Many of the things that rile us, which often are not very different to the things that hold us back, are a consequence of short-term thinking, observes author Ari Wallach in his new book, Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs.
I’d recommend that every South African of voting age read it before the elections in 2024. This is a book — described as an antidote to short-termism — to help sober us up, to help us think beyond our limited time on this scorched earth. Wallach says many people are asking the wrong questions and solving the wrong problems because they’re trying to ward off short-term challenges.
Think about our most pressing political challenges now: will President Cyril Ramaphosa survive the battles within his organisation and deliver the next state of the nation address (Sona)? The short-termism here isn’t so much that the address is little more than two months away, it is that our preoccupation with who leads us distracts us from what matters.
If I asked ordinary South Africans what policy issues were fiercely debated ahead of the ANC elective conference in about three weeks, it’s anyone’s guess what the answers would be. In other words, there is no common understanding of what we are trying to solve. The vicissitudes of leadership rob us of the attention due to what we need to do today to ensure that those who come after us don’t have to face the same challenges we do. Imagine what decisions needed to be taken 16 years ago about our country’s energy needs and what a fillip this would have been to our economy if the right decisions had been taken.
Think about our most pressing political challenges now: will President Cyril Ramaphosa survive the battles within his organisation to and deliver the next sState of the nNation aAddress (Sona)?
In the same vein, the question is whether this generation is taking the right decisions to ensure that the spectre of load-shedding isn’t a feature of future South African life.
That our infrastructure is falling apart isn’t the issue. The issue is putting in place the bricks, literally and figuratively, to ensure that future generations will be proud of what we build. That’s what is at the heart of Global Citizen, for example. You may look at climate change and say the generations before us focused on industrialising their economies on the back of fossil fuels and paid little attention to the cataclysmic challenges their actions would unleash on us. Think too of past decisions on land, on race relations and many other things, and how these have impacted us many years after they were taken.
To undo these and ensure that some of the challenges don’t get worse, we must, to revert to Wallach, stop asking the wrong questions and solving the wrong problems spawned by our short-term focus.
In his book, Wallach asks: “Can we build a story of progress that embraces an inclusive, psychologically evolved, and ecological objective, which by its very nature hooks future generations up with what they’ll need to flourish? Put simply, can we make a better us? Can we be the great ancestors that future generations need us to be?”
On the surface, it seems we are not ready for Wallach’s type of thinking. For starters, there are people within and outside the ANC who believe that the best president we have, the one who will help us become the best ancestors for our future generations, is a fellow facing multiple investigations related to the theft of millions of dollars, possible foreign exchange violations and other potential criminal offences at a farm in Limpopo. The alternative to him is another fellow implicated in fraud and corruption related to the Digital Vibes scandal.
If you look outside their party, you find an offshoot of Cape Colony thinking in a party that sees diversity, in a country with such a racialised past, as an optional extra. Other political parties are personality-driven while some have woeful policies.
The options are a sad joke on South Africans not yet born — that those who must prepare this land for their arrival are some of the worst among us. Future generations may be disappointed with us for outsourcing our own agency.
Wallach’s thinking also applies to corporate life. Kodak used to be a great firm, but its failure to think beyond the unbridled “now-ism” of the ’80s and ’90s was its undoing.
Wallach challenges us to think about families and life beyond our own children. If we could leave our descendants a message, for example, on “what the most important thing in life is, the wisdom you most want to pass on, or maybe a wish or benediction”, what would it be? Conversely, if South Africans, black and white, wrote us letters about what they did in 1948 (birth of formalised apartheid) or 1913 (implementation of the Land Act) to bequeath us a better life, what would the letters say?
This book is an important contribution to the body of knowledge on how to think long term. It challenges us to become responsible, not just for ourselves. “If you’re engaged in a dialogue about Longpath, pay attention to its trajectory. While ‘How did we get here?’ has a role, it is not the whole conversation. See if you can guide the exchange toward ‘Where are we going?’ and ‘Where do we want to be?’ It’s a whole other conversational posture.”
What’s important is not whether Ramaphosa makes it to the next Sona. It’s whether this country gets a leader who will act in a way that those who walk our streets 200 years from today will be glad we voted and acted responsibly. That’s being the great ancestors future generations want us to be. That’s Wallach’s Longpath.
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