The Crisis Is Not Capacity. It Is Organization.

The denial of foundational concepts is a symptom of a people without grounding. When a society loses the wisdom to define itself, it begins arguing over language instead of substance, concepts instead of reality. Our public discourse becomes an endless cycle of misinformation and reaction rather than understanding and direction.

I often find myself frustrated by the quality of our political discourse. Much of it appears to originate from social media, while social media, in turn, merely amplifies political rhetoric. It becomes difficult to distinguish which influences the other. As much as I admire leaders such as Boko and several politicians across Southern Africa, I equally admire the quiet confidence and disciplined messaging coming from the Chinese, where a communist-led government speaks less but communicates with unmistakable clarity. There is wisdom in measured words.

My cousin once gave me advice that has stayed with me ever since: "Brother, they must never hear you coming, but they must know you have arrived." That simple statement captures something we seem to have forgotten. Must everything in our country be debated publicly? Is every strategic question supposed to become entertainment? More importantly, are we organised at all?

I once had the privilege of speaking for a brief moment with our former Statistician-General Dr Pali Lehohla. During our conversation, I confidently asked him about our people taking over the spaza shop sector. Without hesitation, he replied, "Don't. You and your people are not organised."

At the time, I was amused by his prompt response. Surely opening a few shops could not be that difficult, especially with youth unemployment sitting at 60%. Yet today we are told that the spaza economy is worth billions of rand annually and run by immigrants. His response was never about shops. It was about organisation and that we needed to have a common galvanizing agenda and unapologetic approach. I digress.

My mentor, Mama Litchfield-Tshabalala, once asked me what I believed our generation's purpose was, considering that our parents' generation had a clear national mission, education. Half-jokingly, I answered, "To party and enjoy the fruits of their labour." We both laughed.

But the reality is far more demanding.

Look around us. We have popular civic movements organised around single-issue exclusion. We have criminal syndicates capable of out-organising, infiltrating and, in some instances, capturing public institutions. We have political parties that fill stadiums during election campaigns. We have formal businesses, churches, trade unions and countless registered organisations.

Yet despite all of this organisation, we remain fundamentally disorganised because in my opinion we mistake activity for organization.

The problem is deeper than institutions. It is constitutional, historical and psychological. At the highest level of our democratic order, our people are primarily recognised as ethnic groups rather than nations. Entire nations are reduced to cultural classifications rather than recognised as historical peoples with their own systems of governance, philosophy and civilisation. Worse still, many of our own brothers and sisters continue to carry imposed apartheid-era identities such as "Coloured" instead of being recognised by their ancestral nations and ethnic names. A people cannot cultivate a coherent national consciousness while simultaneously being disconnected from who they are. It is a constitutional and historical misnomer that perpetuates an identity dilemma.

We share common experiences. We share common histories. We share common identities.

What we do not share is a common sense of being.

In the United States, people are taught the American Dream, and those who choose to become Americans are expected to understand and embrace what that identity represents. Whether one agrees with that project or not is beside the point. The point is that there is an organised idea of what it means to belong.

What, then, is a South African?

Here lies the dilemma. We continue attempting to construct a new national consciousness while systematically extinguishing the generational knowledge, history and civilisational memory that preceded the modern state. We have become so eager to define ourselves by 1994 that we have neglected the thousands of years that came before it. Our people only encountered the most devastating forms of organised violence after foreign powers arrived on our shores claiming to bring civilisation. Yet before that, our societies organised themselves, governed communities, traded across continents, resolved disputes and sustained complex systems of life without the endless dependence on prisons, psychiatric institutions or perpetual litigation that characterise modern governance. Time itself was understood differently. That, however, is a discussion for another day.

Who are we, not according to those who conquered us, classified us or renamed us, but according to ourselves?

Surely, we may have lost battles throughout history, but history itself is not finished. We are a people who evolved, organised, traded, governed and built civilisations long before many of today's modern states came into existence. Humanity itself traces its earliest origins to this continent, yet many of us remain strangers to our own story.

So how do we organise?

We begin by reminding our people who they are and where they come from. We stop chasing acceptance at the cost of identity. We reject the notion that progress requires cultural amnesia. Fear is a construct, but dignity is a birthright and therefore non-negotiable.

Above all, buyelani emasikweni.

Return to the customs that grounded our ancestors. There is wisdom in the rhythms of the natural world, and there is wisdom in the communities that preserved them.

When our people once again embrace their heritage as creators and contributors to the modern world, recognising that our civilisations preceded, evolved and helped shape it, we can confidently welcome a new dawn. One where we move forward unapologetically, united by shared values, common principles and a collective purpose. A society that returns to its communal way of living, where success is measured not merely by individual survival, but by the wellbeing and advancement of the whole.

As the children of our forefathers, we seek a world that honours all Indigenous peoples, while remaining firmly rooted in who we are. A world where our children inherit more than opportunity. They inherit pride in their identity, confidence in their history, and a shared purpose that binds them to one another and to generations yet to come.

By Mr Mncedi Mabona