• Wealth creation is not about driving the latest 4X4, it’s about making a difference in the lives of those less fortunate, writes Zama Mkosi, chairperson of HEARTLINES and senior legal adviser at the Industrial Development Corporation.
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• The reality of commercial pressures on journalism makes it more important to define and defend professional ethics – not less, writes Franz Krüger, journalist, author and lecturer.
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• Are we teaching our children to accept difference, to contribute to and thrive in a complex and dangerous world? Our children don’t think so and we should listen to them, writes Professor Jonathan Jansen, Dean of Education at the University of Pretoria.
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The middle class play a critical role in any society – not just as consumers or workers who drive the economy, but in terms of the contribution they can make intellectually and culturally. In short, they can help define the country they live in by virtue of the contributions they make.

As South Africa experiences the Heartlines campaign of “Eight Weeks, Eight Values, One National Conversation”, it is time for everyone to consider how they live out the values they claim to believe in.

How far have we come? Government Communication and Information Service (GCIS) research compiled in the Macro-Social Report cites research report after research report showing a growing increase in a black middle class.

The MSR quotes research by the South African Advertising Research Foundation (2004) which shows a rapid rise in the percentage of blacks in the slightly higher echelons of the middle strata (average household income of R4 075/m and above) between 2000/01 and 2003/04.

The same report also notes that the recent study of 750 black professionals aged 21-39 years in the LSM7 by the School of Management Studies of the University of Cape Town suggests that black South Africans are the future engine/stimulus of the growth of the economy.

It is clear that there is a rising middle class in South Africa – a new strata of professionals able to take up the challenges of this amazing country. How has our advancement benefited our country? The economic benefits are clear for all to see: An increase in consumerism that has spurred on even the Reserve Bank Governor to urge us to slow down the party.

But those of us in professional positions have a greater responsibility. A responsibility that lies not only with the politicians. Of the many definitions of the word “Responsible” - Concise Oxford Dictionary definition reads “morally accountable for one’s actions”.Our actions, or lack of action, can have a huge impact on our communities.

While the pool of black middle class is growing, South Africa still faces a poverty crisis. There is a growing gap between the haves and the have nots that needs to be addressed. A life of poverty as we know, is not just about bread and butter issues but there are many other consequential challenges that a person burdened with such a life has to contend with.

Professionals are able to make or influence the making of decisions by organisations that can – in fact – make a difference in people’s lives.

Being in such positions goes with certain responsibilities. Our fathers and mothers paid a price during the struggle for freedom – many with their lives –so that we can be in such positions. And, having assumed these positions, use them for the betterment of people's lives in the same way that our forefathers laid down their lives for us, the next generation.

What are we doing today - not for our own sake but for the sake of the generation to come?

Are we morally accountable for our actions? Or are we forever in pursuit of selfish needs. Does our position allow us only to get the latest luxury 4X4 model Or does it give us an opportunity to make a difference?
As long as there are people without running water and electricity; children surviving without parents or guardians; elderly people going hungry because they don’t have infrastructure to get to their pension collection points; people having to board 3 taxis to get to a bank and grocer store; young talent going wasted because of lack of finances to pursue higher education… we should be using our positions to influence for change.

Professionals in business can help define whether their company is there just for the profit or whether the company can take responsibility for the communities in which they operate and benefit from. This is not only about Corporate Social Investment Programmes – which themselves are an important place to start - it is also about your organisation’s main line of business. Is there a way that they can expand and/or modify their business so as to provide services or invest in creating infrastructure to improve the lives of our fellow people? It makes business sense too – the sustainability of business depends on the very same people whose consumer power keeps us in our jobs and sustains the organisations for which we work.

The challenge is for professionals not just to accept the status quo of their organisations but - if they believe the values adopted by their company can be improved in order to better the lives of our fellow people – to take up the challenge of change.

It is our responsibility and we should not shy away from it. If we don't do it, we can't expect someone else to do it. We must each take responsibility for making a difference in those spheres that we operate in. If we want to see a change in this country then it must start with each of us doing our bit. 

Edmund Burke once said: “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing”.
The time to do something is now.

Zama Mkosi is Senior Legal Adviser at the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa Limited. She is also chairperson of Heartlines a multi-media project aimed at stimulating a national conversation around values.

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When former ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni arrived at Pollsmoor prison the other day to start his jail term, it marked the end of a South African media success story.

The Sunday Times first broke the story of Yengeni’s discounted 4x4 in March 2001.  He denied the charge, spending hundreds of thousands of rands on newspaper advertisements to refute the claim.

But the paper’s evidence was solid.  He was arrested, charged, and ultimately found guilty of defrauding parliament.  In his plea bargain, he admitted the discount, as well as a string of attempts to hide it.

And so his path led to Pollsmoor prison, where he was greeted by singing, dancing warders and a phalanx of ANC luminaries.  The inappropriateness of his reception has been much commented on: he may have been a hero once, but fraud is fraud.

It is true, as his supporters point out, that he made an important contribution to the building of democracy.  But it is no mitigating factor – on the contrary, it imposed greater obligations on him.  

The Sunday Times can be proud of the role it played in putting Yengeni away. This is how the media helps to build and uphold social values, by shining a light into dark places, making it a little harder for corruption to flourish.

There is a rich tradition of South African investigative journalism that has made a significant difference to the society at large.  At a recent conference held under the title Power Reporting, Wits University’s head of journalism, Prof Anton Harber, presented an overview of some of these reports.

In the 50s, Drum magazine’s Henry Nxumalo took on a job on Bethal’s potato farms, and returned with a harrowing account of the way labourers were treated.  He also allowed himself to be jailed in Johannesburg’s Fort in order to research an expose of prison conditions.

In the 60s, the Rand Daily Mail also focused on the appalling conditions in the country’s jails, and the 70s brought “Infogate”, exposures of massive misuse of public funds by the then Information Department.   Disclosures of apartheid death squads were made by the alternative press of the following decade - primarily the Weekly Mail and Vrye Weekblad.

And these are just some of the most sensational and influential examples.  There are many, many others. Even a pothole that is fixed due to a newspaper report can be chalked up as a success for journalism.

To play this role successfully, journalists need to pay attention to their own values, too.  Credibility is a precious and fragile thing, quickly lost and hard to regain.  Without it, journalists might as well turn their talents to selling fast food or used cars.

The picture here is not rosy: newspaper circulations in Europe and the US are steadily declining.  Although not the only reason, a growing disenchantment with journalism and media is a factor.

There have been too many scandals: stories invented or plagiarised, and journalists found to be in the pay of interested parties.

The more worrying trend, because it is systemic, is the growing industrialisation of the media, with a handful of international conglomerates dominating the media, from newspapers and magazines to TV, the Internet and movies. 

Publishing has always been a business, but now it seems that what audiences get is more and more determined simply by what will sell. The market calls, and journalists are expected to answer.

The business imperative has driven media outlets to look harder and harder for the lowest common denominator.  So in the UK, Channel 4 is planning a week of programmes on masturbation dubbed “wank week”.  The line-up will include a one-hour documentary about a “masturbate-a-thon” in aid of charity.  (Don’t ask.)

And in South Africa, Survivor mania is set to dominate the news for the next little while.  Audiences are going to be treated to every twist and turn of the TV series, every vote, alliance and dispute minutely analysed and described.  You know that a programme concept is a success when it finds its way onto the news pages of the newspapers as if it was real reality and not just reality TV.

At the same time, the appetite for risk-taking is shrinking, as Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee said at the Power Reporting conference recently. Really important investigations take time and money, and a willingness to accept that they might lead nowhere. 

The blurring lines between marketing and journalism can lead to cynicism about the relevance of values. Many dismiss traditional ethics like truth-telling and independence as a mere smokescreen, behind which the media pursue their real goal: chasing profit by selling entertainment.

In fact, the reality of commercial pressures on journalism makes it more important to define and defend professional ethics, not less.  When the marketing department arrives and asks for a particular event to be covered because it’s been organised by an important advertiser, journalists need professional standards to refer to.

If they do not, their credibility may suffer.  And in the long run, even the marketers will lose out if that happens.

***Franz Kruger is a journalist, author and lecturer. He is also ombud of the Mail & Guardian newspaper.

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Are we teaching our children to accept difference, to contribute to and thrive in a complex and dangerous world? Our children don’t think so and we should listen to them, writes Professor Jonathan Jansen.

When my son started Grade 1, he would wake up at four in the morning and, with great speed and alacrity, would wash, eat, dress and pack his bags out of sheer excitement about the day ahead. By the time this same child started high school, I would have to wrestle him out of bed to try to get him to school before four in the afternoon. Somewhere between Grade 1 and high school, our children typically move from being great enthusiasts for learning to becoming deeply disengaged from formal education. I have spent much of my time trying to understand why and how this natural thirst for learning among young children is so quickly lost after a few years inside this structure we call school.

Throughout South Africa, I have been privileged to address more than 30,000 students in the past five years—black and white, urban and rural, private and public—and they all tell me the same thing, which I could summarise as follows: schools teach the wrong stuff.

One could argue of course that schools were never created to become fountains of knowledge, sources of invention or sites for the liberation of the mind. In fact, more than one historian has drawn powerful parallels between schools, mental asylums and the prison system. One has only to witness the regimentation of children in school, the common uniform, the colourless teachers, the humourless principal, and the inflexible security systems to wonder loudly about this quasi-prison environment. We pay for this, in more ways than one.

I partly share one view that schools as institutions are a set-up, a device to warehouse the children of working parents in order to control them and prevent trouble on the streets. I partly share another view that schools are places to reproduce the kind of class-based society we live in, allocating chances of success and failure with astounding (though not perfect) predictability—rich kids at affluent private schools make it big in the corporate world; poor kids in run-down township schools trawl the streets with meaningless certificates, provided they even get that far. What these children have in common, though, is that they were all taught the wrong stuff, and that very few of them were taught the kinds of things that enable them to thrive in a diverse and dangerous world.

When I talk in this direction at endless numbers of school gatherings, the audience normally splits down the middle. The one side thinks that this kind of speech is the best thing they could ever have heard. There is too much emphasis on competition, too much favouring of the kids who are talented in math and science, too little focus on wholeness. The other side—whose children normally stride up to the podium struggling to carry all the trophies—absolutely hate what they hear. How dare the speaker rain on their child’s parade? After all, their children worked hard to achieve these certificates and accolades; they won because they played by the rules. Yet it is precisely the rules of the game that worry me. What is it that we teach, why and with what consequences?

I have yet to meet students in my first-year class at the University of Pretoria who remember school teachers because of their skills at solving quadratic equations, their fluency in grammatical analysis, or their knowledge of the DNA double helix structure. They remember single teachers who made a difference in their lives. They tell moving stories of individual teachers who taught them about community, about caring, about compassion and about change.

Most of our teachers, however, have succumbed to the mindless focus on curriculum trivia reinforced by competitive examinations that measure individual performance on a very narrow range of competences. It did not help, of course, that under the former Minister of Education, there was the real threat of exposure of failing schools in the media. The pressure on teachers is relentless. One of my doctoral students, an accomplished mathematics teacher at a private school, lives in fear every year that she might not keep her job because the failure to get 100% math passes in matric (matriculation examination, Grade 12, the last year of school) means, at worst, that she would not have her contract renewed and, at best, that she finds herself demoted to teach pre-matric classes and live through this humiliation among her peers.

Sadly, we have come to believe that the matriculation results measure achievement. We accept without hesitation that these results represent fairness—despite the so obvious fact that the inputs into a child’s twelve years of schooling are so clearly differentiated by race and class. And we make devastating decisions about children’s futures by reading-off school examination results the potential of a learner for success in life.

Yet most university students I know—those kids with six distinctions in matric—have very little self-knowledge, hold very little respect for women, feel deeply uncomfortable in the presence of black people, display incompetence in African languages, lack basic knowledge of their continent, and fail miserably at (re-)solving complex social problems.

The demise of the inspection system under apartheid, when many black schools rejected the surveillance functions of these government officials, means that to this day schools are not accountable for what they teach….except through that indirect measure of performance, the Grade 12 examination. One of my students found that a school in Soweto and a school in Pretoria, using the same curriculum in the same subject (History) taught to the same grade level, had teachers who were teaching completing different things—the black teacher in Soweto taught about black concerns, the white teacher in Pretoria taught about Europeans. But they both taught for the examinations.

Given what we teach, it is no wonder that high school graduates are queuing up in record numbers to enter fields such as actuarial science, accounting and economics. They might not know what an actuary is, but they heard about the cut-throat competition for places and the huge amounts of money that can be made in these disciplines.

When I recruit school kids in Grades 10-12 in South African high schools, one of the most common reasons for not becoming a teacher is the salary. Somehow our schools—with not a little help from the parents—have conveyed to young people an understanding that to be successful is to make loads of money, to be educated is to maximize your number of subject distinctions, to be qualified is to be certificated.

Again, the parents have bought into this crass commercialization of higher training. It is also not uncommon for me to find young people who wish to become teachers complain bitterly that their parents want them to study law or medicine or engineering…”why waste your time becoming a teacher?” Yet it is these same parents that would want highly qualified teachers teaching their children—provided it is not their precious ones doing the instruction. How selfish, if nothing else.

In the meantime, the world faces unprecedented levels of organized terror by both democratic Christian states as well as ruthless Islamic killers, all acting in the name of God. There is the real possibility, by the way, of an unprecedented clash of clash of idiocies that could tear our planet apart. At the same time as aggregate global wealth increases, inequalities between rich and poor nations have deepened, at pace. And climates change and environments collapse under the sheer weight of human greed.

Closer to home, while white schools celebrate “a 100% pass in matric”, their graduates run around Pretoria East beating up homeless and anonymous black citizens. Young black youth who should be in school run rampant through our society, killing and maiming at random. Babies are rendered homeless as HIV/AIDS sweeps through poor communities. Growing numbers of school-age children begin to over-populate the prison system.

But you would not know this from the school curriculum, or by examining what schools teach.

As it turns out, the 21st century workplace does not require automatons. It calls for persons who can work in teams, who can solve complex problems, who can reserve judgment, who are comfortable with difference, who can cross cultural and geographic boundaries, and who understand people. Of course mechanical skills matter and technical competence helps. But it is not enough in the modern workplace, and it is certainly dangerous in a complex and divided world. And there is no better place than South Africa in which to live these values and apply these skills.

I was invited recently to speak to the graduating matric class at a prestigious private school on the subject “South Africa Needs You.” My dislike of the assigned topic could not be disguised. My political antenna, seldom wrong, interpreted the assignment as follows: kindly appeal to a group of upper middle class, mainly white, kids to please not leave black South Africa and employ their special skills to uplift this desperate developing country.

I of course did the opposite, by reminding these young people in this astoundingly well-draped school that South Africa did not need them. In fact, they need South Africa. They need South Africa to teach them humility, in the face of the arrogance of apartheid from which most of their parents were willing beneficiaries; to teach them service, in the face of overwhelming poverty made worse only by its visible existence alongside obvious wealth; to teach them community, in the face of deep racial divisions which simmer below the surface of this fragile democracy in which black men get thrown to lions and black workers get stuffed in washing machines.

My point, in sum, is this—every parent and citizen must realise three things. One, that many of our schools are doing little more than producing technical mastery on a narrow range of skills for a small minority of our population. Two, that such a narrow schooling fails to prepare students for complex and demanding national and global work contexts. And three, that skilled automatons operating in a dangerous and unequal world place us all at risk.

**Professor Jonathan Jansen is Dean of Education at the University of Pretoria. He contributed this piece to the recent HEARTLINES-initiated national conversation on values.

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