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Carnegie 3 pools insights into poverty, inequality
19 September 2012
Deliberating: Speakers at the opening sessions of the Carnegie 3 conference featured (left) Dr Max Price and Emer Prof Francis Wilson. |
But, as promised by the conference organisers (led by UCT’s pro vice-chancellor for poverty and inequality, Emeritus Professor Francis Wilson), these trends merely set the scene. For the remainder of the conference, the buzzwords were 'action' and 'moving forward'.
"In no time in the history of our country has there been so much evidence and discourse on the stubborn features of poverty and inequality, and the devastating effects these have on the lives of millions of people in our country," said Associate Professor Viviene Taylor of the Department of Social Development.
Taylor is also a member of the National Planning Committee (NPC), which (under Trevor Manuel, minister in the presidency for national planning) first asked for a conference along the lines of Carnegie 3.
The conference provided a vital platform for cross-pollination and sharing ideas. Director of the prequel Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development, conducted in the mid-1980s, Wilson said that the current conference had superseded expectations. Organised in only nine months, it had attracted over 350 submissions.
"But the conference is only the first step in a process that will take many years," Wilson cautioned.
"It's also a working conference in which we all have to ask tough questions about how we're going to make sure the things that matter really work; like our schools, like building the infrastructure we really need, like finding ways to eliminate huge corruption." Former UCT Vice-Chancellor Dr Mamphela Ramphele, who worked with Wilson on the Second Carnegie Inquiry and who now leads the Citizens Movement for Social Change, talked of the role of the citizenry and the need for a "spiritual reconstruction" in the country.
Kate O'Regan, former judge in the Constitutional Court, spoke of how the country's Constitution, though it operates in a different world to that of poverty, in fact urges the state and its citizens to uproot poverty and inequality.
Manuel spoke of essential issues like leadership, sustainable livelihoods and enterprise, and how the lessons that would emerge from Carnegie 3 could be applied elsewhere in the world.
His final words probably best served as a mantra for the conference: "Let's get to work."
