The Big Idea Business & Society
The Sizwe Nxasana’s cop-out of moral responsibility and the failure of the black child. It was in the height of apartheid regime and Bantu education when South Africa receive its first black chartered accountant in the form of Professor Lumkile Wiseman Nkuhlu, who would later motivate, inspire and even mentor many young and aspiring black chartered accountants. One of those who received the privilege to be inspired and mentored by Prof Nkuhlu is none other than Mr Sizwe Nxasana. Indeed Mr Nxasana managed to achieve a great feat of being one of the few black South African Chartered Accountant at the time. He later founded one of the most successful black accountancy firm with his friend and fellow black chartered accountant Mr Sango Ntsaluba, the firm later merged with Gobodo Inc. to establish what we now call SizweNtsalubaGobodo. In the height of the apartheid South Africa, many of our parents were offered one of the most inferior education you can ever find in the world, the Bantu education. Bantu Education was designed for the sole purpose of turning a black person into a servant of white people, regardless of the black man’s potential, ambitions and aspiration in the world. The education was designed to suppress those ambitions.
September 2018
by
Tsele Moloi
The million dollar question would be, how on earth has many of South African blacks managed to achieve such a great feat with this kind of education and with literally no resources? The answer can be traced back to love, unwavering commitment and belief in our people. Dr Lwazi Lushaba reminds us that during the Bantu education there was literally no education to offer or to teach to our people. The only thing that kept our teachers who were our parents was LOVE for their blackness, unwavering commitment and sheer belief in the black child. They gave themselves wholeheartedly, inspire confidence, gave hope in the midst of hopelessness in ensuring that young black child prosper regardless of the situation we faced as blacks at the time. They had interest of the black child at heart and the understanding that in order to liberate this country our hope rest with the young black child and to ensure that this happen they needed to give their all in educating the black child regardless of the resources. They made a commitment to educate a black child for him or her to come and liberate the country. To them the battle was just to live this world a better place and the only way possible to them was to ensure that black child is educated, then the rest shall follow, their reputation shall follow as long as the black child is up there with the rest of the world that was primary to them and indeed everything was secondary.
Katalytik Business Review Magazine: September 2018
They understood that the only way for them to achieve their dreams was through ensuring that black child achieve true and meaningful emancipation from slavery, colonialism and apartheid. They believed that through educating a black child regardless of resources, this will ensure that the future will be bright, even in their absence and in their graves they would have won the battle for true emancipation of our beloved country and the continent. Through the black child they would have realised the world longed by their forefathers and they would have won the battle on their behalf. In his 1995 article titled “Three generations of African academics” Thandika Mkhandawire demonstrate how the second generation of academics failed in achieving the goals set by the first generation in nurturing them to take over the academy and ensuring that they work towards the total emancipation of African child within the academy and in the developmental exigency of society at large. This crisis is well captured by Mahmoud Mamdani in saying that in the common purpose of producing world class institutions that will solely serve society and its developmental agenda, the idea was to nurture a new generation of upstanding and responsible leaders within the academy and in society, however we have nurtured leaders who have little capacity or even interest for civic duty and societal responsibility but who could move and serve privileged societies with ease “In our failure to contextualise standards and excellence to the needs of our own people, to ground the very process and agenda of learning and research in our conditions, we ended up creating an intelligentsia with little stamina for the very process of development whose vanguard we claimed to be. Like birds who cross oceans when the weather turns adverse, we had little depth and grounding, but maximum reach and mobility. So that, when the going got rough, we got going across borders”.
Taking guidance from above and indeed not judging, I would argue that Mr Nxasana has indeed failed a black child. Mr Nxasana has failed to take advantage of the great opportunity that can ever be bestowed to an individual by his country. To ensure that the black child is educated and the future is secured for many black generations to come after he has departed from earth. I believe he missed the great opportunity of being one of the richest individual in the graveyard by knowing that at least I have served humanity, I have indeed left the world and our country a better place. In his case at least our forefather has done the ground work, it was just up to him to finish the work. It was indeed a home run for him. However Mr. Nxasana failed to realise that. Like the biblical Moses Mr Nxasana failed to deliver our people in Canaan (the land of milk and honey) let alone take them out of Egypt, the land of slavery and oppression. Mr Nxasana failed to appreciate the fact that through our teachers and our black parents who had our interest at heart gave wholeheartedly amid no resources and inferior Bantu education, they gave with love and single mind to prepare black child for future total emancipation of this country. They did this without complaining about not having resources, good teaching apparatus and even without complaining about ‘extreme strain’ of Bantu education, they understood that they have a moral duty to make it work anyway. They understood that Calvary is not coming they have to do it themselves, they had to ensure that black child is educated and prepared to liberate this world, they knew by doing that they will die in peace because the world would be in good hands. They did not cop out. As a parent who have the interest of his or her children at heart you take full responsibility for their upbringing and mistakes or delinquency that they do out there in the world. Parents take full responsibility. You hear them say “I take full responsibility maybe I did not raise him or her well or I did not have time to look at her because I had to work for them to eat and have comfortable upbringing, therefore I ended up neglecting them”. Even if there are good reason to cop out of responsibility our parents never give up on us but they take full responsibility and declare that I have failed my children and I will do everything in my powers to change that. They understand that they do not have luxury to give up and apportion blame. Looking at it from this premise you realise that Mr Nxasana indeed has failed a black child who was put in his care and should take responsibility and agree that history will judge him very harsh. As part of his moral and civic duty to South African society Mr Nxasana could have stayed the course. He is a retired baby boomer and elder of our society. The same way Mr Nxasana was inspired by the likes of Prof Wiseman Nkuhlu the young and upcoming responsible leaders in society are looking at him and are inspired by his achievement in private sector yet are asking themselves if he might be a good and responsible leader in society. Older people are a great store-house of experience, wisdom and moral compass and we as aspiring responsible business leaders are looking up to them and mould our leadership journey on them. As a retired elder who has no reason to prove himself or even protect his private sector reputation or credentials, he has now only one duty and moral obligation and indeed an opportunity to prove himself that he can indeed leave this world a better place for future generation who will inherit it. He has moral obligation to ensure that he secures the future for future generation and die a wealthy man who has served his society diligently and responsibly. The only purpose he has now as a retired elder is solely to leave this world a better place and the only opportunity he had he squandered it. I believe in Mr Nxasana and other baby-boomers who are retiring and I believe if they could start reimagining their retirement they could be great locomotives to pull this country out of the doldrums of poverty, Inequality, unemployment and other complex societal challenge and secure the future for new generation.
Katalytik Business Review Magazine: September 2018