Learning & Social Capital in South Africa

Walmart again...

2012-01-13T06:42:00.001+02:00

Disinvestment by Dutch company as Walmart breaches global ethics code:

www.iol.co.za/business/companies/pic-to-scrutinise-massmart-1.1211537

Gisele Wulfsohn, Rest In Peace

2011-12-31T21:07:00.004+02:00

http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2011/12/31/obituary-gisele-wulfsohn-indomitable-spirit

Walmart, poverty and social capital

2011-12-07T20:05:00.003+02:00

Walmart's merger with Massmart in South Africa has been opposed by the trade union movement on the basis that it is likely to lead to a net reduction in jobs and an increase in imports from abroad.

What has been highlighted less is research that shows that poverty increases as a result of Walmart's presence, and a study also indicates that Walmart has a negative impact on levels of social capital.

Do we need Walmart in South Africa?

The Geneva Convention

2011-10-25T20:52:00.000+02:00

Article 13:

"Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. ...no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned and carried out in his interest.

Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity."

The Johannesburg Moment – “a fractious and turbulent set of social contestations”

2011-10-17T16:16:00.005+02:00

At the recent Mail & Guardian Johannesburg Literary Festival Professor Karl Von Holdt presented an important paper on ‘The Johannesburg Moment’ – a concept for exploration and debate that he is working on and that will form an aspect of a forthcoming book.

What is the ‘Johannesburg moment’? The first idea is that Johannesburg, and indeed South Africa more broadly, can be viewed as a place, in time, that is characterised by a comprehensive contestation of ideas and power for influence and control – over spaces, organisations, institutions and sectors. The contestation can be defined in different ways, and manifests itself in many guises, and impacts on all our lives and forms of organisation in different ways. Perhaps the essence, however, is that previously accepted certainties do not prevail and every issue or idea, large or small, is open for debate, review or conflict.

This can be seen as a wonderful manifestation of a new democratic society, as well as being characterised by what Von Holdt refers to as “a historic rupture, the end of white political domination”. So may sacred cows are upended in such a moment – what are the new ways to organise and run a society as the old order comes to an end and a new one struggles to be born?

Von Holdt argues that the second aspect of the Johannesburg moment is an “intellectual and cultural project” to interrogate and reconstruct the Western lenses through which we understand and make meaning of our situation and context.

Bringing together these two ideas offers the opportunity to create new ideas about how we design and construct our spaces of engagement – not drawing on existing models and frameworks but creating new, socially connected and democratic spaces where work and art can co-exist, where politics and business become integral together to how we think and work, and where new conceptions of society and power can lead to a re-drawing of our idea of ‘organisation’ that can integrate ideas of productivity, learning and playfulness. Real progress.

Critical to this process will be the establishment of a shared sense of our history and identity as a people (a history that itself has been contested) and a new sense of where we want to go. In this sense the political changes that took place in the early 90s represent just a starting point, rather than an ending or a solution.

Exciting new Learning Workshops in Johannesburg

2011-07-18T22:41:00.005+02:00

Together with my colleagues in Kessels & Smit, we have planned an exciting new series of learning workshops over the next couple of months. All the workshops will be facilitated with a participative and engaging methodology, in which participants will work with their questions and real issues pertaining to their work, and their professional growth and development. Workshops will be limited to 12 participants each. Each workshop will offer some theoretical perspectives (with reading material) as well as practical opportunities to work with and practice new approaches. The interactive nature of the workshops will attract participants who are open to trying new ideas and who are comfortable with ambiguity.

The workshops are 3 hours long and will take place on Thursdays (either afternoon or evening) at Unit 7, The Rosebank Fire Station, Bath Avenue, Rosebank. Afternoon workshops will start at 2pm (coffee and biscuits from 1.30pm), and evening workshops will start at 6pm (coffee and biscuits from 5.30pm). Bookings and payments can be made by contacting Kgomotso Ratswana at kratswana@kessels-smit.com or on 011 447 9898.

Details of the workshops are as follows:

1. Working with Appreciative and Integral Perspectives
Facilitator: Mark Turpin
Date: 4th August 2011
Time: 1:30 pm

This workshop will introduce the thinking behind ‘appreciative inquiry’ and ‘integral thinking’, drawn from the work of David Cooperrider and Ken Wilbur respectively. These perspectives will be contrasted with more common problem-centered and deficit-based approaches to working in organisations, and to how larger ‘wicked problems’ are addressed in society.

Participants will be encouraged and supported to apply these new approaches to organisational issues that they face, and also to think about how these approaches can also be used in their personal lives, with the objective of uncovering new perspectives that can support personal empowerment and liberate new energy for solving problems and resolving conflict.

2. Designing Learning Processes: Exploring Different Paradigms on Learning
Facilitator: Paul Keursten
Date: 4th August 2011
Time: 5:30pm

Learning is of critical importance, and there are many ways to learn. But it’s not so easy to know which approach works for what and when. Over the past 50 years, various paradigms on learning have developed, each with its own strengths and pitfalls. Every paradigm has a different vision and definition of learning and how learning can be best supported. Every paradigm uses its own language. Understanding these paradigms and the language and approach that comes with it helps us to navigate the field of learning and development. It helps to understand the often implicit views of key stakeholders and why some discussions never get solved. Most importantly, it enriches the way we can create the powerful learning interventions that are so needed in organisations.

3. The Intelligent Conversation
Facilitator: Mark Turpin
Date: 11th August 2011
Time: 1:30 pm

This workshop introduces the idea of a productive and generative form of dialogue that can be utilised when important outcomes are desired and when a building conversation is needed. A number of simple rules are introduced that can easily be learned and internalised by groups and teams that need to work effectively together.

Participants are then encouraged to practice a real dialogue utilising these new ‘intelligent conversation’ rules and to hold each other accountable in using the rules. They are then given an opportunity to reflect on the experience and develop plans to use this new dialogue format in their day-to-day work.

4. Managing Complexity through Simple Rules
Facilitator: Andrea van der Merwe
Date: 11th August 2011
Time: 5:30 pm

This workshop will explore concepts of complex systems and the relevance and value of this frame for individuals and organisations today. Drawing on the work of amongst others Senge, Stacey and Snowden (Cynefin model), this workshop will explore some of the foundations of complexity thinking and useful frameworks for personal, business and organisations that can help us manage challenges in ways that create more simplicity and meaning, while creating results.

Participants will be encouraged to apply the frameworks and properties of complexity thinking to challenges they face, while creating their own ‘simple rules’ to manage and thrive in complex contexts.

5. The Brain at Work: Using the skill of Reframing to Increase your Effectiveness
Facilitator: Andrea van der Merwe
Date: 18th August 2011
Time: 1:30 pm

The savvy use of our most important tool, the brain, plays an important role in our success in the work and relationship environment. In his book, The Brain at Work, David Rock describes the skill of reframing or reappraisal as the brain’s ‘killer application’. Using this skill effectively can become one of your most important tools for social intelligence. Reframing is about changing your perception by understanding something in another or different way, and the ability to do this in highly charged or emotive situations can change the course of the situation and your ability to shape it. Being able to think about things in a variety of ways, builds a spectrum of understanding and responses for individuals and especially leaders.

Drawing on the growing field of neuroscience and behavioural psychology, participants will have the opportunity to learn how the brain can be used for reappraisal and have the opportunity to apply a number of practical methods on their own challenging situations or relationships as the start of a practice.

6. The Odyssey of the Young Professional
Facilitator: Neliswa Fente
Date: 18th August 2011
Time: 5:30 pm

This workshop is aimed at young professionals who have just entered into a new working environment - maybe you have moved to a new organisation or have just entered the cooperate world. The workshop will focus on the individual journey as well as how to incorporate this journey into that of the organisation. What makes this workshop special is that it is led by a young professional who understands the journey and has experience in both large and small corporates.

The workshop introduces the Heroic Journey framework, a way of understanding, describing and planning for processes of change at the personal, organisational or community level. It is an archetypal story of transformation found in cultures around the world – in myths, fairy tales, ancient stories, legends, books and movies. It is a way of understanding the lives of great leaders – such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. A successful journey is a transformative experience, where basic attitudes and assumptions are often challenged, and we are frequently different at the end from when we set out.

7. The Logical Levels Framework
Facilitator: Mark Turpin
Date: 25th August 2011
Time: 1:30 pm

This workshop introduces the thinking framework of Bateson & Dilts as a structured way of developing effective responses to complex social problems and individual/societal relationships. The framework can be used for problem-solving and conflict resolution, as well as for finding purpose.

Participants will be supported in applying the framework to particular questions or problems that they are concerned with as a logical and systemic way of developing effective strategies. The framework will create clarity and insight on issues of purpose, identity and values as tools for guiding thinking and decision-making that is aligned with what is desired.

8. Social Capital and Learning
Facilitator: Mark Turpin
Date: 1st September 2011
Time: 5:30 pm

The idea of ‘social capital’ has recently been popularised by Robert Putnam though his book ‘Bowling Alone’, which deplores the decline of social and collective activities in American society. This workshop examines the idea of social capital as a very real form of capital that can brings returns to individuals and society. Social capital in the workplace can also be seen as the basis for powerful learning that can unleash innovation and creativity, as well as stimulating happiness. Participants will be encouraged to explore their own social capital and how it can be developed and exploited.

9. Learning to Innovate: Facilitating Breakthroughs
Facilitator: Paul Keursten
Date: 8th September 2011
Time: 5:30 pm

Innovation and learning are strongly linked: without learning there is no innovation. But it requires a special kind of learning: learning that creates new knowledge, that results in answers and practices we did not know before, that creates a breakthrough in thinking and in doing. How do you organise this kind of learning processes? What are some ways to create such breakthroughs? These fascinating questions prompted us to start a research programme in 2002, in which we investigate many innovative practices to uncover principles and methods that work.

Participants will gain access to the main outcomes of this research and are invited to link these to their own practices. We will focus on finding ways to deal with issues and challenges where more of the same is not enough and breakthroughs are needed.

10. Learning to change: Exploring Paradigms on Change
Facilitator: Paul Keursten
Date: 15th September 2011
Time: 5:30 pm

As the saying goes: change is the only constant. But change is such a broad concept and there are so many visions on change. Ask people ‘what is needed to create change’, and you will hear many different answers - often rooted in strong beliefs. In many companies there are heated debates on how to achieve the desired change. De Caluwé and Vermaak conducted extensive research into various approaches to change and discovered five basic worldviews on change. Their conclusion is that the best chance to achieve change is to balance these five views and include elements of all five.

Participants will explore these five different worlds of change. Through a self-assessment participants will learn their own view on change in thinking and in practice.

11. Leadership for Learning
Facilitator: Amanda Barnes
Date: 22nd September 2011
Time: 1:30 pm

It is said that organisations that have developed the capacity to learn are more able to adapt to the fast rate of change. Too often in organizations, the responsibility for learning is limited to the learning and development manager.

Drawing on the work of authors such as Peter Senge and Michael Fullan, this workshop will explore how organisations can develop a learning culture that permeates the organisation and the leadership required at various levels of the organisation to sustain such a learning culture.

12. Performance Management as a Learning and Progressive Process
Facilitator: Kholiswa Menemene
Date: 22nd September 2011
Time: 5:30 pm

Most articles on employee performance management deal with the basics of the process. They provide managers with guidance on how to: measure and track performance; give feedback effectively; conduct a performance appraisal meeting; and coach to sustain performance throughout the year.
However, there are a number of other highly effective and sustainable practices that can enhance your process but often get overlooked. At this workshop we will go beyond the basics by looking at:
• helping employees improve and succeed with Development Plans;
• aligning the individual goals with the organisational goals;
• conducting self assessments to get the individual’s perspective.

We plan that this series of workshops will become a continuing rolling programme, and also to offer workshops by other professionals in different fields. Watch this space...

Kader Asmal RIP

2011-07-04T14:15:00.014+02:00

I was most fortunate to have Professor Kader Asmal as one of my lecturers at Trinity College Dublin some years ago. His love for his students, and brilliant mind, combined to ensure some of the most stimulating lectures one could have attend. And he was in a faculty that also included other brilliant minds – such as Professor RFV Heuston (a great constitutional lawyer of the old school), and Mary Robinson (a leading campaigner for womens’ rights and subsequently President of Ireland).

A mark of his brilliance was that he taught us the whole International Law course using only one source text – namely the judgements of the International Court of Justice on South Africa’s illegal occupation of Namibia. And all his lectures were imbued with his strong sense of natural justice (or what one of my fellow students said was “justice according to one’s conscience” – a very Protestant concept in holy Catholic Ireland in the 1970s!). Natural justice – or what was known in Ireland as ‘constitutional justice’ – infers rights on the basis of the underlying ideas and intentions in a country’s Constitution. So one could infer, for example, that overt controls on the media, even if technically legal (or consistent in a narrow sense with the Constitution) or compliant with the rights of the legislature, could impinge on ideas of constitutional justice in South Africa as they are not consistent with the Constitutional intent behind Article 16 – that freedom of expression supports an idea of freedom for the media that may be stronger than the actual article itself. (Experts on constitutional law can please advise me if my understanding of natural or constitutional justice is flawed in some way…)

Perhaps one of the greatest tributes to the life of Kader Asmal would be the clear establishment of a significant concept of ‘constitutional justice’ in the South African legal system (without undermining at all, and indeed building on, some of the wonderful judgements of our Constitutional Court in recent years). But I am straying into territory that I am insufficiently qualified to comment on!

Of course, Kader and his wife Louise, were always focused on the struggle against apartheid, and Kader quickly recruited South Africans in Dublin into the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement (IAAM). Run from their kitchen in Beechpark Road in Foxrock, the IAAM Executive brought together a range of disparate individuals – student activists, Labour party members, religious people, poets, musicians, communists and so on. Joan Burton was very prominent as a Labour Party member (she is currently the Irish Minister for Social Protection). We were involved in a wide range of activities – campaigning against John Robbie (then a fellow student of mine) from participating in the British Lions rugby tour of South Africa in 1980, lobbying for a complete boycott of South African goods and services, raising awareness of what was happening in South Africa etc.

Perhaps most inspiring was the faith and conviction that the Asmals always displayed, even in the very worst moments of apartheid repression, that South Africa would one day be free, and that it would happen in our lifetimes. I recall many discussions, often over the whiskey that was always available after the meetings were concluded, as to who would be the future Presidents of South Africa. The news of resistance in South Africa was always spoken of, even when these were but small chinks in the monolith, as further evidence that the regime was crumbling.

And of course, as well as working with politicians and trade unionists, Kader always understood the importance of the artists, musicians and poets in articulating the struggles of people. Regular art auctions were held to raise funds, with pictures donated by well-known Irish artists such as Michael Farrell. And we organised a major Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim) concert in Dublin’s Liberty Hall, where he was supported by Rock Fox and his Famous Orchestra. We arranged interviews for the great South African musician (then living in exile), including a wonderful moment in Kader’s office in Trinity when a London-based journalist pitched up from the Cape Times and asked him when he was coming to play in South Africa. Without blinking, Abdullah assured her that he would be returning to play at a victory concert in Johannesburg. She had the naiveté to ask him if a date had been scheduled for the concert. He told her that it would be ‘soon’. End of embarrassing interview.

Kader’s rich contribution to public life in Ireland meant that his obituary notices in South Africa were mirrored by different obituary notices in the Irish media, recalling his significant work there, including his establishment of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and his support for human rights throughout the island of Ireland. He knew well that human rights are indivisible.

His concern for the people of South Africa as a whole also extended to the young exiled South Africans that found their way at a tender age to the freezing wet climes of Ireland. He supported them, often out of his own pocket and ensured that they would never be homeless or on the street, even if it meant camping on the floor in sleeping bags. Years later it has been good to reconnect with Zukile Nomvete and others from those days.

There is no need for me to repeat what has been recorded in the various obituaries to Kader. Enough to say that here was a giant of a man with a brilliant mind - someone who stood for substance over form, who tolerated no puffery, and who had no truck with the arrogance that sometimes comes with power. Widely cultured and literate, humorous and sensitive, he was, as the Irish say, ‘a gentleman, a scholar, and a fine judge of whiskey’.

Unit 7, Rosebank Fire Station

2011-03-21T21:35:00.006+02:00

As posted previously, we have created an exciting working and learning space for our company at Unit 7 in the Rosebank Fire Station. The units at the fire station (it is still a working fire station!) were originally built as accommodation for the firemen and women, but about 10 years ago were converted into office units.

As well as providing a space for ourselves we have created a flexible working and learning space for other consultants and small businesses. By creating a beautiful and energetic space we have been able to stimulate creativity and networking, as well as building important connections.

The people and organisations who currently share our space include Ivan Ginsberg, who runs Computer Experts Personnel - an IT recruitment agency; architect Pietman Lategan who creates beautiful living spaces (Virtual Architecture); Refiloe Seseane (18twenty8 – an NGO that supports the professional development of young women); the partners of Sarraounia Trust, that focuses on capacity building in the health sector (Nancy Coulson, Cheryl Goldstone and Nirvana Pillay); and Wendy Ovens – a local government specialist. And we also have an exciting connection with the SeeTrust - established by my colleague Paul Keursten - which seeks to promote social entrepreneurship and networking in communities, building on the work done by some incredibly committed people to address social issues.

Kessels & Smit The Learning Company

2011-02-27T21:31:00.006+02:00

Kessels & Smit The Learning Company has been my professional home for the past 4 years. This has been one of the most rewarding times for me – both personally and professionally. Working as part of this increasingly global learning network (we are now active in Holland, Belgium, Germany and the UK as well as in South Africa, with a wider network in eastern Europe, southern Africa, Asia and the US) means we have access to ideas and innovative practices that support and sustain learning and change in a wide range of organisations and communities. And we are also our own ‘laboratory’, as we work with our own internal changes and growing processes.

As an organisation without traditional structures, job descriptions or formal reporting lines, and without human resource policies, we find new and exciting ways to connect, provide feedback and support each other in our own learning. Kessels & Smit has recently been nominated as one of the top 10 innovative companies in the world!

In South Africa we are now a growing team, consisting of myself, Andrea van der Merwe, Mandy Barnes, Paul Keursten and Neliswa Fente, and we will soon by joined by Elsona van Huyssteen. Our work is very varied, taking us to universities, companies, NGOs and research institutes, as well as individual mentoring and coaching. We have been particularly excited to work closely over the past year with the University of the Free State, which is going through a major transformation process.

The opportunity to work with both large and small organisations from different sectors provides real richness and learning for us. In addition, we work increasingly on international projects and assignments, in which we work with our international colleagues to create innovative processes in areas such as HIV, corporate responsibility, democracy building and environmental sustainability. Our colleague Neliswa Fente is focusing a lot of her time and energy in thinking about the challenges and opportunities for young professionals in South Africa and globally.

In Johannesburg we have created an exciting ‘learning space’ at the Rosebank Fire Station, which we share with a range of other consultants and specialists – people working in the fields of health, local government, IT, architecture and so on. One of the people that works alongside us is Refiloe Seseane, who runs a dynamic organisation called 18Twenty8. 18Twenty8 supports the professional and personal growth and development of young women from disadvantaged communities, and has won a number of awards for its work. We will be finding ways to develop a close relationship between our company and the work Refiloe is doing.

Viva the great people of Egypt viva!

2011-02-12T20:26:00.000+02:00

Apologies for the long silence in this blog! The last few months have been a busy time. I have been experimenting a bit with Twitter, where I have tweeted on a variety of topics, usually in quite a random way – experimenting with the medium. You can follow me on Twitter.

For the last few days I have been impressed by the resolution and determination of the people of Egypt. By holding firm, they have achieved their singular objective of ending the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak. They know well that the hard part lies ahead – building a new democratic system. It is hard not to see the coincidence between the birth of a new Egypt on 11th February and the release of Nelson Mandela 21 years ago to the day.

The change in Egypt raises much hope for wider change in the Middle East. At the time of writing, there is an upswell of protest also in Yemen, Algeria and Jordon. For too long the region has been ruled by kings, dictators and sheiks without regard for the will of the people. This lack of democracy in neighbouring countries has enabled Israel to avoid finding a lasting and peaceful solution to its relationship with the Palestinian people. A more democratic region will inevitably put pressure on Israel to find a new accommodation.

The best thing about the World Cup...

2010-06-21T09:49:00.005+02:00

We have new stadiums, the Gautrain, Rea Vaya, upgraded ‘world class’ airports, some improved highways, refurbished hotels and a R90bn boost to our economy, but I would swap it all for the spirit that swept through the country spontaneously on the Wednesday before kick-off at 12noon.

At that moment the country came together again on the streets of our cities, when people came on to the streets in a colourful, noisy and joyous and shared display of exuberance at the start of the World Cup. The noise from the vuvuzelas was deafening, and continued on and off for the rest of the afternoon.

If we could bottle what happened that day, and bring that sense of togetherness and happiness into everything we do, we could solve every problem and deal with every challenge we face as a people. And forget about building ‘world class’ cities, and just focus on creating nice places to live.

[My thinking on this has been encouraged by the new ‘daily life’ blog from Barbara Klugman – see side panel].

Picture: Gisele Wulfsohn

Welcome to the beloved country!

2010-05-29T11:49:00.006+02:00

Last night I flew back to Johannesburg after three days working in Cape Town. The journey home was a great experience after the high of connecting with wonderful people in the mother city.

It started at the brand new Cape Town International Airport – clean, spacious and bright. Our Kulula flight at 6.30pm was full, and included the disabled basketball team who boarded with crutches and wheelchairs at the back of the plane where I was sitting. This group entertained us throughout the 2-hour flight with a continuing banter in different languages with the cabin crew. The cabin crew entered into the spirit of things, offering face painting to passengers, and even the usual Kulula jokes were funnier than normal. The crew also entertained us by singing songs on the journey.

On arriving in Johannesburg the cabin crew disembarked the basketball team first – a change from the normal way of doing things which would be to ask them to wait until everyone else had gone before bringing on the wheelchairs. This was accepted by everyone in good spirit, even though it took 20 minutes longer to disembark.

Walking though the OR Tambo airport at Johannesburg I was struck by the colour, flags, everyone wearing soccer shirts (‘Football Friday’ in Johannesburg) and how everyone was smiling. As I walked to my car I found myself smiling also and happy to be home.

A short note on the death of Eugene Terre’Blanche

2010-04-05T11:38:00.006+02:00

Eugene Terre'Blanche & Connie Mulder at AWB cultural day, Krugersdorp, 1986 (Picture: Gisele Wulfsohn)

It is an important sign of the increasing political maturity of South Africa that political leaders have generally called for calm after the murder yesterday of Eugene Terre’Blanche.

And President Zuma this morning is reported as saying that political leaders should think before they speak. Mmm – cryptic. I wondered at first who he was referring to – my first thought was Helen Zille, who yesterday morning warned on eTV of increased polarisation in society as a result of the killing, but by yesterday afternoon (after reading the mood?) was (also on eTV) calling for calm like everyone else. Then I wondered if this was perhaps a shot across the bows of Julius Malema. My next thought was that he was articulating some of his own learnings…

No matter, the point is that the senseless killing of Terre’Blanche is probably unlikely to result in much in the way of civil unrest or increased polarisation, beyond perhaps a few stones thrown in Ventersdorp.

The AWB actually met its end in what was then Boputhutswana in 1994, with the killing of Nico Fourie, Fanie Uys and Alwyn Wolfaardt – three of the AWB members who went into Bop in a futile attempt to bolster the so-called government of Bop and prevent its reincorporation into South Africa before the first democratic elections in 1994.

Of course, racism in South Africa does not begin or end with the AWB, although in substance and form the AWB was clearly a white-supremicist organisation. Perhaps one thing can become clear from the death of Terre’Blanche: South Africa really does have to belong to all the people who live in it, not parts of it for some people and parts for others. This is a good starting point for realising that we all then have to live together – and not just because we have to, but also because it can be more fun and we will be happier as a people!

Raymond Suttner's Prison Reflection

2010-02-25T12:32:00.006+02:00

I recently read Raymond Suttner's book 'Inside Apartheid's Prison' and then the other day a powerful article that he has written from a more philosophical and reflective space. The article is one of the best pieces I have ever read on the prison experience and so I am copying it below with his permission as it deserves a wide audience.

[pictures: Gisele Wulfsohn]

20 February 2010. Draft. Not to be quoted without author’s permission

Rethinking and re-remembering prison. Reification and agency.

Paper to be delivered on 11 March by Professor Raymond Suttner to UNISA seminar series as part of subseries on ‘violence’.

E mail: rsuttner@worldonline.co.za and suttnrs@unisa.ac.za

Prison. The word terrifies. No other image affects the daily life of each and every citizen the way the idea of prison does. The architectural brutality of the prison establishes it as a presence in every person’s mind-no matter what one’s gender, ethnicity, social position or economic class. .... Prisons carry a no-nonsense public relations message. (Sanders, 2005: 24). .

Having been in prison, is not something in the past tense, it is still with me and is continually in my daily experience. Every time someone rings the door bell loudly for a long period, it evokes a flashback. I associate banging and knocking and ringing with unwanted sounds and that period of my life, when it was not my own. There could suddenly as a civilian or a prisoner be a series of events that preceded a search or an arrest or a move or some such unwanted, anxiety provoking emotion. The notion of being a prisoner connotes a range of things, one of which is a sense of insecurity of location, that you can be taken away at any moment, moved or even released. Whenever they called me in prison they would not say why or to where I was going. I would ask whether I should take my toilet paper because the answer would give an indication of a big move –to another prison, release or another part of the prison. They do not answer questions about what is going to happen when they take you as a thing from one place to another.

This reification of the prisoner is essentially what characterises imprisonment. For a non-political prisoner, their mode of survival is to conform to this and they make some gains through that situation, compromising young warders and then getting some concessions from them. Without spending too much time on this because this is not my experience, a typical young warder has to ensure that the passage is clean and polished well for inspection by the head of the prison. If the big gangsters do not cooperate that will not happen. They ply the low-earning warder with tea and biscuits or other things and he enters a relationship of mutual dependence. They and he are aware that they now have the power to land the warder in trouble and soon he is smuggling dagga (cannabis). One day a person may be a warder, the next he may appear as a prisoner.

Being a political prisoner, possibly not for all, but for me meant being a representative of a long line of freedom fighters. The phrase I have in my head is ‘head held high’. I drew on this tradition in order to strengthen myself under torture or other ill-treatment or on trial. Or, in my training I had been told, that if put on trial I ‘would know what to do’, that is, stand proudly and defend the struggle

In prison, if you have prepared or learnt to deal with the situation, you can adapt. Where they take something away or deny you something important there is always a mode of surviving after retreating to another, smaller territory or conditions with less of the comforts of life. They can stop certain food or many other items. Then you make as much pleasure as you can from others, from what is left or what is improvised in place of what has been taken.

One day they raided our books and took huge numbers, accumulated between the 1960s and the early 1980s. At one point prisoners who were 'A group' were allowed to buy three books a month. When I became A group after about five years (under what criteria I do not know) I placed my first order for books which I never received and then the scheme was cancelled. But unwittingly over the years they had allowed in quite a few progressive books either through that scheme or via University of South Africa (UNISA), for example, the Socialist Register, which had an article by Joe Slovo on armed struggle or the Grundrisse of Marx and various works of Cabral, Althusser, Gramsci and others, from UNISA, which we copied out word for word. At first we were only allowed to study undergraduate degrees and I had done a BA so that I had to register for Library science which had some BA subjects in the degree. I then had to justify, sometimes successfully, why I ordered 20th century books when the history course stopped somewhere around 16th century.

To have large numbers of these books taken away was a great trauma. It did not affect all that we prized because they tended to work by title, so that Selected Works sounded harmless or Register sounded like keys register even if it was Socialist Register it was fine with them. They did not look to see if the author was Thatcher or Lenin. They worked by title. Gramsci was unknown, though it was better to get his works in a collection rather than in Prison notebooks, something that may have been seen as containing criticism of their prison. But life went on and we adapted and we continued with a lot of other permissible or contraband books. There was also the prison library but its cataloguing was indecipherable, with no list of authors and any title beginning with 'The' listed under T and The Tempest described as ‘science fiction.’

There are a lot of aspects of my existence today that derive from this period. Even the positive things, like consistent work on research, are of an extreme kind related to modes of survival. The consistency of exercise, every day without the need for someone to push me is a survival from the second period ‘inside’ where physical exercise was more important than intellectual work as a means of survival.

To clarify, I was inside twice. In the first period, I was a detainee, then awaiting trial and then sentenced prisoner- totalling eight years. The second time was a state of emergency detainee, held for 27 months June 1986 to September 1988, 18 of these in solitary because all other whites had been released. I was placed under house arrest, reporting twice a day to the police and forced to stay in my home from 6 pm to 6 am with a range of other limitations. This required a form of self-policing in order to remember to report on time. In this sense, the psychological effects of imprisonment were not removed, although there form was altered. There was also a potential danger of assassination. The day I moved into a house, David Webster, a scholar and activist, was assassinated. Consequently, while free I had to take different routes to report, because regular habits facilitate any planned attack. I also had to conceal engagement in any political activity since this was disallowed.

But in August 1989 I defied restrictions and went to Harare for the Harare declaration on negotiations and since I was already in trouble, I thought I might as well make it big trouble for myself and the regime as well through public interventions and went on a ‘world tour.’ I returned in late January 1989, with the potentiality of prosecution but said that I regarded myself as free. A few days later this was in fact legally the case with [former President F W] de Klerk’s announcement of February 2 1990, inter alia, lifting restrictions.

PRISON AS A CONTINUOUS PHENOMENON

But the prison experience is a continuous phenomenon in another way, in that I prepared for it before it happened and I anticipated it –correctly –after I was first released and it remains part of my psychological make up now that I am free. That is something I have only thought of recently. From the time I committed myself to work underground I also prepared for arrest and handling torture. I feared what I had seen of others betraying their comrades and especially those who became state witnesses.

In a sense, when I was detained I entered a familiar environment. I had long read and imagined it and the coarse way of speaking to me and the threat and actual violence always present. The lack of any sense of common humanity and the unbending determination to extract from me what I wanted and largely succeeded in withholding.

But every detention is different, as us experts say. All who have been detained or imprisoned talk about it endlessly and are in a sense experts, because everyone’s experience is unique. I had resisted writing about my experience because it was so short, a ‘parking ticket’, compared with Mandela. A trauma counsellor said to me, that if you are robbed you do not deny a sense of injury because you were not murdered. The liberation movement inculcated a sense of modesty –writing anonymously or under pseudonyms – and an unwillingness to ‘show off’ or dwell on your own achievements or suffering. In general, however, the comrades with whom I worked paid little attention to ‘‘the personal’’. In retrospect my sense is that most, including myself were not sufficiently aware of ourselves as damaged individuals, nor were many interested in hearing about it, insofar as anyone did voice such feelings.

There is tendency to be very repressed and not express fears and anxieties and not to use the word ‘‘I’’ but merely describe how the fuse did not light for sabotage or as Madiba would say, ‘‘I was strengthened by my comrades’’ and similar phrases in a depersonalised way. This is not to say that I have shaken off all elements of this repression.

I was always with white prisoners, though I had some illegal contact with black political prisoners on occasions, especially during emergency detention. In my experience the white political prisoners, who were small in number, were wracked by internal tension. We would never have chosen to be with one another, in certain cases. The state brought us together. There were generational, experiential and ideological differences.

Elaine Unterhalter (2000: 157-8) makes an insightful comment on how black and white (mainly male) autobiographies tell the history of the struggle in a stereotypical manner, and it cannot simply be dismissed as boring. The person concerned wanted to locate himself as part of this army of liberation, as I saw myself as part of an international tradition. They consequently relate a lot of the history preceding their detention. When I envisaged torture and was being tortured with electric shocks, I remembered who had gone before me and that I was at once a human being who ought not to die, but I was a small part of a wider struggle, involving millions who had died or would die or were being tortured at the same time as I was. This may have been romantic, in that I had illusions of the qualities of some of the comrades in the struggle on whom I thought I was modelling myself, but there were nevertheless some who confirmed this exemplary character and were worthy of such admiration or emulation.

LIMINALITY

Liminality refers to thresholds between one state of being and another, rites of passage from boyhood to manhood, getting married and so on. (Turner, 1969 Rapport & Overing, 2004). I see myself as always having been in a liminal state in relation to prison-on the way there, there but not quite there, partly on the road to release, inside but not with ‘’the others’’, with the others and fairly settled, but in the last few years, on the threshold of release from prison, but nevertheless entering freedom with the sense that I could easily lose it. Underground is especially liminal because you are acting politically while they are consciously trying to hunt you down. There is a liminal state, which the other side consciously seeks to bring to an end or to transform into another form of liminality.

Liminality is a state of being neither here nor there, in this case free and unfree or potentially one or the other. The state of indefinite detention is especially a variant of that phenomenon in that you think release will happen- but while seeing others cross that threshold, even specially released in front of you, you do not know when you will pass from where you are to where you ‘’must’’ or ought to be some day. It has greater uncertainty than other liminal states in that liminality is generally associated with rituals that are regularised (as in a marriage or release from serving a sentence) whereas indefinite detention has no distinct rites of passage, year after year of renewal of the emergency can pass.

The court case is another liminal phase, which may be handled in various ways. Some adopted the approach of the common law prisoners and said they were misled or pleaded for mercy. I understood political prisoners to be defiant, following the example of Mandela and Bram Fischer. In so doing one robs the police of their day of triumph.

This is a liminal moment where one has agency. In my case I was young and I may have increased the sentence I received by making no apologies and going to the prison with my fist in the air. I was single- minded.

TORTURE

I had spent a lot of time preparing for detention and potential torture and expected it. I did not want to be tortured when I was too weary so that I would not know what was happening. In that situation weariness may lead to loss of control. Prema Naidoo (a member of a distinguished struggle family, whose forebears were close to Gandhi) was tortured for 10 days and eventually could not have full control of his consciousness and then told them about things they had not asked. He emerged with scars all over his body.

There is nothing inevitable about what happens in torture situations. You may die, because they do not know enough about electricity or cannot tell that you are about to die for other reasons or they intend to kill you and then sometimes construct a situation and throw you out of the window or you do jump in order to end the pain and avoid betraying others.

The question of agency is always at the centre of my rethinking of prison. Even under torture I had what they wanted and it was up to me to release or not release it. Only I had what they wanted. It was not inevitable to tell anything or everything. And they depended on my response to their acts of violence. Their mode of agency was first talking then mainly electric shocks but also other physical pain. I did not believe in the theory that you just say nothing. I believe that you can stall or if too arrogant can get so badly beaten that you lose control of what you say. I first told them about people outside the country and other matters that did not interest them greatly.

My main job was to protect two people who had recently been recruited, on I think inadequate advice. They were inexperienced but the rule was that if anyone was arrested the rest should disappear, meaning then, get out of the country. I had then to ensure that they knew I was arrested because my absence would not be immediately discovered. One was not expected to hold out indefinitely and thus impair one’s capacity through continual beatings. So I told the security police of hiding some of my material in the university. If they raided the university, everyone would know I was inside. In other words, torture did not rob me of all rationality, though I imagine that over time it did impair elements of my judgment.

GOLDEN AGE OF PRISON

Something that relates more specifically to memory and post traumatic stress is that despite, having been fairly severely tortured in my pre-trial detention in 1975, I remembered my first eight years in prison or initially remembered these as a type of golden age. The second period was hard and I could see the evidence in my state of mind. But I never signed anything renouncing any organisation or form of struggle. I do not thereby impugn the motives or reasons that made others ‘‘sign’’ for a range of reasons, facing different conditions.

Somehow there was a reservoir of strength preventing certain routes to be taken, I nevertheless felt the effects much more and acknowledged them more readily. I did not like being ‘’called to the front’’ (to see the Head of the Prison or some unknown person for some unknown reason) or have Security Police arrive at the end of each year of the State of Emergency, to re-detain me. But I would give them a run for their money. They would ask, are you satisfied? And I would say, of course not. And they would say why and I would say because this is completely illegal. They would ask why and I would say that will require consultations with my lawyer. Then they would leave, saying, ‘’that one will be here to switch off the lights at the end of the emergency’’.

I think that while I believe I remember the details of both these experiences, I repressed the loss suffered in the first experience, when I had not been married or in a relationship and I went directly from sentencing to prison, without any counselling over torture. As a result I did not really evaluate what my torture had meant for a long time. I also have not got a clear conception of the meaning of a 7 ½ year sentence, mostly without newspapers and in a small group which created huge tensions unlike what could be more easily defused in a big group as on Robben Island. There the differences were mainly political as I understand it, but ours were partly political but mainly personal.

I have never really admitted that ten years is a long time to lose in a professional career. I always stayed just too short a time to get a sabbatical or a promotion that may have been due. I have only said or written that now in this paper, that I have experienced losses that set me back in various ways. So I have not got loss of memory, but I still may not have a clear understanding of or consciously expressed the trauma and losses I experienced.

My understanding changes. But there is not erasure as far as I can see but defects in my processing the experience. I do not need hypnosis or some other method to remember that I was tortured, as some do. My understanding and the level of importance I attach to some experiences, like my initial torture which I more or less shrugged off, has changed. I have a clearer appreciation of the after effects and I had the habits of prison in the three years interregnum before my second arrest and it remained a way of being, a furtiveness that actually continued to be appropriate in the situation, but it was less obviously understood by me as a problem and I saw no counsellor after my first release in 1983. Even today when it is no longer as appropriate, I still react if there is a car outside my house or someone drives behind my car for some time. These are ingrained approaches to potential danger that have not disappeared.

Before my second arrest I was underground for a while and had to practise various modes of disguise and other techniques to avoid arrest in the first relatively short emergency. So there was a degree of continuity between pre-arrest in 1975 and after release where I was in a liminal state before the second arrest.

ARRESTED AGAIN

One thing that was very different about my second spell was that it had no definite end and this meant that because I landed up being the only white in the country that remained after about a year, that I correctly concluded that I must prepare for the worst, (and hope for the best). Now I had been in a relationship and my partner could not have that perspective and continued hoping for a release in time for Christmas or whatever rumour was circulating. I could not encourage that because my coping depended on not setting myself up for disappointments and relating to an indefinite stay. Ultimately I had to encourage her to find another relationship, hoping it would not happen, but it did. Often when one makes such decisions, morally correct though they may be, one hopes that they will not be acted out. Unfortunately for me it did happen and that was painful.

Regrettably, this was not something that many or any of my comrades could relate to, after release. It is, gender scholars will say, part of a wider question of masculinities (most of my comrades were men) and attribution of reason and not emotion to males. In general, one was simply expected to take one’s place back in the ranks and that is one of the reasons why I think there are a lot of people who are apparently lazy, but in fact, suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome.

I was complicit in a situation where we had no idea of needing treatment. When various people were released from prison, we would sit down with them and advise them to work in one or other sector. We and they expected this to happen immediately. In fact, many received a mandate as to what they should do from their prison comrades, especially on Robben Island, which had to be reconciled with possibly different perceptions outside. None of us reflected on anyone’s psychological state.

As indicated, 18 months of my State of Emergency detention were spent in solitary. I had not expected it to be very difficult because my pre-trial detention was five months on my own. That had not seemed so bad. When I was again arrested in 1986 I first went to John Vorster Square which was a terrible place, though when one young warder was on his own, I could persuade him to allow me out into a court yard to get some air. Or once when my lawyer gave me fruit, I asked to be able to take some to various other prisoners and he said he would, I said no I wanted to do so myself. So he said you are section X and they are section X, ok. It made no sense but he let me do so.

I was suddenly moved to Diepkloof’, where I was at first on my own, though from the beginning I could easily have contact with the mainly short term common law prisoners. For some reason there had been a change since my first period inside. One was now allowed to have money and buy things from a tuck shop in the prison, various unhealthy items which nevertheless compensated for being in a cell. I used to open my window and if I inhaled I could get high on all the dagga they were smoking.

From the beginning I used my money to smuggle newspapers, which were at first not allowed. Secretly a warder who had right wing inclinations would smuggle indirectly to me, asking nothing in return. I did not know this from him, but one of the gang leaders who were there. I had a routine smuggling system throughout my period in Diepkloof. It was mainly in exchange for cash which the bandiete (common law prisoners) would use for buying dagga. When I was allowed newspapers legally I still offered money to those who had helped me and they could not understand that I wanted nothing in return. The ethos of their trade as criminals was very different from ours. ‘’Ours’’ meaning that I was with others, including two priests for up to 9 months. I also smuggled personal or political letters in and out hidden inside cardboard file covers, for carrying study material. The message was written on very thin paper.

As in my period as a sentenced prisoner being in a small group had its tensions. I remember that we received a message that we should go on a hunger strike for 1-10 days. This was very common on the Island but not so common for white political prisoners.

I thought because I was in leadership, I should volunteer for 10 days. Another comrade, for some existential reason felt the same. Others got quite angry and accused us of blackmailing them. In prison one can get some of the good things of life and one is reluctant to part with them. I was very loath to fast even considering the notorious character of Diepkloof food, but I had to. We got various messages in the meantime which reduced the number of days required until it was a symbolic single day. The warders did not know this and when we did not take our food the ‘‘drama factor’’ created panic. In prison there is a routine and continuity is sacred for both prisoners and the prison command. The very fact that this was disrupted rather than the character of the action threw the authorities into panic.

I have mentioned that I had reconciled myself to being inside indefinitely. Some did not and cherished hopes that were repeatedly dashed, although all went out long before me, often released in front of my cell. I remember how this lack of preoccupation with release improved my standing as a table tennis player. Initially, someone could defeat me with his left hand; in the end I could beat him, because my spirit was still ok. I did not like prison but my calculations or expectations were correct.

When everyone else had gone there was no one to talk to except the warders and prisoners which was not allowed but happened. I became more and more lethargic though I did so much running that I had to have an operation on my knee and can no longer run without risking injury. Then I did a range of other exercises.

I got by with the warders and officers who could not understand why I was not released. Some believed the Security Police wanted to ‘break me’.

After a while I sought permission to have a pet bird. I had seen how the sentenced prisoners had such pets. They allowed me a love bird, a parakeet, not out of kindness, but because they feared I was being psychologically affected and they would be blamed. I called the bird ‘jail bird’ or JB and trained it by letting it bite my hand and soon it became very attached and would sit under my track suit and if I sought to get it out, it would bite. If it heard that I was eating a granola bar, it would emerge to eat out of my mouth. I think what one misses in solitary is not merely affection towards oneself but expressing affection. JB was the recipient of my affection.

In some ways having this bird and training it was something that the warders could understand about me, as opposed to why I was in jail and had gained nothing. They did not understand what I was doing with all the books, initially disallowed, and my politics. But a bird was within their world. It was something the other prisoners and the warders could identify with and talk about. One officer also had birds and I asked him whether they could talk at all and he said ‘’Hulle praat fokkol. They say fuckall’, as if that was a merit. Mine did not talk but it smelt like a baby, something in deep contrast to the prison environment.

SURVIVING

I am classified as an intellectual and one of the points of interest for me has been the intellectual side of struggle. But I have also or primarily been involved because of a sense of personal, existential commitment that I wish to make my life in a particular way.

I placed weight on being a white and saw my involvement as connecting me to something from which I had been excluded –normalising my life insofar as it could be in the sense that it was abnormal under apartheid for whites, to put their life at the disposal of the liberation struggle. Bram Fischer, the Afrikaner aristocrat turned revolutionary was my role model. It may sound naïve but I did not count on being alive and hoped to be sufficiently effective to do so much that if captured I could land up on the gallows. I remember acting this out when I cashed in life insurance for a pittance in the 1980s.

Now this personal commitment has practical consequences. When you are alone in the cell or with your interrogators your knowledge of ANC strategies and tactics, Marxism or religious texts is insufficient to survive. I have seen people who were very bold on public platforms collapse when facing the prospect of indefinite prison and separation from their lover. Gandhi, Mandela and Luthuli all said one must prepare oneself for whatever one advocates that others do. By this I mean as Mandela said if you are ready to die, you must mean that, you must be psychologically prepared when it happens. I prepared myself to be ready.

The second time I went in I had been out of jail for three years, though underground for about 6 months of that time. I had become a little afraid of being re-detained and tortured again (as one comrade assured me would happen). When I was arrested in the second detention, starting June 1986 I did feel afraid –until they were rude to me when I asked a question. Then I thought ‘’fuck you’’ and felt a surge of strength returning to me, some of what had got me through the previous time, returned.

WHO CONTROLS THE SITUATION?

The key issue for me is who controls the prison? To the outsider this may seem absurd and it may appear obvious that the prison officials control it. For the bandiet, the ordinary criminal it is clear, as the warders say in the beginning ‘‘you are nothing, you do not even have a number’’ and when you have a number you become something. Now we handled the situation differently, obviously the question of self-agency is very constrained when you are blindfolded and tortured, though even here you can have some control over the flow of information and disinformation.

In Pretoria Prison, as sentenced prisoners, we never ran if they called us nor did we polish the floors. The image I have of other prisons is that of prisoners ‘’taxi-ing’’ as it is called sliding from one side of the passage to the other, on wrapped up blankets, making them shine like a mirror before inspection. We said the floors were Marley tiles and you do not polish them and that was accepted. Often we had much more ‘’institutional memory’’ than the authorities. In general, we did various things, at one stage gardening and woodwork, but then it was stopped. Then we did our own thing in one part of the prison and the warders left us alone most of the time. Sometimes we had to wake them up because of the imminent arrival of an officer and they would invariably say they were not asleep, just resting their eyes.

In general we dictated the pace of events, and all the warders had to do was lock us up or let us out and count us which despite our small numbers they often got wrong.

On the other hand, the head of our prison most of the time was an old man, Captain Schnepel and in our eyes he was more powerful than any Tsar. We constantly listened to rumours or discussed speculation of his impending departure. When he was away there was a tacit agreement between the warders and ourselves that we would have peaceful coexistence. We would lie down and sunbathe while the warders also relaxed.

The problem with the Captain is that we needed his permission for certain things and although I was not our chief spokesperson, I often entered into negotiations with him. Every Wednesday was the official day to make your requests and complaints, but in practice we also did so ad hoc. His common response was ‘’you people never take no for an answer’’, and I would respond ‘‘but what is the reason?’’ and he would say ‘‘because I have decided’’, then I would ask but what is the reason and he would repeat that he had decided. Finally, in exasperation he would say, if you do not understand me in English I will say it in Afrikaans. ‘‘Ek het besluit!’’ Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost.

Sometimes he felt we betrayed him by calling in our lawyer, when he had done something unreasonable, for example there were dogs in our yard and sometimes a neurotic dog would bark the whole night and usually they would remove that one and replace with another but one time he would not budge and he presumably got reprimanded by Headquarters. They did not want lawyers around. He tried to inculcate a sense that we owed him something and would descend into a maudlin mode when we challenged his decisions, beyond the prison walls, to the Commissioner of Prisons or sought our lawyers.

Apparently they recorded conversations in the cells and the captain was frustrated in not being able to give vent to his feelings about what we were saying about him. One day, however, when we requested something he responded ‘‘now you want something but it is the fucking old captain this and the fucking old captain that.’’

When I was on my own in emergency detention, my previous experience was a source of respect. There is nothing that counts more in the eyes of a prison official than someone who has already been there and they soon find that out if they try tricks like giving dirty blankets. Someone who knows the ropes does not stand for that and when I got to Diepkloof around six weeks after detention I said that I would not use them until they were medically inspected and they brought new blankets in abundance.

In the states of emergency others came in and left, but even when I was on my own again, I still had a list of things that the warder who guarded me had to do every day and the head of the prison would know this and instruct new warders to get my list and do those things. I would not wait for them to bring medicine but insist on us walking to the hospital, so that I could get a bit of fresh prison air and greet people (something quite out of order but tolerated in a situation where they feared my capacity for drama, something that would break the prison tranquillity).

One of the politically conservative warders explained that with the others he just said fokkof, get into your cells, but with me it is the United Nations, the Supreme Court and who knows what else.

The physical power may lie with the authorities but the political prisoners can create breaches of the peace, bring in lawyers, hold hunger strikes, and make credible complaints, demand that the rules be observed, and refuse to sign something. I would never sign even that I had received something, that is, to take note. If I did not like the contents, I did not sign. I would ignore the explanation that all I was doing was acknowledging receipt. I would say that it is so unreasonable that I cannot put my signature to such an acknowledgement. The bureaucrat abhors a vacuum like a missing signature. One wise young right wing man who guarded me found a solution and simply forged my signature

When I was in solitary the second time, I was not in a good state in the long run and survived not by reading and intellectual activities though I had much more literature than had been the case when I served a sentence, in fact an extra cell to accommodate some. But I found as the months in solitary passed that depression made survival dependent on exercise and I came out physically more muscular than before, but emotionally damaged. I had a resistance to acknowledging that I was depressed. Somehow I had not understood it except as a ‘’weakness’’ and was woefully ignorant until it descended on and enveloped me.

POLICE AND CHANGE

What was striking was the degree of sophistication of certain security police in the 1980s. In general the reason given for my continued detention was that I had advocated popular power through writings, speeches and other methods, which they tried to connect to necklacing. I enjoyed the flattering suggestion that holding me would enable them to bring the state of emergency more speedily to an end.

I was questioned for days by Major Oosthuizen and Lt Brookbanks (who was uncovered as a spy at Rhodes). They had read everything I had written and remembered better than I had. They openly taped the sessions and it was quite interesting.

While I would rather have been out, it was stimulating to argue over meanings which I think they wanted to lead towards treasonable interpretations. They were right in a sense in that I had worked for insurrection, but I was sufficiently experienced to know how to deal with argument. Argument is argument and you cannot argue with electric shocks on your genitals and klaps (blows).

The capacity to do with you what they want in some respects, taking you unexpectedly to some unknown and undisclosed place was a major destabilising factor and denial of agency. For that I can find no counterweight. I have no idea why I found myself in Hillbrow or in Sandton with a man having a model of an AK on his wall.

CYNICISM ABOUT THE STRUGGLE

I am writing of a very different period of the struggle in the sense that when we joined we could only anticipate difficulty, we anticipated one day being assaulted and jailed and/or killed. Initially, one had access to toothpaste and bread and jam (the ingredients of prison pudding as it happens) and terrible coffee or rooibos tea (including the branches) in a large pot. There was no thought in my mind and I thought in others, of parastatals or shares. We had tensions and different personalities clashed and some may have been more anti-social than others. But in general there was little to gain in a material sense from taking this route, being in the struggle and a political prisoner or a detainee. Father Albert Nolan (1988) celebrated the struggle as a phenomenon which provided solidarity and unity and strengthened participants. I have subsequently learnt that the degree of sacrifice/benefits and anticipation of later benefits may have been uneven in the pre-1990 period. Some appear to have readied themselves for a much better life than before.

We have seen in the last decade or more how some who have emerged with great reputations from the struggle have compromised their integrity, left jobs under a shadow, been convicted of crimes or been accused of crimes and not faced courts, as in the case of President Jacob Zuma. In the main, the ANC must bear most of the blame (and I do not absolve myself since I was in leadership some of this period, though not directly involved in such decisions) in that only a few went to the promised land of parliament and well paid jobs. Some of those who had skills that were prized in the struggle, which could lead to blowing up SASOL, the oil from coal refinery, and later deeds were not put into specific skills training programmes and they may have used their military skills for armed robberies and other acts of lawlessness. Certainly there are definite cases of this happening.

But those who suffered imprisonment are generally respected by black communities and other progressives. I have learnt that if you have earned respect it is not something that just remains. How you conduct yourself every day must reinforce the initial reasons for respect. That is why I am very careful not to fall into temptation in what I do and do not do in my life, that I do not enter shady deals and I pay vat and do not bribe traffic cops.

That some have lapsed, some who were very brave in their time and left jobs under a cloud has bred a certain cynicism amongst others, as if this justifies, retrospectively, their not having involved themselves in the resistance. I am not judging those who did not risk heir lives. However, I do believe that what many of us tried to do was important. I am proud to have played a small part in creating an opening for democratic and transformational development, even if these have gone off course or may have done so. I am proud that I have had the opportunity to associate myself with the freedom struggle, because it was something that linked me to the fate of the oppressed majority. In later years I met rogues but I also met exemplary individuals like Chris Hani, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo. I had a close but tempestuous relationship with Nelson Mandela. I think I irritated him greatly by disagreements but unlike some others, he never lost his personal warmth and remained close, though I have not seen him for some years.

PRISON AND REPRESSION

Prisons are fearsome places, in the first place because one is going into some unknown danger. There is nothing akin to what one knows outside. This is plain threatening and often that is not a metaphor but prison officials or police act out violence on a person who is held. So the imagery of the prison is in some ways as powerful as the experience.

But there is a tension between the intentions to reify, to treat a prisoner as a thing and the powers of the prisoner. I have indicated this with regard to many or most political prisoners, but in the case of common law prisoners, gangsters comprise a competing power centre and their notions may well be hegemonic in many/most prisons. But the gangsters wielded open power, in a minor prison like Diepkloof, not meant for ‘‘hardened criminals’’.

I imagine that there is always latent violence in any repressive institution. I myself feared this after torture and had considerable anxiety about it resuming. But as a political prisoner, once I found myself in a prison, I did not fear violence, except in very exceptional cases. For the bandiete it was of course different, with gangster rule.

This account is intended to speak to notions that people have of coping requiring exceptional qualities. That may be true, but we need to unpack this and in so doing we see that prison is a place where individuals may exercise some agency, limited by the overall environment, but there is always an element of choice. One cannot determine release, unless one offers something to the other side, but given that one is inside, one need not be powerless. That speaks to a range of situations in ordinary life, where we grapple with ways of being and acting. Inside or outside, there is agency or surrender of agency. (Elaboration and a slightly different account can be found in Suttner: 2001)

REFERENCES

Nolan, A, (1988) God in South Africa. Cape Town. David Philip

Sanders, B. (2005) Prison. in Vinay Lal and Ashis Nandy (eds). The Future of Knowledge and Culture. A Dictionary for the 21st Century. Penguin. New Delhi. 2005, 24

Turner V. W. (1969) The Ritual Process. London: Penguin Books. 1969

Rapport,N & Overing, J (2004) Social and Cultural Anthropology. . London and New York :Routledge, 229-236

Suttner, R, 2001 Inside Apartheid’s Prison. (Melbourne. New York. Ocean Press. Pietermaritzburg. UKZN Press (presently available only on internet purchase).

Elaine Unterhalter, ‘The Work of the Nation: Heroic Masculinity in South African Autobiographical Writing of the Anti-Apartheid Struggle’, The European Journal o f Development Research, 12, 2, 2000, 157-178

Knowledge in the Blood runs deep!

2010-02-03T22:56:00.003+02:00

My colleagues Andrea van der Merwe, Paul Keursten and I are involved in an exciting new initiative at the University of the Free State to help strengthen a culture of customer service at the University. It is a fascinating time to be working there – earlier in January we had the opportunity to witness the registration process and see the new students finding their way around. This is the first year in which the students’ residences are integrated as a matter of policy. And of course the impact is visible, as residential groups undertake library tours etc together. Students who, in previous years, needed to be segregated by race, happily mixing and socialising together in their first days – as if apartheid had never existed.

Of course, we are not suddenly all living under a glorious rainbow and there may be problems along the way, but this represents an important step forward in transforming the education system in this country. And this is due in no small part to the efforts of Professor Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor of the University. Jansen recently published an important book ‘Knowledge in the Blood’, in which he addresses issues of race in the education system – particularly through the lens of white Afrikaner students as he got to know them in his previous position at the University of Pretoria.

The concept of ‘knowledge in the blood’ he describes as “knowledge embedded in the emotional, psychic, spiritual, social, economic, political and psychological lives of a community”. Jansen acknowledges Irish poet Macdara Woods as the originator of the term, which he (Woods) saw as meaning “the sum total of what we learn … of love, disappointment, age, loss, and how this knowledge can both make the necessary ongoing human reaffirmation of life and hope possible and at the same time hinder it…”

It is this ‘knowledge in the blood’ that sets up a challenge to any well-designed transformation process, as this deep knowledge will not easily be displaced by new value statements or training courses in ubuntu. But it also provides an opportunity – perhaps the key opportunity at this point in South Africa’s history – the opportunity to build a new knowledge, with new stories, heroic leaders, miracles and healing wells. And this knowledge to be a unifying concept - shared and wondered at by future generations.

Idealistic? Perhaps, but I hope these ideas can contribute to addressing very real challenges we face in South Africa.

Jansen, later in his book, provides valuable insights that should be compulsory reading for teachers, facilitators and leaders in our society. His ideas about demonstrative leadership and a dialogue that can help people move towards each other can be valuable also in our political discourse. And give courage to he faint-hearted who may feel a disconnect between their own ‘blood knowledge’ and what passes for political correctness in post-apartheid South Africa.

2010, and welcome to the world!

2009-12-31T11:35:00.008+02:00

As we celebrate the New Year in South Africa, we are very excited about the 2010 World Cup, and the opportunity to welcome new visitors to our country. The stadiums are ready and all our international visitors are in for a treat!

Mr Sepp Blatter – apparently the head of Fifa – has been critical of South Africans for not being enthusiastic enough. I cannot say much about Mr Blatter, but I am sure he is an honourable man. He has been feted and wined by our Ministers and other officials whenever he comes here – I have seen it in the media – so he must be honourable.

I looked him up on Google – this man who, while no doubt honourable, has the nerve to tell us to be more enthusiastic about the World Cup.

I was interested to read about his nephew getting a very lucrative world cup contract (in the news just 2 days ago).

And apparently there is a journalist called Andrew Jennings, who has reported extensively on what he sees as the corrupt way in which the Hon Mr Blatter has governed world football for many years.

I am somehow reminded of the great speech by Mark Anthony:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar ... The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it ...
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral ...
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man….
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

The Right Honourable Blatter has something still to learn if he thinks he is the King of South Africa, even for only a year. Whoever we as South Africans are, we are not the kind of people to come out on to the streets and cheer just because some Fifa official tells us to – even if he is very honourable. We will blow our vuvuzelas when we are ready.

Apartheid where it belongs – in a museum

2009-12-23T20:37:00.008+02:00

Today I went again to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. On 23rd December, we did not expect it to be busy. We were wrong – there were hundreds of visitors – many from overseas and also many South Africans, of all shades and hues.

Visiting the Apartheid Museum is a moving experience – whatever your prior knowledge or experience of apartheid. It is difficult not to be moved when reading the official execution notice of Andrew Sibusiso Zondo (hung in 1986), or to read the words of Solomon Mahlangu before his execution in 1979 - "My blood will nourish the tree that will bear the fruits of freedom. Tell my people that I love them. They must continue the fight."

I was there with Gary Friedman. Gary is a puppeteer who lives now in Australia but whose heart is still in South Africa. Gary was the creator and master puppeteer with Puppets Against Apartheid in the 1980s, Puppets Against AIDS in the 1990s and Corporate Creatures (now). The Puppets Against Apartheid included caricatures of former President PW Botha (Pee Wee), Konstabel Kaaskop, Bishop Desmond Tutu, the green alien ‘CT’ who was unable to find a place where green people could live in South Africa, and various other memorable characters.

Working with puppets is an amazing way to communicate with people about very real issues in a medium that enables messages to be transmitted and taboos to be explored - whilst allowing us to laugh at ourselves at the same time. This was the power of Gary’s work, and was especially effective in addressing issues related to HIV and AIDS. The work that Gary and others did in prisons was incredibly valuable – giving prisoners the opportunity to become empowered in exploring what goes on in prisons in the context of HIV.

Gary still has many of the original puppets, and is now exploring a new home for them – we hope that the Apartheid Museum may be the right place!

Paul Keursten comes to South Africa in 2010!

2009-12-12T09:59:00.003+02:00

My good friend and colleague Paul Keursten is moving to South Africa in the next few weeks. Paul is one of the founding partners of our company in Holland and, not the first and surely not the last Dutchman to fall in love with South Africa, is taking the great step of buying a one-way ticket and will be setting up home with his family here from January onwards.

Paul is an entrepreneurial visionary. He has the wonderful quality of being able to see and appreciate the opportunity in almost any situation! He doesn’t see problems or blockages, and when he experiences them first-hand finds them completely intriguing, and as opportunities for change, growth and learning. We are so lucky that he will be joining us here in South Africa!

One of the initiatives that Paul has pioneered is the SEE Trust. The germ of the SEE Trust idea came from his engagement with Susan Rammekwa and the work she is doing with the Tshepang project in Roodepoort. Susan is another incredible person. She has established an incredibly vibrant community project at Princess – near Westgate in Roodepoort, Johannesburg This project has at its heart a crèche-school for vulnerable children (that has grown from a mere handful to over 200 children now) from the community, who are educated, fed and cared for every day. Around the school, Susan has mobilised volunteers from the community and has established a computer centre, a sowing initiative, a large vegetable garden, and a feeding scheme for elderly community members – above all a community centre that people can involve themselves in and make a difference.

Around the Tshepang project, the SEE Trust plans to build some low cost rental accommodation and a high school (currently children from the community have to travel great distances every day to get to school). The Trust mobilises investors who take a stake in these initiatives.

This is an exciting initiative that seeks to transform communities and peoples’ lives – assuming that people will take responsibility – and provides a new developmental model liberated from the normal constraints of donor funding and ‘service delivery’. It will be very exciting to see how the SEE Trust plans unfold in the next few years. Paul, Ineke and Florian – welcome to your new home!

SA 51st position in Legatum Index

2009-11-01T15:01:00.002+02:00

The 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index, which measures the relative prosperity of 104 countries, rates South Africa at 51 overall.

The Legatum Institute describes itself as “an independent research, policy, and advocacy organisation that promotes political, economic and individual liberty in the developing and transitioning world”, and describes the Index as “the world’s only global assessment of wealth and wellbeing; unlike other studies that rank countries by actual levels of wealth, life satisfaction or development, the Prosperity Index produces rankings based upon the very foundations of prosperity – those factors that help drive economic growth and produce happy citizens over the long term”.

Well how independent the Institute actually is I cannot be sure. The Institute has an interest in ‘free markets’ and according to their website key personnel have links with the US National Security Council and the Heritage Foundation, so you may be able to form your own opinion.

Nonetheless the Prosperity Index makes interesting reading. The South Africa country profile is based on an assessment of 9 indices – economic fundamentals (regarded as unstable), entrepreneurship and innovation (moderate), democratic institutions (basic freedoms guaranteed “but there is interference in South Africa’s judiciary”), education, health, safety and security (“notable domestic security problems”), governance, personal freedom, and social capital.

On the social capital index, South Africa is ranked 30th overall, and the report notes that “social trust is low, with only 17% of individuals believing that other people can be trusted”. However, the social capital ranking is boosted as a result of reported high levels of organisational membership (especially religious affiliation), and a willingness to assist others in need.

The safety and security ranking (96th) gives cause for concern. The Index reports that “the South African government allegedly engages in practices such as torture or political imprisonment”, implying that torture and political imprisonment are used as instruments of state repression. The Amnesty International 2009 country report on South Africa (which I would consider a more credible source) indicates that “torture and other ill-treatment by police, prison warders and private security guards continued to be reported and sometimes led to the deaths of detainees”, but does not imply that this is done as a matter of state policy. Which is not to say that the South African government should not be doing more to prohibit the mistreatment of prisoners and detainees.

Interestingly, the US is rated 19th in terms of safety and security, despite one of the highest homicide rates in the world, the continued existence of the death penalty, and the use of torture, mistreatment and rendition by US forces around the world.

Working with electricity in Pretoria

2009-10-17T09:17:00.004+02:00

For the last 2 weeks Paul Keursten and I have been working with the Imtech/Nova project in the east of Pretoria. The project is part of the Imtech BV corporate social responsibility programme and is working with the Nova Institute to promote the sustainable use of electricity in households as a contribution to addressing climate change. 6 people from Imtech have been working (together with people from Nova) in households in 3 distinct communities in the east of Pretoria (Mamelodi, Garsfontein and Woodhill).

In each household, the Imtech people have engaged with the residents over a 48-hour period to measure the electrical energy consumed by each individual appliance in the homes and to provide advice to reduce electricity consumption. The results have been very interesting, both from a social and from a technology perspective!

Major consumers of energy are geysers and fridge/freezers (especially when set at inappropriate or incorrect temperatures), TVs and other devices on stand-by, and over-filled kettles. This is true in all communities, regardless of income levels. It appears that households in all 3 communities could quite easily reduce their electricity consumption (and bills!) by up to 20% a month by taking some quite easy steps. Particularly important in the light of huge looming price increases for electricity over the next 3 years!

Paul and I have been facilitating the learning process in the project, and we framed the process in the heroic journey model (Home, Test, Quest, Shift, Gift). We have facilitated a learning and de-briefing session with the Imtech and Nova people at the end of each day, and have been fascinated to see how the group has developed in the course of the project. A big ‘shift’ is now occurring, in which the group members are increasingly seeing how providing information is only one part of a wider process of social change that requires community and individual engagement, and so the group is now looking at how to sustain the initiative over the longer term.

Peter Ngwenya

2009-05-31T15:05:00.002+02:00

This post is dedicated to the life and memory of my friend Peter Ngwenya, who passed away recently. Peter was a remarkable man in many ways. He was above all a South African, who dedicated his life to transformation and development. His passion for supporting the growth and development of young people through theatre was unmatched, and the work he did through the Soweto Youth Drama Society was inspirational. He later changed the name to The Youth Drama Society, as he did not want to limit involvement of young people from other township areas.

Peter was warm, funny, deeply caring, and incredibly loyal to those he loved. He carried a lifelong intrigue for all people, especially from other cultures and across boundaries. From the township, he loved to visit the suburbs. He walked a global stage, but stayed rooted in Soweto. He embraced the new South Africa, while often frustrated and mystified by its bureaucracies, and was always open to learning. Above all he reached out to people and was a human being.

Hamba kahle Bra Peter.

"Strategic Foresight" needed...

2009-05-04T20:08:00.006+02:00

Here is a link to an interesting article by Adam Habib published in The Sunday Times that explores (in a deeper and more articulate fashion!) some of the some ideas from my previous posting...

Opposition politics in South Africa

2009-04-30T20:31:00.005+02:00

The election has been something of a distraction from day-to-day things, so this will be my last posting on politics for a while. My continuing interest is the process of realignment of opposition politics and a hope that the process will move in such a way that leads us towards a political opposition that can pose a credible alternative to the ANC for significant numbers of our people – not because I believe that the ANC currently has unacceptable policies, but more because a democracy generally depends on people have choices between different political groupings that they can trust to represent their interests and to govern the country.

So, in this context, what do the results of last week’s elections mean for this realignment process?

The ANC remains the largest party, with more or less two thirds of the popular vote -having probably lost some votes to COPE and the DA and won some from the IFP and maybe some other smaller parties (the ANC won over 1m additional votes in KwaZulu Natal this time round – a major achievement).

The DA, having around 16% of the vote, remains the ‘official’ (largest) opposition party. They are still a long way from posing any real threat to the ANC at a national level – probably for at least the next 12 years – unless there is some radical realignment of the opposition parties. The DA won the Western Cape, and is the main opposition party in only 2 other provinces (Mpumalanga and Gauteng).

Interestingly, the DA’s election analysis document (available on their website, and which is a wonderful example of how to put a positive spin on a situation whilst ignoring some hard realities!) describes the DA as the “fastest growing” party in both the Free State and the Eastern Cape, despite the fact that COPE came from nowhere and leapfrogged above the DA in numbers of votes in both provinces!

COPE won around 7.5% of the national vote, so is well behind the DA overall, but oddly is now the 2nd largest party in 5 provinces (Northern Cape, North West, Limpopo, Free State and Eastern Cape) and so could also claim some recognition as a significant national opposition party.

Smaller parties – especially the Independent Democrats (ID), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the United Democratic Movement (UDM) and others, did less well and may be thinking about their political futures. Patricia de Lille of the ID has hinted that she may be thinking about what to do and that opposition parties should consider getting together.

If the smaller parties decide to roll up their tents and find a new political home, I would imagine that the ID and UDM and the remnants of the PAC would be more likely to move towards COPE than the DA – potentially, on 2009 voting figures, bringing COPE closer to the DA…

The Freedom Front Plus would probably be more likely to move towards the DA. It is not clear where the IFP votes would go but if COPE managed to win most of them we could have this scenario:

COPE (7.42%) + ID (0.92%) + UDM (0.85%) + ‘PAC’ (0.7%) + IFP (4.55%) = 14.45%

DA (16.66%) + FF+ (0.83%) + UCDP (0.37%) + MF (0.25%) = maybe 18%

In this scenario, the DA and COPE face a continuing battle for the role of official opposition, with the DA having to constantly look over its shoulder. The ANC would continue to win elections, with still no real alternative emerging. However if we put the realigned DA and COPE percentages together we go over 30% (maybe 32% on 2009 percentages).

Assuming that the ANC could struggle to retain 66% of the votes in the next elections, (and of course assuming that it stays together as a single party), we can then see the potential of a reorganised single opposition party going well over 35% in the 2014 election, and being able to position itself as an alternative government by 2019.

Do any of the opposition parties have the foresight to see this scenario, and the courage to take the first steps or make the first moves? My sense is that fortune will favour the brave.

Election over - what next?

2009-04-19T16:04:00.004+02:00

What a disappointing election campaign. I have been looking hard for interesting or even exciting things to write about, from an appreciative perspective!

There have been some positive aspects, some mentioned in my previous posting. It was good that COPE managed in the end to publish an election manifesto – find a link to it on their website. And good that the franchise was extended, as a result of a court case, to South Africans temporarily overseas – although more will need to be done to make it possible for South Africans living away from capital cities, perhaps by allowing an extended postal voting arrangement.

I cannot help but feel hugely disappointed by the opposition parties. While none of them excite me particularly, they (COPE and the DA in particular) had a real opportunity to establish themselves as real opposition parties that showed the potential to really contest for government at some point in the future. All was in their favour – widespread concern about a Zuma Presidency, infighting within the ANC leading to the splintering away of COPE, growing concern amongst marginalised communities about the slow pace of service delivery, and an economic crisis starting to impact on jobs in South Africa.

The one point on which the DA and COPE could potentially have made substantial inroads was in their criticism of the ANC’s policy of ‘deployment’, through which the ANC deploys loyal cadres to key positions in state and semi-state institutions (but they failed to capitalise on this point). The policy of deployment essentially means that people are appointed to key institutions as a result of political largesse, rather than on the basis of competency for the position. We have seen, on many occasions, people being fired or resigning from such positions as a result of incompetence or mismanagement, (and sometimes being paid out large sums to go quietly), when they should probably never have been appointed in the first place. This has led to major problems in key institutions such as the SABC and SAA, and also meant that the in fighting within the ANC spilled over into these bodies as well.

The Independent Electoral Commission has somehow stood above such challenges, with the result that the vast majority of South Africans have great confidence in the electoral process. It is a substantial democratic achievement to have reached the point where the main difficulties with these elections have related to the defacing of some posters on lampposts – “Election marred by disfiguring of Jacob Zuma poster by COPE supporter on Jan Smuts Avenue”.

So the ANC seems likely to win by a substantial majority (of course, I may be wrong!) How is this? The fact is that the ANC is still the party trusted by the majority of South Africans as the one party willing and able to work for the rights of poor and marginalised people in South Africa. It may also be the only political party that can contain both the hopes and the frustrations of the majority of the people, as we work as a country to improve the lives and living conditions of all. The ANC was also the party that brought liberation and hope to South Africa.

It is also the case that no other political party is currently able to win the trust and faith of the people, despite all the failings of the ANC. The ANC, together with alliance partners, COSATU and the SACP, is still a broad church, bigger than Jacob Zuma, within which many perspectives are accommodated, and complete dominance of any one grouping or faction over the others would probably lead to a split – and a much more significant one than that represented by the COPE splinter. My sense is that such a split, if and when it comes, will be defined along policy lines, rather than as a breaking away of personalities.

For now, unless the different opposition groupings, and especially COPE and the DA, can come together to define an alternative policy framework for the country as a whole, the ANC is likely to remain the largest and most dominant party for some time to come.

So what does this mean for trust in our body politic? For now, the majority of people are prepared to trust the ANC with the governance of the country. Other parties are trusted to the extent that they seem to respond to the hopes and fears of particular groupings only. The opposition parties need to articulate a forward-looking agenda that the South African people ‘as a whole’ can identify with, and which offers hope, and enables people to trust them. This will also mean finding new and trustworthy leaders who can articulate that agenda. Sadly, we are a long way from that at the moment.

With the ANC firmly in control of political institutions, the role of civil society, the media and other voices in society will be to ensure accountability on the part of government and parliament, and work for sound governance and competence in the management of public and private institutions.

Reasons to be cheerful!

2009-03-20T09:53:00.003+02:00

One of the people who commented on my last post criticised my posting for lacking in insight and another assumed that I need some kind of political education. While I do not intend to defend myself on either charge, and being quite conscious that I do not pretend to be any kind of political analyst, I do feel it useful to perhaps explain the context in which I will on occasion share my perspectives on our political situation – apart from the fact that anyone has a right to comment on politics even if not a political commentator or analyst (or Helen Zille supporter!)

My purpose in writing my last posting was really to illustrate some of the ways in which politicians sometimes betray the trust of the electorate – by using trite slogans, trying to be on more than one electoral list at the same time, projecting image above policy, pretending to be what you are not etc.

And the reason the issue of trust in politicians is important, and related to this blog, is that trust in politicians is an aspect of social capital. Inasmuch as politicians set themselves up to be political leaders, trust in politicians goes to the core of how we see ourselves as a nation and what we want to become. In seeking our trust, and asking for our votes, politicians should be modelling and representing the social capital we need to create and invest in. Trust is therefore a vertical as well as a horizontal phenomenon, existing - or not existing – between people in communities and networks as well as between those who govern and aspire to govern, and those who are governed. (To read more about political capital, see Kenneth Newton's article 'Trust, Social Capital, Civil Society, and Democracy').

A healthy democracy is one in which significant numbers of people vote, and do so to make real choices about politics – policies and leadership. And to facilitate this process we need political parties and political leaders that are able to articulate a clear national vision and alternative choices that appeal to the people of our country on the basis of policies that rise above racial, tribal or sectarian divisions of the past.

Some further feedback I received on my previous posting is that I was surprisingly cynical and unappreciative! So I thought I would take up the challenge and point out various aspects that I do appreciate about the way the parties have conducted their election campaigns.

I am impressed with the moderation (in style and content) displayed by Jacob Zuma. He has been measured and calm in his rhetoric, and I believe this has helped to create a more peaceful atmosphere – important in the light of political tensions in KwaZulu Natal and the arrival of COPE on the political scene.

I am impressed by the DA’s commitment to working in coalition – this bodes well for the development of opposition politics in South Africa.

I guess I am impressed by the fact that COPE has just arrived on the political scene and has managed to conduct some kind of national campaign within a few short months.

I believe that the PAC has done well to come through its recent troubles and is presenting itself in a more coherent fashion to try and win votes.

The Independent Democrats have run a quite focused campaign and have also managed to project themselves as being slightly more than just a political machine for Patricia De Lille.

The ‘A’ party has done well to arrive on the political scene as a smart combination of smaller and minority parties that by themselves would not have been able to afford the deposit to run on the national list.

Well let me stop lest I am next accused of damning with faint praise! Considering that our democracy in South Africa is still less than 6,000 days old, and despite many reasons to be cynical or despairing, I believe that there are also quite a few positive signs that we are a steadily maturing political democracy.

The opposition hands it to the ANC

2009-03-09T21:13:00.006+02:00

What a disappointing election campaign. With national elections on 22nd April I have seen slightly more evidence that something is happening than there is of the FIFA World Cup coming here next year (but not much).

No leaflet from any political party through my letter box as yet. No phone call, SMS, or e-mail from anyone. Some posters on lampposts, but none from COPE. The DA has pictures of Helen Zille, and some other people (but no idea who). The Freedom Front Plus has posters of happy white people, which at least makes clear who they are targeting. The ANC says that “together we can do more”, which is hardly inspiring.

COPE has marginalised itself by failing to produce anything substantial by way of policy. Some brief lines do now appear on their website. The 2 most recent ANC defectors who joined COPE (Sello Moloto and Dennis Bloem) between them made a farce of the whole process – Dennis Bloem by managing to appear on both the ANC and the COPE lists simultaneously (to appear on a list you have to sign nomination papers) and Sello Moloto by resigning as Limpopo Premier on joining COPE, but not quickly enough to avoid being COPE’s first, possibly last, and undoubtedly shortest-lived Provincial Premier for a few hours last week before the ANC hastily replaced him with an acting Premier (Cassel Mathale). Interestingly the Who's Who profile of Moloto shows that he was also a member of the South African Communist Party - I wonder if he also remembered to resign from the SACP before joining COPE?

The DA has all the colours of the South African flag incorporated into its new logo (er, except, er… black). Party leader Helen Zille effectively gave it up to the ANC when she descended into a name-calling tit-for-tat with ANC Youth Leaguer Julius Malema, only for President Motlanthe to chide Malema for being an unruly child, leaving Zille with lots of egg on her face and looking distinctly un-Presidential. In one well swoop, by calling Malema an uncircumcised youth, she probably alienated some hundreds of thousands of potential DA voters. Recognising the value of these type of silly exchanges, Malema on Saturday reportedly perpetuated the exchanges by referring to Helen Zille as a "toddler".

Helen Zille is now reduced to attacking COPE, saying that a vote for COPE is effectively voting for the ANC. I don’t quite get that, but it shows that the main concern of the DA is that they will lose support to COPE, which at least managed to remember to have some black in its logo.

So the likelihood is that the election will confirm
that the COPE breakaway does not represent a major
split within the ANC – more just another stage in the
continuing realignment of opposition parties.

Social capital in the workplace

2009-02-16T22:35:00.004+02:00

Miro's 'Personages in the presence of a metamorphosis'

So, following on from my last post, if we accept that social capital is a real form of capital (even if it is hard to measure), then why do we invest so little in creating it?

Joseph Kessels and Rosemary Harrison distinguish between human capital and social capital – describing human capital as “the knowledge, skills, competencies and attributes embodied in individuals that facilitate the creation of personal, social and economic well-being” and social capital as comprising “networks together with shared norms, values and understandings that facilitate cooperation within or among groups” (Harrison, R. & Kessels, J. 2004. Human resource development in a knowledge economy. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan).

In South Africa we invest significant resources in human capital development – a whole bureaucracy (SETAs, SAQAs, national qualifications frameworks, unit standards and so on) exists to skill and train our people, even beyond the formal schooling and tertiary level education sectors. And yet, by comparison, almost no resources are directly allocated to promoting social capital.

Three years ago the Macro-Social report produced by the Presidency recognised the apparent low levels of social capital in South Africa – reporting that over half of all South Africans claim to have no close friends, with almost another 30% claiming to have only one or two close friends. The Report indicates that membership of voluntary groups (churches, youth groups etc) has fluctuated since 1994, with no clear trends emerging, suggesting that the value of belonging to such groups is not obvious to all. Somehow I found these figures quite disturbing – I had imagined that communities in South Africa contain vibrant networks and that people have strong support networks and friendships, but maybe many relationships are more casual, occasional and temporary than appears on the surface…

Social capital can bring significant advantages to individuals, communities and society at large. So much so that the World Bank supports social capital development projects around the world. The advantages are many and varied – for individuals a strong social capital network can bring support in times of crisis, new business contacts, support in bringing up children etc. Communities benefit from a stronger sense of identity and cohesion, and society at large benefits from the harnessing of new ideas, higher levels of innovation and productivity and a stronger sense of shared values.

And there is an increasing interest on the relationship between social capital and learning in the workplace. My colleagues Tjip de Jong and Joseph Kessels have argued that whereas the returns on investing in human capital development (through more traditional training interventions) can be measured in terms of improved performance within the confines of existing job descriptions and linear performance management systems, investing in social capital in the workplace can contribute to higher levels of productivity, innovation and creativity (see their paper.

Investing in social capital then is different from training and ‘capacity building’, and is more concerned with building lifelong learning and supporting a learning perspective to how we work. This could involve, for example, building communities of practice, action learning sets and ‘brown bag’ events, as mechanisms for connecting professionals both within their own working environment and connecting them with their broader professional community.

Social Capital – a trendy concept, or a real form of capital?

2009-02-11T22:13:00.004+02:00

The popular debate about the value or usefulness of social capital is a relatively recent one – popularised by Robert Putnam, who wrote a book called Bowling Alone, in which he looks at the decline in popularity of bowling clubs in the US, as people stay at home to watch TV, and how this is symptomatic of a decline in social capital in that country. Putnam sees social capital as consisting of features of social organisation that depend on trusting relationships and networks that facilitate business and cooperative activity in society.

One of the challenges in building an understanding of social capital is that it appears to be very intangible and is hard to pin down and measure. How can we put an objective measure on the value of our relationship with our next-door neighbour? While we may instinctively understand and appreciate the importance of that relationship, it may only provide real or significant returns in times of crisis or when we need each other, and the importance of that relational social capital is not given a value by society.

While it may not be easily visible, we instinctively create and invest in these social relationships, knowing that they may also be useful for us and provide returns at some point, as with other forms of capital. The ‘returns’ may simply be the value we gain from having social contact (friendship), but may also be more (practical assistance in times of hardship, business engagement etc).

It is useful to think of the trust and networks that constitute social capital as constituting a real form of capital, similar to human, physical and financial capital – even if it is less easy to measure.

Paul Adler and Seok-Woo Kwon, writing in the prestigious Academy of Management Review (Adler, P.S. & Kwon, S. 2002. ‘Social capital: Prospects for a new concept’, Academy of Management Review, 22(1): 17-40) examine whether social capital is actually a real form of capital, and they argue that social capital is similar to other types of capital in that it represents an asset that one can invest in with expectations of future returns, that it can be used for a range of different purposes and that it can substitute for other resources, and that it requires maintenance (similar to human and physical capital, but unlike financial capital).

As such, social capital can be understood as a real form of capital with meaningful value that can be exploited in similar ways to other forms of capital, even if it cannot be seen and measured easily.

If it is a real form of capital, then it is perhaps surprising that we as a society do not invest more in creating and stimulating social capital. I will explore this question further in future blog posts.

Low Trust Globalisation

2009-02-01T12:45:00.005+02:00

I have indulged myself somewhat in recent posts with my thoughts on the Open Doors and Flags scenarios developed by the Shell scenarios team in 2005, in which they explore possible future worlds in 2025.

To complete the picture, the third scenario they imagine is ‘Low Trust Globalisation’. This scenario is perhaps closer to a representation of the world as it is today, and less idealistic than ‘Open Doors’ and less fatalistic than ‘Flags’.

These 3 Shell scenarios were developed through a process of exploring the results of trade-offs and choices that can be made in managing the interplay between powerful forces that exist in the global business environment. The forces derive from a drive for efficiency and the power of the market, the need for security (in the broadest sense) and the consequent push for coercion and regulation, and the push for social cohesion that arises from the human need for community.

So, while the Shell team emphasises that these three forces will continue to shape our world for the next number of years, it is the business choices and political trade-offs that will impact on the balance of these forces and lead to the scenario alternatives. So ‘Flags’ represents a world where the balance is found between the needs of security and community, with free markets playing a less significant (but not absent) role. ‘Open Doors’ emphasises the balance between community (social cohesion) and the market, with less concern about security and higher levels of regulation. And the ‘Low Trust Globalisation’ scenario is a world that finds itself concerned primarily with market efficiency and security, and in which community power and the drive for social cohesion struggle to make as big an impact.

The current global economic ‘crisis’ has had interesting consequences, with western ‘capitalist’ governments effectively nationalising banks and propping up the motor industry. It was Karl Marx of course who in the Communist Party Manifesto called for the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy. Come back you Reds – all is forgiven!

And it seems to be agreed, amongst economic commentators in the Western media, that much tighter regulation is needed of the banking system and the behaviour of senior banking, auditing and other financial directors and CEOs.

If this represents a fundamental shift away from the values of the market, it could lead us towards the ‘Flags' scenario, in which national interests take precedence over the globalisation trends of the last 30 years. My sense, however, especially after following what has been happening in Davos, is that the leading economic powers will seek to re-establish the power of the markets as drivers of economic growth and that Western governments will have little appetite for running banks for very long, even if new regulatory systems are negotiated and put in place.

The prime challenge facing those who see the need for a more environmentally and ecologically sustainable world system at peace with itself then remains. As the forces of globalisation reassert themselves, how can companies, organisations, communities and governments, especially those in the developing world, create innovative, practical and dynamic products, services and initiatives that stimulate more sustainable ways of living and lift people out of poverty?

We certainly live in interesting times, and the world and South Africa seem to change markedly even in the time between my blogposts! But these times are times of great opportunity and optimism, even as we face deep and sustained crises of one kind or another. Seamus Heaney, one of Ireland’s leading poets, wrote of the time when ‘hope and history rhyme’:

from The Cure at Troy

Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted or endured.

The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.

~ Seamus Heaney ~

Fresh air!

2009-01-23T15:58:00.001+02:00

I write this while watching the announcements by Hillary Clinton of George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke as special envoys for the US to, respectively, the Middle East and Pakistan and Afghanistan. A ‘dream team’ in terms of their combined experience, although Al Jazeera commentators are tonight sounding notes of caution about Clinton’s perceived Zionism. Nonetheless, it is refreshing is to hear a new language coming from the US State Department about peace, and the possibility for peace, and the vital need for intensive processes of diplomacy and development as critical to achieving these goals. The presence of President Obama and Vice President Biden at the event on the second day of the new administration emphasises the momentum and energy behind this new approach.

Without getting starry-eyed about US foreign policy, this marks at least a different articulation from the recent past. A new approach to policy based on diplomacy rather than military strength is consistent with the Open Doors scenario discussed in my recent blogs, and a move away from the more nationalist Flags scenario.

This new wind will hold a mirror to the rest of the world. Can South Africa bring a new and urgent focus to efforts for peace and development in Zimbabwe? Where is our Special Envoy to Harare? We need to be doing much more to address the humanitarian crisis on our northern border.

The inauguration of President Obama leads us to recall the day that Madiba was inaugurated as our first democratic President. The ANC government, in my view, still represents the best continuing hope for peace and development in South Africa. Nonetheless, the ANC needs to retain a sense of humility and humanity in these tasks. It was saddening for me to hear the response of ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe to the defection from the ANC of former President Mbeki’s mother to the new COPE political party. He described this as a “non-event”, saying that she had not campaigned for the ANC since the 1950s. The implication is that individuals are not important unless they have power, and that individuals leaving the ANC are of little concern to the party. This is unfortunate for a party that has always been grounded in the people of this country, and I hope does not represent a shift away from the idea that South Africa belongs to all the people who live in it.

more scenarios, and working through the crunch

2009-01-15T12:32:00.006+02:00

In contrast to the Open Doors approach, Shell also offers us the Flags scenario. This is probably the most gloomy prospect, and represents a retreat into nationalism, local community, tribalism and a backtracking on processes of globalisation. It is the opposite of an interconnected world.

And of course, there are examples around us of how this plays out. The conflict in the Middle East, and the particular conflict in Gaza at present, shows how the Flags scenario unfolds. The real tragedy is that the Israeli approach is likely to be counter-productive in the medium to long-term. As Jonathan Freedland has written, the danger of destroying the Hamas leadership is that more sinister forces arise in their place. This has happened before – the intensive and illegal bombing of Cambodia by the US in the 1970s (in an attempt to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh trail – along which weapons were transported into what was then South Vietnam) created fertile conditions for the rise to power of the genocidal Khmer Rouge. Of course, the Khmer Rouge posed no direct threat to the US, whereas Gaza is on the doorstep of Israel.

As Harold Macmilan (not Winston Churchill) once said, “jaw jaw is better than war war”. In South Africa, it is good to see that the Chief Rabbi Dr Warren Goldstein and Muslim Theologian Moulana Ebrahim Bham can sit together and debate Middle Eastern politics in a civilised way on Radio 702. We do not expect them to agree, but the fact that they are able to talk at least keeps alive the prospects for dialogue – this is more consistent with the Open Doors approach and should be welcomed. And, similarly, the talks held between French President Sarcozy and the Syrian President Assad also demonstrate the importance of dialogue, even when people may disagree or not be on the same side.

One of the most outstanding war poets was Wilfred Owen. He wrote many poems about the futility of war, and was killed, aged 25, 7 days before the end of the First World War, shot dead whilst arranging some duckboards at a river crossing. One of his poems Dulce et decorum est scoffs at the idea of finding glory in dying for one’s country. Here he reflects on the smallness of nationalism and imagines a better human purpose:

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, -knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.

from The Next War, Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918

With looming elections in South Africa, we need to be mindful of the lessons for us. Arguing about flags and symbols leads nowhere. We need real civilised debates about issues, and the forward direction for our country. We have big problems to solve, and need to put aside arguments about party names and logos.

The present global economic climate is one that may not seem conducive to boosting foreign direct investment into South Africa and for stimulating expanding economic activity. But there are opportunities. The approach we take in Kessels & Smit (see our new website) is to support companies to focus on what works and those strengths and core competencies that already exist in the organisation, rather than trying to identify gaps and failings. By leveraging existing capacity, in an appreciative way, we are able to help create real value.

My Dutch colleague, Paul Keursten, puts it like this:

“The current crisis is caused by a search for financial gain without adding value: packaging bonds and loans into big bundles, cutting them into pieces again and selling them on does not add any value, it only creates margins that have to collapse at some point.. A stock market where investors are not shareholders but share speculators, eager to sell shares at a higher prices, where you can win money by gambling on shares going down, and where hedge funds are looking to buy companies to break them up and sell the pieces at a higher prices – this is no longer a useful market in which capital is invested and available for companies to grow and add real value, and where banks exist to provide access to finance and insurance, and to provide financial security.

At Kessels and Smit, we work on the basis what is already there, what is possible (in stead of what is lacking and what is not possible). In these times of limited resources companies need to mobilise what they have to make it and to build on it. They need all their strength and creativity to avoid downsizing or closing as their only option. Our approach is also means less out-of-pocket costs (we work with them and connect with their strengths, which is cheaper and quicker)”.

So we are looking forward to an exciting year, working with existing and new clients. Our work will include supporting personal growth of employees and teams, through coaching, mentoring, team building and creating feedback cultures. We will be supporting strategic processes, for companies, NGOs and government departments. And we will also be creating new partnerships with other organisations that leverage our complementary capacities.

more on Open Doors

2009-01-01T11:02:00.004+02:00

The appointment of Justice Edwin Cameron as a judge of the Constitutional Court is very much to be welcomed, and is also an example of an Open Doors approach (see my last blog). Justice Cameron is eminently qualified from a legal perspective, but is also an interesting choice because of his openness about his sexuality and his HIV status – he has been living openly with HIV for some years. This means that he brings an important human rights perspective to his new role, and strengthens confidence in the Constitutional Court as an institution that is able not only to defend the Constitution but also to articulate and stimulate our emerging human rights culture in South Africa.

Beyond the implications for our Constitution, his appointment is also an expression of tolerance and an embracing of diversity in public life that sends a wider message. How many judges, or other high public officials, around the world have ever been able to declare their HIV status, let alone done so in a country where this does not hold back their promotion. We should celebrate his appointment for what it means for South Africa at the start of 2009, and hope that the ANC government in the run up to and beyond the upcoming election can continue to promote diversity, openness and transparency in its governance of the country and its tolerance of differing and even opposing opinions.

Of course, the Open Doors scenario is about much more then political tolerance. It is the Shell scenario that appears to offer the best prospects for enhanced economic growth over the next 15 years. As such, it is useful to think about it as a template for democracy and development, whilst also engaging critically with the insights we gain from the Open Doors perspective in addressing South Africa’s challenges.

We tend to take for granted the idea that economic growth needs to be pursued almost at any cost. We know, from what happened with the power crisis last year, that a growing economy needs to be fuelled with oil, water and electricity, so we immediately need to think about how we create a sustainable growing economy – one that addresses both the demand and supply side of the economic equation. The Open Doors scenario is the one that places the greatest demand on oil reserves as rapid economic growth, particularly in the developing world, means that millions more people buy cars and seek middle class lifestyles.

In consequence, if we seek to create the open and accountable society envisaged in the Open Doors scenario, we need also to focus on issues of sustainability and think creatively about strategies to address energy needs. And the issue of poverty, and the associated consequences, risks falling from the agenda. I will share further thoughts in future posts. Meanwhile, a happy new year!

Open Doors

2008-12-28T09:49:00.003+02:00

As we move into 2009 should we be optimistic or pessimistic? There are plenty of reasons for both perspectives, in South Africa and elsewhere. The ‘credit crunch’ and associated market impact has left millions of middle class people around the world feeling anxious and uncertain, not least about their savings and investments for retirement years. Those millions of poor around the world, who have little to start with, are less vulnerable to the immediate impact, but are likely to see a slow-down in whatever development assistance may have reached their communities.

Conflict, in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere continues to stand in the way of prospects for democracy and development and in many ways appears to become more intractable. We face significant environmental and security challenges globally, and HIV and AIDS, TB and other diseases ravage families and communities particularly in southern Africa.

But there are signs of hope. We have a new President in the US who seems committed to multilateralism, signalling a possible break from the policies of George W Bush (now the most disliked US President in American history). A withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and the closing of Guantanamo Bay would be a good start.

Zimbabwe is still in crisis, but is probably moving into the end-game phase, with Mugabe slowly losing his grip on power and signs of disaffection within the military and his own Zanu-PF party.

In South Africa, we have a new political party (the Congress of the People) that, while it still has to articulate some policy directions that differentiate it from the ANC, offers hope that a realignment of the opposition can offer prospects of a credible alternative government in the future. We have a general election in 2009 from which a changed political landscape will emerge, and while the ANC will likely be the winners, we will also see a more ‘normal’ political dispensation coming about in which people cast their votes less along historically determined racial lines of allegiance, and more to reflect real political choices.

For now, the government led by Motlanthe, has shown prudence and caution in managing the country and the economy. The Minister of Health, Barbara Hogan, has won support from civil society and the media for her commitment to seriously addressing HIV and AIDS and moving away from the denialism of Thabo Mbeki and her predecessor.

But these are really just straws in the wind! In 2005, Shell produced a set of Global Scenarios for the year 2025, continuing a 30-year process of developing future scenarios for the global and business environment. The 2025 scenarios were developed as a consequence of changed thinking on global questions following 9/11.

Exploring issues of market efficiency (or lack thereof), social cohesion or disconnects, and global security (defined broadly to include terrorism, poverty, environmental degradation etc), and the trade-offs that will have to be made as the world grapples with these issues, the Shell scenario team identified 3 possible scenarios: Low Trust Globalisation, Open Doors and Flags.

Low Trust Globalisation is characterised by legalism, increasing regulation, intrusive controls and oversight – a kind of ‘big brother’ scenario. Open Doors envisages increasing cross-border integration, voluntary regulation, a growth in public-private partnerships, and global networks addressing policy issues. Flags offers a retreat into nationalism and ‘laagers’, conflict over values, ideology and religion, and a break on globalisation.

These scenarios are offered as likely trends in a global ‘jet stream’, that recognises the existence of localised ‘weather systems’ in which particular parts of the world may gravitate more to one scenario than another, and which also recognises the potential for different ‘navigation’ strategies.

The scenario team worked with economic forecasting units in Oxford and Washington to project economic growth rates under each scenario. The Open Doors scenario provides the highest likely growth rate of 3.8%, leading to 40% higher levels of economic prosperity under this scenario than in Flags, and 17% higher than suggested by Low Trust Globalisation. While these are not forecasts, they nonetheless provide food for thought and a degree of incentive for anyone concerned with creating a better world.

The Shell Scenarios recognise the particular challenges in Africa as well as the opportunities that exist here. Institution building is identified as a critical variable for Africa if resources are to be effectively harnessed to development. This means building government capacity and accountability, improving donor-recipient engagement, and improving the prospects for public-private partnerships that can contribute to development.

'Born frees' complete primary school

2008-12-05T22:53:00.007+02:00

Today the first of the ‘born free’ generation in South Africa completed their primary school education. I attended the final assembly at my twin boys’ primary school. It was moving to see the children, many in tears, bidding farewell to each other as they all depart to go their separate ways to high school in January. These children, now teenagers, are the children born in 1995 – the first full year of democracy in our land.

They entered primary school in 2002, and, then, it was hard to predict what kind of children they would turn out to be. Now we can tell! Different generations have been broadly categorised over the years in terms of their values, ideas and characteristics. These categories are based mainly on middle class urban generations over the past 100 years or so, and have been broadly defined (in American/European terms):

GI generation (born 1930-1945), Baby Boomers (born 1945-1960), Flower Power (born 1960 – 1975), Generation X (born 1975 – 1990), Millenium Generation (born 1990-2005). In South Africa, the millenium generation are seen as ‘born frees’ – those urban, generally middle class children growing up after the end of apartheid.

So what can we say about this generation? They very much represent the future of our country. From 2015 onwards they will be entering the workplace, bringing with them new ideas as a result of having come through a (relatively) non-racial education system. The exciting thing is that these young people are generally free of the prejudices and perverse norms that were encouraged in the apartheid education system. They are comfortable with diversity and cherish the values of our Constitution that support non-racism and non-sexism.

Further, they value strongly their individual identities as people, their unique talents, and their distinct but frequently overlapping cultural and religious identities. They see themselves first as South Africans, whether Indian, Muslim, Jewish, Afrikaans, Zulu, Chinese or whatever.

They are courteous and polite, and respectful to their teachers and to each other. At the same time they are not afraid to ask questions, be critical and to assert their own ideas. They are ingeneous and very computer-literate - indeed when they enter the workplace they will be the first employees to have been using computers since they were 5 years old! They are AIDS-aware and can become an HIV-free generation.

These teenagers appreciate the history of their country, although they cannot fully understand what it would have been like to go through an apartheid education system and not to have friends and school mates from different backgrounds. They do feel privileged to have been alive in the time of Mandela.

They are incredibly brand-aware (Ama Kip Kip!) and mediate their relationships via Mixit and Facebook - for the most part doing so responsibly.

So what does this mean? Perhaps my overriding sense is one of huge hope and optimism for the future. Our country will be safe in their hands as they grow up and take their responsibility as citizens and leaders of the future. There is no doubt that they will face huge challenges in continuing the process of rebuilding and developing the country. They will also have to play a leading role in ensuring that the whole continent of Africa is able to move beyond poverty and conflict, and walk the world stage in addressing global challenges, particularly relating to the environment.

Learning from the UPU

2008-11-09T14:23:00.006+02:00

One of the most interesting international bodies, which predated the United Nations and models international cooperation, is the Universal Postal Union (UPU). The UPU was formed in 1874 and essentially regulates the international postal system. The system is based on the universalist principle that people around the world, no matter which country they come from, should be able to communicate with anyone else – anywhere else in the world. And not only that, but people should be able to do this by buying a stamp in their own country for international postage, and their letter will be delivered to any postal address anywhere – regardless of the actual cost of delivery in the country of destination. And all countries are responsible for setting their own postage rates.

Obviously the cost of delivery of a stamp sent, say, to an address in London will be different from the cost of delivering a letter in Alaska or Siberia. So the international postage rate set in South Africa takes no account of the cost of delivery elsewhere in the world. And some countries may have more incoming international mail than outgoing – meaning that they could potentially suffer a financial loss by being part of the system. In the early days of the UPU it was assumed that the international postal system would balance itself in this regard.

In fact, postage use is closely related to economic development, and generally developing countries have more incoming mail than outgoing, and have tended to experience the financial burden. So since 1969, this aspect has been regulated through the terminal dues arrangement, whereby countries are compensated for imbalances in postage volumes.

Another aspect of the universalist aspect of the UPU is that it has never excluded any country for political or other reasons. South Africa, for example, was excluded from the UN, but never from the UPU. This meant that the International Defence and Aid Fund was able to use the postal system to send remittances into South Africa to provide financial support for prisoners’ families during the apartheid era – simply by connecting people through postal addresses.

Of course, the UPU deals with post, but also with parcels, postal orders, registered mail, customs clearance arrangements, international reply coupons, telegrams and much more – all of which require international cooperation and agreement amongst all the 191 members.

The UPU, then, effectively establishes what it calls a ‘universal postal territory’, which facilitates easy commercial, business and social exchanges between people and organisations around the world. (The internet also tries to do this, but excludes much of the world). As such the UPU is a fine and long-standing example of international cooperation based on reciprocity and mutual interest that we can learn from, as we move with hope into a new era.

What a day for a day dream!

2008-11-05T22:04:00.006+02:00

Well it has been quite a day. 5th November is my mother's birthday (happy birthday Mum!) and we also celebrated Guy Fawkes Day when I was growing up in England - an odd celebration in which the English celebrate the man who tried to blow up the House of Parliament.

And this morning we wake up to the news that Obama has won the US Presidential Election! Apart from the significance of electing a black President, it appears that a new spirit and consciousness has awoken in the American people. It was amazing to watch on our TV screens the images of Americans in tears hanging on every word in his victory speech. And how different his words from the cynical, mocking, arrogant and sarcastic language of George Bush as he led the US into the war on terror during the past 7 years.

So for now let us celebrate for America and her people!

I hope Obama's words of humility will soon be translated into policies and strategies that take the US away from an aggressive and militaristic foreign policy. For now, US warships and gunboats patrol the seas, and her young men carry guns in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. US embassies are targets, and much of the world lives in fear. A lot needs to happen.

And maybe we can find some learning in all this about leaders and politics. How fickle it all is. Bush was very popular - just a short time ago. Some people who voted for Bush now voted for Obama. Many people who voted for Obama would really have preferred Hilary Clinton. Some Hilary supporters voted for Palin. Obama got the breaks this time around. He had four times as much money to spend as McCain. Let us hope we are lucky and that something substantial and real can be created this time. If not, then I fear the world will descend to new lows of cynicism.

I attended another lecture this evening. My Professor (I like to think of her as "my" Professor!) - Adele Thomas - delivered her inaugural address at the University of Johannesburg. Her lecture was entitled "What questions would Socrates ask? Universities and their internal governance". Adele gives a devastating critique of the internal governance of Universities in South Africa and elsewhere from an ethical perspective, and highlights the need for imaginative leadership in stimulating the development of what she calls 'institutional moral responsibility'.

This moral responsibility, she argues, is "founded in institutional integrity" - meaning an understanding of the institution's morals, values and commitments that is based on a rigorous and continuing process of internal dialogue and introspection about what the role of the university should be.

The address was by its nature admittedly discomforting to an academic audience. The question arises whether university institutions can rise to the challenge of critical self-reflection, which might mean descending from ivory towers!

Morality and ethics in public life

2008-10-28T22:30:00.004+02:00

It was a real privilege tonight to attend the Helen Joseph Memorial Lecture delivered by Professor Kader Asmal on the theme of ‘Law, morality and ethics in public life in South Africa’. I am fortunate to count myself as a former student of Professor Asmal at Dublin University, and so this was not the first lecture of his that I have attended!

Asmal spoke eloquently of the need to create an ethical society, based on tolerance and mutual respect founded on a sense of a common shared destiny. He made a passionate plea for people in public life to take a stand on issues of morality, and not to fudge the distinction between right and wrong. Calling for respect for the institutions of democracy, he made a strong case for cementing our young democracy by assuming civic responsibility. Working simply according to rules is not enough, he argued, citing the bizarre ‘conflict of interest’ when MPs under investigation in the Travelgate scandal are able to brazenly vote for the abolition of the Scorpions – while what they did was not illegal or in breach of conflict of interest rules, he argued that they should have recused themselves from the vote. He also cited as unethical the 27% pay increase awarded to the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Tito Mboweni - a pay increase that is four times the upper limit of the inflation target band set by the Reserve Bank!

Asmal made a strong case for businesses, universities and other institutions to make clear breaks with the practices of the past where they do not serve the new democracy, in the same way that the Constitution of South Africa and the Bill of Rights make a decisive break from our apartheid history.

Asmal of course has been a long-standing member of the ANC, and until last year was on the ANC National Executive Committee, so his voice on these matters is important and carries weight. In the context of our current political context, his call for people to make decisions on the basis of what is right and what is wrong, rather than on the basis of personalities, or who is left and who is right, is refreshing.

Measuring, reflecting, knowledge management, M&E and learning

2008-10-18T10:04:00.004+02:00

It was really interesting this week to work intensively with one of our clients who is playing a leading role in stimulating a learning culture in her organisation. After working together for a day and a half we stopped to reflect on the learning process and she shared 2 important new insights. One is the importance (for her) of the fact that we were not working with pre-determined models or frameworks that she needed somehow to 'transplant' into her organisation, but instead were focusing on her particular organisation throughout, and what could be useful or appropriate there. The second insight related to her own learning process and what had made it powerful, and her realisation that the learning for her had been especially successful because it was collaborative, and she had participated actively in creating her own learning.

For me this second point was especially interesting, as it validates the idea that learning is best when it is a social process in which people engage and are involved together in working to learn, solve problems and be creative.

Too often we fall away from real learning opportunities, and rely on more linear approaches to capacity building, assuming that organisations learn in the same way that learning happens for us in school or as students, and that employees can then be 'taught' how to do things.

And frequently we then get caught up in a demand for 'measuring impact' of change and learning processes. I recently interviewed Nancy Coulson, an independent health consultant who works in Southern Africa, about the question of 'monitoring and evaluation', or 'M&E'. We have shared a concern that M&E processes, and the drive for measuring, can mitigate against real learning opportunities, and that M&E has become a self-sustaining 'industry' - particularly in the development sector - in which thousands of people are employed in almost ritualistic endeavours to assemble and package data and information in order to 'prove' to absent sponsors or donors that a specific project is working well.

See Nancy's interview here:

Yesterday we had one of our Kessels & Smit days in Johannesburg, and I realised how privileged I am to be working with such great colleagues. Philippa Kabali-Kagwa was with us from Cape Town, and I am very excited that she has now also joined the blogging community. I have added a link to her blog Shift is Happening on my list of recommended blogs. 'Shift happens' has become something of a key phrase in our company recently, incorporating the idea of change (and its inevitability), but also as an affirmation of the richness that comes with persevering through difficult change processes.

SoL comes to SA, fun and games in the ANC

2008-10-11T10:27:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I attended a meeting about setting up a South African ‘fractal’ of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL). This is an exciting initiative, aimed at bringing together people (consultants, researchers and practitioners) who are passionate about organizational learning, and who wish to share this passion with organizations in this country. A small group of people are leading this process, and it is planned to have SoL established by early next year. In the interim, interest is being sounded out with local companies and organisations, and a number of learning events are happening in which interested people are starting to share ideas about learning. One of the interesting things for me is that SoL recognises the idea that learning is a social process, which is consistent with how we see learning in Kessels and Smit The Learning Company.

We continue to live in interesting times in South Africa. It appears very likely that a number of high profile ANC figures will establish a breakaway party in the next few weeks. Mosiuoa Lekota (formerly referred to by ANC people as ‘Comrade’ Lekota, but now offered the designation ‘Mr’ Lekota) has declared his intention to call some kind of national convention in 3-4 weeks and sees this as a process of ‘serving divorce papers’ on the ANC. What does this mean? Is this the long predicted spilt?

The real question is whether any new party will offer a new or different set of policies to the electorate. Mere difference of style or leadership will not be enough to win significant political support, however disillusioned some sectors of society may be with the pace of service delivery. There is little sense yet that a breakaway faction will offer an alternative set of policies or a different programme from the current government, even while Lekota espouses a core allegiance to the ideas of the Freedom Charter. What is more likely is that the breakaway group will make alliances with the United Democratic Movement – led by former ANC member Bantu Holomisa – and other opposition elements. In this sense, my feeling is that the significance of the breakaway is that it will ultimately represent more of a continuing realignment of smaller opposition groupings, rather than establishing a real and credible alternative government.

But then, I may be wrong (as we know from previous blogs)!

Cry the Beloved Country

2008-10-06T11:07:00.002+02:00

On a regular basis I come across new initiatives aimed at building and supporting a better and nicer South Africa. Sometimes these are government programmes, but as frequently they are initiatives taken by ordinary people, by non-government organisations, or by the private sector. A good example is the SATheGoodNews initiative (see their website on my recommended list). It is possible to subscribe to a weekly e-mail update from SATheGoodNews.

Another good example is the Stop Crime, Say Hello initiative. Like many other good ideas this is small and simple! Stop Crime, Say Hello encourages people to greet each other in the course of their daily interaction. It sounds simple, even naïve. In some ways it is troubling that we have to see this as important, but a small idea like this can be the first step in building a connected and connecting society. There are parts of the world where people avoid connecting and greeting each other – infamously the London Underground is a place where people do not greet even the person sitting next to them. This can be one of the first symptoms of a sick society – where we lose the opportunity to greet strangers.

A reluctance to greet a stranger can arise from fear – a fear of not wanting to know, of being afraid of what happens when we get to know people and share what is going on. So we retreat and let our fear take over. And fear starts to govern all our relationships. Alan Paton, in his Cry the Beloved Country, wrote about the fear of bondage and about the bondage of fear – we have known both in South Africa of course.

By staying in our fear, we victimise ourselves and disempower ourselves as people that can take responsibility for our future. So, how to liberate ourselves from fear. Three ideas are important here. One is to accept responsibility for our situation (we alone can change things). The second is to take the first steps to move away from our fear – and this is where the Stop Crime, Say Hello initiative is important – it encourages us to take some first steps to get to know each other, and to build bridges with strangers. This is the first step to building new social capital in society. The third idea is that we have to decide to trust. Trust ourselves and our ability to change ourselves and our situation.

If we embrace these three ideas we can liberate ourselves from our fear (of others, of our situation). Alan Paton acknowledged the cry of our beloved country “for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear". We have freed ourselves from the fear of tyranny, now we need to free ourselves from the tyranny of fear.

Networks – what’s it all about?

2008-10-02T16:50:00.002+02:00

My LinkedIn profile shows that I am “connected” to 46 other people. These 46 can connect me with around another 3,600 people, and through them I can connect with 599,400 others (i.e. with 2 introductions). This is a potentially incredibly valuable network – even the 3,000 who are only one introduction away. Some people in my network are connected directly with over 500 others, so the size of their wider networks must be immensely huge!

And yet I don’t know what to do to mobilise this potential! Through LinkedIn I have made a good connection with one other person that I did not already know – Reut Schwartz-Hebron (you can find a link to her KindExcellence blog on the left). I hope that Reut and I will be collaborating on a couple of writing projects together. But what about the other 599,999 people? We all have such incredible networks, if only we can find ways of really connecting with each other. Ideas welcome!

I wrote my last exam this morning for my MSc studies in Public Policy and Management through London University. These studies have been a good, if solitary, learning experience for me, and have given me deep insights into public management theories. Part of the value of the programme has been its comparative nature, and I have had the opportunity to read case studies from all over the world. A particular focus of the programme has been on theories of New Public Management, and an exploration of the tensions between rational, linear processes and more chaotic, ‘garbage can’ processes that need more flexible, iterative thinking. The importance of learning processes for public agencies has also been highlighted.

It appears that our new cabinet is receiving some luke-warm and tentative support, which is good news. Barbara Hogan is the new Minister of Health and her appointment has been widely applauded. It is good news that she has now said that she is making HIV and AIDS her top priority (and what an indictment that this is finally happening only late in 2008).

of blogs, small farmers and new Presidents

2008-09-23T13:23:00.003+02:00

Well it seems I was wrong about Ms Baleka Mbete, and that the likely new President will be the current Deputy President of the ANC, Kgalema Motlanthe. Which just goes to show that I should not pretend to be a political analyst. Steven Friedman does that job very well, and I was impressed by his opinion piece in yesterday’s Business Day.

Currently I am involved in an interesting collaboration with 2 Dutch people – Sibrenne Wagenaar and Joitske Hulsebosh. We are together doing some research with IKM into different approaches to the evaluation of knowledge management strategies. This has involved a desktop literature study, and we are also interviewing people. We will be publishing a paper, and our findings will be presented in Holland in November and in Namibia early next year.

This collaboration has been interesting as we have done a lot of work together online, using tools such as Skype, Google Docs and blogging. This has been a new way of working for me and has led me to see the potential for using the internet as an interactive collaborative tool as well as a search engine and a networking forum.

I did have the opportunity to meet face-to-face with Sibrenne and Joitske when in Holland recently, and this certainly makes online collaboration easier, but increasingly I can see the potential for online collaboration and working over distance when one does not have the opportunity to meet one’s colleagues in person. This raises challenges in terms of how one builds trusting and cooperative relationships, minimising the opportunities for misunderstanding and conflict, without ever having met the other people.

I am also involved in developing another project together with my new Kessels and Smit colleague Julian Sturgeon. Julian is involved with an organisation called Resource Africa.

Our proposal is to investigate alternative forms of capacity building in the development sector with the intention of developing new and sustainable learning methodologies.

The ‘Empowering Emerging Farmers’ (EEF) project seeks to develop supply chains for agricultural products that can be marketed through the fair-trade mechanisms. Resource Africa’s role in the project is to assist emerging farmers to set up production systems and to develop management capacity in the community-based organisations.

With Julian, we are developing a systemic learning approach in which the project will aim to achieve the following:

Firstly, we will introduce a systemic organisational learning approach using different projects that are willing to particpate. Secondly, we will focus on measurable changes in the performance, creativity, sustainablility and impact of key organisations within the system - an example here would be a Common Property Association engaged in supplying fruit to the fair-trade system. Third, we hope this will result in a sustainable learning approach that can be applied in the arena of land reform and small-scale agriculture.

This is an exciting initiative and provides the opportunity for us to expand our work in a developmental context with a social learning approach.

Choose your title for this first blog on the post-Mbeki era: Packing for Perth; In for the Long Haul; Politicians Come and Go; Seize the Moment...

2008-09-20T14:33:00.003+02:00

I write this as the breaking news comes through that President Thabo Mbeki is being 'recalled' by the ANC. Well, Presidents and Prime Ministers come and go - and like good soldiers some get knifed in the back (Thatcher), some fall on their swords (Blair), some try to re-invent themselves (Clinton).

But South Africa is a young democracy (less than 5,500 days old) and we have not had much experience of this kind of thing. Mandela retired after one term - that was it. Now Mbeki, who refused to do the decent thing and go quietly, and kicked out in what is effectively a mutiny at the gates of the Union Buildings. It may well be that other Cabinet members follow him - certainly Deputy President Ngcuka will not stay around.

So what next? We will live in interesting days for the next while as the dust settles. The Speaker of Parliament, Ms Baleka Mbete, is likely to be appointed as Acting President for an interim period. But we will need some certainty soon.

My hope is that the new President will lead a more collective and accountable approach to governance and policy-making. Of course, there is the potential now for a more pro-active approach to addressing issues of poverty, crime and HIV in the country, and a foreign policy that builds on the achievements of the Mbeki-era in peace-making in Central Africa to support a genuine and sustainable way forward for the people of Zimbabwe.

We also need to move beyond the 'big man' perspective on leadership. There are people of calibre within the ANC who can move into new positions in government - they come from different backgrounds and have different perspectives. A good indication of how South Africa will move forward will be whether we can move beyond patrimonial politics and bring people into government because of their skills and abilities and not as reward for loyalty in past battles.

Social capital and building our society

2008-09-18T12:59:00.005+02:00

The World Values Survey, mentioned in my previous post, paints a grim picture about levels of trust in South Africa. However, this survey probably does not give the full story. The Survey asks a simple question:

“Generally speaking would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful when dealing with people?”

with the following response options:

1. Most people can’t be trusted
2. You can’t be too careful when dealing with people
3. Don’t know

Tracy Jooste’s article (also mentioned in my previous post) suggests that one of the difficulties with this question is that it offers no positive response options, and she argues that trust is a situational concept that cannot easily be measured in a general sense. A more nuanced approach is called for. While people may give a negative response to a generalised question, if you ask them about particular engagements (eg. with neighbours, members of their community etc) you may find different responses.

Social capital exists in trusting relationships between people in their interactions in communities, organisations and society in general. It is increasingly recognised worldwide as a valuable form of capital, (although the value of it is harder to measure than financial or physical capital).

South African economist JP Landman has argued in Business Day that social capital is one of four factors that can lay the basis for sound economic development of the country. The four factors he identifies are: a growing economy; ‘re-creating’ social capital; strengthening institutions, and enforcing rules (I guess with underpinned by the concept of the rule of law).

I especially like one of his comments: "It's nice to live in a society where people are getting richer, but it's also nice to live in a society that's getting nicer".

Realising the full potential of stimulating social capital development requires a new focus. Currently, we as a country put huge resources into human capital development – essentially training people in specific skills to be able to meet the skills shortages in the country. In relative terms, we put practically nothing into creating social capital. Increasingly there is evidence showing that stimulating social capital can bring returns by way of increased innovation, creativity and smart thinking – all badly needed if we are to be able to solve complex problems in this country and the continent.

Affirmative action going backwards?

The latest Employment Equity Commission Report (2007/8) makes disturbing reading. The Report indicates progress being made at normalising the demographics of the South African workplace through the implementation of employment equity plans in companies employing 50 people or more.

While progress in bringing in previously disadvantaged people to senior levels is still slow, there is worse news at the middle Professionally Qualified & Middle Management levels.

At these levels the representation of black people generally showed a decrease of 8.7% from 50.0% to 41.3%. The representation of white people increased by 8% from 49.2% to 57.2% over the same period.

As these are the levels from which the next cadre of senior managers are recruited, the indications are not good for creating a more representative senior manager level in the short-medium term. It makes one wonder what is actually happening in companies if the reported numbers are going in the wrong direction?

While this is not good news, it does make one wonder about all the whinging from white people who claim that they cannot get jobs due to reverse discrimination.

Social capital alive and well in South Africa!

2008-09-15T09:26:00.006+02:00

There was a nasty accident on Glenhove Road this morning involving 2 cars colliding at a junction. What was interesting was that a number of people - pedestrians and other motorists - immediately stopped to help. One was on the phone within seconds to call the emergency services, some others were immediately attending to the two drivers involved, another person started directing the traffic safely round the scene. Without any apparent coordination, people immediately took on roles that seemed to them to be useful at the time. I chose not to stop as I was a distance away, and my take on the situation was that everything was quickly under control and there was no useful additional role that I could play at the time.

This is in a country that apparently, according to the World Values Survey, has low levels of trust and in which people are supposed not to trust strangers (trust is generally understood to be a key aspect of social capital in a community). Tracy Jooste has conducted research in the Western Cape (www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0002147/index.php) that suggests we need a more nuanced understanding of 'trust' and that despite the generalised distrust of strangers in the above Survey, people are quite willing to trust neighbours and workplace colleagues.

The incident above confirms for me that we have an abundance of trust and willing engagement in South Africa, and that it shows itself everyday in smaller and larger ways, if only we are willing to recognise and appreciate it, and see that it is the people who make up our land.

What goes around...

2008-09-13T09:08:00.004+02:00

Well someone said to me the other day about living in South Africa that we live in interesting times, and it is certainly true reading the newspapers this morning! One of the things that strikes me is that we need to move beyond our conception of a centralised state. This idea did not serve SA well under apartheid, and it does not serve us well now. Unfortunately, our current (but for how long?) President, Thabo Mbeki, has adopted a 'democratic centralist' approach to how he has run the government and the country, and has appropriated significant power to himself and a few people around him. It appears, from yesterday's judgement in the Zuma case, that this included effectively giving instructions to supposedly independent state institutions such as the National Prosecuting Authority.

We now live in the 21st century, and centralisation of state power, and indeed the centralisation of power in organisations, is no longer, I believe, a sustainable way to manage our affairs. It will not work in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Iraq or the United States.

So, while Jacob Zuma may not be an ideal person to have as incoming President of the country, the ANC conference in Polokwane was important in that it re-established the control of the party over an increasingly remote and disconnected government. And now Mbeki's pigeons are coming home to roost.

What can we learn from all this? I would suggest that sharing power is important if we want to create sustainable organisations and societies. The idea of 'the big man' is past. Further, we have to move beyond the idea that support and loyalty (based partly on fear!) can be bought through systems of patronage, and build societies and organisations in which people are genuinely committed to each other through bonds of trust and shared responsibility for our future.

Welcome to my new blog spot!

2008-09-12T15:34:00.003+02:00

This is a space where I will share lessons from my personal learning journey. I am fortunate to be connected with a special firm - Kessels & Smit - The Learning Company, and have the privilege of helping to establish the company in South Africa from my base in Johannesburg. Since starting this process at the beginning of 2007 I have been joined by Andrea van der Merwe and Philippa Kabali-Kagwa, and we are currently also being joined by some other consultants. We have also found some great clients to work with over the past year and a half.

Much of our work is about learning - for ourselves and for and with our clients. I will share more about this, but I guess our starting point is that we take the view that powerful learning opportunities can arise when people connect with others about things they are passionate about.
We also work in an appreciative way, and try to bring appreciative approaches into our work and personal lives as well.