with our people, especially the young ones, in their communities becomes extremely difficult to correct once they become adults.

This reality explains why so many of our young people fail to represent the best interests of their families and communities in the bigger marketplaces. They become misguided and self-serving individuals who join either the political establishment or the economic oligarchy to perpetuate the tragic murder of community life. Until there is understanding that many of the problems we experience in our society emanate from the way our politics and our economics treat communities, we will have poor people engaging in protests. And our vested interests will continue to make us delude ourselves by thinking the protests are for poor service delivery.

Some political formations are even waiting on the wings to take power away from the incumbent government, promising to improve service delivery. No government or political party will be able to address the problems of our society if it is not prepared to deal with the fundamentals related to its infrastructure and edifice. The problem of poor service delivery is merely a symptom of a much bigger malady of dysfunctional talent management systems, where prejudice and privilege take precedence over talent and planning. Let me tell those who do not know and remind those who have forgotten: progressive communities are collectively the foundation of a sound and well-functioning society.

But for as long as our political and economic masters benefit from the prevailing situations of ignorance and poverty in the communities, our society will continue to stumble on two legs when it is supposed to stand solidly on three. Our salvation can come only from the young men and women in the poor communities who take their time to humbly learn the rich history of their country and based on that, decide to play their historical roles.

I know that a great number of them have had little in the way of education. But their roles require more humbleness than education. They require more awareness or consciousness than speed. They require more willingness to serve than to succeed. I repeat: the modern and worst form of destruction used against the children of the apartheid victims of yesteryear is distraction. Their ignorance and incompetence hand them over as mincemeat to their new enemies under democratic rule.

For lack of knowledge, they have not figured out the difference between a reaction and a response. For lack of knowledge, they react to the slightest of provocations from the environment. For lack of knowledge, they fight and lose wars they should not even be part of.

Gibson Sakong
Executive Chairman – Montshepetja Academy