Freedom day - What the post apartheid reconciliation learns us for the new normal in post-covid period

What the post apartheid reconciliation in South Africa learns us for the new normal in post-covid period.

Happy Freedom day! On the 27th of April 1994 the first general democratic elections in South Africa paved way for a definitive closing of the Apartheid period.  The transition from an Apartheid regime to a democracy with general elections lasted 5 years ( from the liberation of Nelson Mandela in February 1989 till the elections on 27th of April)

Systemic design analysis

I have learned  the systemic design toolkit (https://www.systemicdesigntoolkit.org/) invented by Belgian company Namahn, as a holistic structure to trace back these 5 years, and the decisive elements that have paved the way to a democracy.  This route was full of personal 1-1 leader talks, personalities , alignments,  internal battling, mournings, forgiveness, reconciliations,  violence and individual sorrow.  It was an interesting exercise to try to map these five years  using a toolkit that is meant to predict the future   Here you can find a detailled analysis

Lessons from apartheid for a post covid19 period

What can be learned in terms of the current COVI19 crisis that we are going through?  Is living apart or social distancing the same? What would happen if we apply The systemic design toolkit  to construct in a design thinking way the future way forward of the ‘new normal in post covid period’ , listening to all these obvious pieces of the future already present.

The analogies between post apartheid period and post covid19 period are already written on the wall:

• Reconciliation after the crisis:  we have to be able to say sorry, to the others and to ourselves; sorry of police violence, sorry of limiting the individual liberties, sorry for creating an economic havoc;  what about setting up a ‘reconciliation’ commission like was set up in South Africa with Desmond Tutu as a believer?
• A period of grief for all the people that have died needs to be installed
• A period of tensions will appear after the peak crisis is over,  between different groups that have experienced the lockdown differently (people with and without garden; with and without children; continue to work and not) and that have to be acknowledged and be handled with to create a new social pact
• a period to regain confidence in an inclusive society, to avoid that some people move to populist feeling of betrayal and abandonment: YES, we are all in this together
• accepting the ‘new normal’ and accepting that not everything is perfect, and that we are writing together the handbook for the future as no manual exists
• accepting that everyone has experienced this period psychologically in a different way, depending on its past and resilience, and that it is OK so; 

Let’s create a better society together.  Tanguy