By Karen Leroux, based on an interview by Anna Morris.

Africa is teeming with high-minded leadership potential that simply has to be recognised, mentored and nurtured in emulation of the greatest statesman of the twentieth century, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. That’s the opinion of Shaun Johnson: struggle son, Rhodes Scholar, award-winning novelist and media man extraordinaire. “With exceptions, the current leadership of our continent is a grave disappointment,” Johnson feels, but The Mandela Rhodes Foundation, by blending academic opportunity with personalised leadership development, is on the way to successfully moulding young Africans in the great man’s image.

Johnson, the singular chief executive of the Foundation, was himself a beneficiary of a Rhodes Scholarship. It gave him a life-altering experience that has led him full circle to the familiar space of intervention and untold possibilities. “I had never been out of South Africa before,” he explains. “I was at Rhodes University in South Africa, which I loved, but this was a life-changing experience. One of the reasons I am so absolutely passionate about what I do now, and about these young people, is because I know from personal experience that my life was utterly changed by that opportunity. I was transformed, overnight, from a provincial South African boy to a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.”

The fruits of that transformation included growing confidence and a more cosmopolitan outlook. “It had a massive effect on everything that has happened since,” Johnson reports. “I am quite sure that the good things that have happened to me in my career, and the leadership positions that I have held, would not have happened – certainly not in the same way – without the gift of opportunity. That is why I am so dedicated to the Mandela Rhodes Scholarships, because I know what opportunities recognised and taken can do for people’s lives.”

In the words of iconic patron Nelson Mandela: “The central purpose of The Mandela Rhodes Foundation is to build exceptional leadership capacity in Africa. The bringing together of these two names represents a symbolic moment in the closing of the historic circle; drawing together the legacies of reconciliation and leadership and those of entrepreneurship and education. Already the Mandela Rhodes Scholarships are changing the lives of young Africans, who will play vital roles in the future of the continent. The achievements of The Mandela Rhodes Foundation so far have been remarkable, but it is its future potential that is most exciting.” “One of the reasons we are helping to develop these young people,” Johnson notes, “is that we want new young Mandelas to arise. We want people who, at a very young age – twenty-two to twenty-three is the average age here – think about the ethics of leadership, and not just leadership as power or patronage. All these young Mandela Rhodes Scholars are ambitious in terms of making a difference, but they are not the kind of cynical leaders who are in it only for the money and the power.”

Johnson’s personal journey to the space he comfortably inhabits now – leader, acclaimed author, and senior executive in the Mandela organisations – was influenced by a number of factors. Not least of these was his father’s despair in his role as a civil servant under the apartheid regime, a story poignantly recounted in the first novel Johnson wrote, The Native Commissioner. “My early years were spent in a country that no longer exists, called the Transkei,” Johnson recounts. “My father was a civil servant in that area at the time. He died when I was very young. We moved around the country and I ended up doing my matric in Johannesburg, at an excellent school called Hyde Park High. “In those dreadful old days, young white males were conscripted into the army. That happened when I was seventeen. I came out of the army and went to Rhodes in Grahamstown, which I loved very much. I became very politically involved there.”

Following his time at Oxford University, Johnson returned to the country of his birth. South Africa was in the throes of political upheaval. “One has to remember the context of the times, which affects one’s life so much,” he says. “This was the height of the struggle against apartheid. I went to Oxford in 1982 and came back in 1985, and the mid-eighties was the time of the States of Emergency. I became involved with the brave people who had launched The Weekly Mail, now the Mail & Guardian, and also edited and published a volume called South Africa: No Turning Back.” Johnson’s chosen weapon was the pen, not the sword. “I am a writer. If I have a gift, then that is it,” maintains the man who subsequently became one of South Africa’s leading political journalists.

“I grew up very quickly, because it was a serious time. During the Emergencies people were being locked up and people were being killed.” With disarming honesty, Johnson adds, “I always say to my friends – and when my daughter is older I will say to her – that if I had known then the risks we were taking, I would never have taken them, because I am not that courageous. However, when you are young, you do not know. As I say, we grew up very, very quickly because we were involved in very serious stuff.” The pain and effort expended by Johnson and his ilk paid dividends. “It led to the marvellous 1990s and the decision to release Mr. Mandela and unban the ANC. Of course our politics changed completely then. For my generation, the Mandela generation, these were the glory days of South Africa. Idealism was the order of the day, the Rainbow Nation and so on.” Johnson penned the 1994 bestseller Strange Days Indeed, an eyewitness account of the transition from apartheid to democracy, with a foreword by Nelson Mandela. An exciting time, indeed!”

His profession as a political journalist, editor and finally deputy CEO of the whole Independent Newspapers group put Johnson in constant contact with the first democratically elected president of South Africa. As a Rhodes Scholar with the ear of Nelson Mandela and his circle, Johnson was afforded yet another life-defining opportunity. “This is serendipity, how things happen that are completely unplanned,” he remarks. “In 2002, to mark its centenary, the Rhodes Trust entered into talks with Mr Mandela and his advisors. They said they wanted to make a contribution back to Africa, where Rhodes’s money was made. They wanted to set up something called The Mandela Rhodes Foundation. “I was probably one of a very few people in the country who was part of the Rhodes Oxford community and also known to and trusted by Nelson Mandela. I straddled these two different communities. The upshot of it was that my ‘big media career’ was suddenly cut short, and I was given the tremendous, yet scary, privilege of, designing this Foundation from scratch.”

In true Madiba fashion, the father of the nation embraced an unlikely union of his name with that of an imperialist coloniser. “When asked whether he was willing to lend his support to the new Foundation, Mr Mandela, being Mr Mandela, said, ‘Well, if we can put those parts of Rhodes’s legacy that are highly admirable – such as the Rhodes Scholarships – to work for future generations, let’s do it!’ ” Johnson recounts another anecdote that speaks of the generosity and reconciliatory principles that typify Mandela’s global influence. “At one point Madiba was asked whether he wanted this scholarship scheme to benefit only previously disadvantaged people in South Africa, or to be open to all. The essence of his answer was that much of the charity work done in his name is uplifting people who are in poverty, dealing with HIV/ Aids, all of those things. He wanted a part of his legacy at least to indulge only excellence and aspiration. ‘Simply find me the best young people’, he was saying. “The Board of Trustees had reservations, largely due to South Africa’s divided past. They wondered: ‘What happens if we do this on a completely open basis, and the result is that because of our history, all our Scholars are white males? That surely would not be serving the purpose, would it?’ Mr Mandela’s riposte: ‘Well, it would mean that you did not look hard enough!’”

As it turns out, these fears were ungrounded. Johnson gestures towards the photographs that grace the walls of the Foundation. “When our first class was elected for 2005, I could not have manipulated it better in terms of gender and race if I’d tried to,” he quips. “Mr Mandela was proved right, because without us manipulating it at all, what popped out was representative of what is out there, and every year it has been the same. Amazing! There is such talent that each year we have grown our numbers until we reached our current optimum level.”

Asked what experiences shaped him as a leader, Johnson’s response is: “Growing up in middle-class white South Africa. Coming at a young age to understand what was wrong in the country, and living through and finding a useful role to play in the magnificent change. What has shaped me and my generation – the Mandela generation – is that we straddle apartheid South Africa, transitional South Africa and post-apartheid South Africa. It is an overwhelming shaping experience for me.” His challenges have come in the form of dealing with conflict situations and in the understanding that leadership is never easy. “What has helped me,” Johnson affirms, “is to always say to myself, when in a very difficult situation, ‘How do I de-personalise this? How do I try?’ And if you are not in difficult situations, then you are not in a leadership position, because there is no such thing as pure smooth run. Not even Nelson Mandela has had a pure smooth run. “It is very difficult to take my own very fragile thinking and ego out of it. How do I delve down to a principle? What is the principle at stake here? The principle will more or less tell you each time what you have to do: whether you have to go through conflict, whether you can smooth your way through it, or whatever. I am still learning that,” he says.

There is an overriding quality that Johnson most admires in other leaders. “There are all the other things, charisma, all sorts of things,” he ventures. “Leaders are all different. But the bottom line is integrity when it is inconvenient. When holding the principled line actually does not suit you, it is not the easy thing to do. I think Mr Mandela embodies that more than anyone.”

What he values most about himself as a leader is the simple fact that he has been given the opportunity to make a contribution. “I would say that what makes me effective in this context is that I had been around the block so much before. I had learned the hard way how to run a complex company, and I could bring those skills to running an NGO. That is not usual. I am not trained to run an NGO. I was out there in the hurly-burly of the media and corporates. I think I have been able to do a good job here because I could apply those entrepreneurial principles to a charity.”

One of the biggest lessons Johnson has learnt about leadership development during his tenure at the Foundation lies in the areas of group dynamics and generational differences. “When we are identifying young people (or just coming to grips with how young these people are, that is something as well!) I have to remember to set my own generational understanding to one side,” Johnson maintains. “Although intellectually, in my approach to life, I still think of myself as a young person, I have got to understand that I must listen and learn. Whatever they are called now, ‘Generation Y’? – they think differently. Things that I take as absolute assumptions are not true for these young people, so I need to understand that.”

The Mandela Rhodes Foundation’s mission is as a leadership and educational intervention on the African continent that draws on the best of the Rhodes Scholarships experience of the last more than a century, but keeps young people here, says Johnson. “Our four principles, which are based on the best achievements of Mandela and Rhodes, are reconciliation, education, entrepreneurship – which Africa needs particularly – and leadership. So the acronym is REEL. “Our definition of leadership is very, very broad,” Johnson continues. “It does not mean necessarily becoming president of the country, (although we would not mind if you did!) but the real goal is ethical, excellent leadership in your field. While we demand a level of academic excellence, it is not a purely academic scholarship. There are applicants who had better academic results than some of our elected Scholars, but that is all they did. Mandela Rhodes Scholars must be well-rounded individuals with leadership potential, under the age of 30, from anywhere in Africa. The only other criterion is that they must study at a South African university.

The Scholarship provides blanket financial aid over a maximum of two years of study. “We want to make the experience equal for those who have come through a nice middle-class education, like I did, and those who grew up in a tin shanty,” Johnson asserts. Thus, he explains, the Foundation is intent on “spending as much time thinking about the input side as about what happens afterwards.” “Three times a year, in a very safe environment, we put the group in a room and let them learn from each other and from us,” he continues. “It is an extraordinary experience, because the young Rwandan guy, somebody from Soweto, and somebody from Bishopscourt – they just learn so much from each other’s life stories. Then we put it in a broad framework. What we mean by leadership is an ethical, Mandela-like approach to leadership. What does reconciliation actually mean? What is entrepreneurship and why does it have a bad name among so many young people? What do we mean by educational opportunities? And so on.” Since the students are different each year, the dynamics of these gatherings change. ”But each year, every single one of the Scholars says meeting the other Scholars and getting to know them was life changing,” Johnson reports.

This intensive communication also creates bonds that serve the students beyond their Scholarship experience. “So often, you will have a leadership intervention and scholarships that, when they come to an end, the students all go their own way and that is it”, he observes. “Ours stay involved through the alumni association, the Community of Mandela Rhodes Scholars. And again, we spend as much time on the input and output as we do on the actual scholarship period itself, which I think makes us quite unique.” Another unique element of the Scholarships is the personal attention each student receives. “Unlike with a mass bursary,” Johnson says, “I and my colleagues know who each Mandela Rhodes Scholar is, how they did in their degree, where they are now, and when we last saw them. It is highly personal and individualised. We really adopt them and try to act as mentors to them.”

Asked whether the Foundation will prove a successful catalyst for its protégés, Johnson wryly replies, “It is too early to tell, as the Chinese said about the French Revolution more than a century after it took place! Remember, our first group is only five years out into the world, so we do not know. “But success, for us, is an unscientific thing. It is if the Scholars themselves feel they have done more, or done better, with their own raw material, than they would have if they had not had the Scholarship.” Johnson believes that leadership development has to constantly adapt and evolve. “I do not believe – and I have learnt this the hard way – that there is any customised, shrink-wrapped, perfect leadership model. I do not think that you can teach leadership in that way. You can only facilitate people to find their own limits of leadership. The content of our leadership programme will never be complete and never be perfect. It gets tweaked every year, and I am sure that in future others will bring their own approach to it.”

As for who inspires him, Johnson says, “The opportunity to work in the name of what Mandela means to humanity has proved irresistible. When I come to the end of it, I have to say that the two people who will have shaped the person I am, more than anyone else, would have to be Nelson Mandela and Cecil Rhodes!” What renews his hope in the field of leadership are the Scholars themselves. “I am so excited about them,” he says. “I wish I could see five years into the future. I and my colleagues have a completely unique insight into these generations of young Africans. I just think they are going to be wonderful human beings. “In my day, getting involved in politics was not a road to riches and comfort,” he reflects. “It was high risk. For these generations now, going into politics is a career path. What inspires me about these young people is that they are more highminded – and I am not just talking about politics. There are a few of them who I think are going to pop up and really make a difference, not only in this country, but in other African countries too. “They are a move away from the me, me, me, ethic,” Johnson continues. “I think the world recession has been a good wake-up call for everybody: materialism, purely on its own, kills you. It kills the soul and everything else. I see more and more holistic approaches to leadership. Ours is an example. It is the re-humanising of leadership training or leadership interventions.”

For a full transcript of this interview please visit www.tsiba.org.za/news/resources 

By Karen Leroux, based on an interview by Leigh Meinert.

Leadership development, underpinned by the values, history and tradition of Africa’s oldest liberation movement, the African National Congress, has to evolve, adapt and experience intergenerational renewal to be relevant to today’s youth, claims Febe Potgieter-Gqubule, social and political activist, former ambassador to Poland and member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee.

Potgieter-Gqubule, a passionate campaigner for youth empowerment, who has personally shattered the glass ceiling of feminine leadership within the ANC by becoming the first female secretary-general of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), is constantly amazed at the incredible innovation and talent inherent in today’s youth. “I think there are a whole range of young men and women, who went to school and university in the early 90’s, who have the confidence and enthusiasm and who exist in all streams of South African society – in business, in the unions and public sector, in NGOs, in all sorts of places – who are going to make a major contribution.” Young, emerging personalities in government who have grabbed Potgieter- Gqubule’s attention include the Minister of Public Enterprises, Malusi Gigaba, provincial Minister for Economic Development in Gauteng, Qedani Dorothy Mahlangu and the Minister of Sport, Fikile Mbalula. “I think the ANC is quite good at giving younger people responsibility, responsibility that will provide them with invaluable experience for future leadership roles.”

For the South African dream to succeed, however, Potgieter-Gqubule believes in inclusive leadership development, where every single man, woman and child in South Africa is committed to creating a fair, equitable and sustainable society. “You don’t have to have a position to provide leadership,” argues Potgieter- Gqubule. “Given the extent of the challenges we face, all our talents can and should be used, as there is a place for everyone. Different people bring different ideas to the table, ideas one would never necessarily think about. “I think it is an amazing South African strength that one has a diversity of voices, a diversity of views,” asserts Potgieter- Gqubule. The challenge is to find a way to coalesce all the divergent views for the common good. “It does not mean the voices are the same. One should always have divergent voices from both inside and outside organisational structures.”

This doyenne of political education and leadership development within the ANC took on the mantle of change and responsibility with studied reluctance. A strong sense of civic duty was instilled by her parents who motivated the young, rural villager to make a positive contribution from a very early age. “I have always seen myself as a political and social activist, a view that emerged in high school when I became aware of the differences in society: the issues of race, the fact there was no electricity in the area I grew up in, and the terrible injustices of an unequal society. “This was in the beginning of the 1980s, so you have the 1980s school boycott, getting involved in the campaigns of the time and forming an SRC,” recalls Potgieter- Gqubule. “At all these different phases I felt as though I was being pushed into a leadership position. I did not really choose to do it. I took the view there was a job to be done and simply took responsibility for it.”

Following her tenure as head girl of her high school, Potgieter-Gqubule went to the University of the Western Cape where she was exposed to the punch, power and sabre rattling of the anti-apartheid national liberation movement. “It was an incredibly exciting time to be young and a student at university. Throughout my university life I was involved in student organisations.” Although still hesitant to take on the leadership roles offered to her, Potgieter- Gqubule quickly learnt one of the most valuable lessons of leadership development, that of mentorship responsibility. “A positive outcome of being forced into taking responsibility is the fact you actually learn a lot from people around you. I have always been surrounded by incredible mentors, people who took responsibility for developing me, who engaged with me, and who I could bounce ideas off.”

It was during her stint with the South African Youth Congress that Potgieter-Gqubule first encountered political education, a facet of leadership development that would become an enduring passion. “One of the techniques of bringing about positive social change is by expanding the pool of people who want to bring about change and want to make a difference by providing them with the requisite skills, exposure and responsibility to be able to make that difference and make those changes,” maintains Potgieter-Gqubule. Yet another string to Potgieter-Gqubule’s professional bow was her ambassadorship to Poland, a lofty position that she held at a relatively youthful age. “It was really interesting in the sense that leadership development is also about getting people outside of their comfort zones and I think that was one of the take aways the four years in international relations provided for me. “It means you are out of the country. You are in an area where people do not know you, so it provides a sense of freedom where there are no expectations, but at the same time, you have to prove yourself all over again.” One of her legacies was pushing for more gender equity in the Foreign Service. “For example, out of about eighty-five resident ambassadors in Warsaw, there were only twelve women ambassadors at any given point in time. So there was always an issue about the questions facing women and how you make your space within that. One of the things we started was an association for women in diplomacy – not just woman ambassadors but also woman diplomats,” recalls Potgieter-Gqubule.

Apart from grappling with her full-time doctoral thesis (entitled Continuity and Change: the organisational development and institutionalisation of the ANC after 1990) at Wits University, Potgieter-Gqubule is chairperson of the board of Lejweleputswa Development Agency in Welkom in the Free State. “This local economic development agency has to look at ways to stimulate small, medium and micro enterprises and the different economic sectors in the area. In a sense it is also leadership development because part of what you need to do is to find a way to build the capacity of small, micro or medium enterprises, bring cooperatives in, strengthen existing businesses and make people think about the long-term economic viability of the area.”

Potgieter-Gqubule credits her leadership style to a select group of guides, mentors and role models, the first of whom is Billy Ramakgopa, a former president of AZASO (a national student organisation in the 1980s). “When I think about leadership style, his is the leadership style I have internalised – an incredibly bright person, but very humble and with lots of integrity who is always willing to listen and be able to bring people together, but at the same time, can be very tough about the fact that things need to get done.” Another is politician, businesswoman and struggle icon, Cheryl Carolus. “One of the things I admire about her is her energy,” exclaims Potgieter-Gqubule. “Her sense of optimism, her ability to relate to people across a broad spectrum and her dogged persistence to stay the course, to never lose hope.” Minister of Home Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s drive is a leadership attribute admired by the ANC stalwart too. “If this is the road you take, then this is the right thing to do. Simply go ahead and be consistent about it, persevere and be tough about it.”

Characteristics she values in herself as a leader include self-reflection, knowing her inherent strengths and weaknesses, and her ability to motivate people “to focus on the task at hand at a strategic level but also in terms of the details.” Tools she has successfully employed in her leadership role include reading widely, listening to others, and providing people with the autonomy to do things. “To come up with ideas and to be there for them when they want to bounce off the ideas,” clarifies Potgieter-Gqubule. In all avenues of her professional life, Potgieter-Gqubule has focussed on leadership development. During her decade with the ANCYL the spotlight was firmly on “how to build a youth movement that is more active in the community, that understands the issues of youth development and how the economy impacts on issues of young people’s employment possibilities and skills development.”

Part of her personal mantra is to build continuity in leadership and leadership development. “Organisations need to reproduce leadership and, with an organisation with as long a history as the ANC, you have to make sure you transmit the values, history and traditions but also ensure you renew and remain relevant. The assumptions my generation made are not the same as today’s generation. You need to make sure you adapt and encourage intergenerational dialogue, the transmission of ideas and really listen to each other.” “In the ANC, leadership takes place within a collective. Part of the underlying philosophy is to bring people together with different experiences and different points of view. It encourages a melting pot of solutions that is much better than if a single leader decides on the way to go. “I think it is a very strong element of the leadership model within the ANC. The relationship between action and reflection is also crucial in that leadership is not simply about talk, but about leading by example. So when we look at the ANC leadership collectives, we need to look at what it says about the ANC – its non-racial character, the mixture between different generations, the gender and the geographic spread. You need to reflect the diversity of your membership as well as the South African population and the kind of society that we all envisage – a united, non-racial, democratic, non-sexist South Africa. If you can’t live up to it as a movement, then how do you expect society to do that?” enquires Potgieter-Gqubule.

“One of the major issues facing the ANC today is how being the governing party has impacted on its organisational culture, its values, and its organisational processes. It is now eighteen years since freedom and I think the National Planning Commission has come at the right time because it is the moment where we need to reflect.” According to Potgieter-Gqubule, the ANC has to be clear as to the development trajectory, “Where do we want to be in twenty years time? “We should be able to answer tough questions about where we come from and where we want to go to and not shy away from the difficult questions. The only way we can address complex issues is by confronting them. “Take the land issue. The Youth League president (then Julius Malema*) made the point that over the last fifteen years we have redistributed five percent of agricultural land. Now, he says to a young constituency, if we continue to redistribute only five percent every twenty years, the youth will be too old to benefit,” maintains Potgieter-Gqubule. “So what do we do? Are we saying to him he cannot say that? Or do we need to discuss it as South Africans, black and white, the landless as well as those who own land? What do we do? How do we all address the issue? “You have a whole new generation of people and the challenge is: how to link up with the younger generations and have an ongoing conversation that is respectful and that draws on the respective experiences, knowledge and points of view that have shaped our different experiences.”

Potgieter-Gqubule believes leadership success is measured by, firstly, “the ability to provide a vision that unites people and addresses the challenges of the day. It is about having a plan and a programme that address the challenges that face us in a way that will take us to where we want to be. Secondly, it is the ability to unite people behind that vision. “It is in all our interests to address unemployment, poverty and inequality. We need more and more people to participate in the economy, so it is about uniting people around those issues,” explains Potgieter- Gqubule. “There is often a sense that young people are empty vessels that you pour knowledge into, but I think we can learn so much from engagement with young people. They can provide information we do not even have the capacity to think about, or simply force us to confront issues in a new way by pushing the boundaries,” claims Potgieter- Gqubule with optimism.

* Note that this interview took place in 2011.  For a full transcript of this interview please visit www.tsiba.org.za/news/resources 

Earlier this year we hosted a brainstorming session to discuss alternative forms of sparking early learning capacity. The panel included a linguist, neurologist, educator, psychologist among others.  It was a very interesting session and we thought we would share some of the most important points emerging from this conversation with you.

What stimulates learning in young children?

Let’s unpack that somewhat:

What are the elements of a good programme to stimulate learning in young children? 

Some of the critical aspects of learning are:

• Multiple intelligence versus general intelligence:  There used to be a notion that the brain is geared for a narrow set of cognitive action measured in terms of IQ.  Multiple intelligence recognizes that there are multiple points of interaction between the various cognitive functions, such as numeracy and literacy, music and art, emotional intelligence and social skills for example. Therefore learning processes need to stimulate all aspects of brain development, not only that which is conventionally measured as ‘general intelligence’ (IQ).
• Analogical thinking:  All thinking is framed in terms of analogies.  Play is an analogy for real life circumstances, and helps frame concepts for thinking.
• Memory formation:  The learning environment must be conducive to memory formation:

1.  Short interactions
2. Physiological priming e.g. breathing exercises
3. Repetition (in different ways)
4. Verbal
5. Sleep

• Language development: Language development is critical for framing concepts.

The Green Paper is an impressive attempt to address the systemic blockages that limit access to post-school education, and that prevent access to such educational opportunities from leading to successful entry into the world of work.  Whilst we feel that the paper does a thorough job of cataloguing the problems and deficiencies of the current post-school education landscape and posits significant changes that begin the process of addressing the gaps in post-school education, there are a few areas that are not adequately addressed in the Green Paper:

The Green Paper accurately details the weaknesses of the current college system, but still seems to categorise further education and training (FET) colleges as steps on the way to other educational and training opportunities.  Whilst it is true that it is a mistake to attempt to characterise all qualifications as equal, one of the problems the FET sector has been facing is a lack of a coherent identity.  The exercise of clearly defining the role of each kind of institution within the post-school education landscape will be useful, but we must be careful not to define FET colleges solely in relation to higher and basic education. The Green Paper rightly argues that the role that vocational training on its own plays needs to be recognized; we would add that recognising FET’s identities as part of that.

The plans to improve FET colleges’ capacity and infrastructure are a step in the right direction.  In addition to this, a closer look at FET colleges’ role in preparing learners for the world of work needs to be taken.  In order to ensure that FET colleges are offering learners an education that will facilitate successful entry into the world of work, colleges need to pay serious attention to the need for facilitative interventions that connect their graduates to employers.  This means that as part of the plans to develop the capacity of FET colleges, some thought and work needs to be dedicated to developing a strategy for establishing employment facilitation capacities within FET colleges.  This needs to go beyond employing career guidance counselors, and involve building relationships with local industry and other employment facilitation services.

The Green Paper lays out a plan for bringing FET colleges under the national department.  This seems an ambitious undertaking.  Whilst the standardization that centralized administration of FET colleges and offers is important, it would perhaps be worth exploring strengthening the capacity of provincial departments (and involving these departments in the capacity development processes planned for FET colleges) to oversee FET colleges.  If FET colleges are to become centers of excellence that provide young people with a viable alternative to other forms of post-school education, the direction of provincial governments, who will have established relationships with local industry and are able to facilitate the creation of strong pathways for FET graduates into the world of work, is crucial.

Community-based NGOs

The role that community-based, non-governmental centres of learning and training play is not adequately addressed in the Paper.  The Green Paper accedes that the Department does not have comprehensive, up-to-date information on the range and extent of services offered by such organizations, but the plans for research into these organisations will need to be followed up by comprehensive plans for supporting these organisations.  40% of South Africa’s youth are not in employment, education or training (NEET), and cannot access current formal post-school education and training institutions.  Often, these are the people who turn to the (accredited and non-accredited) short courses offered by non-governmental organisations, and rely on these organisations to forge connections with potential employers.  Such organisations provide essential skills training to people who are not in employment, education or training, and who do not meet the entrance criteria for further education and training (FET) colleges: they shoulder the responsibility of providing basic literacy and numeracy training, in addition to their standard training courses.  These organisations thus form an important bridge that tends to the large gaps that still exist for many of the population into the world of work.  These centres often have to operate without much support from or access to sector education and training authorities (SETAs), DHET and other state bodies who are focused on supporting accredited training institutions and FET colleges.  In the absence of such support (and faced with the diverse needs of members of their communities who are not in employment, education or training), these organisations are dependent on donor funding and on the support of the DoSD.  Whilst this support allows these organisations to function, and access some of the resources necessary to deliver the services they offer, it is often insufficient, given the enormous gap they are addressing.

Our interactions reveal that these organisations are addressing serious gaps, often with limited to no access to state bodies that regulate training, and public resources.  It is encouraging that DHET has undertaken to do research into such organisations and the role they play.  We hope that DHET will engage DoSD and attempt to develop a framework through which such organisations can be supported. 

The Green Paper does not adequately expound on the role of industry in post-school education and training.  If post-school education and training is to equip people to enter the world of work, it is necessary that those who drive the world of work be involved in shaping the education of people who will fill the skills needs of that world.  Industry stakeholders need to be included in a more direct way with special attention being paid to the establishment of live communication channels between education and training.  There are existing channels and mechanisms through which industry and training and education bodies communicate; however, these have not resulted in the strong links that are vital to addressing both skills gaps and unemployment.  In order to ensure that the post-school education and training system is training people to fill gaps that exist in the market, dynamic communication channels and feedback loops with industry are essential.

By Jackie Lagus, based on an 

“Being a little spark under the potential of everyone around you. I think that is really what leadership is about.” These are the words of social entrepreneur and activist Joy Olivier. It is also the success story behind IkamvaYouth, an organisation focussing on youth education through a system of tuition and mentoring programmes.

Olivier started tutoring young learners in 2003 and, within two years, the programme had begun paying dividends. “IkamvaYouth works with learners in township schools, providing after-school support, and then helps them to get the grades, skills and experience they need to access university or employment,” Olivier explains. “The first year our students matriculated was 2005, and they got really brilliant results. We got a one hundred percent pass rate, and sixty five percent of them got into university. The township average is less than ten percent, so we were only aiming for thirty percent. I was quite amazed by that.”

Olivier is undaunted by the scale of educational discrepancies and the enormous gulf in opportunity between more privileged learners and those disadvantaged by their economic environments. She is actively working on the change she believes is vital for the future of the country. “The mission of our organisation is to enable disadvantaged youth to pull themselves out of poverty and into university and employment,” she says. “The focus is on education. So we are really trying to help people to create, not only the passport that they need – the report Co-Founder and Director, IkamvaYouth with decent academic achievement – but also a real understanding of the fields they are studying. Really knowing how to learn, how to build knowledge, how to access information, how to communicate that – that is quite a tangible skill that we teach.”

The philosophy of the programme and the spirit of activism that spreads through its entire focus put collectivist ideals ahead of individual determinism. The mentors and tutors for the programmes are carefully selected for their history of volunteerism. “A long history of service in one’s community is something that everybody should have,” Olivier believes. “When we are employing people, we look at that more than we look at their qualifications. It speaks more about the values they have and the action they have taken. “There are a lot of people talking about how things should be, and how they wish things could be. That is all very well, and we enjoy those conversations. Ultimately, however, it comes down to the actual doing. That is something we really look at,” she says. “Our value of commitment is very strong, in that we require our learners to attend seventy five percent of all our sessions. That includes afternoon tutoring two or three times a week, computer classes, and tutoring every Saturday morning. Then during the holidays, we have a two-week holiday programme. Our KwaZulu-Natal branch also does a summer school. It is a huge amount of time that the learners and volunteers are required to give, and over many years. Learners need to be in the programme a minimum of two years, all the way up to five years. They are basically giving up all their spare time to learn and help each other learn, and to progress through these different experiences that we offer.”

Asked about the people or events that have shaped her life, Olivier talks about the country’s history and the anti-apartheid activists who were so instrumental in shaping a different national identity and an altered political landscape. There were many, but Olivier is currently most moved by a recent reading of Jay Naidoo’s book, Fighting for Justice. “I think he is quite phenomenal,” she enthuses. “His autobiography tells his story right from the beginning: how he started to get involved in social justice as a young man. I think some of the choices he has had to make are quite amazing – walking that fine line between making decisions that not everybody agrees with and being a representative of the people. And he has managed to do that.” Translating this skill into the leadership style she admires in the workplace, Olivier points to those people who are able to have the contentious and difficult conversations. “The work that we do is emotional. That is why we do it; we are not doing it for the money. I really admire the people who can have those difficult, contentious conversations and then let that emotion go and move on – to be able to deal with the difficulties, but then also not carry them, to just let them go and move forward. I think that is something one has to learn how to do as one builds.”

Being open to change and willing to acquire knowledge all the time is half the battle, in Olivier’s opinion. She is not afraid to take chances, learn from others and make difficult choices when needed. By the same token, she provides others with the latitude to do the same. Olivier characterises her own leadership style by referring to a comment from a colleague who attended strategic planning weekends she facilitated. “The way that our organisation works is that we have got a decision making process that is very democratic and involves a lot of voices,” Olivier clarifies. “So it is quite complicated, but simple at the same time. We have come up with a model that tries to strike a balance, getting everyone’s input in a democratic decision without things taking forever, so that we can actually be effective and get things done. “Andrew, our Gauteng regional manager, said that I am very good at creating space for people to share their opinions, and for everybody to be involved in decision making,” she reports. “He said that I have found ways to get lots of people to own the work that we do – to feel that their voices really do have an impact in the decisions that are made. I appreciated that. And I think it is because of this that people volunteer and stay with the organisation for so long.”

Olivier also attributes the success of the programmes to the fact that they operate in parallel with the existing curriculum, and with input from teachers in the education system. Additionally, the value of having young tutors and mentors coming from the same disadvantaged circumstances to facilitate their study schedules provides direct, living examples that learners’ aspirations are possible to achieve. “It also works because these mentors are modeling the approach,” Olivier explains. “So the pedagogical method that we employ is not teaching; it is tutoring. The learners have to bring the work that they need help with, and then they sit in small groups and take responsibility for their own learning. They drive the learning process themselves. The tutors are just facilitating peer-to-peer learning, and teaching people how to solve problems. They show learners how to teach themselves and each other by showing them that the first step of learning is to identify what you do not know. The tutors encourage creative thought and diminish the fear of being wrong. In big classroom situations, that is difficult to do. Most teachers just want learners to be quiet so that they can get through the curriculum.”

Admitting to failures, learning from mistakes, discarding those practices that did not work and embracing the opportunities that new insights bring – according to Olivier, all these elements help to create a strong leader. She believes very strongly that leadership is not an inherent characteristic or a set of predetermined traits, but rather an acquisition of skills along the way. From that perspective anyone, given the right encouragement, can become a leader. “So let’s take a learner in a township with potential to be a leader,” Olivier proposes, noting that “every single learner has that potential. When the people around them believe that about the person as well, then they start to believe it themselves. The more positive reinforcement, encouragement and support one has, the better one can be. But all of that needs to be coupled with very high standards of achievement. “With our branch coordinators, for example, we set very high targets. If you were to look at the statistics in the context we work in, you would say those targets are unreasonable and impossible. Yet we use them, and we always exceed them. I think it is something about having very high aspirations and a lot of support and belief in the vision. It is a mix of having support and being challenged; really pushing for people to work hard and continually extend themselves in their knowledge and experience. The mix of those things – support and challenging environments – that is what produces leaders.” But as with any theory or plan, the real test lies in the outcome, in the tangible and practical results.

The exciting story of IkamvaYouth comes to life in the tales of those learners who have been through the programme and are now embarking on their futures – and who, in turn, will shape and influence the aspirations of others. “Our first ex-learner who became a board member of our organisation is Thobela Bixa,” Olivier relates.“When he joined in 2004, he was in Grade 11. There was a whole group of learners that year who worked really hard together and produced quite phenomenal results. Thobela is now doing his masters in chemistry at UCT. He has travelled the world, doing research at amazing institutions. He has received great fellowships and scholarships. He is basically going to pull his family out of poverty. When I met Thobela just a few years ago, he was saying that we could not charge learners for photocopying, because many of them do not have fifty cents to pay for a photocopy. Only a few years ago, he was one of those learners. “Another one would be Funeka Kalawe,” Oliver continues. “She also started in 2004. When she first joined IkamvaYouth she was one of those who had Es and Fs on her report and had never used a computer before. I do not think she spoke the whole of the first year. She was extremely shy when she started. Funeka has now got a qualification in information systems, and she runs the computer programme at our Makhaza branch. She has been responsible for about three or four years’ worth of learners being computer literate by the time they graduate from Ikamva. Funeka works at Capitec as a software tester, and is also the breadwinner for her extended family. She is now a very confident, amazing woman. We went on a trip to Canada to present our model to the Canadian government, and she spoke on a panel at this massive international conference that was on Canadian national TV. She looked like a TV star. She was super confident, eloquent, smart and engaging. I could not quite believe it!”

Olivier has a seemingly endless pool of success stories. “Then there is Phillip Mcelu, who joined in 2005,” she recalls. “He is a very enthusiastic mathematician who has been an incredibly committed volunteer. Phillip is now running a maths programme for the Grade 8s, managing a project that we have partnered with Education Without Borders. “The people that I would say are the success stories are those who have not only achieved amazing things in their own lives, in terms of pulling themselves out of poverty and into amazing positions of postgraduate study and employment,” Olivier elucidates. “They are the people who keep coming back to create those opportunities for more people. It is people like Funeka, Thobela and Phillip who are ensuring that the results we produce each year are produced again. “That is really the concept that underpins the entire operation. It is the real spirit of ubuntu that is so often used to evoke a sense of camaraderie – the greater good triumphing over the individual need. It is these values that have distinguished the visionaries, those leaders who have shaped the destiny of entire countries through their remarkable compassion for others: the likes of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Aung San Suu Kyi… the list goes on. “And there are the unsung heroes, who are cultivating the leaders of the future. These are the people within IkamvaYouth who are making things happen.

Each branch is run by a committee comprising the young people who are most committed at that branch: learner representatives and volunteers. They make all the decisions for the branch, and are responsible for programme delivery. Each branch committee has two paired people, one coordinator and one assistant. Everybody else is volunteering. They take responsibility for running programmes, being in meetings, delivering on progress reports and making decisions. They draw up budgets, take minutes, meet with partners and raise funds. “All these things they are learning to do make them very employable. While they are studying, they are also building this work experience. These are the leaders at university level, people who are really engaged in their university studies and also in their communities, who are gaining work experience by implementing programmes.” The branch coordinators, Olivier reveals, are really the people that ultimately make the IkamvaYouth model work. These are typically young social entrepreneurs in their early twenties to early thirties. They are the individuals who inspire, mobilise and recruit volunteers, and who motivate the learners to keep showing up and working hard. They coordinate much of the administration required to track the programmes and their outputs.

“Ultimately, it comes down to the branch coordinator to report at the end of the year, when the matric results come out, what those results were; how many of our learners accessed university; how many of them got into jobs,” Olivier explains. “That is how we can see whether or not we are achieving what we set out to do: our results. They have been pretty good. Since 2005, we have had between an eighty seven percent and one hundred percent matric pass rate every year. More than sixty percent of those are usually passes that enable access to tertiary education. For the last three years, more than seventy percent of our learners have accessed tertiary education. We have had some branches that get one hundred percent placement in terms of tertiary education, learnerships or employment. “About forty percent of all South African youth between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six are unemployed and not enrolled in any education,” Olivier points out. “If you look at township youth, it is a whole lot more than that. So the results we are producing are pretty remarkable, given that this is the context in which we are working.”

Boosted by the outcomes of the programmes, Olivier wants to extend them to as many people as possible, as any leader would. She and her colleagues at IkamvaYouth are thinking about how to scale their models. Critical to this initiative is doing it in a way that is sustainable. “Right from the beginning, the model has been designed to be replicable,” Olivier says. “It is partnering with libraries, universities and companies, and whoever else will partner with us. We have managed to keep our costs really low through liberating strategic partnerships and volunteerism. We are able to produce amazing results with very little financial input. The question is, how do we scale this up? Even though it does not require a lot of money per learner, we want to get thousands of people into university, and with scale comes the need for a lot of money. Figuring out the best way of getting that money and having it arrive when it needs to be there in a sustainable way is quite a challenge.” Olivier is candid in her assessment of the structural inequities in leadership development trends in the South African context. “Young people from middle-class backgrounds, they have that challenging, supportive environment that I spoke about,” she says. “They have what they need to be able to develop their leadership capacity. The learners or the young people without that kind of support – that is really where our pool of talent lies. That is where we are missing things. We are missing out on that huge pool of people that we need for driving our economy and getting us through all the challenges of a new democracy.”

Yet Olivier does see some hopeful trends. There are new models for leadership development programmes, and more individuals involved in this kind of work. There is also greater collaboration between organisations, projects and people; and the vision is bigger, encompassing shared resources and a more integrated approach to harnessing the talents of new generations of learners. “That is really the only way that we can do something with really significant impact, and on scale,” she asserts. “So these trends are quite heartening.” Figuring out how to turn this potential into reality is Olivier’s next big challenge.

For a full transcript of this interview please visit www.tsiba.org.za/news/resources 

By Karen Le Roux, based on an interview by Janet Jobson.

Diverse, talented and brimming with potential, African youth essentially holds the key to performance-driven leadership that is carefully underpinned by integrity, humility, compassion and excellence, maintains entrepreneur, practical educationalist and CEO of the African Leadership Academy (ALA), Fred Swaniker.

Rather than simply focusing on the theories behind leadership development, the Johannesburg-based Academy is intent on creating formidable African leaders in government, business and science & technology through practical means, supplemented by an extensive network of mentors, funders and like-minded individuals. The Academy’s overriding vision is to produce a self-sustaining leadership model that generates not one or two outstanding role models, but literally generations of astute, caring and mindful leaders who, together, can transform the entire continent.

“What we are doing at ALA is a fifty year project. You do not develop a leader through one seminar. It is a life-long process. You’ve got to start with the youth and build it up over a lifetime,” explains Swaniker, who based his big Pan-African dream on his own experiences as a headmaster of a small school in Botswana at the tender age of eighteen! “In fifty years’ time we will have created this network of six thousand leaders – six thousand leaders who we will have known from the age of sixteen and will have worked and engaged with as they passed through different stages of their lives – in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties. The importance of intergenerational development and networking to the success of the programme’s long-term vision cannot be understated. “In time, forty-year old leaders in the network will be giving twenty-one year old leaders in the network internships in their companies. They will be coming back to be speakers on campus. They will be mentoring the young leaders still on our campus and through all this we will have this self-reinforcing mechanism, where the network develops itself and replenishes itself,” explains Swaniker. “That is how you create the system of change we need in Africa.”

Swaniker’s progression from continental child to notable leader, facilitator and visionary, is deeply entrenched in his overwhelming passion for the continent at large. “Underlying a lot of what I do is a passion for Africa and the feeling that I would like to have an impact on this continent I love so much, a love that came about from a very early age when I started moving around Africa.” Swaniker was born in Ghana and has lived in The Gambia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. After a period of study in the United States, he now lives in South Africa. He has also worked in Tanzania and Nigeria.

What really motivated him to pursue the dream of long-term leadership development, however, was the lack of sound, moral, accountable leaders. “I saw this tremendous potential on the continent, but everywhere I went I saw the potential being blocked by leaders. “We were spending a lot of money on treating the symptoms of this bad leadership, and I am talking about leadership across the board: leadership in government, leadership in business, and leadership in science and technology. We simply did not have the people who would use their talents and their skills to help solve our problems in Africa.”

His attraction to the edifying power of education as a tool to greatness is firmly in the blood. A generational mix of grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts forged a path before him, establishing quality educational institutions in the country of his birth. Prompted by the residents of a small town in Botswana to open an affordable alternative to the expensive private schools in the town, Swaniker’s mother started a study group at a local church. It wasn’t too long before the student body had grown from five children to twenty-five children, enabling Swaniker to make a decision that would effectively guide him to his pre-ordained destiny, that of co-founder of the African Leadership Academy. “When I finished high school, I had a year to wait before I went to university. During that gap year my mother made me the headmaster of the school. I taught, I managed the teachers, and I dealt with the parents. When I went to college I kept working with my mother, helping and advising her as one of her board members and so on.” What started as a small study group, confined to a tiny building and with only one teacher, has today grown into one of the top performing schools in Botswana, with over three hundred children enrolled at a time. “It is called Mount Pleasant Primary School. Every year when they write the national primary school exam in Botswana, it is either number one or two in the country,” says Swaniker with evident pride.

This early life experience taught him the immeasurable benefit of beginning the leadership journey at a youthful age. “What I believe is that a lot of outstanding leaders begin their journey of leadership at a very young age. Experiences they have in their formative years – when they are emerging from the influence of their parents and forming their own, unique views of the world – define their leadership path. “Like Nelson Mandela at the age of twenty-one getting involved in the ANC Youth League; Thabo Mbeki at fourteen joining the ANC Youth League; Richard Branson selling magazines at the age of sixteen – an experience that gave him the confidence, self-belief and practice to eventually launch Virgin; and like Michael Dell selling computers in his dorm room at nineteen – a move that excited and motivated him to build Dell Computer one day.” Swaniker is firmly of the view that although the initial projects may be small, they are crucial learning curves, enabling youngsters to practice and experience the indomitable art of leadership and then inspiring and prompting them to take on even bigger challenges. “If I had not had that experience setting up a small school with my mother when I was eighteen, I do not think that at twentysix, when I saw the need and was inspired to start this African Leadership Academy, I would have done so,” reflects Swaniker. “I probably would have shied away from the idea, thinking, ‘This is too big, I cannot do it.’ If I had not had that positive experience at the age of eighteen, I would not have had the confidence to say, ‘I think I can do this.’ “Very often we are simply limited by the size of our dreams, our confidence and what we can achieve,” claims Swaniker incisively.

Swaniker adopted his early, life-affirming leadership experience as the paradigm for the African Leadership Academy; ‘We find promising young people in their formative years and take them through a defining leadership experience where they get hands-on leadership practice.’ “I believe that developing leaders cannot be done through theory. It is a practical thing. You learn how to lead by leading. That is the only way you can learn to lead,” he maintains. “You can take students through all the readings and case studies, but they will never quite get what it means to be a leader until they are faced with a real, hands-on leadership situation. “They have to engage with communities, with real people and the issues they face, as they try to make change in the community. It is those experiences, and the lessons they learn from them, that enable them to grow as leaders,” adds Swaniker.

The Academy discernibly differs from most other leadership development models in that it constantly develops and sustains each student throughout his or her lifetime. “What we are doing at ALA is not a two-year programme. It is a life-long programme,” reiterates Swaniker. “We are finding students from all over Africa, people that have demonstrated some of the attributes of leadership, and bringing them into the institution for an initial two-year period. We see this initial two-year period simply as the foundation or beginning of their leadership development. It is not the end. “We then concentrate on working with them throughout their lifetime. When they are in college, we need to have programmes that continue giving them practice in leadership – such as internships and short leadership programmes during their holidays. When they graduate from university, we want to be there to facilitate their early careers, and when they are in their thirties to fifties, we want to bring them back to the Academy every year for short programmes to continue to help develop them as leaders.”

An aspect vital to the continuing success and self-sustaining growth of the project is that of networks. “Your effectiveness as a leader is only partly a function of your skills. It is also hugely a function of the networks you have,” asserts Swaniker. “I would guess about fifty percent of my effectiveness as a leader comes from the networks I am able to tap into. “I define the word ‘leader’ as an agent for positive change, someone who uses his or her skills, networks and talents to change society for the better, in whatever way they are passionate about. “In order to bring about change, you need to co-ordinate a whole series of actors. You need to find others who believe in your vision, who can come on board as employees, as partners, as funders, who can open doors for your first clients, open doors in government and so much more. “Whatever you are inspired to do, you simply cannot act as an individual. You need to create a team, a whole movement around you that can help you bring about the change you envisage. All of that comes through relationships. That is why a network is essential to your success as a leader,” stresses Swaniker. “Thus, in forming the Academy, not only are we developing the individuals’ leadership skills through giving them practice in leadership, but, as importantly, we are plugging them into the right networks. So we do not see ourselves as a high school. It is a life-long ecosystem we are building. “We are creating a network of mentors, potential funders and links to other leaders who can help them take their ideas and scale them up. We are creating all these avenues so they can eventually get the resources they need, and connecting them to partners who can eventually get them into the positions they need to be in to be able to really create change on a massive scale in Africa.”

Swaniker strongly believes there is an architectural framework or blueprint for leadership development that comprises raw material, perseverance, passion, values, practice, experience and opportunity. “I see a simple formula for becoming a leader,” claims Swaniker. “I actually think you can engineer leaders by taking them through this formula. The formula is a mix of three things. First is talent. By talent I am not talking about academic talent. I am not talking about people who are geniuses. Maybe talent is not even the right word. It is more like raw material. “In that raw material we are looking at a few personal attributes that people have, which are needed to be effective as leaders. Attributes like courage. Every leader is going to go through a frightening process, and they need courage to veer away from the status quo. They need to stand up for what they believe in because there is always a lot of resistance to change. So, you need courage. “You need perseverance because it is going to be a long journey. You need people who do not give up easily when the inevitable obstacles arrive. “You need passion, to be obsessed with something. You simply want to go in deeper. “The final or fourth ingredient is values, good values. “If you look for people who have those four elements, that is the first part of the formula. Then you add some practice and experience by giving people opportunities to practice leadership,” claims Swaniker.

Practical leadership experience at the Academy is genuine, real time hands-on leadership experience, where the students are not only encouraged to launch a business or community project but are, in reality, running the entire show. “If a team of our young leaders wants to start a business, for example, they come up with a venture, pitch the idea to a panel of venture capitalists we assemble, and then the best ones get funded. “Over the two years at the Academy they have to run these projects. There is a CEO, a CFO, a Marketing Director and a board of directors of real business people they have to report to. “They get audited by Ernest & Young, and a corporate lawyer on their board helps them to address the legal issues. In short, they go through a real experience of running a business or social venture with real money, involving real people. “Over the past three years we have launched about thirty-five different ventures on our campus,” adds Swaniker. “What we are trying to do is simulate the experience Michael Dell had when he was selling computers in his dorm room at the age of nineteen. “Let’s find a way of simulating that experience. It is not so much whether it succeeds or fails. It is the experience of going through the process, gaining experience of how to lead, and giving them the confidence to go out and jump into bigger things later on in life.”

The final part of the leadership formula is creating opportunity. “That is where the whole network part comes in,” remarks Swaniker. “It is about proactively facilitating networks which open the doors the leaders need opened in order to take their ideas to scale. “I think the raw material for great leadership exists in Africa,” affirms Swaniker with confidence. “The problem is the channels for getting them into the positions where they can actually exert the great leadership skills they exhibit, are blocked. So you have the wrong people getting into positions instead of the right people who could actually create the fundamental changes we so desperately need in Africa. “They are simply not getting access to the networks they need to bring their ideas to fruition,” argues Swaniker.

One of the major stumbling blocks in Africa, and the world at large, is the resounding lack of accountability, a deficit Swaniker is adamant will be addressed by this very same network of facilitators, mentors and leaders. “We want to get everyone working together around a common vision about what good society in Africa should look like,” remarks Swaniker. “Due to the personal relationships that exist between these leaders, they will hold each other accountable,” he asserts. “If someone gets into a position and becomes corrupt, a fellow leader in the network will say, ‘This is not what we were taught at the ALA,’ or, ‘These are not the good values we know.’ “I have a lot of belief that it will be a self-enforcing mechanism of accountability because they have certain standards they expect from their peers.”

Swaniker is also dismayed at the inherent skepticism of Africans towards this new, innovative paradigm of leadership in Africa. “When we first started the Academy in 2008, a lot of people thought we were crazy. Africans would simply not support us. Even today we struggle to get funding from African institutions, companies and individuals while America champions us in realising our big dream. “We, in Africa, do not have enough confidence in ourselves to think that we can actually solve our own problems, and are always looking for the outside world to solve them for us. We will come up with all the reasons why something will not work, instead of actually figuring out how it can work. “We need to stop waiting for the rest of the world to solve our problems. We need to do it ourselves. That is what these leaders are here for. They need to solve problems for Africa. It is not about enriching themselves or becoming powerful. It is about solving problems for the common person on the ground in Africa.”

Notwithstanding this singular lack of belief in Africa by Africans, Swaniker has been blown away by the talent and calibre of aspirant leaders identified by the Academy. “I had high expectations, but the four hundred leaders we have found so far across Africa – selected from over nine thousand five hundred applicants and brought into our network – have exceeded my expectations. I have never seen anything like it – I had a dream but what we are witnessing exceeds even my wildest dreams! “The people who can solve our problems in Africa do exist. It is simply a matter of finding them and getting them into the right place,” remarks Swaniker with unrestrained enthusiasm.

For a full transcript of this interview please visit www.tsiba.org.za/news/resources 

DGMT is seeking to develop a similar information hub for young people, through its support for Career Planet.  In this regard, we were struck by Babajob’s ability to attract the interest of small and medium-size companies, because they are more likely than bigger corporations to employ unskilled and semi-skilled workers.  We were also encouraged to see that a relatively small call centre of 8 people could handle the roughly 1 000 connections and enquiries a day.  On the downside, we realised that the cost of mobile connections in South Africa – more than ten times that of India – undermines our ability to use new communication technologies for development.  Sure, almost every South African has a cell phone, but few South African firms would respond to a job-seeker’s ‘please call me’.

Many adults and youth have not completed their formal education due to the many and varied challenges that beset South Africa.  There are as many adults and youth requiring education as there are children in school, yet their needs are not adequately addressed or even considered as important.

Why adult education and providing second chances should be an important national priority:

—     Adults, and some youth, are parents.  Parents are crucial in the support and development of their families as well as their children’s education.  We have an education crisis, how much could have been resolved if parents were better educated and involved in the education of their children?

—     Adults are part of the work force.  Skilled and educated workers have a much better understanding of their role in the economy.  They understand systems and relationships if they are better educated and informed.  How much stronger could our economy be if workers were better educated?  How many more people could be employed if they had the requisite skills needed, including a good basic education?

—     Adults and youth are part of communities.  The development of communities is vital if we are to have a stable and democratic society.  Adults and youth vote, create or manage conflict, engage with each other, support community initiatives, act as monitors in their environment regarding crime, health issues, child and gender abuse and family care.  How much healthier would our communities be if they had learning opportunities, both formal and non-formal ones, where they examined their situations, determined the actions needed and felt empowered to address the issues?

—     Although education does not guarantee employment it gives greater access.  It also enables people to apply for employment or to participate in training programmes, register at FET colleges or university or gain promotion at work if already employed.  Many people who left school with an incomplete education find in later life that they cannot be promoted or attend training courses because they do not have the requisite matric certificate.

The present situation, whereby a properly supported and recognised adult education system is not in place in South Africa, is hampering our progress to become a skilled and developmental society.

What Share is doing:

Over the 21 years of its existence SHARE has developed a system to try and address the needs of adult and youth who desire to continue their education and redress the poor educational system in which they found themselves.

Among literacy and other courses we developed classes offering ABET Level 4 (the equivalent of Grade 9) and matric.  Both courses are assessed through the national education department’s examination process, moderated and marked externally and have the certificates necessary to prove competence.

Working in the Helderberg basin around the Somerset West area, we see very high school drop-out rates.  Various reasons for this can be named, such as discipline problems, bad school attendance record, big classes, social problems and learning disabilities.  Annually we enroll between 25 to 40 students for the Level 4 course, but we also hope to pilot a non-formal popular education programme to draw youth back into a learning environment without the pressure of formal exams as we have seen a number of our students drop-out of this course (for the second time) because they cannot cope academically.

The demand and need for matric studies continues to overwhelm the centre, there have however been many challenges in offering this course.  The Minister of Higher Education, Dr. Blade Nzimande extended the old matric curriculum until 2014, but a number of provisos were put to learners, such as age limits and previous registration.  Even though the Department does not want to take new learners, people continually come to register at Share to try and complete the qualification.  We encourage them to register directly with the Department, or to write to the Head of Education to illustrate to the Department the needs of adult learners and the demands experienced by adult education centres.

We have also appealed the limitations set on the matric course and always endeavour to give learners the best opportunities for their development.  Last year (2011) a number of learners went on to tertiary and further education studies after they completed the matric course, as did a group the previous year.  This after it was said that adults couldn’t pass their matric in one year part-time!  Many adults and youth only need an opportunity to show their mettle and they can achieve much.  This year we are offering learners the following 6 subjects: Afrikaans First Language, English Second Language, Physiology, Travel & Tourism, South African Criminal Law and Introduction to Criminology.

Our lessons learned and best advice for other centres and individuals who would like to get involved in offering adult education and second chances for school drop-outs:

—     We employed educators who are not only competent but passionate and dedicated, who understand the needs of adults and youth as well as their challenges in studying at night, part-time.

—     Given that we offer night classes in an area where there are few options in terms of public transport, our students needed a transport system to allow them attend classes regularly. We therefore developed an intensive taxi system that offers learners the opportunity to travel safely to and from class.

—     It is vital to have good management and financial support.  We have established strong and accountable management together with all the legal requisites of the non-profit and non-governmental sector.

—     The ethos of SHARE is to be learner centred, to be caring, to help people develop their own competency and confidence and not to be fearful of the unknown.  This applies to staff as well as to learners.  We have always strived to encourage learners to understand the possibilities each one of them holds.

—     We network with a range of other bodies and have always been willing to share knowledge, ideas and processes, even resources.

In conclusion, a good quality, responsive system of further learning and education for adults and youth will be needed for a long time in South Africa, although lifelong learning should always be part of a country’s approach to the development of its citizens.   All people should be on a pathway of continuous learning, whether it be for new employment opportunities, promotion possibilities or simply for the pure pleasure of growing their minds.  SHARE trusts that with the development of the Green Paper on post school education that the national Minister of Education will ensure that a new process will be enacted upon which will see the implementation of a true adult education and training sector, one that will truly serve the needs of the many communities and individuals within South Africa.

-Based on a learning brief prepared by Share

Contact Details

301 Victoria Centre

Victoria Street

Somerset West 7130

021 8511427

Fax: 0866728197

abeshare@iafrica.com

www.abeshare.org

We came away persuaded that children’s reading can be significantly improved by intensive and focused reading activity, and that the gains can be sustained. It was fantastic to see a school-library system operating in over 1 200 schools in Bangalore, implemented by Akshara at very low cost.  They are able to track the reading habits of over 215 000 library users. A major facilitator of reading in India is the affordability of books, which cost less than a quarter of the price of books in South Africa!

Another major facilitator is the low-cost of communication: cell phone costs are about 15c per minute!  This has allowed mobile technology to be widely used to improve access to information for poor people.  Babajob connects 1 000 work seekers to potential employment every day.  We must confront the facts that the cost of books and communication in South Africa are major impediments to education and employment.

We will be writing a learning brief based on our experience, but you can look at a brief presentation of our study visit here (note that this is a large document and might take a minute or two to load).

Based on a learning brief prepared by the Centre for Child Law

Although the legal framework for children’s rights in South Africa is extremely progressive, the fact that South Africa is a developing country means that the realization of the rights guaranteed to children presents a great challenge. As a result, it is necessary that members of civil society actively seek out areas in which the state ignores or has reneged upon their obligations. Although many civil society organizations are very successful in advocating for systemic change, it is often a lengthy process which can result in a delayed response to children’s rights issues that need immediate responses. Strategic impact litigation can however complement advocacy efforts, especially in South Africa where court judgments has the potential to result in the development of  laws,setting precedents which have a lasting effect on the law.  The lack in knowledge and understanding of impact litigation amongst child rights organisations and legal practitioners prevents them from effectively ensuring the fulfilment, protection and enforcement of children’s rights?

What is strategic impact litigation?

Strategic impact litigation can best be explained as involving a strategy whereby cases, that have the potential of bringing about broad legal and social changes for people, are selected and taken to court.  It involves selecting cases to present  before courts with the aim to effect broad changes in society and have long term benefits for all children.  Through the Centre for Child Law’s litigation project, civil society organisations can refer cases to the centre for impact litigation.

When to refer a case to the Centre

The Centre is continuously building networks and partnerships with organizations for referrals of cases that will be appropriate for impact litigation. The Centre takes the following into account when deciding to embark on strategic impact litigation cases:

• The scale of change for children similarly affected in South Africa;
• The results from a through situation analysis (if time permits);
• The broader political context – the time must be right for litigation;
• Involving partners as amicus curiae (friends of the court);
• Linking the case with other forms of advocacy and the media;
• The client’s needs — first ensure that the client’s interests and protection and participation needs are met;
• Whether the threat of litigation can also achieve the desired result.

How to refer a case to the Centre for Child Law

The Centre for Child Law welcomes the referral of cases from civil society organizations that deal with systemic issues relating to children or emergency protection of children and their rights. If an individual or organization is unsure as to whether the case is appropriate, contact the Centre nevertheless, and a referral will be made if the case does not fall within the scope of those undertaken by the Centre.

Steps to take:

• Ensure that all options are exhausted before turning to impact litigation;
• Gather all information available on the problem experienced;
• Evaluate the type of case –is it a case that could potentially affect a wide range of children, or will it only affect a selected amount of children;
• If other organizations are involved/experiencing the same problem, inform them of the possible litigation around the matter;
• Contact the Centre for Child Law as soon as possible.

Contact details:

Centre for Child Law

Room 4-30

Faculty of Law Building

University of Pretoria

Hatfield

0083

Tel: +27 12 420 4502

Fax: +27 12 420 4499

www.centreforchildlaw.co.za