MPHUMZI MDEKAZI

On Wednesday the Walter and Albertina Foundation for Social Justice, together with the Vaal University of Technology (VUT), will host the second annual Walter Sisulu Memorial Lecture.

The VUT and our foundation have decided to journey together in a partnership that will highlight the intimate relationship between Walter Sisulu’s ethical leadership paradigm and intellectual human development in the context of social justice in our signed memorandum of understanding with VUT.

While every university has its own path, VUT and the Sisulu Foundation have chosen a collaboration concentrating on ethical leadership development, with specific reference to Sisulu’s central integrity traits:

infinite courage;
infinite hope; and
insatiable desire for selfless service to the people (servant leadership).

This relationship is fitting, proper and natural. Convened under the theme “Stolen Tomorrows”, this year’s lecture confronts one of the most corrosive threats to our constitutional democracy: the theft of the future that belongs to South Africa’s young people.

The Vaal is not incidental to the gathering. Sisulu owned a piece of land in Evaton in the Vaal Triangle, where his entrepreneurship orientation began. It was in Evaton that he took refuge during a time when he was pursued for arrest by the apartheid security police. The community sheltered him at considerable risk to itself.

It is this history that gave birth to the Sisulu Foundation and VUT partnership. To convene the lecture at VUT is to return to the conversations Sisulu used to have with people on the ground, those who once offered him sanctuary.

With the world in chaos and South Africa facing many crises, the void caused by the lack of credible voices who can give guidance and inspire hope in people creates an alarming moment.

The foundation regards this continuity from a place of concealment to a place of learning as an apt setting because the second annual lecture is about what one generation owes another.

The foundation was established to advance the values for which Walter and Albertina Sisulu gave their lives.

With the world in chaos and South Africa facing many crises, the void caused by the lack of credible voices who can give guidance and inspire hope in people creates an alarming moment. Yet it is this very moment that makes the collaboration between VUT and the Walter and Albertina Sisulu Foundation for Social Justice so timely and appropriate.

The names and legacies of these two towering figures in South African history, separately and together, invoke the inspirational confidence South Africans can call on in moments like these. These names recall integrity, calm authority and authenticity that resonate strongly with the deepest longings and highest ideals of our nation.

Tata Sisulu’s life of self-sacrificial love for his people, his unwavering fortitude and his strong leadership remain an extraordinary example for South Africa’s young democracy in its ongoing struggles, especially for young people to find their rightful, honoured and respected place in South African society in every walk of life, including their intellectual pursuits.

Sisulu’s compassion and determination to seek what is right are a sustained and sustaining beacon of hope at a time when the scourge of corruption, unemployment, poverty and lack of access to education is an epidemic engulfing South African society, poisoning our people’s lives together and presenting a horrifically uneven playing field even for young people and the marginalised at every turn.

VUT ... is a natural space for South Africa’s people to reach out — not only to what seems lost but to what can be regained

While Nelson Mandela was rightly called a “reconciler”, Sisulu deservedly wears the mantle of “unifier”. As president, Mandela sometimes had to make decisions that, though they often turned out to be right, nonetheless caused tension and even division in the ranks of his organisation and within society. It was Sisulu’s inimitable wisdom, quiet patience and humble but unwavering leadership that kept people together.

At this moment of great uncertainty, disturbing division and a lack of a common and binding vision, invoking Sisulu’s name can be the persistent strain of strength in VUT’s commitment to the empowerment of young people on all fronts, and the inspirational spark of a new national commitment to social justice.

VUT, together with Sisulu’s unique spiritual ability to lift people up and bring them together, while unifying them in moments of adversity and victory, is a natural space for South Africa’s people to reach out — not only to what seems lost but to what can be regained.

This year’s memorial lecture will be delivered by former president Kgalema Motlanthe at VUT on Wednesday.

VUT and the Walter and Albertina Sisulu Foundation join hands at a crucial time in South Africa, marking 32 years of democracy. In this moral arc of time, the 32 years are wrapped in the blood of students who laid down their lives for freedom 50 years ago, a freedom they are not enjoying due to corruption and unemployment.

Together, we are both stronger and better.