The delayed reset

In March 2020, we packed boxes, bags and binders, abandoned our office buildings all across our cities, and headed for our homes as if a plague had hit us. Well, ok, a pandemic hit us. Our cities became ghost towns, and high- rise office blocks stood empty against an ominous skyline. There was no use for these buildings in their traditional roles as containers of people. We all discovered that it was possible to work from home, or wherever.

The lockdown buzzwords were ‘reset’ and ‘new normal’. Everything was to be reset, and whatever we reset to would become our new normal. I don’t know what happened to the prophets of the reset movement and the new normal crowd, but they seem to have all disappeared. Most of what we are left with is a far worse-off old normal. The poverty is worse. The household crises are worse.

In his April 2020 Freedom Day address, President Ramaphosa gave what I consider to be one of the most important speeches of his presidency – and most of us missed it. The President called on the nation to build a new economy, a new consciousness and a new society.

When I look around me today, I see no reset. No new economy. No new consciousness and no new society.

After two years of working from home, I fear that a lazy comfort has taken hold of many, and all talk of a reset economy, a new society and a new consciousness has died. The 2021 Local Government Elections ushered new city governments across the country into power. But I fear that the same lazy thinking that existed prior to March 2020 is back in the strategic driver’s seat. And that dashes all hopes of anything new emerging.

I sense that words like inertia, apathy and indolence are returning with a vengeance to dominate businesses and government leadership. What we encounter is verbosity among many leaders, but I have a visceral sense of the vacuous nature of their words. They don’t know how to lead us.

This Trumpian behaviour of having the ‘best words that mean nothing crisis’ is exactly the place to start the awakening of the reset. It’s where all great social resets begin. Go and stand in the middle of Adderley Street and ask yourself: what kind of public open space could this be? Go and stand in Cape Town Central Station and ask: What kind of global transport interchange could this be? Stand in the 500-car parking garage of a city office block and ask: What kind of social housing could this be? Begin with the willingness to imagine. Don’t be scared. Sit in the reception area of the mayor’s office and imagine what that space would sound like if he had a group of volunteer civil society members in his executive suite on a monthly rotational basis as a sounding board to help him think through community issues. Imagine if the Premier had a weekly visit down a local community’s street to chat to them at their front gate and called it ‘stoep talk’. Imagine if working adults in Cape Town gave just R10 a month, and we started ‘The R10 Fund’ and each month it would collect R1 million and every month a different community would get that R1 million to improve an approved education, health and transport infrastructural issue in their community.

Imagine if we stopped being scared by the narratives we have been taught about race and religion, abandoned its fear-mongering, got into a taxi, train or bus, and started talking to other people. Imagine the worlds that would open up. Imagine if every politician would use public transport at least once or twice a week to travel to their offices in the city. There is no reason they can’t use public transport.