Agang SA leader Mamphela Ramphele was pressed into taking questions from the audience after her prepared speech at the Wits Origins Centre on Thursday when a student interrupted her exit to ask whether the public would be allowed to engage with her. "We're not in church here," he said.
Unflustered, Ramphele took a series of questions from the audience, which was made up mostly of students. Although many had cheered and clapped during her speech, which was themed as a citizen's fear of criticising government, even the obvious Agang supporters asked probing questions of the struggle stalwart.
The beret-wearing student, who introduced himself as Tom, criticised Ramphele's address, saying it focused more on the ANC and its governance than on Agang.
"What is Agang itself going to do that is different?" he asked. "It's misleading to associate corruption with government because those people who are doing it are not doing it alone; they are doing it with public companies."
Ramphele responded by saying that one did not fear "something that's still being formed" but "something that is still happening".
"There is something disturbing with the governance of our country and we owe it to ourselves and the future of our children not to allow the continuation of the misgovernance that is going on," she said.
"Without good governance you cannot have a sustainable demo-cracy, and that's the reason why you're focusing on that."
Hopelessness
A young woman told Ramphele: "I'm a student at Wits, I'm black, I'm young, and I do have a fear and my greatest fear today is disappointment. So much hope you're getting [to] a place where there is no corruption … How can you dismantle that fear so that when I walk into the next election, it's not just a case of the same script but [a] different cast."
Ramphele responded: "Sisi, your fear of disappointment – who's going to disappoint you? You should be the active person making sure you don't get disappointed.
"We were much younger than you when we led this country out of the hopelessness, the total despair of the 1960s and 1970s. We didn't say 'give us a guarantee that we will succeed'. There are no guarantees."
Another student told Ramphele that she had been away from politics for a very long time and would "miss the rules of the game". "Politics and academics are very different," he said.
Ramphele disagreed. "That's the problem in South Africa. There is no difference. You cannot govern in the 21st century without knowledge and science and technology," she said.
Agang's policies would be based on evidence and focus on execution through a professional, meritocratic public service, she said.
"You will see the difference between a public service that knows how to govern in an accountable way with knowledge of the [local] areas."
Ramphele said that Agang had 10 000 volunteers across the country and that it would launch a six-point petition on electoral reform in Klipspruit, Soweto, on Freedom Day.
Another student questioned whether there would be enough time for the political platform to make an impact before the general election.
Constrained
"Some of us feel that the pace is not fast enough. We're looking at elections, looking at the time, and saying we're not going to win this campaign," she said
Ramphele disagreed. "We're playing to win; we're not playing for any other game," she said. "There are enough citizens who want to see change. What they want is a vehicle for change. Agang is that vehicle. We are building it. It's going to be nimble; it's going to be smart."
The event came nine weeks after Ramphele launched the political platform Agang SA and embarked on a listening tour of the country during which she spoke to communities to discuss their needs.
Ramphele said she had found that South Africans – rich, poor, urban and rural – were constrained by the fear that raising their voices against government and the ANC would result in the loss of government grants and business opportunities.
She was scathing about corruption, which stole R30-billion from the budget each year.
Ramphele said that these were not just "bumps on the road" or "the inevitable pains of a transitional period" but a betrayal of the founding principles of South Africa's democracy.