There is no one waiting to save us. We must save ourselves | Lindiwe Mazibuko | TEDxEuston

Lindiwe is on a recruit mission to get young African diasporas to take up positions in public service in Africa. She states that Africa has a problem of nicely polished policies without implementation. She made a case for young people not to be disgusted with politics but get in there and be the change we believe in. She says, "Remittance isn't enough for the diaspora who want to give back. They must also share their skills and experience with Africa. Your country
and continent needs you. Not later... Now!"

Lindiwe Mazibuko was until recently the Leader of the Opposition in the South African National Assembly, making her the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) youngest-ever parliamentary leader and the first black woman in South African history to be elected to the post of Leader of the Opposition. Mazibuko committed herself to making Parliament the true center of robust political debate and engagement in South Africa. In May 2014, at the end of her term and following a successful electoral campaign in which the DA grew its share of the national vote from 16% to 22%, Mazibuko announced that she would take a sabbatical from active politics. In May 2015, she graduated from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government with a Master of Public Administration (MPA), and since September 2015 she has been in residence at the Institute of Politics (IOP) at Harvard University as a Fall Resident Fellow.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

So, I'm here to recruit you.

(Laughter)

But not in the sense that you're thinking.
I know I'm a politician.

I'll save that for another day.

I'm here to try and encourage you

to take up a leadership role
in public service

in your country and on your continent.

I'm here to convince you

that your country
and your continent need you -

not later, not when you're older
and more experienced, but now -

and that whether you realize it or not,

your country's politics
are going to be doomed to fail

unless you're willing
to get involved right now.

So my recruitment pitch
comes with a single disclaimer:

I resigned from public office
18 months ago.

(Laughter)

I did it in order to take stock
of my time in office,

to think about the work that I had done,

to capacitate myself with skills,
knowledge, contacts,

allies and experiences,

and to find a little bit of personal
and professional perspective.

It's one of the best decisions
I think I've ever made.

I imagine that some time during the next
18 minutes while I'm pitching you,

you're going to think,

"Yeah, it's easy for you to say
I should go into public service.

You've already done it and you've left."

But I hope I'll be able to convince you

that, in fact, we all find ourselves
in exactly the same boat right now.

Because being outside
of politics for 18 months

has reminded me
just how important it is

and just how much the political landscapes

in my country and in your countries
and on our continent

are truly lacking in good leadership
and political talent.

So, I want to make a deal with you.

I'm not going to return to active politics
unless you come with me.

(Laughter)

I'm not going to do it alone.

I won't go back unless I can convince
smart, entrepreneurial, highly skilled,

talented, experienced
young Africans like yourselves

and millions more like you
across the continent,

that the best chance
that our countries have,

not just for survival
but for lasting prosperity,

is if our most talented
citizens step forward

and make themselves available,

either for political party, leadership
or for public service and government.

So over the next 16-or-so minutes
that are remaining,

I'm going to alternately
flatter you, as I just have,

(Laughter)

I'm going to challenge you,

I'm going to talk to you
about my experiences,

about a couple of facts and figures;

I may even frighten you a little bit.

And it'll be entirely worth it

if that fear convinces you
of the urgency of the point in history

that we find ourselves in today.

Everything I say today will be
in service of a single objective:

convincing you, showing you,
that your countries need you;

that Africa's prosperity
may depend on many things -

entrepreneurialism,
industrial development,

health reform, social upliftment -

but that all of these hinge

upon the success of politics
and government in our countries.

I can't begin a talk
about public service, of course,

without honoring my former
president Nelson Mandela,

the father of democratic South Africa.

(Cheers) (Applause)

President Mandela passed away
on this day in 2013.

I really believe that
when the people of my country

look back on the day that he passed away,

it'll be seen as an inflection point
in South Africa's history.

The day we decided whether we could,
indeed, go it alone without him.

What's written in those history books

will depend entirely
on whether this generation,

which includes all of you
sitting in this room,

recognizes that the time has come for us

to take up the work
that President Mandela left for us,

before that work is captured by people
who would use power and politics

for empty vanity and personal gain.

I'm referring, of course,

to the young man who was here
in London this very past week.

Defiling the name of the visionary leader,
the intellectual and political strategist,

the formidable athlete,
the Prince of the Abathembu nation

who served as a South Africa's
first democratic president.

The young man who tried to taint
President Mandela's legacy

with a few throwaway lines,

all in service of getting
cheap headlines, which he got.

People like this,
who we leave public service to

when we stay out
of the fray of public service,

are the reason your country
and my country needs you and needs us.

So let us begin.

I want to first talk to you
about the African diaspora.

You may have heard
about a study in 2013

that revealed

that cash transfers from Africans
living outside of the continent

have now begun to exceed donor aid
from foreign countries into Africa.

(Applause)

In 2012, total remittances to Africa
stood at 60 billion dollars

while in the same year,

official development aid
to Sub-Saharan Africa

totalled 44.6 billion by comparison.

Now, this got me thinking.

If we can do such great work
with our money from outside of Africa,

what can we do with our skills,
our talent, our experiences,

our education and our passion
for our countries and for our continent?

I've spent the past semester
at the Harvard Kennedy School

as a fellow at the Institute of Politics.

I ran a seminar which was called

"How to build a democracy?
Lessons from South Africa."

It was also about Zimbabwe and Malawi.

And it wasn't intended

to make it seem like we got
everything right in South Africa,

but it was asking the critical question:

Now that we have this legacy

of peaceful transition,
of constitutionalism,

of difficult negotiations,

which were very, very difficultly gotten,

are we going to be successful
in entrenching that democracy

and making it last into the future?

Now, one of the benefits
of being an African

in an academic setting like New England

is that other African students
reach out to you,

they want to talk to you,

and many of them express to you
their desire to enter public service.

So I had students knocking down my door,
wanting to talk to me in office hours

about the fact that they have
Ghanean parents

but they were born in Texas.

They really wanted to give back to Ghana,

but they're afraid that if they go home,

nobody will take them
seriously as real Africans.

I had students who said they had families,

wives, children, husbands,
partners to take care of,

perhaps they were better off
staying in the United States

and providing for their families back home

rather than going back
and getting into public service.

This got me thinking
about the question of skills remittance,

of talent remittance,
of social and political remittance.

If these young people have the passion

to give back to their
communities monetarily,

imagine how different
our politics would be

if those same skills,
influence, leadership, talent

were put at work in service
of the public good.

And that includes all of you in this room

because many of you
are also part of the diaspora.

I'm here to recruit you.

I'm here to make a deal with you.

I'm not going back
unless I take you with me.

(Laugther)

Now, I know that most of you,
if not the vast majority of you,

are completely fed up, turned off,
discouraged, disgusted by politics,

either in your country,
in this country, all over the world.

Perhaps you are discouraged by the fact
that governments are slow to deliver.

Perhaps they're inefficient.

Perhaps they are thoroughly
corrupt and rotten to the core.

Perhaps they're responsible
for conflicts that have claimed lives

and livelihoods in the countries
from which you come.

So why would you sink your time
and your energies

into such a compromised system?

One of the most powerful analyses

of conflict, inefficiency,
corruption, stagnation

which I've encountered
in recent months

is the question of a political economy.

There is a reason that our governments
are not performing as they should.

It's not just because of
a failure within the system.

Consider the political economy of conflict
and corruption in your own country.

Why is it so difficult to overcome?

Who is making money or amassing power

because things don't work
the way they should?

Where does the back stop?

Who has an incentive to keep
the system dysfunctional?

And how can we work together

to overcome their
total infection of the system,

to ensure that we don't lose our grip

on the very principle
of democratic governance?

The answer, I'm afraid,

because you were born
into this political time,

is simply by taking over -

you have to get involved.

There's no way around it.

You have to join political organizations

in numbers large enough
to influence change from within.

You have to actively seek
to take up a leadership role

in government, in the state,
in the public service

and deftly but decisively move
its priorities to where they should be:

not in the service of people who want
to amass power and money for themselves,

but to better the lives
of the highest number of people.

There will always be government,

whether we like it or not,

whether we find it palatable or not.

But there won't always be democracy.

If we ignore politics,

the people who have been quietly
lobbying our governments

to prioritize development
ahead of democracy,

these are the people
who will have their way,

and the systems that we now take
for granted will dissolve before our eyes.

When I was campaigning in South Africa
last year for the 2014 general election,

the voter registration numbers
looked a little bit like this,

six months before the election:

23% of potential voters
in the 18-to-19-year-old age group

were registered to vote.

In the age group 20 to 29 years old,
55% were registered.

And from 30 upwards,
the number varied from 79 to 100%;

in fact, there were more people
aged 80 and over who were registered

than were in the census
numbers in South Africa.

Imagine that.

Fully 100% of people over a certain age

consider voting to be
an indispensable right,

21 years into democracy,

and do not shirk their responsibility
to register and turn out at the polls.

But in the 18-to-19-year-old age group -

and we must remember 19 is
the average age on our continent;

26 is the average age in South Africa -

the number is 23% to 55%.

What's the political economy
of voter apathy?

Who benefits when we stay
out of the system?

Who gets to keep the status quo

and empower themselves
and enrich themselves

and continue to infect
our political system like a cancer.

Who banks by us continuing
with the status quo?

Now even as I say all of this to you,

that your country and your continent
need you to enter public service,

I know that if you take up my challenge,

you're going to face
huge amounts of resistance -

all because of these political economies
that I have just described.

I did.

I was told that I was too young.

I was too female.

(Laughter)

I didn't have enough experience

though no one could define
what experience was enough.

I had too much of a white accent;
I wasn't a real African.

I straightened my hair and wore weaves;
I wasn't a real African.

We should be honest

about the things that hold people back
from entering public service -

humiliation, degradation;
it's not an easy road -

but all of these things
should illustrate to you

the extent to which
the status quo is designed

to enrich and empower a few
at the expense of the many,

and it should impart to you
the urgency of you, as a generation,

of now getting involved in public service

to change that very culture.

And if you decide to enter public service,

you may even be tempted to believe
some of these criticisms.

They're designed to keep you out;
that's how gatekeeping works.

Somebody is benefiting

from the absence of excellence
and disruption in politics and government.

But these are challenges
that have to be faced on.

There is no other route;
there is no wishing this away.

They are the reason that your country
and your continent need you.

We have this thing in politics in Africa;
it's called the "big man."

The cult of personality - we've all heard
different terminologies for it.

In South Africa, in particular,
this entails waiting for a great person

to come and save us from ourselves.

Currently, we're waiting for
Cyril Ramaphosa or Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma

or [inaudible] to come and save
South Africa from itself,

to save us from the mess
that we find ourselves in

that perhaps another big man put us in.

But how can a single personality
be held responsible

for building or for running
a whole nation?

And where do we turn when they fail?

If we haven't cultivated any kind
of pipeline of energetic, young people

who wanted to enter
public service now or in the future

and, critically,
who can do the job better,

are we doomed to always have to choose

between mediocrity and ego,
and mediocrity and ego?

Is that it?

Is that all our government will ever be?

Or worse: Are we going to stand by
while presidents change constitutions

so they can serve a third term
and a fourth term and a fifth term,

claiming that three million people
signed a petition

stating that they are the only person
who can do the job?

(Laughter) (Applause)

Is that what we'll do?

Now, there's a new energy

around entrepreneurism
and innovation and growth

in Africa today.

But that energy isn't going to translate
into lasting prosperity

unless we get our politics right.

Political leaders who are
gatekeepers of the status quo

will claim that any success
is their success.

They'll centralize power,

and they'll demand that we all be grateful

for those little green
shoots of achievement,

and then they'll claim
that nobody else can do the job.

They'll argue that development
must come first, freedom can come later,

and that they are the best
benevolent dictator to do the job.

They'll take your political voice from you
when times are a little bit good,

and when times go bad,
they will refuse to give it back.

There is no prosperity for our continent

without a vibrant, diverse,
and truly competitive politics,

founded upon excellence, transparency
and commitment to the public good.

Our politics will not have
any of these qualities

unless talented, young people,
the best people,

step forward at this moment
in Africa's history,

when we're emerging from that stereotype

of the dark continent,
the hopeless continent,

and commit themselves to public service.

We must run for office.

We must work in the civil service.

We must disrupt the political status quo.

We must prevent the rush to the bottom.

You really are the ones
that you have been waiting for.

There are no great saviors
waiting somewhere in the wings

to save us from future problems.

There's nobody who is waiting in the wings
to come and save us from ourselves;

there's just us.

And I'm not going back without you.

(Laughter)

So, will you take up the challenge?

Thank you.

(Cheers) (Applause)