OPINION | Pick leaders who draw on future, not past
The clash of the old and the new is something that has happened throughout history. It is a clash brought about by the unfolding development of humankind.
When progress happens, the new wins. However, the new never wins without carrying some of the past along with it.
The question is always how much of the past, how much of the essence or the values of our past do we wish or are we willing to carry into the future.
It is important to determine this and get the balance right as it has the potential to enhance our future enormously. Or we will leave a trail of utter destruction.
I am convinced that in attempting to achieve that balance, the future remains far more important than the past.
The past is already set in stone. We can reflect on it and learn from it. But the future is not assured, its promise can still be lost.
The future, however, is where our offspring must live. If we leave them an unlivable future, we will have failed in our most basic duty as forebears.
One of the challenges of the forward march of human progress is the threat of dragging an empty past along with us, one filled with old habits, mindsets, traditions, institutions and systems, but bereft of the noble and important values that should be carried forward for a better future.
This usually happens when we fail to interrogate patterns of thinking, traditions and systems that may be flawed in order to find out why they came about in the first place.
We also frequently find ourselves called on to protect such inheritances and we tend to comply without stopping to ask questions. This is lest we are labeled oonokhontoni – those who do not believe what they are told, are disrespectful and are likely to fall into dangers well known to those who went before them.
But as clear as the benefits of this societal approach may be, especially in traditional societies, a side effect is that it apportions too much trust in those who hold positions of seniority. Yet theirs is assumed knowledge and wisdom.
This in turn has created an establishment, a pattern whereby certain people have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo as opposed to entertaining the new.
Come colonialism and apartheid, and the new came replete with a great many undesirables. And so the new became something to be resist even more vigorously along with the oppression and dispossession that accompanied it.
If you were to take your cue from looking at the uptake of technology in our society, at our city life and our reach for other seemingly modern conveniences, you would be forgiven for thinking that none of this applies to South Africans. But you would be mistaken.
The clash of the old and the new is so enduring and deep-rooted that it is a clash that occurs even within ourselves.
It is why we still hold onto traditions that often kill our children.
It is why we cannot accept inequality even as we live in it.
It is why, when we go home to slaughter for a ceremony, we feel free from the prying eyes of modern society.
It is why we often refer to modern society as “the white man’s world”.
The yearning for a time long past seems determined not to leave us. Yet if we were to start mining the past for all its treasures, for the values it carries, the essence of knowledge passed from one generation to the next, we might begin to see what it is that we need to carry forward and what we would do well to leave behind – and then to make wise choices.
We might also, at last, be at peace, truly free to create something new using the tools and values we treasure from our past.
We might be free to embody the language of our ancestors, who inevitably came to the conclusion that we are members of one human race, created equal, all deserving of respect and all befitting of a life lived with humility.
The failure to distinguish what we wish to carry from the baggage that we need to dump will continue giving us leaders who gain their power from our past.
Some, like Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, have no problem with threatening the future of this nation in an attempt to keep the power given to them by our past.
We need to think about the consequences of our actions. And we need to do so quickly if we wish to create a future where freedom is protected from all seekers of unmitigated power, whether they come from our past or our future...
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