Why have we chosen the theme 2014, not 2004, the 10th anniversary of democracy, for our end- of-the-year edition?
Next year will certainly be a milestone for South Africa — 10 years of freedom, a third general election, a second term for the second president. There will be much to watch, to talk about and to debate.
But the 20th anniversary of democracy in 2014 is going to be the watershed anniversary — which is why we have chosen to project this edition two decades into freedom.
The interregnum will be over; the nation fashioned and the first generation of the children of freedom will stand on the threshold of adulthood.
Will this be a generation of “born-frees” for whom apartheid is something granny talks about; are they independent of thought and action?
We hope that generation 2014 will be highly opinionated, choosy about their leaders and protective of their democracy.
We hope that they stand on the shoulders of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Lillian Ngoyi, keeping in mind always that for freedom to mean something it must touch everyone.
We hope that they, in turn, will have been touched by democracy’s fruits (education, housing, health) and that,by 2014, there will no more children who meet Baby Tshepang’s fate.
We hope that the universities will be hotbeds of learning; that the social movements will have grown in strength and the leading political parties will have grown in thought and strategy.Â
And, most vitally, we hope that the rate of HIV infection will have been stemmed; that the anti-retroviral programme has been a life-saving success and that people talk about sex and practice safe sex … with whomever they like. Â
2003 is the year in which long-term thinking has come back into vogue, with most analysts focusing on the years 2014 or 2015.
Witness the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s 2015 plan for its future (the year the federation turns 30) and the Brenthurst Initiative commissioned by Nicky Oppenheimer and his son Jonathan, which plots business’s ideal world and economy circa 2014.
Labour, business and the government have also fashioned the outlines of a social compact in the form of the growth and development summit pact. Among its more revolutionary targets is an attempt to halve unemployment by 2014.Â
So 2014 is the year to watch: scenario planners both in the unions and in the Presidency have used the imagery of cars to conceive a South African future.
They warn against a skorokoro trade union movement and a skedonk of a country.
Who wants to drive a beat-up wreck? We see a country that is like a bright new taxi (shiny and recapitalised of course); a fast Gautrain. A strong state not scared of using its pockets to make better the lot of its people.
Now there’s the stuff of dreams.