Thinker Spot

The setting is a large rural settlement in South Africa's Mpumalanga Province. The background to this region's development is of course intricately linked to its past: a homeland outside Pretoria created by the Apartheid Government in the name of 'separate development'. The environment is rural: cattle, goats, donkeys and chickens roam freely, while members of this community carry on with their daily lives, far removed from the hustle and bustle of the "other South Africa" - the one characterised by Western civilisation's pillars: individualism, private property & title deeds, credit and mortgages, money, commercialisation, consumerism and personal wealth accumulation. They are all at odds with an idealised Africa. Here in Siyabuswa, the R578 carries traffic, goods, and passengers past rural dwellers for whom time has a different meaning. It is safe to assume that the principles outlined in "The Fifth Discipline" are unknown to the locals, a...