There is a discernible leadership crisis creeping upon our society. At the moment, the crisis manifests itself in a number of ways, chief among which are the following: the amount of ordinary people who have neither understanding nor personal experience of effective leadership; the amount of historically privileged people who think leadership is merely about opportunistic competence; the amount of previously disadvantaged people who think leadership is only about simplistic legitimacy; the poor performance of our education system – historically and currently – as well as the high levels of self-centredness and lawlessness.

Many people in our society and throughout the world honour Nelson Mandela`s leadership brilliance without necessarily understanding it or making an effort to learn where it derived its effectiveness from. They think Mandela became a great leader when he was released from prison, when he was elected as president of the country or when he was inaugurated as such. They do not realize that Nelson Mandela became a great leader based on the many risky and painful personal decisions he took during crucial moments in his life. Those moments include leaving his own mother to suffer in his absence when he was fighting apartheid, even though he knew he was her only son; starting negotiations with his jailers when he knew many consensus-minded comrades in his organisation disagreed with him. He also, very importantly, demonstrated the greatness of his leadership model when he worked hard, during very uncertain times, to convince his constituency to allow our rugby to retain the springbok emblem.

It is against this backdrop of clearly inimitable leadership performance that we have to contemplate how we are going to find or produce our new leaders. Fortunately for us, the grandest challenge confronting the post-apartheid South African society in the current epoch is not to try and produce another Nelson Mandela for another classic David and Goliath narrative. That is mainly because our current area of engagement is not an area in which an individual or a small group of individuals can win the prize on behalf of millions of people. Our current area of operation requires every individual to be meaningfully engaged in their personal capacity in order for both the individual and the collective to make the requisite progress. Sadly, though, it is an area in which many other societies across the world, which also had great founding fathers as in the case of South Africa, still went on to fail afterwards.

Our current efforts have to be focused on trying to develop enough willing and effective leaders who can mentor people both young and old. We need to produce enough willing and effective leaders capable of designing and implementing innovative strategies to address the behavioural and technical learning needs of millions of ordinary people in order to help them defeat their various forms of poverty. Contrary to what many people believe, the fundamental cause of the endemic suffering in the new-order South African society is something other than the purported failure of democratic governments to provide service delivery.

The endemic suffering has resulted primarily from successive oppressive governments, with the connivance of powerful private capital organisations, taking active steps, over decades and centuries, to prevent the majority of people in our society from discovering and embracing self-driven life-long learning as the most dynamic and sustainable way to create value and live human life. The purposeful exclusion of the majority of citizens was so that they could not become competent and compete for opportunities and resources in the open market against people favoured by the establishment. The poverty or disempowerment resulting from the exclusion is of two main types: material poverty and psychological or mental poverty.

Different forms of discrimination or disempowerment will always come and go among humans. But a form of discrimination that is likely to endure is discrimination on the basis of learning, meaning the good that one knows, understands and can put into practice. Simply put, that means discrimination on the basis of competence or skilled knowledge. And it must be noted here that discrimination on the basis of competence or skilled knowledge is recognized by societies as a legitimate – legally and morally – form of discrimination. This is despite the fact that many developing countries, including South Africa, are scarcely able to provide decent education to half of their populations.

Admittedly, there are many things that need to be done to rid our society of the scourge of unnecessary discrimination, and many of them are already being done with varying degrees of progress. But the most durable insurance against needless yet destructive discrimination is learning. Learning ensures that one is able to knowledgeably steer one`s own life, one cannot be locked out of debates one has interest in and, most importantly, one cannot be forced to revert to mob-inspired destructive behaviours to win battles and prizes, hoping that the mobs one operates within will cover for individual failings forever. Indeed some people in our society go on to suffer for the rest of their lives for deeds they commit in the seductive comfort of mob security, like when they are denied economic opportunities later in their lives because of crimes against their names.

Whereas it is true that the notorious trio of self-interest, incompetence and lawlessness within our society make achieving our national developmental goals extremely difficult, it is critical that we do not lose sight of the fact that our most realistic opportunity is holistic people development in order to ensure that people learn to do things for themselves. The pathologies of self-interest, incompetence and lawlessness are known to thrive in conditions where learning levels are low and the majority of people have neither skill nor confidence to demand accountability. It is my firm belief that no government or political party anywhere in the world can deal successfully with developmental issues on the scale demanded by the post-apartheid South African situation without genuinely returning the power of people development and talent management to the centre stage.

What we need as a society to avoid total failure and collapse is neither a new government nor a new political party. What we need is a leadership pact or contract with our citizens to move positive human energy and ingenuity to the fore. We need to have a contract with our people, which will allow us to unleash the potential of the majority of ordinary people to serve as our engine of growth and development. What we need is to produce leaders, mentors and role models to assist ordinary people to forge or buy into a spirit of wanting to do the most with the least by embracing the concepts of self-leadership and mentorship. Currently, our society is on a trajectory that spends too much to produce too little, depleting irreplaceable resources in the process. Old and young people, even those in privileged circumstances, do very little strategic learning and succumb to destructive behaviours, which does nothing to move them closer to realizing their dreams or taking Nelson Mandela`s dream forward through their talents. Robust people development programmes will make it easier even for our government to perform two of its primary functions, namely to provide a supportive environment in the form of infrastructure and, very critically in our situation, to restore confidence in our society by protecting people against wanton self-centredness and lawlessness.

Oppression has always been about appropriation of resources and power. In our society it has been consistently enforced in two main ways: physical violence and deprivation of learning. Again fortunately for us, Nelson Mandela and his class have done plenty of good work to reduce spaces for physical violence as a means to enforce suffering upon people. However, reversing the high levels of incompetence, corruption and hubris, which resulted mainly from an officially sanctioned poor learning culture, is likely to prove to be a great challenge for many decades. Legalised oppression did not only deny the majority of people access to learning. It also provided poor learning to the minority, teaching many of them to worship technical or mechanical compliance methods, protecting them against fair competition and encouraging them to treat their fellow citizens as subhumans. On the other hand, it must also be emphasized that though education plays a very important role in the process of developing and exercising effective leadership, effective leadership is not merely a function education. Personal characteristics such as talent, effort, resourcefulness and moral fibre still play significant roles in determining the success of leadership interventions.

What needs to be made abundantly clear is that what keeps millions of ordinary people down in our society is not the type of high profile case that kept Mandela in jail for more than a quarter of a century and attracted enormous world attention. Ordinary people are kept down by a plethora of individual barriers and impediments, which are caused by a combination of apathy on the part of many ordinary people themselves and the self-serving tendencies of people in the corridors of power across the entire spectrum of our societal institutions. Indeed many ordinary people are held back by their own high levels of ignorance or indifference to learning as well as their exposure to dysfunctional forms of leadership as practiced by many people in control of opportunities and resources.

These realities, which affect ordinary people with devastating effect in their individual capacities, make it difficult for our society to unleash the potential of enough individuals to make the difference or progress we desperately need. It is the cumulative effect of these realities, in the long run, which will prove to have an even deadlier impact upon our society than the combination of both the armed struggle of the liberators and the total onslaught of the oppressors. Only learning-based self-leadership by ordinary people and their effective mentorship by competent patriots can provide ordinary people with the competence and independence they need to co-operate when they choose and compete when necessary. Competence and independence do not only give people the tools they need to make their much-needed contributions to God`s world. They also grant them the freedom to respond appropriately to other people`s behaviours, irrespective of whether those behaviours are meant to compliment or compartmentalize.

It is important to stress that leadership is not a human being, a position, an institution, power or resources. Leadership is a spirit. It is a spirit of wanting to co-operate willingly with other people to do positive work for the common good. It is a spirit characterised by significant levels of awareness, skills, courage and persistence or resilience. Most importantly, leadership is about caring for people. Caring for people starts with caring for oneself, based on a brand of leadership called self-leadership. Currently, among the greatest risks in our society is the reality that people both young and old have very little chances of finding and working with a leader who knows what they are doing and can positively influence their lives. We have not done sufficient effective leadership training historically and are still not tackling the matter with the decisiveness it requires.

Without effective leadership at all the right levels of our society, especially the community member and the worker levels, the debate in our society about economic empowerment or transformation will go on ad nauseam. But it will go on without doing anything concrete to avert the looming catastrophic intersection between the growing desperation of the downtrodden masses and the headstrong attitudes of the privileged. And the privileged will continue to pretend that the so-called trickle-down effects of the free market system will provide answers for our predicament. As this happens, the majority of ordinary people continue to derive little benefit for themselves from the new dispensation. They derive even less positive benefit for their families and derive the least possible benefit for their communities. We need to cultivate a robust culture of self-leadership and mentorship and we need to do it fast.

Gibson Sakong
Executive Chairman – Montshepetja Academy

]]> http://www.montshepetja.co.za/developing-self-leadership-doing-the-most-with-the-least/feed 2 http://www.montshepetja.co.za/from-rags-to-a-rich-mind-to-rags http://www.montshepetja.co.za/from-rags-to-a-rich-mind-to-rags#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:08:05 +0000 admin http://www.montshepetja.co.za/?p=380 On a daily basis I hear people, myself included, ask questions revolving around development. Is our country making headway in terms of development? Is it going to take us long before we can be seen as a developed country? In all fairness, I find those two questions irrelevant. However, if I had to answer the latter and former, I’d unshakably stand to say no, we have not yet made progress in terms of development and it will indeed take long before we are a developed country.

My premise for the above lies in the fact that we have not yet identified where development is critically required. I am of the belief that we are looking for development in infrastructure, economics and power of the nation, whereas what we really need is development of the man. We need development in the minds of the deprived, particularly, the black man.

We need to start feeding black people information in order for them to succeed and develop themselves and others. If our aim is to develop our country, I am a strong believer of Mahatma Gandhi’s words “be the change you want to see.” We are so concerned of developing our country and getting it to compete internationally, but who are we sending there if we are not preparing any of our people to stand with the Obamas and Castros of this world.

What might be the cause of this sad reality is the absence of mentors, role models and life coaches in deprived societies. Be it, black or white, South Africa has no role models that have chosen to be role models; it is only those that we choose to idolise without them knowing or having indirectly applied for it, role models by default. With that mentioned, the most volatile reality is that those who are able to feed the minds of those in plenty, have moved so far up in the ladder of life, they oppress us with their outstanding knowledge, or power acquired through knowledge, broadening the gap between the poor and progressive instead of a counter process.

Normally, the transition is referred to as “from rags to riches” and it is this approach towards life that drives us from destitution and plenty towards attaining richness. This is a fallacy and it leads us to misconstruing the definition of richness with that of wealth, a topic for another day. We should not just move from being the destitute and become the rich. We should, instead, move to being rich and then give those who have not been able to move a toe from destitution an opportunity to progress as we have.

That, the latter, can only be attained and achieved through informing deprived societies. How do we expect a society to identify its needs, if none of its members has the ability to differentiate between hunger and poverty? How do we expect a man in destitution and plenty to strive for emancipation of a larger group when all he knows is survival of his soul for today and not success for everyday and everyone?

I am appalled and hurt, at the same time, when all I hear is our government saying we need to develop our country, but all that we have is nothing but ourselves to loathe inside infrastructure we can’t break and build in no time due to cluelessness. I have seen many people take home University degrees, but none of them giving a child, a black child, an opportunity to become something much greater than the individual concerned. All we do is point at the white man while standing in front of our remote controlled gates that protect their R16 million mansions.

I am not taking away anything from those who have lived to fulfil my dissatisfactions and lead lavish lives simultaneously, I am merely pointing out that with few of such individuals we are going nowhere very fast and we as individuals need more of such natured individuals, but the reality and state of South Africans demands more of such individuals.

In my twenty two years of life, I have lived with the notion of transitioning from rags to a rich mind to rags. We must not just be rich people; we must be rich in mind and go back to the destitution and poverty stricken black societies and overthrow this volatile creation of past regimes by acquiring information and sharing it amongst each other. With all that said who is to carry out this vital mandate?

Our fathers of the struggle have laid a foundation for us to acquire information from Universities, international summits and through self emancipation. Those of us in parliaments, universities and business, must not go back to flash, but to emancipate those they were trapped in the closet of poverty and pain with. Involve them in business management planning, start groups that will spearhead community development through political forces and also create and make room for more of our own people in institutions of higher learning.

For many South Africans, apartheid hurt us and stole our identity, but it does not justify the fact that we, black people, are not making progress today. Similarly, it does not mean that those who were favoured by the system, white people, are exposed to all that we need and find rare. The system is not only killing us at this point, but those who designed it to perfection.

It is for the latter reason that we should not resurrect the system to become its drivers and trample over our own people. Rather, let us create a system that works for all of us through applying a fundamental strategy pointed out by Gibson Sakong, finger pointing individuals who will mediate information and translate it in our terms and conditions relevant to our needs.

By Eric Mbuyazi.

1. Limited financial resources
2. Lack of facilities and amenities
3. Lack of management and leadership skills
4. Negative competition instead of co-operation among community members
5. Weak institutions unable to shape and direct people`s lives, especially young people

In an effort to alleviate the effects of some of these challenges, two institutions at Moletlane, Zebediela in Limpopo, namely Bathokwa Football Club and Montshepetja Academy, entered into a partnership in December 2009 to work together in order to advance the common purposes of the two institutions. The essence of the partnership is to jointly host soccer tournaments at least two times a year, preferably during the Easter and Christmas holidays.

The tournaments have three main purposes: to provide players from the surrounding communities with opportunities to participate in better organized sporting activities, to provide practical learning opportunities to people wanting to gain understanding of management and leadership and to provide much-needed entertainment for soccer followers.

So far a total of three tournaments have been successfully hosted at Bathokwa Sportsfield. The first one was in December 2009, the second in April 2010 and the third in April 2011. All three tournaments were played with eight local teams and were attended well by supporters. Plans are already in place to brand the tournament and make it a permanent feature in the lives of the local people of Moletlane. There is currently a plan to add netball to the tournament while strategies are also being devised to improve the commercial or financial side of things in order to make the initiative sustainable. The biggest drive is to make the tournament attractive to the supporters so that they can be willing to part with the few rands required to watch the games. The tournament will rely on both players and officials to make it a success.

The tournament is possible under the management of a committee comprising Gilbert Makhubela and William Makwela – Managing Director and Club Manager respectively of Bathokwa FC, and Kabelo Sakong, Brand Manager of Montshepetja Academy. The committee is mandated to accomplish the objectives of both organisations. Kabelo Sakong also serves as the spokesperson of the committee.

“It is important to note that competitions of this nature can only be hosted successfully during holidays when ‘everyone’ is home on holiday,” said Kabelo Sakong, who added that the tournament also serves to keep youngsters off the streets.

We run small business initiatives at the tournament and charge spectator fees (entrance fee) as a way of raising revenue, thus ensuring that both organisations continue with community development on a sustainable basis. Revenue generation goes a long way towards helping both the tournament and the institutions involved, considering the prevailing bad socio-economic conditions in rural South Africa”, said the community activist.

“For Montshepetja Academy and its business wing, namely Montshepetja Business, this is part of our community outreach programme. The joint committee assists in the management and financial administration of the tournament in order to improve the standard and value of having the youth play football and other sporting codes in rural communities. We have a progressive plan, sustainable and aimed at ensuring that we have a tournament every Easter and December. Whenever there is financial loss, a report has to be compiled and submitted to stakeholders for them to understand how we incurred the loss and we together work out ways to guard against the same occurrence next time. The committee gives a report of every competition, and the report has to be presented to at the stakeholder meetings of both institutions. It is a tradition that we wish to encourage in the society and our partners in community development programmes,” Sakong remarked.

Sakong said that the practices aim to ensure and encourage financial transparency, responsibility, progress and sustainability in the administration of their institutions and also hopes to teach others. The management committee believes that accountability is vital, and it is of prime importance in their dealings with the community as this will in the long run ensure that their joint efforts at community upliftment have a lasting effect.

The competition is mainly a top eight (8) soccer tournament. Bathokwa FC as the host entered the competition with two teams i.e. Bathokwa Masters and Bathokwa Juniors. The six other competitors were Junior Aces, Mandebele (Juniors), Mandebele (Seniors), Moletlane Junior Swallows, Seleme FC and Experienced XI. The current Montshepetja Academy team, which is an under-15 team, is still too young to participate in the tournament.

For spectator fees to be charged the whole football field had to be enclosed with a sail. This was done a day before the start of the competition. This end was made achievable by the tireless and loyal efforts of all the junior members of Bathokwa FC who among others provided security at the event and guarded the sail parameters against trespassers. Sponsorship capital for the tournament is provided by Montshepetja Business. The capital is provided on condition it is returned without interest at the end of the activities or the conclusion of a particular tournament. Gibson Sakong, who is the chairman of both institutions, is responsible for strategic leadership. His views on the tournament are quoted below.

‘’The biggest long-term concern we have is that underdeveloped communities do not have either capacities or cultures to use soccer to train young people for things other than just soccer. Soccer should not be just about soccer. It should also be about proximity. It brings people together and, with creative courage, what we do with people once they are together is potentially more important than soccer itself.

Technical skills must be mastered and used to achieve the highest level of progress or success for soccer players. But universal skills such as communication, confidence, resilience, discipline, teamwork and other character habits should help young people to develop the staying power needed to withstand the challenges of growing up in an impoverished environment. They should help them to rise to the top of their careers no matter what direction they take in life. But too many of our young people shine in soccer for only a few years and then struggle to take their lives forward because of lack of discipline, inadequate preparation and poor support infrastructure. This is the greatest challenge that confronts many community development initiatives and is something we need to work hard against as we progress.” commented Gibson Sakong

My name is Thato Golden Sakong. I was born on the 28th of July in 1992 at Groothoek Hospital in Zebediela, Limpopo Province. I grew up in Moletlane, Zebediela and in late 2001 me, my sister and mother moved to Diepsloot in Gauteng where we lived for over five years. It was closer to my mother’s place of employment that was Four-ways. I am currently living in Moletlane in Zebediela – where I was born. I am doing Matric at Chita Kekana Senior Secondary School- specializing in commercial subjects. I aim to pass my Matric with seven distictions at the end of the year and that is a distinction for every subject I am registered for. Outside school I play soccer for the MoAc Football Club – I am part of the 2009-2014 class. I also hold the position of team manager.

I am the third and last born child among my late mother’s children. The untimely death of my mother in 2006 marked me and my sisters return to our grandmother’s home in Moletlane in the following year. The reason for our return to Moletlane was that, our mother was a single parent and me and my sister were still so young and there was no one to look after us in Gauteng. I and my siblings were raised by a single parent and that is my mother together with the help of my family from the maternal side. Like any other child of a single parent growing up in poverty, I have had my own fair share of life’s hardships. But as our experiences play a great role in determining our characters, I think I am a “strong man”. However, nothing equals losing the only biological parent you have ever had to know in life.

Despite all that, my daunting challenges and hardships won’t seal my fate. I have dedicated myself to the struggle of shaping my future. I live among the most wonderful and great people at the moment who are endowed with fair and good guardianship traits – they are from both my family and community at large. What constitutes success differs from one person to another, so I have come to believe. I love it when people, both successful and unsuccessful in usual terms, share the little or more that they have.

Every human being is endowed with something special – that is, every human being is a source of some unique resource. I am motivated or inspired at this moment by seeing the dawn of the day when every human being shares that God given unique resource that is within them for the betterment of humanity – especially older people to the younger generations. I believe that here at MoAc we are working hard towards that goal/day.

Through MoAc I am learning leadership skills and further mingling with team mates and other players from different clubs that we get to play with improves and betters ones social behavior, respect etc. I am based at the moment at the primary home of MoAc where every afternoon tens of young people spend their time sporting or just sharing views and mingling in a protected environment. It is beautiful believe me. We are learning to be responsible, independent, and respectful to one another and further being motivated to follow our dreams regardless of where we come from. We as peers and the youth of MoAc in Moletlane share knowledge and it is safe to say that we are learning from each other and the experiences that being a member of MoAc brings along. I believe that Montshepetja Academy is playing a great role in the youth development of my community and South Africa at large. Crime and other enemies of humanity must be fought in this way. And I am glad to be a member of the MoAc family.

The following words were said by Steve Biko in 1971: “We reject the power-based society of the Westerner that seems to be ever concerned with perfecting their technological know-how while losing out on their spiritual dimension. We believe that in the long run the special contribution to the world by Africa will be in this field of human relationship. The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial and military look, but the great gift still has to come from Africa – giving the world a more human face.”

Steve Biko`s words above are a timeless challenge to Africans everywhere to step forward with courage and build their continent. There will not be many better opportunities to present Africa to the world as a continent of progress and success than during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in our own country, South Africa. We should rejoice that FIFA has as its leader at this point in history a man who understands how power works.

Joseph Blatter is not by any means among the most educated people on earth, yet he ranks without doubt among the most learned ones. And he is probably not among the cleanest. Yet he is certainly among the most courageous. His antagonists from the materially richer regions of our world have pursued him with allegations of corruption from day one, because they fear his sense of justice and palpable capacity for good.

May people are not aware that Joseph Blatter worked hard to bring the FIFA World Cup to Africa long before he became president of the organisation. They think all he did was to say no when some crazy but powerful people wanted to take it away from us on some flimsy excuses long after it had become ours. Joseph Blatter made bringing the FIFA World Cup to Africa one of the primary missions of his life and prepared well for it. That is part of the reason why his enemies who woke up yesterday to the news of the World Cup already on the way to Africa can do nothing to stop it. This was yet another classic case of privileged people sleeping through a revolution.

FIFA itself, like any organisation in world with a lot of power, is not clean and was used to serve the privileged parts of the universe since its first tournament in 1934 without many of the complaints we hear today. The antagonists of Joseph Blatter are prepared to keep quiet about the imperfections of FIFA and its leaders when it services their favourite parts of the world. They find every excuse to raise false alarms when it reaches out to disadvantaged people. Sadly for them and fortunately for us, Joseph Blatter has not just studied and mastered the subject of power but he has demonstrated incredible ability to put his learning into practice.

Joseph Blatter said the following words after the decision to discontinue the rotation system was made: “The rotation system has served its purpose and has enabled us to award our most prestigious competition to Africa for the first time and, depending on tomorrow`s decision, to South America for the first time in many years.”

Joseph Blatter is among the very few people on the world stage who know that democracy is judged on both process and outcome. He knows that whereas form is not unimportant, it cannot substitute for substance. He knows that whereas postulating from the pulpit has its merits, toiling in the trenches is what really makes a difference. He knows that organisations have no lives except for the lives of people within them. He knows that organisations have no way of doing good except for the deliberate good deeds of people within them, especially those in leadership positions.

The story of Joseph Blatter is a shining example of how the world can rid itself of the injustices built over centuries within international institutions. Whether we like it or not, the resources of the world have been distributed in a lopsided and unfair way throughout the centuries using many winner-takes-all approaches based on military power, political subjugation, economic exploitation, cultural annihilation, intellectual disempowerment, spiritual disorientation. etc.

We trust that Joseph Blatter, assisted admittedly by the talents and sacrifices of many honourable people, of whom our own Nelson Mandela is chief, has set a blueprint on the world stage for a courageous epoch of enlightenment and justice. We trust that other leaders within powerful international institutions such as the United Nations, which is fast approaching 2015 without having made much progress with its Millennium Developmental Goals, will take a leaf out of his book.

The Word Economic Forum and the International Monetary Fund are other institutions whose leaders can learn from the inspired leadership of Joseph Blatter. We also hope the economic and political shake-ups in major countries such as the US, the UK, Greece, etc, will provide further evidence that well-known human frailties such as greed, incompetence, irresponsibility and plain corruption are not the lot of poor people or countries alone.

The world will always depend on men and women who understand how power works to make sure it is used creatively and positively before it starts to become a force of evil or it does irreversible evil or damage. In our own country, we trust that government and business leaders can jettison their feeble efforts and embrace the art of using courageous engagement to dismantle the edifices of injustice once and for all.

Although many organisations sing the mantra of diversity and mutual respect, they are festering with inbreeding, hoarding and self-interest and reduce many of their stakeholders to toyitoying beyond locked gates. The world requires more and more learned men of courage who understand how power works and who can purposefully seek it, find it and use it to reverse the incalculable injustices of our times.

The world and nations everywhere require courageous people who will work knowledgeably from within organisations to ensure that the fine features of their organisations are sustained when those locked outside by greed and self-interest start pushing for opportunity and real change. Joseph Blatter himself, by his own admission, was inspired by Nelson Mandela, who is a world acclaimed icon on the use of power to free mankind from mankind.

Many people are made uncomfortable by the abrasive style of Joseph Blatter, which is evident especially when there are people who want to stand in the path of what he considers to be right. What many people do not quite understand is that the abrasiveness comes from his understanding of how power and privilege work. He knows that many people are cocooned in privilege and that enlightened abrasiveness or stubbornness is the most appropriate antidote against that, especially if, as a leader, he wants to do justice and see progress within the lifetimes of his beneficiaries.

Many educated people have mastered articulation and eloquence at the expense sincerity and delivery. Many uneducated people we see and meet in our lives do not interpret language but behaviour. As educated people learn more and more words, the uneducated people watch more and more behaviour. The greatest enemy of education and progress is not the uneducated but the educated themselves who fail to match their eloquence with behaviour.

Maybe we should recall words from yet another eminent citizen of the world, namely Emperor Haile Selassie, an African colossal who played a pivotal role in ensuring that colonialism never came to Ethiopia:

“I assert that the issue before the Assembly today is not merely a question of the settlement in the matter of Italian aggression. It is a question of collective security; of the very existence of the League, of the trust placed by states in international treaties; of the value of promises made to small states that their integrity and independence shall be respected and assured. In a word, it is international morality that is at stake.”

Haile Selassie was appealing in vain to the League of Nations to intervene. Whatever their reasons were on the fateful day of 30 June 1936, the leaders assembled in Geneva never intervened and the emperor was to be exiled from his country for five years. For various reasons, the issue of the FIFA World Cup allocation has become an issue of international morality.

Joseph Blatter and his lieutenants inside and outside of FIFA have shown the world that they are friends of Africa and the disadvantaged people of the world. The best way Africans in general, and South Africans in particular, can honour the great act of leadership on the part of Joseph Blatter is to ensure we have a successful 2010 FIFA World Cup. This journey of success must be championed by Bafana Bafana delivering credible performances from the pitch. We must all play our humble parts and pray for African success.

Gibson Sakong

Executive Chairman – Montshepetja Academy

I must admit that there is a lot of truth in the view, often expressed, that South Africa is probably among the very few countries in the world that have had to deal with the dual challenges of economic development and democratisation on a large scale at the same time. Many societies that have had to deal with the challenge of a fast-paced economic development did not have to grapple with democratisation issues on the scale that South Africa now faces. The same goes for countries whose major challenge was democratisation. Many of them operated from a better economic base compared to South Africa.

So our important challenge as a society is not just how to grow the economic cake. We also have to contend with the equally important question of how to distribute it with convincing levels of fairness and justice. The situation is complicated even further when we consider that, for various reasons, many of the people who possess or control the bulk of the economic resources, the old ones as well as those with newly acquired fortunes, are not believed by the majority of their compatriots to possess or control those resources legitimately.

It is very easy for people to argue, as many do, that we cannot share the economic cake without first growing it. That makes perfect sense and very few people will waste time trying to dispute it. But what many people with practical experience related to the behaviours of those in positions of power in our society want to see is evidence, with integrity, that we are sharing it the right way in areas where it is already possible to do so.

One thing that I must state very categorically here is that as a society, sometimes we are too quick to offer blanket amnesties. Blanket amnesties breed poor accountability and with poor accountability comes the erosion of value in society. The past sixteen years have seen big and powerful organisations, including the state, struggle to play leadership roles in the process of transforming our society. This has created an undeniable challenge for individuals and small institutions with courage and creativity to play breakthrough leadership roles.

Our society must stop pretending that the business organizations and other economic entities we have inherited from the old order will solve the massive developmental challenges – including democratisation – we face as a country. Every time I listen to or read about public or private business managers talking about their plans and what they want to achieve, I am left with a strong feeling that some really competent people are making good plans to achieve success for our economy and country. I become seriously impressed with what people are doing for our society.

The picture changes completely, however, when I come to know how many workers or employees our organizations have laid off in the last decade or two in order to increase or maintain their profit margins. Or how many jobs disappeared from the books of those organizations consistently in that period. The picture gets even worse when I visit communities where the former employees returned after they were laid off.

Life in many of our communities can be summarized in a few lines: many people have nothing to show after spending half their lifetimes working for big companies in towns and cities. High levels of anti-social behaviour are prevalent and are accompanied by general filth and squalor. More and more children are born into and brought up in those conditions. I regard this situation as nothing but a time bomb waiting to go off.

Our society`s performance deficits as related to job creation, training and development, productivity improvement, income per capita and, most critically, Gini coefficient need urgent action. We need effective strategies to deal with all these challenges. We urgently need strategies that are capable of turning around the fortunes of our country in a meaningful way for the sake of our society now as well as the societies of future generations. Those strategies must be able to make sure that our democracy and its attendant advantages materialize for the benefit of all or the majority.

At the moment, many of our people are brutally locked out of economic opportunities on the one hand while being tempted by agents provocateurs of all kinds to succumb to lives of crime and dishonour, on the other hand. But their sense of humanity and loyalty to the great ideals of their society continue to give them reason to hope that the privileged and more fortunate among us, like me and many others, will find the vision and courage needed to help them to move to and occupy their places in the sun. Our common humanity seems to give them reason to believe that those of us with good fortune will see the impending doom and move fast to create new institutions and opportunities to accommodate more of our people.

I say the more fortunate because good fortune and privilege are what the edifice of our society is founded on. We are a society that glorifies privilege and comfort and puts them ahead of talent and effort. And that is part of the reason why our society is not making the necessary progress in many critical areas of our development programme. Good fortune is fickle and can never have the dynamism of genuine talent. Good fortune is not innovative and cannot grow the base of our economy and facilitate transformation and improved opportunity distribution.

The greatest disservice being done to our society by the privileged and more fortunate is not merely that many of them lack the preparation or desire to perform in their exalted positions. The greatest harm done to our society by the privileged and more fortunate is that they deny that they are privileged in the first place. This is the greatest obstacle or tragedy we have to deal with before we can make any headway on the road to full democracy and economic development. To deny that they are privileged is a form of dishonesty on their part that actually borders on fraud, or even treason. We need decisive plans and action on this issue as a matter of urgency.

In line with the national reconstruction plan of embracing politics of rehabilitation instead of politics of replacement, we need the privileged members of our society to admit their histories and positions of privilege. We need them to admit that our society has unfairly privileged them. That is so that we can use them and the resources they control to strategically influence the difficult process of transformation and equitable opportunity distribution in our society. We have very tough decisions that need to be made and implemented with conviction but we cannot start with that till we have put some fundamentals in place.

At the moment, there are three issues that need urgent attention if we are to avoid the catastrophe that many people are starting to sense. All three of them are related to the one area that apartheid did its utmost to frustrate, namely the supremacy of talent. The first is that we have not shown the vision and courage to strengthen our education system appropriately at all levels to ensure that everybody who is supposed to be in school is indeed in school and is receiving the best possible form of education.

The second is that we have not moved with speed and purpose to ensure that every inch of our national space is recognized and utilized as a space for learning. The last one is that we have not shown the courage required to take people with special abilities, many of them admittedly having been unfairly privileged by our society, provided them with incentives and disincentives and put them in special positions to positively impact the process of transforming our society.

Many white people, who have lived privileged lives for decades under apartheid, today refuse to acknowledge that privilege and say we must blame their ancestors for what went wrong in our society. Many black people – even BEE beneficiaries – who have had privileges in the last sixteen years of democracy claim they have no association with affirmative action and that they became overnight millionaires purely as a result of their own talent and hard work. Some young people enjoying better educational opportunities at our prestigious institutions also believe the generations of their grandparents and parents as well as their siblings with little or no schooling are somebody else`s problem.

So the window of opportunity we have as a country slips away tragically as everyone feathers their own nests and shouts esoteric solutions from ivory towers. It is this chasm between the privileged and the poorest of the poor which threatens to swallow the country that worries many people today. One of the most frightening things to ever witness in our society is lack of proper dialogue or engagement between the various segments of our society.

It makes one both sad and fearful to see how people, especially young people, regularly come out of homes, churches and schools and start to loot and burn private and public property with impunity. The connections between each young person and their parents or guardians at home, their pastor at church and their teacher at school are supposed to make the young person think twice before involving themselves in behaviours full of illegality. But many adult people are disconnected from the youth and have long given up on trying to positively influence young people in our society, which is a sad thing indeed.

But what is even worse is their reason for giving up. The behaviours of many adult people leave much to be desired. They steal from their society and seriously abuse many of their democratic rights every day with the full knowledge of their kids. While some adult people do those things because of their desperate economic conditions and low levels of consciousness, many still do those things because of greed. Many people in our society chase technical competency with all speed and pay little or no attention to matters of behaviour or character.

The solution to problems related to people behaviour, whether old or young is always role modelling or leading by example. If adult people see themselves as being untouchable and being accountable only to themselves, then we have no chance as a society. I have been privileged to visit some important places in my society and must say here that it is frightening to see how many people carrying massive institutional power are accountable to nobody.

We need strategies to influence the behaviours of our people through meaningful engagement, utilizing companionship, mentorship and other forms of meaningful contact instead of relying on the police to use guns to deal with crowds when a protest march is already on and emotions are high. Incentives must be provided and people with credibility in the eyes of the poor can be encouraged to engage them creatively. This must be done in order to reduce the amount of people available to turn a peaceful march into an orgy of anger and destruction where property that took decades and centuries to put together is looted and burnt in minutes or seconds.

Whether we like it or not, we have to deal with the issue of men and women who, among other things, bring into the world kids they can neither take care of nor really need. We have to tackle the matter of young adults who fail to turn their companies into super universities. We have to deal with the situation of children who refuse to stay long enough in school to make sense of things and reap benefits. In dealing with all these things and many others needing serious attention in our society, the most effective strategy is positive engagement and the first step is to earn the respect of the people involved.

The government and the private sector must co-operate to create or support viable initiatives which can be used by competent people, with patience and skills, within their ranks to penetrate communities strategically and diffuse the time-bomb that threatens everyone. Both sets of privileged members of our society – privileged by both apartheid and affirmative action – who control resources must be willing to play meaningful roles and shun selfishness. The young people at higher educational institutions whose tutelage is paid for by our economy must also join the effort by providing knowledge and reasoning to the process instead of joining on the side of the problem. The whole effort must focus on returning community life to its rightful place as the centre of our society.

At the moment the less fortunate multitudes continue to wait in dwindling hope. They continue to dream of having opportunities to do something not only for themselves, but for their society as well. They want to earn the honour of creating or producing something valuable for more than just themselves. They want to feel their lives and efforts are worth something. They want to arrive at the end of their lives with some semblance of satisfaction and fulfilment.

The one thing we must never do is to doubt the ability of ordinary people to see sense and follow good leadership. Irrespective of whether they sit in bins of bakkies and trucks on half-tarred roads between their rural villages and their workplaces, or they trudge mysteriously along long hauls from their townships to their small towns, or they scavenge for food in rubbish bins within big cities, the difficulties of their situations are there for all to witness. They make you feel that they know each one of them has more honour and glory than all of us privileged people put together.

The grace and self-sacrifice with which the poor people of our country take their fate sometimes makes me fear that perhaps they know something I do not know. I must admit that at times they make me fear maybe they are planning some crime or evil against me and other more fortunate people. There is a pressing challenge for many of us, the privileged ones to stop taking ourselves too seriously. What we do as human beings in this world is so imperfect, so uncertain and so unclear. We need to stop taking ourselves and our ways too seriously. We need to give other people a chance to have a go at this game. We just cannot be right taking ourselves so seriously with so many people looking on so submissively.

That is precisely why I end up fearing that perhaps they know something I do not know. Or that they are attuned to something I have no connection with. They make me fear they know they are right and I am wrong. Or that they will be found to have been right all along when it really matters. Or how else do I explain their peaceful demeanour despite their daily miseries. Or how else do I explain how they bear the injustices arraigned against them with such aplomb and fortitude? Or how do I explain the fear and unease in my heart? When I look at how they treat their own security, I discover the reason why they seem not to care about mine. They certainly cannot feel much about my security when they live with so little security themselves.

We must try hard not to let people close to us, those who touch our knees or shoes with theirs as they shake our hand, we must try hard to prevent them from making it difficult for us to see the forlorn human faces right behind them. We must try hard to remind ourselves that not only do those forlorn human faces also belong to God, but that they also deserve their fair share of God`s abundance and generosity.

Gibson Sakong
Executive Chairman – Montshepetja Academy

I believe that whereas many homes, churches, schools, workplaces, playgrounds and other places where members of our society converge are engaged in good work, too many people continue to fall through the cracks primarily as a result of the long-term effects of apartheid.

I believe that whereas the transformation agenda of our society is vast, its two make-or-break challenges are how we are going to put our most capable people in front so that they can lead and how we are going to build capacity in the majority so that they can play their own roles.

I believe that whereas poverty and suffering are the lot of mankind and both poor people and rich people are aware of this fact, it is the sponsored nature of the poverty in our society that makes poor people find it both intolerable and unacceptable.

I believe that whereas the preservation of existing value as well the creation of new value are critical for the functioning and progress of our society, it is important to realize that it is the inequitable distribution of value that landed our society in the current quagmire

I believe that whereas the past blood-curdling war of political apartheid killed many people and left their loved ones in unimaginable pain, it is the current bloodless war of economic apartheid that kills even more people through deprivation of opportunity and promotion of ignorance.

I believe that whereas the strategy in the former phase of the liberation struggle was to mobilize the might of the muscle or the masses, the strategy in the current phase of the liberation struggle must be to mobilize the might of the mind.

I believe that whereas the majority in the previous phase operated the frontlines to confront bullets and bombs in support of their leaders, the leaders must in the current phase operate the frontlines to engage knowledge and education in support of the majority.

I believe that whereas the savagery of political apartheid in the former age required the bravery of soldiers and the resilience of victims, the callousness of economic apartheid in the current age requires the courage of patriots and the responsibility of citizens.

The organisation

I believe that whereas some organisations might have served people well in the past by providing them with guns and walls as a safety curtain, it is the duty of capable people today to protect their organisations through constructive engagement and reasoning.

I believe that whereas it is imperative for our organisations to produce people with the technical competence to build and lead robust organisations, it is also vital to produce people whose character and integrity can defend society against undemocratic institutions.

I believe that whereas organisations are effective in bringing people and resources together to work towards achieving common purposes, the mayhem they are known to cause when their immense institutional power is usurped or transferred into inappropriate hands calls for caution.

I believe that whereas organisations are vehicles for progress in any society, they cannot substitute for capable individuals and many organisations have spent decades using the resources of our society to promote incompetence and dependence in people.

I believe that whereas the current government and business leaders command the political and economic power to move mountains, the sheer scale of commitment, competence and moral rectitude required to reverse the ravages of apartheid will be difficult and long in coming.

I believe that whereas apartheid was concocted and effected in collusions between previous government and business leaders, its worst victims are communities and its ultimate defeat will not be seen until communities themselves take ownership of the fight for transformation.

I believe that whereas it is natural that every parent will want to give their own children the best support or resources possible, creative steps need to be taken at community level to ensure appropriate support for all children through processes of championships and companionships.

The individual

I believe that whereas citizens should determine for themselves the type of success they desire for their lives, from wanting to take care of their families to wanting to help heal our society, the tendency by progressive people to disown their poor communities is self-defeating.

I believe that whereas I am committed to the concept of becoming a companion for someone in order to share my knowledge and provide guidance to help build individual leadership capacity, I recognise the need for me to first become a champion of my own worthy cause.

I believe that whereas background plays a significant role in determining the future of young people, I am aware that life will reward each person not on the basis of extravagance but on the basis of the value the individual creates out of nothing or adds to what already exists.

I believe that whereas trying to find inspiration in our immediate environments is often difficult, I am aware that the rich histories of our country and the world make it possible for me to use the power of reading and learning to access leadership models worthy of emulation.

I believe that whereas for reasons ranging from my date of birth to my inadequate bravery I never took up arms as a soldier against apartheid, I am proud of those among my compatriots and others whose gallantry brought us to the current phase of the liberation struggle.

I believe that whereas various aspects of life around me are attractive and tempting, the most enduring privilege of the modern age is access to cutting-edge knowledge, which grants people an opportunity to understand things and determine the paths of their own lives.

I believe that whereas the seeds of apartheid and the strengths of our doubters or adversaries remain a threat to our democratic project and its ideals, what comes to derail our dream of liberty and prosperity might well be our own weaknesses or insufficient courage as believers.

I believe that whereas I cannot deny the difficulties of my own life, I am privileged to know what I know and pray to God the Almighty to grant me the courage I need to play my role in helping to create conditions that assist my fellow citizens to take responsibility and share in His glory.

Gibson Sakong
Executive Chairman – Montshepetja Academy

1. When was MoAc formed and what is its core offering?

Montshepetja Academy was conceptualised over many years, registered in 2001 and started operating in 2003. From an offering point of view, I must say that we are, first and foremost, a talent management organisation. We help individuals to embrace conscious learning so that they can be able to achieve competence and significance for themselves as well as add value to their organisations.

MoAc is part of a deliberate effort to move our society away from the unhelpful culture of passive participation to one of responsibility, rigorous analysis and learning. The greatest injustice done by apartheid to our society was to create an environment where fear and intimidation are the primary tools of operation instead of information and knowledge.

We must work hard to make lots of money. But we must know we cannot keep that money for long or grow it if we do not cultivate certain levels of competence and skills.

Homes, churches, schools and workplaces are battling to produce enough people of the calibre we need to play leadership roles in our society. Our country needs to build and capacitate organisations that can help complement the roles played by those institutions in dealing with our transformation challenges. At MoAc we help people achieve significance in their lives by balancing the pursuit of material wealth with the need to deliberately learn and live life competently. People who learn and live competently normally create legacies for others.

2. What is the strategy employed by MoAc to achieve its goals and objectives?

We have a group of talent management champions or companions who work with clients and stake-holders to implement our strategy. The talent management champions are guided by our values, strategies and other aspects of our organisation as contained in our master strategic document. Our grand strategy stands on three legs. The first leg is consciousness. You cannot start any significant work or project until you have raised your consciousness or understanding to the right level. But many people live their entire lives without taking a single pause to make sense of things.

The second leg or pillar is responsibility. Life will give you the equivalent of what you give it. Do not expect substantial rewards if you do not take responsibility for something substantial. The last leg is competence. Responsibility teaches you competence, which is a better determinant of significance or success than money or position. We help people embrace learning by introducing them to and guiding them through these three steps or phases of our strategy.

3. What are your main functions as executive chairman?

I am responsible for strategic management, from formulation to successful implementation. The critical areas included in my responsibilities are long-term planning, people management and financial management.

4. As the founder of MoAc, do you believe it is achieving its goals?

There is no doubt that MoAc is achieving its goals. I must mention, though, that the organisation is in a long-term investment market. We did not plan to reap instant material rewards when we started the organisation. And we are making very good progress in line with our vision and plans, especially within our areas of focus.

5. Are there any major achievements so far for the organisation?

Operationally, we have been positively touching and influencing people for almost seven years through a number of initiatives outlined under our strategic programme on our website www.montshepetja.co.za. We have been building the brand for those years and have identified and taken on board a core group of people who are passionate about what we are trying to do. Success without a good team of talented and committed people is not possible. We have selected a small number of talented and hard working people with the right values and potential to achieve success with the organisation. We recently acquired Montshepetja Garden, our new premises in Gauteng where we want to consolidate our presence. MoAc Online has also just celebrated its first anniversary. We continue to grow from strength to strength.

6. What is your definition of success?

I am a strong believer in the power of competence. I have always seen genuine success – we prefer to call it significance at MoAc – as a consequence of competence. Competence allows people not only to create value. It also allows them to sustain it once it has been achieved. Real success is less the material possessions we own or the lofty positions we occupy. It is rather the methods we use to obtain them and our capacity to maintain and grow them. Those things are functions of competence. I must emphasize, though, in line with our strategy that competence itself is underpinned by consciousness and responsibility.

7. Any significant challenges that MoAc faces?

We currently fishing for a good dose of financial backing to grow the brand in order to create and disseminate increased value to our stake-holders. Another challenging aspect is shortage of committed and competent personnel. Many people in our society are disorientated and are not building or acquiring the competencies the society desperately needs. We are also looking at forming strategic partnerships and alliances with more established institutions in order to enter new markets.

8. Any personal sacrifices or risks that you have taken?

I believe in the principle that the best measure of someone`s achievement is what they voluntarily sacrificed in order to have what they have. I have made several significant personal sacrifices throughout my life. But for now I will talk only about one. I have sacrificed personal comfort and glamour to pursue something that I believe will eventually not only define my life but will add real value to other people`s lives as well. I figured out very early in my life that our society`s greatest undoing is ignorance. I want to make my humble contribution to my society in the area of knowledge and talent management. So it is not just what you do that allows you make progress in life. You make your progress from a combination of the deeds that you deliberately do and those that you consciously reject.

9. What inspires you to live your life the way you do?

Two things in particular inspire me. The great people we hear about and see from time to time who made and continue to make sacrifices to create better conditions for our country and humanity in general. I am also inspired by people I meet regularly who live very difficult lives because of other people`s inhumanity and they still remain disciplined and positive that some opportunity will be extended to them one day.

I must admit I am also inspired by people I love and believe myself to owe, be they alive or dead. My simple philosophy is that my life is not more important than its responsibility and purpose. I work hard to ensure that my life serves its purpose before the Maker allows my soul to separate from my carcass. But I do not waste resources trying to be perfect because I believe that is beyond human capability. Every life has its contributions as well as its aberrations. I try to ensure that my inevitable aberrations are significantly overshadowed by my contributions. That`s it!

10. Do you have any role models?

I love success and learn from many successful people. But the truth is that you cannot find everything you want in one individual. As you try to mould your life, sometimes you find vision in Raymond Ackerman or Ernest Oppenheimer, loyalty in Walter Sisulu, competence in Trevor Manuel or Barack Obama, courage in Desmond Tutu or Beyers Naude or FW de Klerk, entrepreneurial brilliance in Richard Branson or Patrice Motsepe selflessness in Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa. Sometimes you learn discipline, responsibility and sanity from your own parents, or the folks next door. To find a role model, you must first know what it is that you want.

Gibson regards Manchester United as not only being among the best soccer clubs in the world. He sees the club as also being among the best case studies in terms of people management brilliance.

11. What are your strengths and weaknesses as a person?

The first value in my life is discipline. Discipline is neither sheepish submissiveness nor blind loyalty. It is a combination of the capacity to personally sacrifice for things that matter and the courage to release yourself from things that are unhelpful or harmful. Among my other significant attributes will be that I am highly learning-conscious and competitive. My level of consciousness allows me to focus on my plans and makes it difficult for situations or other people to distract or derail me.

From a weakness point of view, I will tell you that I wish I had more courage to do the things that I want to do and believe I can do. The fear factor in our society is too high and that is part of the reason why productive capacity is so low. The environment we live in intimidates people instead of inspiring them. Another probable weakness of mine is my impatience with self-pity. I see self-pity as something as bad as corruption itself.

12. What do you dislike the most?

I dislike nothing more than healthy and able-bodied people who decide to live lives of cheating and corruption because of lack of discipline, laziness and greed. We have plenty of irresponsible pleasure-seekers in our society who produce absolutely nothing but want to live like kings and queens. Our society has very poor mechanisms when it comes to holding people personally accountable and that magnifies and multiplies poverty. Corruption does not only happen when someone siphons millions from organisational coffers. It is corruption when people sit on payrolls but do just enough to avoid dismissal. It is corruption when people who have neither leadership skill nor desire to lead with fairness cling to lofty positions. Corruption does not refer to the amount of money involved. Rather, it refers to the presence or absence of accountability and integrity in a decision or conduct.

13. What is your greatest personal achievement?

Without any doubt the greatest achievement of my life must be that I have created some space and freedom I need to live my life according to my values and principles. It takes a lot of deliberate effort to take advantage of the blessings we have in our lives and focus on trying to make our own individual contributions in preparation for our meetings with the Maker. In our society, with its history, there are many people willing and waiting to use you as their garden tool or flying machine and nullify your life if you lose your power to say no.

14. What kind of books do you read?

Although I think I have more books than some libraries that I have seen in our impoverished society, I do not see myself as someone who reads books. I regard myself as someone who reads subjects. If you read books without thinking you might not be able to master any subject during your lifetime because many books today are written purely to make money. Though I am flexible about reading, I read mostly on the conundrum of human behaviour and its mysterious ways.

15. Do you have any serious anxieties?

I have anxieties about whether or not as a society we have a capacity to extricate ourselves from the mess created by apartheid. I wonder whether our generals have a decent plan and whether the foot soldiers have the spirit to toil for the plan to bear fruit. There are many people at all levels of our society consuming much more than they can ever produce in their lives while millions are fast losing hope. It is very scary. There is too much self-interest, too little co-operation and even less learning.

16. Organisations make promises. The MoAc promise for the next five years?

We will continue our efforts to build ourselves into a robust talent management organisation that can help make our society embrace learning as a way of life. MoAc`s enduring promise is value creation and prolongation. We help to identify, develop and optimally utilize talent to create value where none exists and sustain it where it already exists. In a society where distribution of opportunities is traditionally based on privilege and not talent or effort, that makes a big difference. Another significant part of our promise is carried in one of our core values: integrity. Integrity means we put fairness ahead of care.

Apartheid has left us with a sick culture where people are unfairly and needlessly deprived and made infirm so that somebody can receive some perverted credit for claiming to care for them. And all this happens when the resources of the country are being depleted for the benefit of a few. Integrity at MoAc stands for fairness. Fairness reduces the amount of people who need to be cared for by encouraging the majority of our people take responsibility for their lives, which is a route more sustainable and more honourable. That is the MoAc service delivery promise in a nutshell. We want to help our society to create a culture where the majority of people take pride in fair reward for honest work and self-reliance. Remember the MoAc Way: consciousness, responsibility, competence and significance.