The Activator newspaper 2020

Page 1

AN

HIGHLIGHTS

KZN node during the ACTIVATE! Change Drivers training Programme.

Why is this important? By Bongolwethu Sonti It’s 01 January 2030 and you have just celebrated the new year - you’re standing on top of Table Mountain looking down, what do you see below? Is it a picturesque Wakanda-like dream with semi - flying electric powered cars, tree top houses, ecologically designed central business districts with lush green forests? The phone you are holding in your hand, is it a cruelty free phone? Who are you standing with? Is it an excited tourist who travelled 14 000 KMs to marvel at the beauty of Cape Town and to study the spirit of its people and how they model community?

the people who were leading that change. People like the brave young warrior named Shaka Zulu who saw that war was a strategic pursuit of power and not a careless throw of it; to the 1950s civil rights movements that eventually gave birth to groups like the black panthers (in the US) who confronted the realities of the day and were not naïve to societal perceptions; to the climate warriors all over the world in 2019 who saw that the waiting game may leave things too late to save the planet.

As you breathe in the air on the mountain top - do stories of the past decade come back to you about how a country on the edge of collapse was pulled from that ledge by a single movement? And, how a group of young people who wanted to take back their future and lead, turned around a society at the brink of destruction to become the blueprint of a cohesive prosperous nation? Or, is what you see an emotionless pit with clear lines of social divides drawn by toll roads and unending landfills? Did it take you days to reach this mountain from the abyss of helplessness and dead dreams - (from the outer city)? Or, are you looking at the person next to you with envy as they sip on their R75 onelitre water while taking pictures with their R50k smartphone? How did you even get here? As with every generation before us, we are faced with challenges that seem insurmountable and objectives that seem unachievable, but throughout history, the story of guts, determination, courage and change seems to present only one protagonist and one voice – the power of youth. I remember the first stories of change that I heard, I remember

@Activate_ZA

@ActivateZA

Activate Change Drivers 1

January 2020


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