Social Cohesion – A South African Story
We are currently working on a Social Cohesion project.
Social Cohesion looks at what brings us together as a community and as a country. South Africa systematically went through a process of reverse Social Cohesion during the Apartheid years, the separation of the races was designed to keep cultural groupings apart deliberately and to maintain a form of Social Cohesivness only within that cultural (racial) grouping.
Under the democratic dispensation South Africa is struggling to rebuild its Social Cohesion. Studies (sanctioned by Government) indicate that South Africans are seeing themselves less and less as South Africans and align themselves more by their racial grouping.
Why does it appear that the Rainbow Nation is splitting along racial lines? Has Government failed at unifying its people?
I would argue that its not Government that has failed the people, but rather the people who have failed themselves and failed their country. Government has put into place the necessary mechanisms and frameworks (our constitution for example) to allow its people to connect and bond and to form that common identity. We as South Africans are still dragging the Apartheid mindset with us.
How best then to start practically rebuilding a nation? Sixteen years since the first democratic election and it appears we are moving away from each other. The foundation institution for starting the process of Social Cohesiveness must be at our schools and this is where we are failing, this is where our teachers and principals and school governing bodies are failing. We no longer view the school as the centre of the community (even more central than a Church, a Temple or a Mosque).
What do you think?
