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TEDx Talks
Published: 2016-01-27
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69y63oRyD7Y
I mean it's a retreat you but not in the sense that you're thinking I'm a politician %HESITATION I'll save that for another day I had to try and encourage you to take up a leadership role in public service in your country and on your consonants I'm here to convince you but your country and your confidence need you not later not when you're older and more experienced
but now and that whether the whether you realize it or not your country's politics I'm going to be doomed to fail unless you're willing to get involved and get involved right now so my recruitment pitch comes with a single disclaimer I resigned from public office eighteen months ago I did it in order to take stock of my time in office to think about the work that
I had done a capacity it myself skills knowledge contacts allies and experiences and to find a little bit of personal and professional perspective it's one of the best decisions I think I've ever made I imagine that sometime during the next eighteen minutes while I'm pitching you you're gonna thinks yourself yeah it's easy for you to say I should go into public service you've already done it
and you've left but I hope I'll be able to convince you that in fact we all find ourselves in exactly the same boat right now because being outside of politics for eighteen months has reminded me just how important it is and just how much the political landscapes in my country and your country's and on our continent are truly lacking in good leadership and political talent so
I want to make a deal with you I'm not going to return to act of politics unless you come I'm not going to do it alone I won't go back unless I can convince smart entrepreneurial highly skilled talented experienced young Africans like yourselves and millions more like you across the continent that the best chance that all countries have not just for survival but for lasting prosperity
is if our most talented citizens step forward and make themselves available either for political party leadership or for public service in government so over the next sixteen or so minutes that are remaining and then ultimately flat to you because I just half I'm going to challenge you on this tool to about my experiences about a couple of facts and figures I mean even Frank knew a
little bit and it'll be entirely worth it if that fear convinces you of the urgency of the point in history that we find ourselves in today everything I say today will be in service of a single objective convincing you showing you that your country's media that Africa's prosperity may depend on many things entrepreneurial ism industrial development health reform social upliftment but that all of these hinge
upon the success of politics and government in our country I company but I can't begin to talk about public service of course without honoring my former presidents Nelson Mandela the father of democratic South Africa president Mandela pasta way on this day in twenty thirteen I really believe that when the people of my country look back on the day that he passed away it'll be seen as
an inflection point in south Africa's St the day we decided whether we could indeed go it alone without what's written in those history books will depend entirely on whether this generation which includes all of you sitting in this room recognizes that the time has come for us to take up the work that president Mandela left for us before that work is captured by people who would
use power and politics MT vanity and personal gain I'm referring of course to the young man who was here in London this very pasta week defiling the name of the vision really the intellectual and political strategist the formidable athletes the prince of amber Tamblyn nation who served as south Africa's first democratic president the young man who tries to taint president Mandela's legacy with a few a
throwaway lines all in service of getting cheap headlines which she got people like this who will leave public service to when we stay out of the fray of public service other reason your country and my country needs you and me it's so let us begin I want to first talk about the African diaspora you may have heard about a study in twenty thirteen that reveals that
our cash transfers from Africans living outside of the continent have now begun to exceed donor aid from foreign countries and to Africa in twenty twelve total remittances to Africa stood at sixty billion dollars while in the same year official development aid to subsaharan Africa totaled forty four point six billion by comparison now this this got me thinking if we didn't do such great work with our
money from outside of Africa what can we do with our skills out talent of experiences our education and our passion for all countries a foreign continent I spent the possum messed at the Harvard Kennedy School as a fellow at the institute of politics I ran a seminar which was cool how to build a democracy lessons from South Africa it was also about Zimbabwe and Malawi and
it was intended to make it seem like we got everything right since but it was asking the critical question now that we have this legacy peaceful transition of constitutionalism of difficult negotiations which were very very difficultly gotten are we going to be successful in entrenching that democracy and making it lost into the future now one of the benefits of being an African in an academic setting
like New England is that other African students reach out to you they want to talk to you and many of them expressed to the desire to enter public service so I had students knocking down my door wanting spokesman office hours about the fact that they have gone and parents but they were born in Texas they really wants to get back to Ghana but they're afraid that
if they go home nobody will take them seriously as a real effort I had students who said they had families %HESITATION wives children husbands partners to take care of perhaps they were better off staying in the United States providing for the families back home brother going back and getting into public service this got me thinking about the question of skills remittance tell intermittent social and political
remittance if these young people have the passion to give back to their communities monetarily imagine how different our politics would be if those same skills influence leadership talent we'll put in work in service of the public good and that includes all of you in this room because many of you also part of the diaspora I'm here to recruit you I'm here to make a deal with
you I'm not going back and this I take you with me now I know that most of you if not the vast majority of you are completely fed up turned off discouraged disgusted by politics either in your country in this country all over the world perhaps you are discouraged by the fact that governments are slow to deliver perhaps their inefficient perhaps the authority corrupt and rushed
into the cool perhaps they're responsible for conflicts that have claimed lives I and livelihoods book in the countries from which you come so why would you think your time and your energies into such a compromise this one of the most powerful analyses of conflicts inefficiency corruption stagnation which I've been cut in income and counted in recent months is the question of the political economy there is
a reason that all governments are not performing as they should it's not just because of a failure within the system consider the political economy of conflict and corruption in your own country why is it so difficult to overcome who is making money or amassing power because things don't work the way they should where does the Buck stop who has an incentive to keep the system and
how can we work together to overcome their total infection to ensure that we don't lose all grip on the very principle of democratic governments the also I'm afraid because you were born into this political time is simply by taking over to get involved there's no way around it you have to join political organizations been lumped in numbers in large enough to influence change from within you
have to actively seek to take up a leadership role in governments in the states in the public service and deftly but decisively move its priorities to where they should be not in service of people who wants to amass power and money for themselves but to better the lives of the highest number of people there will always be governments whether we like it or not whether we
find it palatable or not but they weren't always be democracy if we ignore politics the people who've been quietly lobbying on governments to prioritize development ahead of democracy these are the people who will have their way and the system that we now take for granted will dissolve before our eyes when I was campaigning in South Africa last year full of the twenty fourteen general election the
voter registration numbers looked a little bit like this six months before the election twenty three percent potential voters in eighteen to nineteen year old age group were registered to vote in the age group twenty to twenty nine years old fifty five percent where it just it and from thirty upwards the number varies from seventy nine to a hundred percent in fact there were more people aged
eighteen and over who are interested then what in the census numbers and saw that imagine that fully one hundred percent people over a certain age so the voting to be an indispensable rights into one isn't and do not shirk their responsibility to register and turnout at the polls but in eighteen to nineteen year old age group and we must remember nineteen is the average age on
all continents twenty six of the average age in South Africa the numbers twenty three percent is fifty five what's the political economy of voter apathy who benefits when we set out of the system who gets to keep the status quo and empower themselves and enrich themselves and continue to infect our political system like a cancer who banks but asks continuing with the status quo not even
as I say all of this to you but your country and your confidence need you to enter public service I know that if you take up my challenge you gonna face huge amounts of resistance all because of these political economies that I have just described I did I was told that I was too young I was two female I didn't have the enough experience though no
one could define what experience was enough I too much of a white accents who was in a real African straighten my hand will leaves I wasn't a real African we should be honest about the things that hold people back from entering public service humiliation degradation it's not an easy road but all of these things should illustrates you the extent to which the status quo is designed
to enrich and empower a few at the expense of the many and I shook him potty the urgency on you as a generation of mouth getting involved in public service change that very culture and if he decides into public service you may even be tempted to believe some of these criticisms the designs to keep you out that's how gatekeeping works somebody is benefiting from the absence
of excellence and disruption in politics and government but these are challenges that have to be faced on there is no other routes there is no wishing this away well the reason that your country and your continent media we have this thing in politics in Africa schooled the big man a cult of personality we've all had different terminologies for it in south African particular this entails waiting
for a great person to come and save us from ourselves currently we're waiting for so ramaposa well because I'm a feminism what to you my guns and I to come and save South Africa from from itself save us from the mess that we find ourselves in that perhaps another big man puts us in but how can a single personality be held responsible for building or for
running a whole nation and where do we turn when they fail if we haven't cultivated any kind of pipe pipeline of energetic young people who want to enter public service now in the future and could succeed who can do the job better are we doomed to always have to choose between mediocrity and ego and mediocrity and ego is that it's is that all our government will
ever be well what are we going to stand by why presidents change constitutions so they can serve a third term and a fourth term and the fifth ten claiming that three million people signed a petition stating that they are the only person who can do the job that's what we'll do not as a new energy around entrepreneur ism and innovation and growth in Africa but that
energy isn't going to translates into lasting prosperity unless we get our politics right political leaders who want gate keepers of the status quo will claim that any success is their success bill centralize power and they'll demand that we will be grateful for those little green shoots of achievement and then not claim that nobody else can do the job they'll argue that developments must come first freedom
can come later and that they are the best benevolent dictator to do the job they'll take your political voice from you when times are a little bit good and when times go bad they will refuse to give it back there is no prosperity for all continents without a vibrant diverse and truly competitive politics founded upon excellence transparency and commitments to the public good all politics will
not have any of these qualities and less talented young people the best people stepped forward at this moment in Africa's history when reemerging from that stereotype of the dot coms a hopeless continent and commit themselves to public service we must run for office we must work in the civil service we must disrupt the political status quo we must prevent the rush to the bottom you really
are the ones that you have been waiting for there are no great saviors wasting some way in the wings to save us from future problems there's nobody who was waiting in the wings to come and save us from ourselves this just and I'm not going back without you so will you take up the challenge thank you
