31 January 2025 – What motivated you to pursue a career in education and community development?
I was the very first university graduate from my family, and I have always understood the importance of education and how much my parents had to sacrifice and commit to creating alternatives to their paths, as a working-class railwayman and secretary, then a homemaker. Being born as a white person in South Africa, I was in a strange world where white was regarded as superior, and I was separated from most people, and this bothered me. I also grew up in a very evangelical Christian family where questioning things was not permissible. I had to develop a challenging voice to free myself of the oppression of my own colonial history and privilege. My education taught me to be ‘polite’ rather than to be ‘real’. I understood from a young age that I was uncomfortable in traditional education spaces, and I wanted to be a part of the change from that. That is where the inspiration to become a change-maker began. Writers like Paulo Freire and Frantz Fanon were really helpful to me. They freed me from thinking that I’m the solution, to realising that I’m the problem and that in my recognition of that and my own freedom struggle, I would create the opportunity for other people to learn. I recognised that the only way to really impact significant social change is through paradigm shifts of my own.
What inspired you to start the first LEAP Science and Maths School in Langa, and how did you overcome the initial challenges?
It grew from the realisation that the inherited colonial system of education was a failure. We could call this the banking system of education, where we imagined opening the heads of children and pouring information in and then closing them up, prepared for life. In Africa, the emergence of only a few who could achieve any kind of mastery of academic content and academic thinking suited the system, because it produced people who couldn’t question it or meet its requirements and therefore would work with their hands on the ground.
As I was teaching, I realised just how cerebral the whole thing is, how everything is about thinking and words, concepts and knowledge. None of it has to do with the unlocking of your personal experience, which is a combination of head, heart and hand. When the missionaries arrived on this continent years ago, they realised they just had to colonise the heads and detach people from the intuitive histories of Africa. Schools were not preparing students for life, or to be aware of the limitations they were placing on themselves. We needed a new kind of school to allow young people to deal with their underlying issues. The LEAP school has a different code of conduct. At the heart of it, it’s about being open to change, willing to confront issues, acknowledging mistakes, learning from mistakes. LEAP arose from a rejection of the separation of the head and heart. From the combination of the rational and emotional emerges the wisdom of the wise mind, the mind that that is settled and can be calm and aware of different choices. Such a person does much better with maths and science and the challenges of these subjects because there’s no shame in not knowing and there’s no fear in asking. Then, the learning process is owned by the student rather than by the teacher.
Can you elaborate on the philosophy of LEAP and its impact on students?
I’d like to tie it back to the 1960s in South Africa when Mamphela Ramphele was an activist and student at university – she was introduced to the self-liberating concept of black consciousness and freeing ourselves. In our work, we reactivate the self-liberating pedagogy. This is not through what you know that’s come into your head, but from the liberation of all the anxieties of childhood and adolescence, to become fully activated on the journey of what some psychologists have called ‘becoming fully human’. In the African context, there is a deeper release that is required from the anxiety of not being good enough and that there is something beyond us that we must learn from. So, it is self-liberation, not just at the level of taking charge of your learning, but also taking charge of your unlearning, what you need to surrender, what you need to let go and what you can embrace.
Can you share some of the success stories of LEAP students?
The greatest success is meeting young people aged between 30 and 36 – the first generations of LEAP graduates who are now loving and caring parents and partners. We come from a country where gender-based violence is extreme and where families are broken. 90% of our children do not really have a relationship with their fathers and they are left with single parents, or often with the grandmother or the aunt. Family as a structure was effectively destroyed through apartheid. For this to be reversed requires the awakening, not just of what you think, to become clever and strategic, but the awakening of the ability to love. And this tension between love and justice is critical in the work we do.
My greatest joy is that the principals of four of the eight LEAP schools across South Africa were students in the early days. They’ve gone on to develop the thinking of self-liberation to a level of now leading it in schools, at a young age – between 28 and 36. The LEAP Science and Math Schools has an executive of five people, with two graduates leading the organisation and 10% of the students going on to become teachers. Graduates have become doctors, accountants, lawyers, and even an elected official, a local government counsellor. But contributing to the building of the social movement has been the greatest success and the intergenerational dialogue is allowing me to be led by young people.
An important notion is that a younger person sitting on my shoulders can see further than me. It helps me to define my role. Ultimately, I want to become a deep resource rather than a decision-maker. I don’t have to see the future. I must support those who can begin to see the future and reimagine what’s possible and work towards that new civilisation that we talk about so much in The Club of Rome.
What motivated you to join The Club of Rome?
I attended the Club of Rome conference in South Africa in 2019 as a guest, with a view to ensure that education was included in discussions. But I was surprised in at how little focus there was on education. And, I’m still surprised at how rarely it becomes referenced as a critical lever. In Africa, we have 35% of the world’s youth, and by 2050 we will have nearly 40%. If we want to shift behaviours, we have to shift attitudes from a young age.
At that same meeting, I met Anitra Thorhaug, which led me to join the US Association of the Club of Rome. Later, I was nominated to become a full member of The Club of Rome. This was an opening to take the ideas that I’d been working with and to expand to a national and continental view. It enabled me to then hear and think at a much higher level about a new civilisation, about new regenerative possibilities and about ways of seeing the world so differently. My life has really shifted with a new contact base, to test my thinking and to listen to others.
What advice do you have for young educators?
Advice is cheap, but I hope it can be seen in the context of my unlearning journey. We’re all unlearning. We’re all valuable. Each of us has a story that needs to be told, heard and celebrated. We need to break the understanding of rugged individualism and go back to what we know in Africa – we are interconnected and interdependent and that the value of Ubuntu is that I’m human because of you. I’d like to remind young people to never forget that and never forget that it comes from Africa, it’s in our heritage. We don’t have to learn something new, we must remember what we know. That’s a liberating invitation, it’s not something that’s come from outside of us, it’s something that comes from within, it’s in our ancestors.
Second, love at the centre of the curriculum is the most important word. Love and justice are bedfellows and love without justice is sentiment and justice without love is cruelty. The idea that justice is the face of love means creating a shift in our communities, so they then create the justice that is needed, ensure every child is fed and has an opportunity to discover the self-liberating framework. Science and maths become more accessible and less intimidating because we’ve gone through the personal liberation. We must enable young people to discover how to do that, ultimately in a way that’s going to impact the system.