Matthew
Field is a student at St. Alban’s College, Pretoria. He is the co-president of
its Oratorical Society and placed third in the National Individual Debating and
Public Speaking Championships (NIDPSC) in September 2017. He delivered the
following speech at NIDPSC and made the final in the category. He has been
selected for the South African team for the World Individual Debating and
Public Speaking Championships.
Connor McGregor vs. Floyd Maywether
was an interesting fight: two titans of violence going at it. Mcgregor: tough with
the luck of the Irish vs. Floyd Money Maywether! There was pomp, spectacle,
lights, huge crowds, and hundreds of millions of dollars and prize money. Sound
like a lot of pressure, right?
We are in a similar situation. We
are the boxers, the MMA fighters, and the World Wrestling Entertainers! The
following century is set to be the match of all time.
Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s
introduce the fighters:
In the left-hand corner, we have an
undefeated tag-team duo: please put your hands together for Poverty and Wealth
Inequality! This tag team from Hell has not lost a single match during their
illustrious career. This season has seen them take down giants like the United
States, India, Brazil and the Russian Federation. Tonight, they will enter the
arena to defend their title.
Helping them we have fighters who
have brought the African Circuit to its knees… Make some noise for Racism and a
Complicated Yet Devastating Legacy of Colonization and Exploitation!
Tonight, these two sickeningly
successful teams will take on an underdog from the south, our last hope of
stopping them. Our fighter is weak, divided and in a hopeless situation, please
welcome: the Republic of South Africa!
Ding Ding Ding. Fight!
Boxing metaphor aside, this fight
is real. South Africa is facing problems left, right and centre. In every
corner there is something waiting to destroy us. Racism. Wealth Inequality.
Climate Change: crisis after crisis taking us on the road to chaos.
You could spend a lifetime
discussing these issues and thinking of radically revolutionary solutions, and
an only a ten minute long speech is just not going to cut it. So I am not going
to bother. I’ll leave that to you guys.
These issues are lining up, waiting
to destroy us, and at the rate we are going, we are going to let them.
South Africa is fundamentally
unequipped to survive. Like a hiker without a map, or a soldier less the gun,
we not going to last long on this journey of nationhood. The 21st
century will see the end of our republic, for one simple reason… the concept of
being South African is dying.
I love the requirements that NIDPSC
has given us. “No party political stance may be taken,” it says. Brilliant! I shouldn’t take a party stance. You
shouldn’t take a party stance. Nobody should take a party stance, because
they’re terrible!
They divide us and make us squabble
amongst ourselves.
And any History student will tell you:
those who are divided are conquered!
The sad thing is that we do not
have to be so divided.
Yes, our history is uniquely
terrible, but other nations, not too different from ourselves, have experienced
similarly, but have triumphed in ten times more brilliant a fashion.
We don’t even have to look far.
You know that country just North of
us, the one without any water…? I’ve forgotten the name…
Oh right, Botswana!
It’s such an unassuming nation with
so little going for it.
They’re landlocked.
70% percent of their country is taken
up by the Kalahari Desert, and as for the rest of it… well let us just say
their national motto is ‘Pula,’ the Tswana word for rain, so you can guess what
they are doing with that land.
They should be a rural, famine
stricken, backwater, the place where UNICEF would go film their starving
children ads, but no.
Botswana is miles ahead of South
Africa!
In 2016, our GDP growth was 0,5%.
Theirs was 2,9%.
In that same year, they had a GDP
per capita 3400 dollars higher than ours!
In that same year, Botswana’s industrial
growth rate was 2,5%. Do you know what ours was? -1%!. Somehow our country,
bigger, richer and with a longer history of industry shrank in industrial
growth, while Botswana grew!
Lets face the facts. Botswana is
doing the impossible. They have the lowest corruption levels of any African
state and they are succeeding economically. Why?
It’s for a number of reasons, but
the biggest is their national cooperation. You don’t have immigrant’s shops
being looted, nor do you racially based hate crimes running rampant. The
Batswana people have unified behind their country. They’ve decided to give this
weird experiment of forming a nation out of an artificially created colonial
mess a try. They’ve done it by pragmatically putting their differences aside
and working towards the benefit of all.
Botswana isn’t perfect, but they’re
doing a hell of a lot better than us. They show us that the myth, the dream, of
a non-racial post-colonial African state is within reach. Atlantis is real! This
magical world can exist.
There is no reason why we cannot
also be the next African miracle.
But we’re not.
We are still divided. We still have
hearts of hate. Apartheid is over on paper, but if you walk outside right now,
you will see a country that Hendrik Verwoerd would be proud of.
The ‘white’ women will still walk
to the other side of the street if a ‘black’ man is coming past. A child will
be told that he’s not allowed to play with his ‘coloured’ friends from Sunday
School, or date that ‘Indian’ girl from church.
Things are getting better, but
we’re going at such a snail’s pace that the Limpopo River will run dry and the
Drakensberg will erode to mounds of dirt by the time true healing has occurred
in our great nation!
This year has been one of
factionalism, tribalism and division.
Division, like long division in
math, is mostly useless and a hindrance to progress.
The British are gone and the
National Party is history, but another threat just like them will rise again.
Neocolonialism and corruption are facing our state with capture, and what do we
do? We blame each other! The Zimbabweans are stealing our jobs; the Somali’s
are stealing our money. The Nigerians are selling drugs to our children. The
coloureds are gangsters and Indians are shady business dealers.
Lies!
All lies that we tell ourselves to
convince us that the problem is simpler than it really is.
Its not the foreigners, its not a
specific race, or family, and its not our President. All of us are to blame.
Our national crises require nuance,
something we have in deeply short supply. We supplement this deficiency with
hatred, blaming others and differentiating ourselves from the problem.
Differentiating ourselves from the
problem is like differentiation in Maths, it seems like a good idea, but it
just causes pain in the end.
Tribalism and othering are killing
our country. Those who wish to take advantage of us know it!
Settle in kids… Matthew is going to
tell you a bedtime story.
Got your pajamas and teddy bears? I
hope not, one might think you were lost.
A
long time ago, in a United Kingdom far far away
A
PR company went astray
Dirty
campaigns were all the rage
New
tweets at every stage
Racial
tensions were stirring
Bell
Pottinger strings were pulling
Causing
racial tension and strife
Conspiracy
around their employers was rife.
Can you believe it? A foreign
company using our differences against us?
No no no!
That isn’t even the saddest part.
The real tradgedy is that we choose to let our divisions weigh us down. We have
allowed Bell Pottinger into our heads.
As evidence point A, I refer you to
Singapore, the Lion City on the Bay.
If you think South Africa is
diverse, you haven’t seen Singapore. They have Chinese, Indians, Malays and
Europeans. Every religion, from Judaism to Sikhism, Islam to Taoism, Hinduism
to Christianity, can be found in Singapore. All are tolerated, all are
celebrated, all play their part, and they thrive because of it.
They went from being a poor
backwater to being the beating heart of global trade. They are a city state
with zero arable land and no natural resources, but their GDP per capita is
higher than Ireland’s, is higher than ours!
We could also be in this magical
reality, if we only could stop blaming each other and work together, to engage
in this little thing called Nation Building.
We are currently divided, and
because of it we are abused, exploited and kicked to the curb. If we engage in
the process of nation building, we will emerge victorious.
Luckily for us, we can climb out of
it, by following 4 principal guidelines, the 4 ‘p’s, as highlighted in Liberty’s
Surest Guardian.
The first P is Partners
An African proverb says: “If you
want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.” Perhaps we
should take our own advice and go together. This means building relationships
and getting all facets of society to buy-into this idea that is South Africa.
From farmer to financier, from herder to miner and factory worker, people will
only buy-into South Africa if they think of themselves as South African.
The next P is Process.
Rome was not built in a day, and a
unified South African people will not come about overninght. We need patience
and clearly set out process, not just a once off bandaid like the World Cup.
The third P is Problem Solving
People will never back a country
that is filled problems, same as how you would never get on a ship riddled with
leaks. To get people to believe in our nation we need to give them something to
bite on. We need some progress, in any form, so they know that it is worth
trying to fix this place.
Then lastly we have P for Purpose.
We need a national goal, a national
mindset, not just development goals cooked up by executive councils behind
closed doors. They do not relate to ordinary South Africans. They are not
communicated to ordinary South Africans. They are not implemented by ordinary
South Africans.
Lets go back to that boxing match.
Nation building is the only way that that underdog can get his act together,
the only chance he has at beating that double tag-team monstrosity.
He only has a chance if he uses
what is at his disposal: diversity.
He has the best scientists,
athletes, public speakers, students, teachers, comedians, sportsmen and every
day heroes. Nation building means having unity in that diversity.
That’s an idea so great that it
could be our national motto, oh wait…
So don’t see yourself as Xhosa,
Zulu, Tsonga, Pedi, Afrikaans, Indian, English or Coloured. See yourself as South
African. You exist because of me, and I exist because of you, its this thing Mzansi
has called Ubuntu.
And if we can just use it, if we
can embrace Ubuntu, engage in nation building and unite as one people, then we
will be the African Miracle, we will reclaim our title as the role model of the
world.
Our hands will indeed be raised at
the end of that boxing match.
Amandla!
