Africa must now shape the rules, not just react to them

Fifty years after the June 16 uprising, Nelson Mandela’s legacy needs to be a challenge to the present, where he is remembered for his courage, accountability, institution building and his ethical use of power.

Dr Mbongiseni Buthelezi is the chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

As South Africa marks Youth Month and reflects on the role of young people in shaping our democratic future, it is worth revisiting a question that extends beyond our borders and across the African continent: who is shaping the future of Africa?

Africa Month cannot be reduced to an annual ritual of pride, symbolism and memory. It must be a moment of reckoning.

It should compel us to ask a difficult, but necessary question: is Africa truly shaping its own future, or are too many of our nations still forced into the posture of response, responding to crises not of our making, adapting to systems designed elsewhere and negotiating from positions weakened by historical injustice and present-day inequality?

South Africa’s efforts to convene and act as “iBhunga” – facilitating dialogue and peace-missions across the continent and world – should not go unacknowledged. This is a role that our founding democratic President Nelson Mandela, deeply embodied.

Dalibhunga, the name given to him at the age of 16, is understood to mean “convenor of dialogue” – and is a notion that has since been transposed in how we as a nation and indeed, as a foundation, understand our work.

But convening must never be mistaken for passive neutrality. To convene in the Mandela tradition is to create the conditions for truth, justice and accountability. It is to understand that peace cannot be built on silence, and that dialogue cannot require the erasure of suffering.

This is why, for instance, South Africa’s decision to bring proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was so significant. It affirmed that international law must apply equally, and that the protection of human dignity cannot depend on the power of the state or people whose rights are at stake.

It was a reminder that South Africa’s own history gives it not only the language of justice, but also a responsibility to act when that language is denied to others.

That same moral impulse is visible in the humanitarian flotilla missions to Gaza. Though civil-society-led, these missions have carried a message that resonates deeply with South Africa’s own liberation history: that solidarity is not abstract, and that as Africans we must not look away when civilians are trapped, displaced, hungry, and unhea