“What we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from… ” Adapted from T.S. Elliot

 

 

SAWIP board members, Deputy Vice Chancellor of UWC, SAWIP Alumni, my fellow SAWIP team members and friends and family, my very own beginning started 22 years ago on a beautiful farm in the Tsitsikamma. Little did I know back then that I would have the opportunity of standing before all of you tonight.

 

As a youngster I grew up in the best home a young man could ever dream of. I had the best parents, a brother which I love and a dairy farm as my backyard; everything a boy could ask for. My parents always encouraged me to be all that I can be, never telling me that I cannot achieve what I put my mind to; the sky was my limit.

 

Ever since I can remember I had a passion for people and our country, specifically South Africa’s diversity of cultures.

 

The part of my family who is here tonight, will attest to the fact that if you go back to all my school books  when I was 8, all of my colouring was done with the colours of the rainbow. Not just any colouring, I used 6 or more colours to colour atone. If you go through every single picture in my books, no matter what it was about, this is what you would find.

 

For some strange reason I did things like this that were quite unique.

 

When I look back at them and other similar events in my life, I realize that it symbolised my own beginning of the appreciation for diversity; the birth of the rainbow nation in my own life.

 

Although my parents raised me in a home where we judged all people as equal, it never was a reality to me until recently…

 

At our orientation camp prior to the D.C. trip, I was one of the few interns which indicated on the accommodation form that I wanted to share my experience with someone else. This happened without knowing I would start a complete new friendship with an exceptional man for the first time. Before I knew anything I was unexpectedly designated to spend my 5 weeks with this person that I knew very little about. In these five weeks while living, eating and literally doing everything together, I made a significant new friendship with a black man for the very first time... He is sitting in the audience tonight, Abednigo Nkosi (AJ).

 

AJ, our relatively young and new friendship has really meant a lot to me, it is my own reconciliation story… My dream is that through our friendship other people will come to understand UBUNTU as they come to see everyone around them, regardless of skin colour, as their equal. My friendship with AJ is just one of the significant stories of how SAWIP has had a meaningful impact on me. The program has added so many new and significant things to my life.

 

Doing a world class internship at the International Finance Corporation and meeting with the world’s biggest business leaders and politicians was an experience that I will search long and hard for to experience ever again. But, there is one thing that separates this program from being just the conventional.

 

It is the opportunity that I have had to spend six months with the 14 most awe-inspiring leaders that I have ever met. No monetary value or international trip to the United States can be valued more than our precious time we have spent together.

 

I have not learnt what leadership is by meeting with the best in business and politics from across the world, you taught me leadership. I have not come to realise the bright future that this nation bears by looking at the Nelson Mandela’s of our country, you showed me the future.  I have not had the courage or influence to make a difference, but you helped me to be the difference.  It is through hours of heated arguments, day after day sometimes for 5 hours at a time, and it is through our wonderful friendships that I have realised and been able to do all of this.

 

Tonight I want to honour all 14 of you for inspiring me to be a better person and leader. You have impacted me in a way that I cannot describe.

 

Our SAWIP narrative inextricably binds us together. We will forever have this life changing experience which we shared with each other and the reality is that all of us will not stay best friends, but we will certainly meet in a few years time and reflect on how we have impacted our world, each in our own unique way.

 

This is not the end, in fact, this may under no circumstance be the end of our journey. To make an end of SAWIP is indeed to make a new beginning. From here on onwards it is a new beginning to our stories, a new life.

 

The onus and responsibility now rests on us to begin with the task at hand, to take this experience and to implement change in a desperate country.

 

Yet, we may not stop exploring; we may not stop searching or stop challenging the status quo. We have to be on the lookout for our fellow South Africans who have the same dreams and ideals as us. We must work together and engage with them to create the space for our dreams to turn into reality.

 

 When this happens and only when this happens, will we be able to arrive at the end of our journey and look back on our stories as successful and still then we may not rest.

 

I believe in every single one of you who are sitting here tonight, you will go out and change this world. Therefore, I find it appropriate to leave you with the following from Winston Churchill “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” May this inspire you to keep on doing great things.

 

On behalf of the SAWIP class of 2011 I want to thank the board, management and sponsors for empowering us with the opportunity and privilege of being part of such a significant event. I want to wish you all the best of luck in continuing to develop the next generation of South African leaders in a way that will change this country and the face of the African continent. I thank you.

Some things may seem like the end, but in essence they serve as fuel which gets thrown onto an already smouldering fire, serving as the drive behind the beginning of something far greater. This speaks truth to my situation. Arriving back in my homeland, back where I truly belong has brought the end to our American-trip/Internship, but it has brought forward the beginning of exciting, challenging and new things.

Gaining perspective can be a very valuable thing. In order to gain real insight into one’s circumstances you need to extract yourself from your immediate surroundings, and take a few steps back in order to gain real perspective on what you are busy with or where you are heading. This is exactly what I did the last few months. The visit to the States has brought forth a lot of new things within me, fruit that will bear, hopefully, uplifting consequences for our fragile society.

To be honest the States has changed my life. Firstly, I have gained insight to my own life and not fully yet, but in a big way what I want to do from here onwards. These past six weeks has sparked within my heart, a renewed passion for South Africa. I want to move into the corporate world, but I want to use it to make a difference in the education and development of our people, especially our children. Education is one of the great keys to a better prosperous nation. No longer will I confine my thinking to my own little world, but I will think much further, much bigger with greater implications.

Secondly, the trip has given me perspective on our challenges and that we cannot postpone in not addressing them anymore. I’ve said this before, but we are not engaging interracially enough. We need opportunities for black, white, coloured and Asian to interact and to learn from one another. Forums and Societies must be erected to address the lack of this. This does not happen overnight, during our trip we got to know this first-hand. We long for having trust in our relationships, this is one of the pillars on which a solid relationship is built. This takes a lot of time. We should also realize that there will always be very urgent things to be done, but more importantly that there are essential things that should be done which will have far greater consequences than the very urgent one’s.     

 Thirdly, it has showed me what can be done when you bring people together. The power within the SAWIP group which still remains till this day is huge. One of my team mates could not have put it better when she said that we are the fuel driving each other to do great things. The same can be said to about our country, we as the country's people will in the end inspire each other to greatness or failure.

Fourthly, it has shown me that although we are 17 years down the line, people still have a lot of pain in their hearts and that some core things deep inside has not been sorted out. This is something basic, but to think that most people have moved on from apartheid is unmistakably wrong. We still have a long way to go and we should look at this urgently.

The challenge is here and now. The challenge is to take up this challenge and to do what I have learned, to change firstly my immediate friendship circle's way of thinking and to work hard at changing our country thereafter. This is but a spec of what I have pondered on, but this is not the end, the thought process must go on, and on, and eventually grow into action…

Through a discussion with one of my team mates I came to realize a very depressing fact this week. Afrikaans people, and especially the Afrikaans youth, don’t have a credible and ethical leader we can look up too. How does that happen? We all know it is exceptionally important for the youth to have a role model to imitate and to relate too. More importantly these individuals should guide the youth’s being; they should be the visionaries for my generation.

What has gone wrong that there is no Afrikaans leader, man or woman, who I personally would like to associate myself with today? Very important knowledge and life experiences are possessed by these older individuals, which needs to be forcefully advanced to the next generation. In order for us to take the best of the generation before us, we need these mentors and their knowledge. If this issue is not addressed soon it will leave a gap within the Afrikaans community. Exactly this gap in leadership has made that people from other races begin to see someone like Steve Hofmeyer as a sort of “voice” for the Afrikaner people. This is very sad, as I certainly do not see it as the case. He is someone I would not like myself to be associated with at all. Where is the Beyers Naude’s in the world? Even if this continues I know the Afrikaans youth will eventually step up to the plate, however this process could have been advanced by the presence of a man or woman with character, innovation and a fundamentally new way of thinking and the lack of presence is negatively impacting the process. My colleague also made a very good point, though Afrikaners are by far the minority group in South Africa this country cannot successfully and effectively go on without our presence at the table. It is crucial that we effectively and efficiently need to be part of the reconciliation process as well as government to really make progress. For that matter, no race group can be left out, but especially not Afrikaans people.    

Let me move to more positive stuff. Our second week was about democracy’s function in the world, but more specifically within the African continent. It is very true that if a country has democratic status it does not really mean that they have a democracy in the true essence of the word. Freedom of association, freedom of religion, transparency and accountability are but a few of these. More importantly I have learned that it is an ethical mindset of leaders and within that having and accommodating active citizenship behavioral mindset of government. We also had a breathtaking visit to the Empire State of Mind: New York. It is everything you see on TV and it truly is a city full of skyscrapers and unique people. We met a few remarkable people from the South African Consulate and it was very obvious to me that they know what they are doing to ensure our country’s success internationally. We also had the privilege of meeting corporate people from Colgate-Palmolive, Standard Bank etc. Thank you to SAWIP management for organizing an action packed and very successful weekend.  

It certainly is nothing like what I have experienced before, as I found myself in a first world country for only the second time in my life.

Doing community service was in no sense a new thing to me, in fact I don’t think it’s new for any SAWIP intern.

The last five weeks has been one of the most inspiring and, in the same sense, completely new times of my life. The SAWIP “ride” has completely lived up to its reputation and it truly is changing my world in a dramatic way and without a doubt, our country.