In conversation with Dr. Mbuyiseni Ndlozi

0:00Let's walk the talk. 7.02 We thought any further, Dr. Bui Sen and Lucy, thanks very much for joining us. Welcome to 7.02. Thanks, thanks very much and good morning to the listeners. Thanks for having me. Alternatively, in your previous life, you would be also on radio at this time. Oh, God, you ruined me. I don't know how you guys do it. I've come to appreciate how hard waking you all up. I'm glad you did when you said that. Now you see. Yeah. But only more serious note. Now you've gone to, I would say, bigger and better things. And not that there's a comparison. But because now you're venturing into space. You call it by Tupila Convention. Let's start there. What is by Tupila Convention? What propelled you to come up with it? It's as I indicated when I had that accident in politics that I will be dedicating my energy

1:00completely to civil society. It's a civil society outfit that tries to catalyze a social movement from below. It's completely non-partisan. We don't even want anybody within the ranks who holds a party position. But Tupila Convention stems from the realization that part of what is broken in addition to the obvious. Broken economy in South Africa. Which I say it's actually not broken. It's designed to function precisely as exclusionary. But we've got a broken state broken by corruption. And what should be fixing it is also broken. Which is the party political system. There are over 600 parties. That's more than the way ever. Chifts in 1912. And there are only ever emerging within the African community in South Africa.

2:00Most of them sponsored by white people. And that means there's been an atomization of the political consensus that is necessary to build a developmental state. Most of the problems we face socially and economically. GBV, MEDA, unemployment, the industrialization growth and all of those things. You need a very united African community that is able to act together, produce plans, minimum 20-year plans, and implement them for the India. There's the aid is also broken. That is broken. But what is the concern is that as a result, the basic citizenry is of a broken agency. We have lost a sense of practicing freedom as a form of self-sufficiency. And I give several examples. We'll just limit to myself this morning to two.

3:02Just to remind our people that we used to understand that to practice freedom even during the days when we didn't have the state, when the state was oppressive to us, we responded by both fighting politically but also building self-sufficient institutions. You would know, and this is the example, I really think my resonate a lot with some of the programs we are doing. The first 10 years of South Africa's democracy, the number one item in the infrastructure budget of education, where the MED schools. Thousands of them in the villages. They were a big item to say, we've got to eradicate the MED schools. But who built the MED schools? The reality is the apartheid state was not arriving to offer education in the villages. Our people decided not to wait. They understood that this state is not coming for us

4:03and therefore condemning us and the youth and the children to eternal ignorance. They brought their own resources little as they were together, paid the teachers, built the same schools as their own houses. If you enter the villages, the schools look like the architecture like the same houses. That's the sense of self-sufficiency. We want to revive from below. The second example I give is a much more dramatic and recent one. If you think about it, now communities, you've got several social institutions, a school, a hospital, a clinic. Let's say a school clinic, a church, a community hall, a mall. You've got a person climbed on top of a community hall, a museum, the roof. The community hall will be exposed and damaged for the next two years before it gets fixed, if it gets fixed. Or it will get fixed before the elections or the year of the elections. Same community, same people,

5:04the same person or the same act of somebody taking the roof, happens on top of the roof of a church, a person takes the roof of a church. That church will be fixed before the next Sunday service. Why? Same people, same community. They go steal the money in the clinic that is supposed to provide medication. The response will be to join the school, join the gangman. You know? And the same community, go touch the burial society money. You will not sleep in that community. Yeah. Why? What informs those two attitudes towards the pro, the programs of facilities that are fundamental to communities of IFA? It's because the church knows that it is self-sufficient. Yes. It knows that nobody is coming to replace that roof. The mechanism of its own existence is that they know they are on their own. Even if politicians can come, sometimes give them this or the other, or some other rich person, give them the way the church functions, is in a sense of self-sufficiency.

6:05So is the burial society, the stockfels. The type of relationship we need to restore with our public facilities, the streetlights, the spot holes, the bust pipes and all of that, has to fundamentally be grounded in a mode of self-sufficiency. And I meant to make self-sufficient people don't know. They are not easily abused. They are not easily taken advantage of. But to build a convention in principle is about restoring the practice of self-sufficiency. Let me be ignorant, please, and pardon my elementary thinking here, because I want you to be well understood and I also want to understand it well, as you've made an example and are looted to spot holes as an example. Yes. Are you saying that it is up to us ordinary citizens, to make sure that over and above maintenance, where fixing is needed, we need to step up.

7:05And if so, I could tear someone asking, then what is the job of the government? I don't have money to fill in spot holes. And I'm asking that, ignorantly, because I want you to maybe give us insight into practically how does it resonate on a pragmatic situation. I'm saying that if you leave it like that, go as majority over 70% of municipalities help is not coming. You've already protested. You've already changed political parties, one after the other, cancel us one after the other. As soon as they get your mandate, they tend their back against you. You've got to try something new. I'm saying to you, when you start as a mode of survival, not as a permanent solution, where the state fails, you step in and you step indecisively, you humiliate those in power. But you don't do that only. It is in addition to the fighting against corruption.

8:05Ah, you don't retreat. What you haven't done is a sustainable way of making sure that if they don't come, you are not helpless. You don't leave in those piles and piles of ways that I am infecting your environment. You've got to practically be self-organized and respond. But that's in relation to the state. What about the economy? I mean, it's worse. The state, half the time, has no competence. We can talk about that all day. Everybody knows. Even if they play and they have not been able to resolve levels of chronic unemployment. And I'm part of the examples there that are critical. For an example, you've got to think of ways of forming organized consumption and production associations to respond to the low-hanging fruits.

9:05There's a perfect example that's a chap, Sibussiso, and Zelle in Everton. When the 360s were being given during COVID, managed to mobilize the community to say, let's not spend them. Let's save them. They built a bakery for themselves. About 5,000 of them. You see the logic. They built a bakery because everybody eats bread every day. But they sacrificed. And the first customer, the 5,000 people who have built that bakery, it's the reorganization of consumption and production. Albania does not have space anymore there. Over time, they will yield profit. There are so many of those initiatives in a form of cooperatives that are low-hanging fruits. That can respond to the chronic levels of poverty and unemployment here and now. For instance, if I was sitting in a meeting of March and March, or the people that were planning the March and March,

10:05I would have said, let us accept the challenge. What that challenge of Pakistanis means. It has exposed that we are not organized. Because if there's so much powerful consensus that we don't want the spaserschops of Pakistanis in the townships, and who the hell has been buying from them, one, two, who is renting to them? So you've got a low-hanging fruit immediately there. Organize yourself as a consumption power. You'll know, Tabo, if I open a shop of any kind in one-ing side, 90% of the consumption power is white people. They do two things. One, they give me a sweet and rent. Two, they don't buy from me. In six months, a year, businesses that are of Africans and business. Die. That's a strategy. But where it doesn't mean if they don't buy to you. They are not buying anyway. They are keeping their rent circulating amongst themselves. Constructive ways of self-sufficient organizing.

11:06That immediately dismantle but also empower the people in the community. I'm giving examples of the types of organizational solutions. We will be embarking on. I want us to get to the machinations of the structure itself of Batubili. How you anticipate it to be the composition thereof. What is it made of? Because in South Africa, as a mobilized people every now and then, we have an idea of a chairperson, a secretary and whatever else. Even in stockfills that you've mentioned, there is that structure. It sounds to me as if you are coming with something different. Please explain to us the composition and the actual running of it and managing of it. Because you are also speaking about the fact that it has to be self-sufficient. People must sustain it itself. How does it look like? Alamed to begin with the immediate initiative that we have made. We've got a steering committee. It's registered as an NPC.

12:06But we are our immediate program, which we are piloting because one of the proof of concept is the alumni league of public schools, what we call the alumni league of public schools. Where we are appealing particularly to professionals. You've got to have a permanent relationship with the schools that produce us. All healthy societies do so. We've got to have a permanent, sustainable, productive relationship with all private schools have that. We have this anomaly because there are 22,000 public schools in South Africa. Four primary schools feed a single high school, three or four. 6,000 high schools as it were across the country. You try. We all have been available on the ones. We try every Mandela day to go put in a window to paint. From time to time you remember, you go make a contribution of the Iran or 40,000, whatever the strength of your pocket.

13:07We need to sustainably do that. And if I say to you, Tabo, go back to Mahalakwin high school. You will try. There will be 50 of you. As time goes, you will die. Because the principle of cloud funding needs density. So the alumni league of public schools that we will be embarking on, the sort of organizes these schools into 200 batches, 250 per chapter. So the example where we are piloting at the moment is in Soweto. And we are gathering and we are calling everybody if we are produced by a public school in Soweto. Then October, a Dhrijayana Mundi that has gathered there to speak about how we formed the Soweto chapter. 254 schools in Soweto. Our proposition is very simple. We contribute annually, 3000 rent, per piece, or 250 per month. If it's too scary when I say 3000 rent. These funds, once we've gathered them, we then choose schools.

14:09It could be 10 schools based on what we raise. We don't give the principal money when independent entity that is not going to succumb to the procurement halabaloo of the state. Once we have selected your school, we say principal, let's enter memorandum of agreement. When the schools close in June or December, we move in, windows, seedlings, toilets, painting, furniture, the works. When the schools reopen, we hand it back. That's what we do, infrastructure dignity. As we grow, we may build science labs. As we grow, we may be able to fund spotting codes permanently, such as Soka. And resolve this problem of Bafanabha fan, one send for all because you've got to develop talent. That's why Ragbees good. They've got feminine, well-funded leagues at primary and high school levels. That's a flag she programmed. That's the first sort of program. And it is based in chapters. All the funds that we raise there, we use them as it were to make these interventions.

15:16That's a particularly infrastructural dignity of that chapter. Once we finish in, so we've got proof of concept, we will roll them out across the country from January. How long is the pilot? It's from now up until the end of the year. We have to work towards this December holiday. See how many schools, how many people can we get on board? How many schools can we renovate, show that as proof of concept? Then go across the country with this proof that it is possible in Mdansan, in Mtata, in Puluwani, in Nelspreid and so on and so forth. That's, I'm giving a concrete example of how would its structure look like on the ground. But of course, the other part is community-based chapters, where you say to the community and we're experimenting that as a pilot in Shabvid. Let's have a sustainable day to run the person, contribution, per month. And you use those funds to consistently intervene to the immediate challenges facing you.

16:19Keep the light on. Wherever the circumstances, we will refuse to live in the dark in relation to street lights, port holes and fund community policing forums to push back against criminals. And it is because these technologies are no longer that expensive, tabo. To put on cameras for ourselves, to put on plate recognitions, to put on boom gates for us. And no longer that complicated white people are doing them with the same small amounts of contributions amongst their communities. You can just walk into a shop and get it. It's as easy as that. Exactly. But allowing to take a WhatsApp voice note there on 072721702 so that I don't monopolize the discussion between myself and Dr. Bressen and Rosie. Who's calling for a new form of grassroots politics that move citizens away from waiting for government solutions towards building their own systems? Are they calling it but to be a convention? He's here to expand on that 25 minutes after 10 o'clock.

17:21Good morning. The sounds like an amazing initiative. There are so many schools in our country that are certainly neglected. I have to go to Alex a few times to the seniors to the high schools. And I do see the neglect and how they need and deserve fixing up the learners deserve to be taught and to learn in a very good environment. These children deserve better. It's a list. Good morning, tabo. I'm Refan. Good morning, I'm so glad to be here. I wanted to listen to comment on this on this point here and I agree with him totally that we as black people must organize for a cause. It appears as if we are only able to organize against something only when we are committed but for a cause we are unable to do so. We're only susceptible to divide and conquer rule. And I'm saying so how can we organize when we are divided spiritually?

18:22Because Jews can organize themselves under Jews and the Judaism. The Arab men can do the same under their spirituality and they can have a Mubarak bingo. We have a bingo they've come up with. But for us, they're susceptible to divide and conquer. We organize. I know one is a Christian. I know one is a Muslim. I know one is a restaurant. I know one is this. They go there separately. By the time they come back, whatever we had agreed upon, how is it going to hold them? We're saying when we are spiritually divided. Good things, good things. Seven or two and Dr. Androsy there. Yeah, it's true. It can be done after this. There's a lot of things that have done before that can prove that if people are mobilized correctly, brought together correctly with no other hidden agenda, everything is possible. Thank you. Ender, come to the back. We say, I'm going to need you to respond to that. But I'm going to ask you to be very brief.

19:24You've been in this business before. We have about three minutes. So it's not me hating you. I'm going to ask you to respond to it briefly because I have one important question to ask you afterwards. Do you want to give it a go? Maybe to welcome the sort of reflections, first from Celeste. You see, Tabo, the environment met us. When you hear the levels of self-destruction in the youth, the school going youth, the immediate graduate of high schools, and you look at the facilities that they studied in, there's no way they can be the law of firstly for education. There can be no way that you are able as a teacher to constitute discipline, but also a sense of self-affirmation that I'm cared for, therefore I should care for myself. It makes a fundamental difference that we give infrastructural dignity to say education is important because it is.

20:28And all these people, when we disagree about this, about bodhars and all of that, who, when they disagree with you, they don't argue with whatever the agenda point is. Yeah, education is useless. Education is useless. This educated people useless. Only in the African community do people disagree and they mock each other as education. How you can wake up the next morning and tell your children to go to school? If you spend the whole day on Twitter, the whole day on WhatsApp and Facebook mocking education. I'm saying that that's precisely the attitude and it's less this right. No one is going to sustainably do that. I mean, all of us, I'm saying we do it in small interventions. I'm sure you yourself can confess to many times you've gone back and it just looks overwhelming. You can't do it alone. So we are finding this is a model, a mechanism to sustainably deliver and push back against infrastructural dignity of our public schools.

21:32Allow me to still just 30 seconds because I have to ask this especially on the backdrop of some skeptics that might be there right? You're wrong. We say, how do we know that this is not a political movement that is coming? They just think it's something. No, but squeezing it in your business. People say, right, that's it like that. We are going here. Action essay. Let's say what the people say. Let's mobilize. And then we say it comes a very formidable politician coming up with this. Is this another political party coming? That's why I took two years off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To go rehabilitate one. And secondly, you have no idea how much of big offers I have been given. I had an opportunity. I know my starting point is there is no tragic proposition at the moment that can come from an African. Then I want to start another political party. That will be one of the biggest and most tragic propositions in society today because that will be a recipe for more division in the African community.

22:44That is not going to produce any results. Been there, done there. And I did it with not only excellence with absolute loyalty and dedication. Where majority of our resources and energy and talents are needed. It is in this space of civil society. That's what is weakened in the African community. That's why we are broken. And I'm setting on a path to fix that. By the way, congratulations on your book, Love and Violence. The results are against permanent juniority. And we say that it is not just a committee member, national steering committee member of the Bayloo Convention, but also an author. Make sure that you get his book. Thanks for coming through.