June 16th. Think we've come far yet?
Youth Day is commemorated annually on the 16th June and is known for its
deep-rooted socio-political significance in South Africa.
I am no politician but have colleagues, and a friend like Jimmy, who
understands more in those areas and so I always know I can ask him if I need a
reliable political insight. Fortunately, as an entrepreneur I seldom need
those. I also think we have bigger issues we find ourselves on the same side of
and to fast recover from.
BUT aside from being
aspirational in business, what I do identify with is being a person who still
can't understand why an intoxicated man, sitting harmlessly in his stationary
car and posing no real threat was shot and killed while running away from
police.
What I also believe myself to be is someone who will be moved on a very
personal level when seeing any youth and person of any nationality or race
going hungry and being displaced. It is also one of the reasons I deeply
respect a recently launched endeavour of a 91year old South African taking on a
very personal challenge to raise funds for the marginalised in SA.
But here I am, on June 16th 2020, this Youth Day still wondering where
are we with ourselves as human beings? In the middle of a pandemic which halted
the entire world, creating major economic and social meltdowns we are tasked to
recover from, we are still having to tell the world that Black Lives Matters.
We still have black people facing the kind of stuff that no other race does in
most circumstances.
Again, identifying with being human I would speak up for injustices (if
I must) against any race, religion, and nationality. I recently had to tell my
colleague from Namibia that it is wrong to blame an entire nation for something
and which could limit straightforward and fair business. In principle it is the
same way I approach business solutions as broadly being a solution which will
serve any person, of any race through a solution for a specific human need.
Because that is exactly the thing. We all have the same needs as humanbeings
and when we take it back to communities of like mindedness, then we create and
serve for those specific communal needs.
So just before this 2020 June sixteenth and on this day, amidst a global
pandemic which stopped an entire world, I flicked through news platforms to
still find us talking about what should have ended around 1976. Infact which should NEVER have even made its way into Humanity.
It does makes me wonder..
If anything, what we should be learning from COVID19 is that we all are
fighting the same fight to survive and to recover from a pandemic which
targeted us indifferently to our race, religion and nationalities.
In closing, I invite you to read more on our NGO https://tcmovement.org/
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