National Service
[2009-04-27]Up until the time when I was a student, the South African government had National Service. This was all about requiring white boys to join the army. But today there are much more important things to promote: rural education and a green society.
The province I live in is now in a unique political position. The country's majority party (by an impressive margin) is the ANC; the party that lead the revolution from Apartheid in South Africa to democracy. But like many revolutionary parties the world has seen, it is not necessarily well-suited to government. Not all high ranking members of the party have been selected by the kind of criteria that one would expect in an open democratic political party, and there have been many accusations of corruption, including many against our president elect, Jacob Zuma.
The province where I live, though, the Western Cape, is the only province in South Africa where the majority is held by a different party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), which is determined to show the country that it is capable of governing better than the ANC, and is trying to establish, in conjunction with the other opposition parties, an opposition strong enough to take on the ANC on a national level in the future.
That is the setting of my idea.
Up until the time when I was a student, the South African government had National Service. This was all about requiring white boys to join the army. And the army was used to fight communism in Angola, and maintain Apartheid in South Africa.
But today there are other important things to promote. Things which are even more important and more pressing than fighting communism or suppressing regime change. These things are rural education and transitioning to a green society. The two must work together, and are important to the whole of humanity, not just my province.
But what makes the Western Cape special is that the DA urgently wants to demonstrate how good they are. I would like to suggest that the DA institute a Gap Year in the Western Cape. It need not be mandatory the way National Service was, but it needs to be encouraged, and it needs to be popular. 17- and 18-year-olds are strong and forward-thinking. And they often are motivated by idealism. These are good because rural education, and transitioning to a green society both need those things.
The Gap Year initiative can source its manpower from the Western Cape, but I believe its manpower should be applied in the whole of South Africa, and beyond, into Africa. We need to recognise that our future as South Africans is inextricably tied to the future of Africa -- something that is often easy to ignore, especially for Capetonians with our strong economy, progressive businesses, glorious weather, and rich Euro-facing cosmopole. But when Africa runs out of food and water, when it is held in a pre-industrial state by a desperate rural population, and when corruption and faux-democratic feudalism wracks it with power struggles and wars, then it will be South Africa's problem first, and the rest of the world can throw in some money and some fodder to assuage any feelings of guilt, but not really address the cause of the problem.
Rural education addresses the cause of the problem. Firstly, it develops skills. Perhaps more than anything else Africa needs skills to build a post-industrial economy. Mark Shuttleworth, among others, sees IT as a way to bypass Africa's lack of industrialisation, play an important role in the world economy, and bootstrap the continent out of poverty. But IT needs education, a high-bandwidth information infrastructure, and electricity, none of which are strong suits at the moment. A Gap Year initiative could help achieve all of these.
Secondly, Africa needs to shorten the process of political maturation from revolution to stable, multiparty, open democracy. It is a treacherous journey. But core to the process is an understanding that "democracy" means "the people rule". That doesn't mean that you vote in a king. It means that you are the king, and you elect employees to run your country. If an employee doesn't do their job properly -- they lie to you, or steal from you, or just don't do their job very well -- then you elect a better candidate. The idea of loyalty runs deep in Africa, and often a revolutionary party will win election after election not because they are any good, but because voters feel they deserve to be elected for freeing them from colonial subjugation. Teaching every African the power that they have, and the responsibility that comes with that, is part of rural education.
Thirdly, education results in smaller families. The human population in the third world is following disastrous trends. We are eating and drinking our way to a sudden and rather nasty catastrophe. The food and the water and the electricity will run out. It has in the past, repeatedly, on a small scale, but what quite obviously lies in store for us in the future is more horrific than anything we've ever seen. Smaller families will allow us to counter this trend. It will also offer rural women an alternative to having babies. They can be happier and more fulfilled if doing something else is what would allow them that fulfillment. They can contribute to the economy and their society. More skilled people would facilitate better healthcare, reducing our world-beating infant mortality, and depressing life expectancy.
But this must be done in conjunction with bringing about a green society. The average American consumes the equivalent of 12 average Africans. So a family of four average Americans consumes the same amount of resources as a family of 48 Africans. That does look ridiculous, doesn't it? Reducing family size in Africa, and improving skills will result in a continent of Africans who want to live like Americans, and the continent, and the world, can't support that. We need to build a society that replaces everything they use, and makes no mess. The undeniable truth is that we can't chop down forests that we haven't already planted; we can't eat beef like there is no tomorrow, because if we do then tomorrow will be so hot than we will be inundated with floods, and droughts, and the resulting famines and disease. We can't keep injecting our food with antibiotics. We can't keep eating fish that have no hope of replenishing their populations. We can't bury our trash, and then go out and make more. We can't keep buying oil from people who fund terrorists. Basically, we have to stop eating, driving and shopping our species to death.
On a continent that is bootstrapping itself out of poverty, this is the best place in the world to get it right, because there is so little legacy, and so few expectations. But we need to do this now, because time is not on our side.
Most importantly, we need to work as teaching assistants. We need to help distribute books, and help build libraries. We need to install and support open source software on old computer hardware. We need to erect a whole lot of windmills so that people can study after dark. We can even just look after the kids while mom reads, or gets some rest. But if there are a lot of us, we can work in factories to make solar panels more cheaply. We can help install cellphone infrastructure and fibre optic cables. We can help to build roads and railways and ferries. We can plant managed forests. We can help farmers to grow more produce in smarter ways. We need to get our hands dirty.
On the way, we'll understand our country and our continent better. We'll learn more languages. And a lot of people will love us.
If the youth from the Mother City's province can help to get this going, we won't just look good to the country, and show South Africa what Abraham Lincoln meant by "for the people". We'll look good to the world, and other countries might emulate us.
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