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Comments

• [1] VS from New York March 11, 2008 - 12:56PM

  Like the prior commenter, I have spent some time in Johannesburg and find it an amazing and wonderful place of enormous potential, but at the same time in peril, not just because of the injustices of the past, but also because of continuing un-addressed problems and the failure of leadership to find solutions to these problems. Crime is one of these problems - living behind security systems and barbed wire fences is a way of life that is taken for granted there, and all of those defenses are not enough to safeguard people. In addition to the other challenges, these problems sometimes seem unsurmountable.

  Apartheid was a terrible system that many believed would never be overcome, and yet it was. South Africa needs leadership to overcome the current challenges, but as with the country's many other skill gaps, the leadership gap puts the achievements of the generation of leaders represented by Albie Sachs at risk as much as the challenges presented by poverty, failing infrastructure, disease and or legacies of injustice. As much as those leaders are to be admired, it is disappointing that they find themselves, perhaps by a sense of loyalty to the struggle or a feeling that their time has passed, unable to talk about it.