My Independence Day message

CELEBRATIONS of Independence Day should see our national colours flying all around our “every creed and race” country, from north to south, with songs of national unity resounding through the air waves and citizens shaking hands at the reason for the celebrations.

The wishes from the well-crafted speeches at the top, as welcome as they are, will unlikely turn into reality. They also seem unlikely to reach down to the hearts of many. There are obstacles.

The published quarrelling from different sides in this multi-cultural country do not really reflect what our independence should really mean. And quite troublingly, there seems to be diminishing space now for mutual understanding, so deeply buried are the contrary convictions.

Quite ominously, these convictions will become divisively active into the election campaign, reminding us that we have a national flag but not a nation yet.

Is this how we are destined to remain, given our plantation history? How can we change the continuing social, economic and political antagonisms? Do we have the leaders and the institutions to do it? Will the inherited political system continue to keep us divisively trapped, unwilling to escape from narrow interests? Which leader or party will show us the way out beyond rosy rhetoric?

This is the fundamental challenge of our political independence.

To help heal the plantation wounds will take courage and integrity at the top, because uncomfortable compromises will be required all around. Political power will then find unprecedented nobility and respect. If this healing mission is successful, we will then see our national colours flying higher and wider, from north to south. The dream of our national anthem will bear fuller fruit and our politics will find its true purpose and an uplifting morality.

If you feel sceptical about today’s politicians taking up this noble mission, then look to the next generation. Set the mission agenda in our schools. Prepare teachers to teach maths, geography, physics, etc, but also about nationhood and the kind of civic character required in students for the mission. We now depend on the youth to build more bridges and fewer fences.

If anything is relevant to our education system, then surely it is this mission. Inspire students’ feelings of national belonging, of public service, of mutual respect, so that later, they will create a more harmonious, productive and peaceful society. Show them that the pen is still mightier than the sword. Show them how and why they can overcome the troubling features of a multicultural society.

We just cannot go on quarrelling this way; we cannot continue feeling all is lost – not if our independence is to mean something valuable.