The death of my childhood hero Nelson Mandela was followed by massive media appreciation of this great politician and freedom fighter. There is no doubt that Mandela was one of the most influential and charismatic political leaders of the last century. But Madiba’s struggle for freedom remains unfinished.
One of the most realistic comments made after Mandela’s death was that of civil rights activist Rev Jessie Jackson. Speaking on Sky News, he said that today many people throughout the world are still not free because they have no economic freedom. This is certainly the case in South Africa, but it is also a sad reality in many other countries, including Malta.
Unemployment in South Africa is a high 24.7 per cent. Average earnings of black households are a sixth of their white counterparts. The ANC’s youth section is clamouring for the nationalisation of banks and mines as a large part of the black population suffers from lack of adequate housing and basic service.
“We still have racial unemployment, racial poverty and racial inequality,” says Sidumo Dlamini, president of the 2.2-million-member Congress of South African Trade Unions, the country’s largest labour grouping and a member of the ruling alliance.
“Our country is still in white hands”.
But this is not just South Africa’s problem. Youth unemployment is becoming endemic in the European Union. Some EU countries are still struggling with their ineffective education, health and pensions system. Others have serious problems with providing decent housing to all citizens. The welfare state is quickly becoming a vanishing reality for most people living in Europe.
Pope Francis in his encyclical Evangelli Gaudium put his finger on the sore wound when he wrote: “Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalised without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.”
Guaranteeing economic freedom to all will prove a much more daunting task for today’s political leaders than it was for Mandela to obtain political freedom for his people. The detachment between politics and the economy in most democratic countries makes it that much more difficult to achieve economic freedom for all.
Democratic governments today have very limited tools to promote economic growth and to guarantee a decent quality of life to most people. Fiscal and monetary policy are simply not enough to bring about the massive change that is needed to make sure that we live in a fairer world where everyone is really free both on a political and economic level.
Massive change ... is needed to make sure that we live in a fairer world where everyone is really free both on a political and economic level
A massive cultural change is needed in many sectors of Western society. I believe that the most important critical success factor for the paradigm shift in values that is needed to guarantee more equality is an effective educational system that will give everyone the tools to succeed in life.
This is not just a task for educational leaders. Political, religious and social leaders need to engage in a soul-searching exercise to determine what is not functioning in our educational systems and come up with plans on how to fix them. I suspect that the root of the problem of low educational achievement in most countries is a cultural one where many families still do not give sufficient value to the importance of their children taking their education seriously.
But there are other equally important areas that our political leaders need to address. The quality of life of people can improve if taxpayers’ money is used more effectively to guarantee good healthcare to everyone. European politicians also need to do what it takes to encourage people to save more for their retirement and avoid social and economic distress in old age when they are at their weakest.
Unfortunately, in some countries, political leaders have lost the trust of their people. This is not only breeding a sense of helplessness among vulnerable people, but is also encouraging the emergence of extreme political groupings that do not have any real solutions to today’s economic challenges.
The world needs political leaders of Mandela’s stature to lead the struggle for economic freedom that is so badly needed not just for black people in South Africa, but for many others in various countries who still struggle to live a decent life.
The solutions cannot come from nationalisation of businesses. They have to come from change programmes that fix the flaws in today’s economic models.
johncassarwhite@yahoo.com