EDITOR’S COMMENT
The fierce urgency of now and why impact investment is so important In its thought-provoking article “Justice delayed is justice denied”1, the non-partisan Aspen Institute says that this ancient legal maxim has been cast into stark relief as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to expose inequality and injustice all around the world.
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ts call-to-action, with the focus on income inequality, gender parity, action against climate change, and racial equity, echoes the words of Dr Martin Luther King Jr who spoke of “the fierce urgency of now” during his 1963 civil rights march on Washington. The Aspen Institute, a platform for thought leaders to address the world’s most complex problems beyond the boardroom, pulls no punches when it says that systems have reached a breaking point globally. I, for one, feel a bit punch-drunk after reading/watching all the bad news, not least of all that Israel and Palestine are at loggerheads again, with casualties mounting. Here in South Africa, our beloved but oh-so-flawed country, it’s plain to see that many of our systems are broken. And yet there is hope. While I get that the cynics will be having an emotional field day as a result of former president Jacob Zuma’s latest delaying tactics ahead of his corruption trial (the new trial date has been set for 26 May, by the way), former Free State premier Ace Magashule’s attempt to get his position as secretary-general in the ANC back, the deadlock between government and the unions around public service salaries, the latest deeply disturbing police crime stats and the arrival of a third wave of Covid-19, amongst many, many other negative events, South Africa has the potential to turn things around. The Daily Maverick’s Sean J Gossel puts it well2 when he says: “The Ramaphosa ANC has the upper hand, but the hard part is still to come. To win back voter trust and support, the ANC will need to
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SECURITY FOCUS AFRICA MAY 2021
Martin Luther King Jr.
professionalise the public service, choke off the patronage networks, stop protecting or excusing its corrupt members and adapt to being an open and transparent political party. Enforcing the step-aside rule was the first step in a long journey to modernise the ANC. Let us hope that Cyril Ramaphosa has the courage, stamina and political determination to carry on.” The step-aside rule is, to my mind, a critical element of “Ramaphosa’s ANC” with its potential to weed out the corrupt elements of the party. Justice that’s seen to be done is desperately needed in South Africa for the sake of its long-suffering
citizens and its tarnished world image. The recent annual meeting of the Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN) saw about 500 of its members connecting with each other remotely, rather than in person, on the Aspen Meadows campus as has been the norm since 2013, thanks to Covid-19. Among the topics discussed was the need for immediate action. “Given the confluence of a global pandemic, crumbling economies and livelihoods, and reckonings on widespread racial inequities, (immediate action) is what the world needs.” The takeaways from the meeting included an observation by Lisa Fitzpatrick,
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