ITHEMBA = 'hope' in the Zulu language

Ithemba - what a lovely word as it rolls off the tongue. Hope.

This week we begin to register the new corporation that will own Fanya Kazi!'s intellectual property. As the meetings, plans and paperwork gets done I think about ithemba - the collective hope of Africa's youth. How much hope do they have? This is so crucial with social change. Unlike the charity model which really has been nothing but a disaster for Africa and contrary to their traditions, true transformation only occurs within us. So instead of creating jobs for young people, I need to create the conditions where this change can become possible. My business has to create a space in the mental landscape of young Africans so they can begin to imagine constructing a foundation for themselves on which to build. That is my ithemba. I lost my ithemba in Kenya.

I see on my new favourite TV show about parliamentary affairs, the statistics about youth aren't great. Wilmot James of the Democratic Alliance political party says that in most industrialized societies around 61% of youth age 18-25 are in tertiary education. North Korea boasts 90%. In South Africa only 16% of this age group will receive post-high school education, and then the trickle down effects of that for themselves and their families. He also says that 2 million South Africans in this age range are currently not receiving education or are they employed. That's a time bomb. It's like Moi's lost generation in Kenya - 5 million of them called Mungiki.

This is my target market. Those 2 million youth who wake up every morning wondering what is going to happen to them, what they can make of themselves. I can only imagine what temptations await them in the informal settlements with one parent or both away at work all day. Television, hanging out, a little bit of trickery here and there. Before you know it maybe a life of crime in a gang. And it doesn't have to be this way. Great education breaks this cycle. And hope. How do you measure the value of something like hope? How do you factor it into economic policy?

This big government system reminds me of Canada in the 70's before we dismantled a lot it and created private sector partnerships. I mailed my husband a postcard to our new home (so he would feel excited to get mail) and it took almost two weeks to reach us. A new dialogue has to be started that big government is a big waste and this is not the route for South Africa. Can the African leaders acheive this here? It's very contrary to how their social systems have always operated. But Zuma can't make everyone happy. The failure of services delivery is testament to that. A new system has to be started, one that can harness the energy of the informal sector to provide for itself on its own terms. If the laws and policies were truly transparent, the government would choose to let go of its control and allow the people to get busier.

One of the most amazing things that exists here, and probably only in South Africa of all the African countries, is the idea of transformation. It's talked about, debated, expected - that hard work took 15 years at least. But now the country must do something with these ideas of empowerment; put them to the real test to see if society is truly willing to embrace them. I think about how hard it was to work in Kenya because this idea of transformation has not proliferated. The African politicians in Kenya are still oppressing their own people and the Kenyans aren't motivated enough to rise above this and change it so it won't change, it can't change because the people haven't achieved it on their own terms to feel the right to deserve it. That concept already exists here. Thank god.