South Africa

South Africa

The Gathering 2015: Generational leadership shift, feel it, it is here

The Gathering 2015: Generational leadership shift, feel it, it is here

The Daily Maverick’s annual news-nerd carnival was this year held in cellphone company’s event centre. If there was a dominant theme, it was that the future of South Africa will be determined by a young, emerging corps of super talented strivers. In a country that takes its ancestors seriously, this is no longer a greybeard’s game. Hobble out of the way, President Zuma. By RICHARD POPLAK.

When was the last time you gave the demographic dividend any serious consideration? I’m referring, of course, to a phenomenon the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) defines as “the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, mainly when the share of the working-age population (15 to 64) is larger than the non-working-age share of the population (14 and younger, and 65 and older).” It’s a hoary old term, mostly because there’s no such thing as “work” anymore—at least not in the sense that the UNPF means it. But in the post-toil era, I think we can safely say that we have arrived at a secondary definition of the demographic dividend, one that I would explain thusly:

The intellectual growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, following a period of gerontocratic stultification that is now reaching its end point because the old bastards are about to die off, and the next generation has no choice but to make a go of it.”

If you were at the Daily Maverick’s The Gathering 2015 last Thursday in Vodaworld, you’d have seen this second interpretation of the demographic dividend in action. I’m not suggesting there were no grey hairs in the house, but they were mainly borne by Moeletsi Mbeki, who I don’t think is in the running for a government post any time soon—unless by “post” we mean something he is strapped to before a flogging. No, this was a young person’s conference: for the first time I felt the very real generational shift that this country is undergoing in the lead up to the upcoming election cycles.

The day kicked off with the politics panel featuring Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane, provincial chairperson of the ANC in Gauteng Paul Mashatile, and fired secretary general of COSATU/current who-knows-what Zwelinzima Vavi. These men are a combined 141-years old, roughly the age of Robert Mugabe, and only six years older than the combo of President Jacob Zuma and his deputy Cyril Ramaphosa. For better or worse, they represent the future of politics in this country, and for better or worse, they will play a part in defining the right, the centre, and the left in the next decade or so to come.

Their opening speeches were the usual position staking and held no surprises, but while Vavi dodged questions about what he hopes to do next and Maimane refused to embrace the fact that the DA are (or, rather, should be) South Africa’s version of rabid red-state right wingers, Mashatile took the opportunity to distance himself from Police Minister Nathi Nhleko’s recent Nkandla report, in which we were informed that not only were the “security upgrades” necessary, but there’d likely be more of them in the future. Panel moderator Ranjeni Munusamy smelled a political maneuver, and asked Mashatile whether he hoped to run for the head of Jesus’ favourite political party when the old guard skulks off to die in their palaces. He laughed her off.

Oh, he hopes to run.

The next panel focused on social justice, and included Section27’s executive director Mark Heywood, Socio-Economic Rights Institute attorney Nomzamo Zondo, and Equal Education Gauteng co-director, Tshepo Motsepe, all of whom teamed against Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development John Jeffery. “How am I going to moderate this?” asked the Open Society Foundation’s Fatima Hassan, perhaps forgetting that the mike on her chest was live.

It was nonetheless a good question.

For one thing, Hassan, on account of her being human, likely agreed with everything Zondo, Motsepe and Heywood spat into their own quaking microphones. “I’m going to try be impartial,” she promised Jeffrey, but they both knew it was not easy for her. By the time the deputy minister came up with the following Brazil-worthy bon mot—“I don’t see the glass as half full or half empty, but rather as a glass with water in it”—I was once again fully jacked by the intensity of the young people on stage, and the creaking weariness of Jeffrey’s ancien regime line. If Jeffrey believed that NGOs and opposition parties were too quick to use the courts as a means of countering unchecked government power (and he said as much), he was largely missing the point: government power is being opposed in all sorts of ways, most of them requiring endless reserves of energy. There is a youth movement in this country, and if it is wild and disparate and unchecked, that’s because the country is wild and disparate and unchecked. All sorts of people are coming along to tap that energy, among them the young and youngish men who sat on the politics panel.

Along with another fellow who we’ll come to in just a moment.

But first!—the business panel, which sported wonks Iraj Abedian and Martyn Davies, Yolanda Cuba (who became Vodacom’s Chief Strategy Officer at 37!) and the aforementioned younger Mr Mbeki, was roundly heckled by the fifty or so Economic Freedom Fighters in the audience, who were in turn politely shushed by Maimane’s blue-clad shock troops. This was followed by the press freedom and new media panel that included internet radio personality/pioneer Gareth Cliff, Business Day senior editor Songezo Zibi, former CEO of the media development and diversity agency Lumko Mtimde, and Ms Hassan, this time not as moderator. Creative disruption was discussed, as it would be. But the take-home was that there were no take-homes, and that in a creatively disrupted world, the new certainty was uncertainty.

Not particularly encouraging for those of us working in “new media,” but the world has changed and we must be grown ups about it. By the time Munusamy sat down with the EFFs Commander in Chief Julius Malema, we had become accustomed to young people taking the floor. Malema is 34, and he told us that he hated it when old people used the age card in order to affirm their authority (he was referring to Inkhata Freedom Party honcho Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who is at last count about 11,000 years old). Malema twisted and turned his way out of Munusamy’s questions like a spry teenaged Russian gymnast; Munusamy countered with some slinky moves of her own. It was a pleasure watching two young masters on stage.

It made me feel like we have a future.

And we do. Everywhere and everyone has a future. The question is, Short or long? A good one or a bad one? In our case, who can say? But let’s defer to Shakespeare:

Youth is full of sport,
age’s breath is short
youth is nimble,
age is lame
Youth is hot and bold,
age is weak and cold
Youth is wild,
and age is tame.

Thing is, however, we’ll need the wisdom of our elders along the way. Shame they’ve become so tame, hiding in their palaces, squandering the power they worked so hard to earn. Perhaps we’ll learn from them in other ways; perhaps we’ll learn not to repeat their mistakes. As the bard warned: “So wise and so young, they say, never do they live long.”DM

Photo (clockwise from left upper corner): Paul Mashatile, Zwelinzima Vavi, Mmusi Maimane and Julius Malema speak at The Gathering 2015. (Greg Nicolson)

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