I've been away, and it's been quite a journey

I’ve been away from this space for quite a while and I think I owe an explanation to the two or three people who have told me they have wondered where I’d gone.

The answer to that has question has several parts. Those who, like me, have left the salaried, formal employment sector – in my case I left against my will, along with 100-odd others who were deemed surplus to the good doctor’s plans to turn Independent Newspapers into a great South African media organisation – will know about operating in the gig economy. It means, in short, that you accept every bit of work that comes your way, at rates so low that you have no choice but to accept the next assignment at similarly cut-throat remuneration, and before you know it you are caught up in a cycle with not much time for anything else.

In the middle of all that, a project came along that I have really come to believe in. I was asked to help with the writing of the second book on the Partners for Possibility programme (PfP). It’s a school leadership programme that sees the principals of under-resourced schools partnered with business leaders on a year-long, structured journey designed to capacitate and empower the principal to lead her school. I won’t go into details – buy the book the next year – but the programme has been running for 10 years now and there have been close to 1500 partnerships, most of them continuing well beyond that first formal year.

They haven’t all worked, but the majority have had a positive effect on the schools, and there have been some spectacular success stories. Chasing those success stories has occupied most of my time for the last six months, so there has been little left over for my other big love: the development of decent human beings through the medium of sport.

If I had to name the one thing that all those school partnership success stories had in common it would be that the business leaders went into the school without judgement, they didn’t try to fix things, they were there to listen to the principals and cheer them on as they worked out for themselves how to turn schools that were often in the most desperate condition into quality learning institutions.

I’ve seen what a classroom with 80 kids in it looks like. I’ve been to schools where the meal provided to the kids at school each day is the only one they will eat that day, and I’ve heard how thieves steal anything of value that a school may acquire, immediately after they acquire it, every time.

But I’ve also seen what can be done in schools when the principal is energised and capacitated.

And in all the places I visited, there was a business leader, usually from the local community or the nearby affluent town or suburb at the principal’s side. I’ve seen ex-pupils who have succeeded against the odds who want to go back to make a difference; brilliant housewives with business experience and too much time on their hands now; middle level corporate managers who have been sent on the journey as part of their executive development; and I’ve seen conservative Afrikaner farmers who have rolled up their sleeves and become involved in the schools that the children of their workers attend.

It’s been a life-changing experience and it made me realise that there is way more to education in this country than what goes on at the schools where I have worked and that I have been to watch sport at in recent times. The kids at the dysfunctional schools in South Africa, and there are 20 000 of those, will never have a chance unless someone steps up and tries to change things. I know where the blame lies, before and after 1994, and I know who should be fixing the system. There are men and women out there who know that too, but that’s not stopping them from trying to change lives anyway.

They do that in many different ways, and the PfP programme is one of them. It’s been quite a journey for me, I’m hoping it will be over in time for next year’s Easter Rugby Festivals.