Learning from the legacy of Es’kia Mphahlele

The nation seems to have learnt very little from the lessons of its own history. This according to Dr Mamphela Ramphele, who delivered the keynote address at the seventh Es’kia Mphahlele Annual Memorial Lecture on September 30 at the Ranch Protea Hotel, south of Polokwane.

Ramphele said Mphahlele had warned about the current issues facing South Africa, but that we had failed to listen.

She said: “He must be distraught about our failure to heed his advice in his graduation address at Wits University in 1995.”

Ramphele quoted from Mphahlele’s graduation speech: “In the heat and crush, push and shove, urgency, preoccupations, panic and heartburn of the times, it is easy to lose sight of the essence of the dramatic events and issues that have come to the forefront of our consciousness these days around tertiary institutions.

“We are afraid to come to terms with the burden of our history, which bedevils the education crises we are in. This crisis, we observe, brings out the ugliest in us as academics, students, workers and administrators, and often belies the best we can bring to the hammer and anvil on which we are currently trying to reshape the present into the future.”

The struggle continues

Ramphele cautioned that the goals of the past — which are very much like those of the present — are yet to be achieved.

“The 1976 high school student uprising demonstrated the power of young people to risk all for the ideal of high quality education, free of the ideological burden that sought to perpetuate their dehumanisation and inferior status in the land of their birth.

“[From] 1995 to 2000, tertiary student protests were about aligning the tertiary institutions with our political settlement and the demands for fundamental transformation at the national level.”

Bemoaning the state of education in South Africa, she said people should acknowledge that the education system today both at the basic and tertiary levels has failed to grasp the opportunity to become the fountain of talent development and idea generation that was envisaged as part of a transformed system.

“Our distress at the violence and destruction of public property is understandable as it is in stark contrast to our failure as a nation to express outrage at the continuing destruction of talent and hope in successive generations of young people.

“What nation can normalise the theft of hope from so many of its young? Twenty-two years after our political settlement, children are still facing high infant and child mortality rates in a middle-income country such as ours. Twenty-two years into democracy, more than 50% of our children still drop out of school, and of those who survive and enter our tertiary sector, 50% of them also drop out.

“Where is our outrage at the pain of the more than four million young people who are unemployed and walking our streets and villages? Where is our outrage at the millions who find solace from humiliation and despair in substance abuse? Where is the outrage against this monumental destruction of the seed of our future by our education and training system?”

Paying tribute

Remembering Mphahlele, Ramphele said the late great was a man ahead of his time.

“Mphahlele could see much further standing on ground level, even though he had no giant shoulders to stand on. But after all, he was a giant. He understood that for us to build a nation, we would have to develop a strong human and social consciousness and move from dependence to interdependence. We must be shapers of our own future.

“In this tribute to Es’kia Mphahlele, I would like to suggest that we have all been lulled into complacency by the political settlement of 1994. We neglected to heed Mphahlele’s advice for us to ‘come to terms with the burden of our history’. I would like to propose that it is time to complement our celebrated 1994 political settlement with a process of ‘coming to terms with the burden of our history.’

“Such a process will enable us to acknowledge the wounds that continue to fester in our society from the impact of colonial conquest, and racist minority governments that legitimised the exploitation of indigenous people through dehumanisation and undermining their history and culture.

“The process would also address the wounds of the perpetuation of economic exclusion of the majority post-1994. The successful conclusion of the process would be an emotional settlement. An emotional settlement would unleash the talents and energies that are essential to a third process: a socioeconomic settlement.”

A way forward

In looking towards the future, Ramphele focused on three themes: re-imagining our country’s future, achieving an emotional settlement, and rebuilding our re-imagined country.

Explaining why re-imagining the country is critical to South Africa’s success, she said: “Twenty-two years after our transition to democracy is a good time for us to pause and re-dream ourselves into a future we can be proud of. We need to listen to the growing chorus of young people’s voices. They feel alienated from the dream of 1994. Some go as far as denouncing it as a sell-out that allowed white people to get away with murder — physical and metaphorical. The anger and rage that burst out during public protests cannot be sanitised by pleas for reason.

“It is unreasonable to expect young people to work together with them [white people] to paint a co-created vision of a re-imagined society that they can co-own and have confidence in. The negative energy in our society is a signal that all is not well. We need to turn our collective gaze towards the horizon to find the inspiration that will enable us to transcend the rut we are in as a society. We need to remind ourselves that we have one of the most beautiful countries in the world that is rich in human, natural and mineral resources. We also need to raise the bar of our imagination and paint a bold picture of an inclusive, prosperous democracy we call all be proud of.”

Confronting the feelings that have been allowed to remain unexpressed is essential, according to Ramphele. An emotional settlement would address the hurt that remains in the country in a way that the democratic settlement, and even the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, did not.

Ramphele said this emotional settlement is the most difficult to address, as few people readily open up their feelings to scrutiny — even within intimate spaces.

“Our feelings, good or bad, shape our being and our capacity for social relationships. Unacknowledged feelings of hurt that are not addressed tend to fester. Social pain is even more devastating on a nation’s psyche and imperils its future.

“Emotional settlement work entails telling one another our stories as South Africans. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was too narrowly focused on gross violation of human rights to significantly assist the national healing process.”

She said that this process must be extended to cover the issues, and people, that were less prominent at that time.

“Only a few people were involved out of the millions of people who continue to carry the burden of [our] social pain. We need broader discussions, including those about the violation of people on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, age and all forms of abuse.”

Ramphele said securing an emotional settlement is a prerequisite to citizens recommitting to working together to rebuild the country they re-imagine. “Our failure over the last 22 years to build a democratic, non-racial, inclusive, prosperous society can be attributed largely to the lack of [a] shared, co-created vision and the flow of empathy that would give content to the rhetoric of ubuntu. The acceptance of the ‘I am because of you’ by all citizens inevitably leads to a desire to see everyone being enabled to contribute to the emergence of our envisioned society.

“We are at a pivotal moment in our history. We have all the ingredients of success. The choice is ours to whether we recommit to re-imagining our country into the great society it can become or continue to hesitate at the threshold of a new, brighter future.

“Coming to terms with the burden of our history would free us to re-imagine ours as a democratic, inclusive prosperous society where everyone celebrates our true unity in diversity. That would be the greatest tribute we could pay to Es’ kia Mphahlele.”

The Es’kia Mphahlele Annual Memorial Lecture

Launched by the University of South Africa (Unisa) in 2009, the Es’kia Mphahlele Annual Memorial Lecture honours the world-renowned novelist, essayist, short-story writer and teacher whose autobiography Down Second Avenue (1959) remains a South African classic.

Born Ezekiel Mphahlele on December 17 1919 in Marabastad, he passed away on October 27 2008 at the age of 89 and was buried in his home township of Lebowakgomo.

Those who attended this year’s event spoke highly of the penman who contributed so immensely to the literary world.

The topic for this year’s lecture was “Es’kia Mphahlele: An appreciation of an African giant.”

First to eulogise the late literary paragon was the programme director of the session, political analyst Dr Somadoda Fikeni, who is director: vice chancellor’s projects and advisor to the principal at Unisa.

Fikeni described Mphahlele as “An intellectual giant who was the doyen of literature. He was like a great African elephant that left his giant footprints on the African soil and his intellectual scent on the baobab trees that will live to testify his immortal presence for another 1 000 years. This doyen of African literature truly fits the title of being ‘the dean of African humanism’.”

Explaining the choice of venue, Unisa principal Mandla Makhanya said, “Holding this lecture in Limpopo is Unisa’s firm commitment to spread the footprint of its public engagement to every corner of our society.”

Mphahlele’s son Puso said he was grateful that his father left him with the priceless gift of reading.

He said, “I spend most of my time in the family library, reading a lot. I also take a book to the toilet and read instead of staring at the walls.

“Everybody wanted me to emulate my father. I couldn’t because he was unsurpassable. At the time of his death, he already had 10 honorary doctorate degrees from around the world. Even the legendary Mahatma Gandhi couldn’t surpass that milestone.”