Lesson in RDP from Cuba
ABOUT a decade ago one of my childhood friends, Michael, called to tell me he had made it into the South AfricaCuba medical training programme. It gave him an opportunity to train as a medical doctor in the socialist island nation. Finally he could ditch his job as a low-paid casual behind a shop counter in a Nelspruit mall.
He should never have been behind that counter in the first place. Michael was smart, gifted but had no money to get to university and in the adverse conditions of his rural high school, produced competent but not outstanding matric results.
When he left for Cuba, it felt like he had escaped the social dead-end that was our Mpumalanga village by the skin of his teeth.
In the days when we chased lizards and locusts on Mpumalanga’s giant rockfaces, my playmates and I were blissfully oblivious of how the structures of inequality had set starkly different life courses for us.
But by our early 20s almost every single one of our childhood friends had become casualties of South Africa’s grim social reality as they transitioned into young adulthood. In the late 90s they were succumbing to HIV/Aids, alcohol abuse, violence, unemployment, crime, unstable work, you name it.
That this is the fate of most young people should cause frantic panic amongst policymakers and politicians. Yet almost all our state institutions and incumbent leaders respond to the crisis of youth unemployment and de-skilling with lethargy.
But then they will not be here to deal with the consequences in 2030.
As things stand, two million people are enrolled in our higher education system but approximately five million are basically sitting at home or engaged in a range of risky pursuits.
Notwithstanding the criticisms and debates around the Cuba programme, its greatest strength is it that it is designed to identify and recruit bright rural kids like Michael.
My view is that it embodies that reconstructionist “RDP” spirit we seem to have abandoned wholesale in our pursuit of economic development that seems to benefit the long term wealth of our historically super-rich “1%” and their handful of Black Economic Empowerment partners.
Important in the Cuba programme is that it explicitly puts the most “marginalised” but meritorious youth at the heart of the recruitment strategy. In its very design, the programme seems to seek out those bright black children who would otherwise not make it into one of our limited eight medical schools.
It does not view these young people as having intellectual deficits, but considers their competence in the midst of dysfunction as a demonstration of their potential.
The Cubans also do not treat our students as though they are second-rate burdens on their education system. They are considered capable citizens from the global south who can be taught medicine in Spanish.
While the Cubans see a potential doctor to train, in South Africa much public discourse around university entry continuously juxtaposes the need for transformation against the fear of “dropping standards”. The debate should focus on expanding equitable access, not preserving historically unjust institutional cultures of exclusivism.
The Cuba model is a responsive bottom-up social reconstruction model. Its transformative philosophy should be at the heart of our entire development path.