JOEL NETSHITENZHE: How black professionals could reshape SA’s economic tone and social timbre
Instead of mimicking white elite lifestyles, the ambition should be to launch a new path that frees everyone, writes Joel Netshitenzhe
Most black professionals nowadays belong, at once, in the binary settings of opulence and wretchedness. The sense of "arrival" is daily tempered by the realisation that we are only at the beginning of another episode in a never-ending journey. To ensure the gold at the end of the rainbow does not turn into a mirage, professionals need to relate their narrow interests to the broader aspirations of society. If there were any fitting articulation of the generic ideal that should guide black professionals, three such assertions from three generations of leaders stand out. In his speech at Columbia University at the turn of the past century, Pixley ka Isaka Seme asserted: "The regeneration of Africa means that a new and unique civilisation is soon to be added to the world…. The most essential departure of this new civilisation is that it shall be thoroughly spiritual and humanistic — indeed a regeneration, moral and eternal!" In his book, Let My People Go, Chief Albert Luthuli says: "Som...
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