by Justin Foxton | Feb 28, 2020 | Citizen Participation, General
Many of us wish to contribute to our country, help confront our many societal challenges and make a positive difference. This is often expressed sincerely in words like: “I want to give back” or “I want to repay my privilege.”
I have chewed on these words for over a decade now. What has become evident to me is that we need to begin a fresh, new conversation in order to grow and sustain our involvement in the important work of giving and building. This becomes more-and-more vital as our democracy matures and citizens begin to realise their responsibility as co-architects of our future.
Shifting the narrative
Language is powerful and the issue with words like, “giving back” and “repaying” is that they kick-off our change-making efforts from a point of indebtedness. So, the impetus is usually something akin to guilt. Now, I am not saying that we are not indebted or that we don’t need to “give back”. I am saying that whilst guilt can be a start point as a motivator, it seldom drives people to a lifetime of quality service. So, great new possibilities arise when we ask: What if we could sustain ourselves and one another for a lifelong journey of service? For me, this is a truly exciting possibility. It paints a picture of millions upon millions of us all building, growing and giving – over the long term.
A vision of a new future
And what if this vision could begin to take shape simply by me changing my language and moving from the paying back narrative to: “I want to be the change I wish to see in the world”; “I want to be a contribution”; “I want to use my privilege to tackle inequality and restore balance”; “I want to build my community by starting fresh, positive conversations”; “I want to serve people who are struggling”?
These statements are radically different because they are rooted in love not guilt. They involve the heart – the spirit – not just the head. They require an ongoing and very positive commitment backed up by effort and joyful sacrifice. The work is not a once-off but a part of who I am and a daily source of joy, as I live within the reality that it is better to give than to receive.
These generative narratives shift us into new and exciting spaces. They take us away from deficit and lack towards positive and intentional lived responses to the myriad challenges of our society.
by Justin Foxton | Jan 31, 2020 | Citizen Participation, General
I read a great quote recently that speaks powerfully of the role South Africans can play in creating the future reality we want for our country. It said simply: “You are just one sentence away from changing the story.” It seemed to echo another commonly articulated trope that the battle is always won first in the mind. If we can exercise the mental muscles to come up with new and more positive story lines – starting with just one new sentence – the battles we face will always be won. History proves this point every time.
What is our current story about South Africa?
I must confess that as we enter this new decade, I am surely not oozing positivity. But if it is worth considering that we are one sentence away from a different story, then what could that sentence possibly be? And would it help to spend time talking about and creating new sentences rather than rehashing our old tales of woe?
Its just a jump to the left
As human beings we get stuck in narratives that bleed us of hope. For example, if we have made up our mind that the Department of Health is inept and will never deliver improved health services to our people, then hope vanishes and we look for validation of this viewpoint, which abounds. If the battle against hopelessness (and indeed poor health care) is to be won in the mind (and hence in reality), then a different sentence leading to a new story needs to be crafted. This might be: “What if I begin to seek out and tell the many success stories in the Department of Health?”. Or better still: “What if I find ways to contribute to better health care in our country?” This kind of thinking takes some serious effort, but it disrupts our personal and collective narratives and sets us on a new and more productive course. It requires us to physically jump out of our current mindset to create new realities and when we do this, reality literally shifts.
The power of possibility
Where are you stuck in terms of your current story of our country? If you stay there, it will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you start a new sentence – and I suggest beginning that sentence with the powerful possibility words “what if….” – you will quickly enter a new realm of possibility and positivity. Suddenly, the future will become brighter as the feel-good chemicals flood your brain.
Disclaimer
You will need to do something painful before constructing new possibility-laden sentences; let go of some stinking thinking as we call it at home. You will need to be prepared to make peace with being wrong in your current assumptions, judgments and attitudes about our country and our people. You will need to let go of your view that we are on a course of failure. You will need to let go of some stereotypical, single-story narratives and the notion that this is not your problem to solve. This is painful because many of us have held our tired old views for a very long time.
But if the battle can be won one sentence at a time, isn’t that a much better way to go into 2020 than holding onto our old negative stories that will ultimately lead only to failure?
by Justin Foxton | Dec 2, 2019 | Citizen Participation, General
We did it – now what?
With the euphoria of our magnificent Rugby World Cup victory in Japan beginning to level off, we are beginning to change our focus and ask some powerful questions: How can we sustain the unity that #RWC2019 created? How can we maintain the heightened levels of hope and positivity? How can we continue to live out the mantra of #strongertogether?
These are the right questions because as jubilant as we are, there is a limit to how far sport can take us before we as citizens must step in, grab the baton and continue leading the charge.
How do we “bottle” the World Cup gees?
In order to “bottle” the positive effects of the World Cup victory, we first need to clearly name what they were. Two things stand out: Hope and unity. Now, the exciting thing about these two affects is that it is easily within our ability as individual human beings, as families, communities and organisations, to not only sustain but create them. Both are, in the first instance, decisions that we take to allow hope and unity to become our dominant narrative and pattern of behaviour.
Creating hope and unity
So, the event of the Springboks winning the World Cup did not of itself create unity and hope. We allowed unity and hope to rise in us as a response to their victory. Sure, we had turbo-boosters – a massive national surge of endorphins and serotonin and all the other feel-good hormones that promote positive, happy feelings and behaviour. But interestingly, we then translated those intense happy feelings into words and deeds of hope and unity. And by the way, this started way before the final.
We needed this
Now, an already hopeful, united nation say, Denmark, would not have had these affects triggered in the same way had they won the World Cup. They might not have felt the victory so intensely, and if they had, they might have allowed other affects to be triggered – affects that they needed at that time as a nation. But we needed hope and unity so as a result, we allowed those to be triggered in us.
Creating hope and unity: A 2-step process
Sustaining hope and unity is seemingly as simple as a two-step process: First we must decide to be hopeful and united with all humanity. Having made the decision to be hopeful and united, we decide to act on it. Here are two actions you might take for each:
On hope:
- Surround yourself with positive, hopeful people
- Speak (and forward, like etc) only positive and hopeful words
On unity:
- Be intentional about greeting people and perhaps smiling at them
- Spend time getting to know people who don’t look, sound or think like you
I am sure that as a family or community you could come up with loads more actions. But if all we do is these few simple things, our country will ride the wave of victory for many years to come.
by Justin Foxton | Nov 19, 2019 | Citizen Participation, General
Whether you like the #imstaying campaign or not, it is doing a significant job of giving a section of the population a much-needed shot in the arm. Given the vast numbers of people lending their voice to the movement (650 000 and counting), there is a huge opportunity for a phase 2 called something like #imstaying #impartofthesolution.
To inspire us and hopefully get things started, here are 4 short stories from my own life of people who have been part of the solution. There is an entrepreneur, an Organisational Development specialist, a mother and a group of passionate S’affers now living abroad. All 4 have one thing in common; they have used what was in their hearts and hands to be part of the solution.
Mam Khanyi – Home of Hope (www.hopehome.org.za)
Nearly 20 years ago, an import/export entrepreneur noticed 4 girl children standing near the robots near her Johannesburg apartment. She asked a man who these children were and was horrified when he told her they were prostitutes. She invited them into her apartment for tea and after being told that they were forced to deal drugs and sell their bodies on behalf of pimps and drug lords, she stormed off to find said men and gave them a dressing down they will never forget. Those 4 girls were rescued and nearly 2 decades later Mam Khanyi has cared for over 10 000 girl children all of whom had been trafficked and sold for sex.
Dr Louise van Rhyn – Partners for Possibility (www.pfp4sa.org)
Nearly 10 years ago, an Organisational Development specialist was profoundly moved by the Dinokeng Scenarios (www.dinokengscenarios.co.za). Dr Louise van Rhyn responded to a scenario inviting us to work together to build the nation, by starting a program called Partners for Possibility. The program partners school Principals of marginalised schools, with ordinary citizens from the non-educational working world in a co-learning, facilitated 1-year leadership development program. Since then over 1000 schools and hundreds of thousands of children nationwide have been positively impacted by the power of this globally recognised program.
Eunice Khumalo – the uMlazi Baby Home (www.peaceagency.org.za)
“Auntie Eunice” has cared for abandoned and orphaned babies all her life. Just this week, she got the keys to a house in uMlazi, South of Durban. From this home, she will now run her own Baby Home and will work together with the local community to care for babies, drive down infant abandonment and provide necessary support to vulnerable girls and women who are unable to care for their babies.
Lana & David Stephenson and Barry and Katherine Corden
These passionate South Africans now living abroad are leveraging their networks and social media skills to raise the funds necessary for Auntie Eunice to open and run the uMLazi Baby Home.
For each one of these 4 stories there are tens of thousands of others; stories of ordinary South Africans using their talents, passions and contacts to be part of the solution in South Africa.
A recipe for being part of the solution:
What are you best at? What do you love doing? What is easy and satisfying for you? Add these things to what gets your blood boiling and you have a perfect recipe. At some point these people – all ordinary South Africans like you and I – used this recipe and are now in their sweet-spot, making a difference and being part of the solution.
I invite you to give this recipe a bash so that you too can say #impartofthesolution.
by Justin Foxton | Oct 24, 2019 | Citizen Participation, Democracy, General
In her latest column in City Press entitled “There is Hope for SA”, Professor Thuli Madonsela gives us a host of reasons why we should be hopeful. She cites her recent Social Justice Summit in which a broad community of powerful stakeholders ratified her social justice M-Plan and where proverbial lions lay down with lambs: Former President FW de Klerk and Professor Ben Turok agreed on the catastrophic legacy of apartheid; Helen Zille and Wits Vice Chancellor Adam Habib shared a vision for our country; students from Rhodes and Fort Hare held constitutional dialogue sessions with no hint of the vitriol we see in our politics. We have come so far and yet our South African narrative is so massively skewed towards the negative.
Living with hope
The piece that is missing from Prof Thuli Madonsela’s powerful exhortation, only we can scribe. And the question we must consider is this: How do we wish to live our lives in SA? With hope or without it? Madonsela has clearly decided how she is going to live: Hopeful and actively involved (of course these are two sides of the same coin). But how do we – whilst not ignoring the many deep challenges and often ghastly horrors of day-to-day life in our country – do the same? We know that to live with hope whatever the circumstances is the only way to lead a happy and productive life. Yet amidst the relentless noise of bad (often fake) news and the constant resulting barrage of negativity, it can be so hard to find flickers of hope. To cope, many of us settle for cynicism. It’s a way to survive. But I invite you to consider this:
Taking the high road
There are two roads in this country. You might imagine them as a flyover suspended above a highway. The flyover is used by scores of people each day; good people who are busily making this country work. They are hard-working; they don’t do corruption; they don’t spread lies, fake news or negativity; they have integrity and are passionate about seeing our country succeed. They are school principals, policemen and women, businessfolk, politicians, parents, domestic workers, engineers, NGO workers, advocates, judges, religious leaders, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, taxi drivers, admin clerks, labourers, entrepreneurs. They ensure that the single story that South Africa is failing, is a false narrative.
Then there are the ones on the low road. The media has much to say about them. Contrary to News24, braai-talk and social media, my lived experience of our country is that this is the quieter road.
Madonsela’s implicit challenge is this: Which road do you and I want to travel on? This is a choice that only we can make, knowing that if we choose to join the high road it will take work and a constant commitment to fanning the flames of hope into being, for a better future for SA.
South Africa wont fail
But it will be worth it, because here’s some exciting news that most serious thinkers locally and abroad know but that gets very little airtime: Africa is rising – it is the next big thing. And South Africa is not going to fail.
Join me on the high road.
This column is proudly sponsored by Partners for Possibility
If you would like to find out more about Partners for Possibility visit www.pfp4sa.org
