[Talk given at a fundraising dinner at Diepkloef Hall, 13 October 2007, for the Holy Cross Education Trust - a Trust established within the Holy Cross Anglican Parish, Orlando West, SOWETO]

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. (Acts 2:17 -18.)

1. Greetings and Introductions

Members, participants, donors, sponsors and beneficiaries of the Holy Cross Education Trust
Members of the Executive Committee and Board of the Trust
Members of the Holy Cross Anglican Church
Ladies and gentlemen

It is an honor and a rare privilege for me to address you on this beautiful and special gala occasion - the Holy Cross Education Trust Fundraising Dinner. From the time of the first telephone call asking me to come and speak here, I had an immediate gut feel, that the Holy Cross Education Trust is indeed a worthy cause. There is a more fundamental reason why I am here. I was immediately attracted to the idea of returning home - to SOWETO. I grew up in Meadowlands and went to school in Meadowlands Zone five - until my own schooling was both interrupted and radicalized by the 1976 SOWETO uprisings. The very quality and professionalism of the Holy Cross people with whom I have interacted until now was a further confirmation that this was indeed a worthy cause. Listening to the speakers who spoke before me earlier today, my initial instincts about the Holy Cross Education Trust have been affirmed, confirmed and re-affirmed. I know that I stand before a special group of people - people in the grip of a dynamic idea; people involved in a worthy cause; people striving for a better society. If the name of the Trust is anything to go by; the new society for which we strive will be built on the combined foundations of education and Christian faith. There is, ladies and gentlemen, no combination more potent than that between rigorous education and true religion; between faith and action; between passion and compassion - between the holy cross and the world in which in which we live. The result of this combination is dynamic, innovative and explosive.

2. Beyond the Limits of a Stokvel and Burial Society Culture

It is necessary that we do not take the uniqueness of a trust such as this one for granted. If we were to be honest, we would admit that, while it is common for us to have a myriad of burial societies and a ranger of stokvel types in the townships; we do not have nearly as many education trusts and cooperatives. This truth must not escape us. We should ponder at its meaning and implications too. One is not saying that multi-faceted stokvels and burial societies are unimportant. Not in these days of the combined ravages of HIV-AIDS and increasing poverty. The majority of us are still steeped in the extended family tradition - whether we like it or not - and so our little or new money is often inadequate to deal with the demands and needs of our extended situations. In those situations, a stokvel or a burial society can come in very handy.

However we must be honest about the limits of our stokvel and burial society culture. A time has come for us to shift from investing in death and mishaps to investing in a future this side of the grave. Indeed I want to suggest our burial society culture has often threatened to consume all of our creative energies. It does seem at times that the sole and prime purpose of our lives and life investments is death and burial. The funeral has long overtaken the wedding and the graduation party. Perhaps Zakes Mda is not so far from the truth when he suggests, in his provocative and gripping novel, titled Ways of Dying, that such is the culture of death and burial in our societies that the three most important characters in South African townships are: the coffin maker, the professional mourner and the funeral orator. These are the most admired and the most inventive characters in that imaginary urban settlement of Zakes Mda's book. In this imaginary urban settlement of Mda people compete not to live life to the fullest, but on how to die most spectacularly and then have the most memorable of funerals! And the church is often an interested party in all this business. The spectacular deaths of our times include dying young; dying while "surfing the trains" that dangerous game played by some of our young dodging live electric cables top of trains; dying from "spinning expeditions" which involve car hijackings; dying from good old stabbing as our young knife one another out in shebeens and on school yards alike; dying from gunshot wounds inside our own homes and in our streets. This is the stuff of our ways. Having realized that dying is our highest value, our young do not disappoint; they die like flies. Thanks to our burial societies and stokvels we always succeed in providing them with "decent" funerals.

The disturbing aspect of the burial society culture is not the fact of investing and cooperation; it is the hopeless and pessimistic philosophy that seems to guide it. It is a negative outlook and worse still an outlook that has elevated the funeral hour to the highest point in the lives of human beings. We have become a society that thrives on death so that our lifestyle can be described by the likes of Zakes Mda as "ways of dying" rather than "ways of living". We are like the people of whom the prophet Isaiah said:

You boast, We have entered into a covenant with death, with the grave we have made an agreement; when an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place. [Isa 28:15]

3. Investing in the Future

Given the scenario painted above, the Holy Cross Education Trust, is a breath of fresh air. Here is a trust established in the interest of life rather than in the interest of death. Here is a shift from investing in decent funerals for our young to investing in education for our young. Here is an initiative designed to deal with the challenges we face today. Here is an investment in the future rather than in the past. There is no better way of staking our claim on the future, stating our faith in the future even as we shape that future than through educating our young. This is what the Holy Cross Education Trust is all about. But it is and should be about more.

4. Beyond Caricature

Let me hasten to say that education in and of itself is no panacea for all the ills of society. In of it education will not enable us to meet the challenges we face. Attainment in and of itself is insufficient. And end can be attained mechanistically, falsely and wrongly. As Stephen Covey, in his book The 8th Habit (following up on his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) reminds us, and I paraphrase: Wealth can be attained without work. Pleasure can be pursued and indulged in without conscience. Knowledge can be attained without the attainment of character. Commerce can be conducted without morality. Science can be practiced without a care for humanity. Worship may be engaged in without sacrifice being part of it. Politics can be conducted without principle. Similarly, education can be pursued as a mechanistical end - a magic wand which in and of itself is supposed to produce jobs and wealth.

This is a popular myth about education - a myth about education that has indeed given education a bad name. There are shorter cuts to jobs and wealth. One can become rich very quickly as a township gintsa (thug). Some talk show hosts and some politicians earn much more than scientists and professors. Indeed the sexiest and most popular character in the township, I would bet, is not a scientist or a professor - it is a DJ. Reading books and going to school is not the sexiest thing in our times. There are far too many plausible shortcuts which beckon people. It is therefore very important that we understand what education is and what it is not, what it can do and what it cannot do. For this to happen we must be wary of caricatures of education and the many false dichotomies that are often constructed around education.

Far too many get-rich-quickly books counsel that making wealth is more important than education. They also suggest that getting an education is the opposite of making wealth. A false dichotomy if ever there is one. This is a dichotomy and a falsehood spread even by some of the most powerful and successful rich people. Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad Poor Dad fame is a culprit in spreading this false dichotomy. The most repeated adage in the book is that parents must not encourage their children to get an education - as that is the advice which dads stuck in poverty will give to their children who will themselves proceed to lead a life of poverty. While education does not and will not guarantee wealth in the financial sense of the word, it is also not true to simply equate education with poverty and lack.

Of course life provides no guarantees. Nothing in life - including religion - provides one with immutable guarantees; this side of the grave. But life is not a destination - even if that destination is often called wealth. Life is a journey. The beauty of life does not lie in the arrival at the mountain summit. The beauty lies in the struggles and the joys of scaling the mountain of life. It is how we travel and why we travel that makes a difference. As one Simon Peres once said: Both the pessimist and the optimist will die one day, but before they die, they will live their lives very differently. Education should enable our communities, our boys and girls, our men and women, to lead our lives like optimists rather than pessimists. The educated and the uneducated may both be wealthy, but I would like to believe that how they cope with their wealth and the meaning they attach to it should be different. The educated and the uneducated may both be poor, but how they cope with their poverty should be different. The educated and the uneducated may both be talented - God is generous with talents - but the educated should be more able to cope with their talent and to make the most of it, not only for themselves but for others.

The myth is widely held that Richard Branson billionaire and owner of the Virgin Empire is an uneducated man because by his own account, he is supposed to have left school at 17 in order to start a small business selling a student magazine. But anyone who has read anything that Branson has written, anyone who has followed his life will know, that there are few people in the world with as much knowledge about life, politics, science and business in the world today. Branson is a highly educated man. We make a big mistake when we freeze his life at the age of 17 when he dropped out of school and not realize that not only did Branson return to school, he actually has been at school throughout his life! Similarly, despite his repeated denigration of education and degrees, Robert Kiyosaki is a man of deep and complex knowledge ñ he just refuses to call it education, he just fails to see that it is indeed education. This knowledge did not come to him because he is rich; rather he became rich because of his education.

If education makes no difference other than increase our ability to earn money ñ then education is dispensable for there are many other ways to make money. If education makes no difference other than the letters we write after our names, and the titles that come before them, then education is overrated; then governments should be free to cut education budgets and increase their defense budgets; then communities should continue to invest in coffins rather than degrees. There is and should be more to education than the caricatures of it we are often fed, sometimes by people who should know better.

4.1 Education and Faith: Strange Bedfellows?

Yet another important aspect of the Holy Cross Education Trust in the linking of education with faith. This is something whose significance might escape us. Faith and education are no automatic allies. Indeed in our increasingly post-modernized cultures, many churches proceed as if education was something that has nothing to do with them. Indeed we live in an era where many churches and many congregations are interested only in their own survival and upkeep. The budgets of congregations consist in building maintenance and upkeep as well as the ministerís stipend. Such is the desperation in some churches that some church councils reserve a percentage of their budget for playing the national lotto - in order to raise money for building maintenance and the minister's salary. Education receives, in many churches, only scant attention. It is therefore a big thing when a congregation located in a place like SOWETO chooses to make education a priority, creatively linking faith with education.

I am sometimes amused by the new churches which insist that Jesus was not a poor and that God never destined us to be poor. These churches preach the so-called prosperity Gospel. While I see the survivalist and transformative potential of the teachings of such churches, especially at a personal level, I am not sure that I agree entirely with the tendency to depict Jesus as some kind of tycoon. What I am still waiting for, is to see churches using Jesus for and in education. I am aware that some New Testament scholars have had the nerve to call him an "illiterate rabbi" - though I wonder how then he would have been able to read the scroll from Isaiah in the synagogue, if he was illiterate. In Jesus was to be found a profound appreciation for knowledge and the most profound love for humanity combined. In him was to be found quintessential wisdom - wisdom being the pursuit of the best ends by the best means. He was a selfless leader who provided a greater vision than what obtains in the present; the ability to see what others fail to notice.

Jesus was therefore not ignorant and I believe it is far easier to argue that Jesus was educated than to argue that he was a tycoon. Such was his love for knowledge that at 12, he engaged in philosophical debates with the educated men of Jerusalem so much so that his parents thought he was lost. Again and again he proved himself to be more than an equal to the educated classes of his times - the lawyers and the Pharisees who always came to him with riddles and trick questions. He was a keen observer of phenomena especially human character. Above all, Jesus was not satisfied merely to observe, merely to share a vision, merely to analyze people and phenomena; he wanted to change the world. Such was the size of his vision that he thought it implement-able in his life time. In order to do this, he lived his vision and encouraged his followers to live accordingly. In him we see a well-rounded and very educated man.

Faith and education are therefore not such strange bedfellows. They were brought together in the person of Jesus himself. Rather; it is the separation of education from faith in God that should scare us. Truly educated people are not people who know everything, but rather they are people who i) know what they know, ii) know what they do not know - and often what they do not know is far greater than what they know. This is the essence of what it means to be educated. By contrast, an uneducated person is one who i) does not know what they know, ii) does not know what they do not know. Education when attained properly should therefore lead to humility and should easily link with faith. Education without faith can therefore become dangerous - for such education is vulnerable to the myth of knowing everything. The effort of the Holy Cross Education Trust to locate education within the framework of faith must therefore be commended.

4.2 Education and Youth

The trouble with the times we live in is that they are Mark Twainean - both the "best of times" and the "worst of times". This period in our history offers opportunities hitherto unavailable to black people in general and black youth in particular. It is possible and permissible for Black youths to dream, including becoming president of the country. Yet it is also a period fraught with danger as HIV/AIDS wrecks havoc with human relations, chopping down the young and the old alike. It is also a time of violence and savagery as we have never known it before - the rape of women and children being but one illustration of a society immersed in violence.

For me nothing captures the excitement and positive possibilities of Black youths like the old song of Nina Simone (1969), redone by the likes of Mahalia Jackson and Donny Hathaway. Something in this song speaks of the exciting possibilities which are open to the young in democratic society.

To be young, gifted and black,
Oh what a lovely precious dream
To be young, gifted and black,
Open your heart to what I mean

In the whole world you know
There are billion boys and girls
Who are young, gifted and black,
And that's a fact!

Young, gifted and black
We must begin to tell our young
Here's a world waiting for you
This is a quest that's just begun

When you feel really low
Yeah, there's a great truth you should know
When you're young, gifted and black
Your soul's intact

Young, gifted and black
How I long to know the truth
There are times when I look back
And I am haunted by my youth

Oh but my joy of today
Is that we can all be proud to say
To be young, gifted and black
Is where it's at

If ever there was a time when it was opportune to be young, gifted and black - that time is now. But do our young people know this? Do our young people feel this? Do they experience the joy of being young, gifted and black? Above all are we, a society that can say with Nina Simone "we are proud to say, to be young, gifted and black is where it's at"?

Nothing underscores a society's faith in the future than the extent of its investment in its youth. The most excellent investment - with returns far beyond calculation - is investment in the young. Countries make serious mistakes when they see youth education as a soft target for budget cuts. We also make a mistake when we see our young as nothing more than a national liability. The focus on the Holy Cross Education Trust in the Youth is visionary. I am especially elated that the focus is on one of the most vulnerable of young people in our country - the matriculants. Matric has become like a curse in the lives of our young. It is so difficult to pass; and once passed, very difficult to move on from it. It has become the definitive hurdle and stumbling block, the gate-keeping fortress of modern South African society - especially for black youth. Yet, I am not aware of much concerted community efforts to work with black youth during and after matric. In its own humble way, I believe that the Holy Cross Education Trust is an attempt to respond to this challenge. I want to challenge all present here tonight to pledge their support for this worthy cause, of assisting black matriculants to move beyond this stumbling black. The reasons why many black young persons do not move further than matric are many. One of the most common is money. We are not being asked to do the impossible. We are being invited to participate in the spreading of hope by empowering the youth of this community. Above all we are not being asked to do it alone and all by ourselves. There is already a community of dedicated people convinced and persuaded of the nobility of this task, who are waiting to welcome us into the fold.

If we do not take up this opportunity to join hands in support of our matriculants, then our message to them is that it is a curse to be young, gifted and black. Then our message to them is that it is an aberration to be young gifted and black. If we fail them then our message to them is that it is dangerous to be young, gifted and black. Indeed, we will; be saying to them that it is burdensome for our children to be young, gifted and black. In short we will be saying to them that they are a mistake.

Many hurdles remain. Many of black youths do not make it beyond matric. There are millions of young, gifted and black youths whose stars will never shine beyond matric - and those whose stars will never shine. But far too many young lives will come to naught, unless we intervene and enable the realization of their dreams - dreams which have been for far too long deferred:

5. Conclusion: Beyond a Narrow Understanding of Black Diamonds

Although I was asked to speak specifically about the role of black diamonds in an endeavor like the Holy Cross Education Trust, you will have noticed that I have avoided this word all along. Now is the time for me to come clean. I do not like the idea of black diamonds - if you mean by it what the UCT marketing scholars mean by it, namely the mythical growing black middle class comprising some 300 000 black individuals, mainly male, who, thanks to credit, are apparently consuming 28% of what the country has to offer in gadgets, toys and toxins. I do not believe in such a consumerist understanding of black diamonds. I also refuse to believe that of the 40 million black people in this country only three hundred thousands are worthy of notice and attention. For me, the real black diamonds are those who are diamonds not as defined by big business and not as defined market researchers. Real black diamonds are those who are diamonds not merely outside, i.e. as in the kind of car they drive, and the kinds of clothes they wear. Real black diamonds are those who are diamonds inside more than they are outside. Such diamonds are young and old, male and female. They need not command huge salaries and they do not need to dress fancy. They are diamonds because they have the right attitude and have committed themselves to a shift from investing in death to investing in life. Each and every one of us is a black diamond. Each one of us has a role to play in enabling our youth to realize their dreams - dreams that have been deferred for far too long.

A Dream Deferred
Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Let us come together and halt the deferment of the dreams of our youth. Let us act now before these dreams dry up like raisins in the sun. I appeal to you not to allow these beautiful dreams, so long deferred, to fester like open sores in this beautiful country. This country deserves and needs each and every one of those dreams. Let us act now before these dreams begin to stink like rotten meat - as they have already started to do in parts of this country. Let us do something before the dreams of our boys and girls sag and weigh down on our communities. Indeed, let us do something before these dreams deferred turn into deadly dynamite and explode in our faces.

Professor Tinyiko Sam Maluleke
Executive Director: Research, University of South Africa and
President: South African Council of Churches