Mamphela Ramphele, Leader of AgangSA, speech to SHAPE Africa, May 7 2013

From Subject to Citizen: Take Your Place at the Table

Good morning. What a pleasure it is to see so many sons and daughters from all over Africa here for this auspicious gathering. Welcome to Cape Town.

I'd like to thank Rapelang Rabana and the SHAPE AFRICA team for creating this opportunity for us to be together today.

The theme of this year's World Economic Forum on Africa is ‘Delivering on Africa's promise' and, as young leaders and Global Shapers it is you who are the very embodiment of that promise.

What an opportunity you have. Hundreds of regional and global leaders from business, government and civil society will convene at the WEF over these next three days.

One of the key issues they will be debating is how to unlock Africa's talent and I urge you to take part in the discussions and make your voices heard. Talk and share your experiences and inspire people with your passion and brilliant ideas.

In too many parts of Africa, young people are so disillusioned with the behaviour of their leaders in government manifesting as greed that characterizes politics that they have either withdrawn from public life or remained cynical on the margins of public life.

Here in South Africa, we have the same problem. When apartheid ended, we under-estimated what it would take to change from being the subjects of undemocratic governments, denied the right to make our own choices, to becoming citizens of a stable constitutional democracy.

But it is only by becoming active citizens, by looking to ourselves for solutions to the problems that affect our communities and by holding those in power accountable for their promises and actions, that we can take the step from passive subjects to active citizens and reclaim control over our lives.

It is a liberating change in mind-set that many of you have clearly already made and it seems to me that we active citizens are the very engine of social innovation: the individual who cares deeply about humanity and has great ideas, energy and passion that will make a difference to the lives of others.

Many Africans of my generation became active for the same reasons that you have today: we shared a vision of how things could be made better and had an idea of where to start.  Social innovation is not a new idea. It comes in many forms: setting up an enterprise that generates social and economic returns; finding new ways of tackling age-old problems by recombining what is already known into a new configuration to start or revitalize a project; or simply finding a creative way of working together in a collaborative way across physical, time and cultural distances.

My first social innovation project was the foundation of a rural community health centre after I had studied as a doctor. Like many South Africans at the time I was fighting the apartheid system and saw the effect that it was having on the villagers around me who were denied access to dignified vital healthcare.

We set up the community health centre in the backyard of a local church in the village of eZinyoka, outside King Williamstown.  We developed it to provide primary health care as well as promoting economic development to lift people out of the despair of poverty and powerlessness by promoting initiatives such as brick-making, leatherworks and vegetable growing. Without our actions many of our fellow citizens would have carried on suffering in silence.  That spark ignited the community and I'm proud to say Zanempilo (in EC) and the Ithuseng (in Limpopo) Community Health Centres are still serving people today.

Many years later in 2010 I was to return at the Eastern Cape to witness how unaccountable governance had led to a dysfunctional public health system that returned people to the depth of despair and helplessness.  Again with the help of local active citizens in the East London area we are using the age-old African technology of healing circles of conversations to heal broken spirits and restore hope and the promise of freedom through Letsema Circle.  Village by village the Letsema Circle workers are healing wounded citizens and turning them into active shapers of their own destiny in slum areas such as Duncan Village or poor rural villages of Tsomo. 

What is missing in our country, especially in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and other provinces, is citizen action to stop the looting of public resources which saw 8000 public servants in the Eastern Cape doing business with the Department of Health and rendering it bankrupt.  None of them have been arrested yet, but the information on them is available.  Such is the culture of unaccountability that steals from poor people without any punishment.

Today, whilst these kinds of projects are still needed across our continent, we also have the benefit of technology to collaborate across boundaries and make massive positive changes happen in people's lives so every citizen can be a contributor to our high potential continent and make it into the great place it is destined to become.

Like me I'm sure that many of you admire the technology innovations coming from East Africa. In Nairobi, Ushahidi has developed free and open source software for information collection and interactive mapping using the concept of crowd-sourcing for social activism and public accountability.

Ushahidi software has been successfully used to record and collect local events by observers using their mobile phones or the internet and build real time maps of everything from pharmacy stocks across Zambia to plotting people who desperately needed help in the disaster recoveries after the Haiti and Chile earthquakes in 2010.

I'm also impressed by Switchboard who worked with the Ghana Medical Association to launch the country's first free calling network that enabled Ghana's 2,200 registered physicians to share information and co-ordinate medical supplies. The same service in Tanzania is helping 6,505 medical & clinical officers to manage all rural health centers in Tanzania, the main points of care for a population of 45 million. 

These are scaled up big impact projects, but as with all great entrepreneurial ideas, success begins with identifying a problem and its solution and then bringing together the resources and team to make it happen.  The capacity to execute is as important as the idea itself - without execution the idea will die an early death.

But of course I don't need to you tell this - you are all already highly capable entrepreneurs who have embarked on your own journeys as active citizens. I'm sure that you take this opportunity here with Shape Africa to share what you have learnt and support each other in improving your work.

Make the very most of your time together, be on your feet from morning to night and when you return home share your experiences. Your leadership will inspire those around you.

It has been a privilege to be with you today and to spend time with the people who are leading, and will continue to lead Africa into the future. This morning like every morning I woke up and asked myself what difference I can make in the life of my nation and indeed my continent. If that's what's driving you too, you can only succeed. And if that is what is driving you, I know that we can we build a better future for Africa together.

Issued by AgangSA, May 7 2013

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