We need new norms and stuff!

I once wrote somewhere that in this day and age, we should be teaching children more about leadership rather than HIV/Aids (which in essence is teaching them about sex). 

I still believe in these words that I publicly shared for the first time about four years ago.

Before you throw your toys out of the cot, please note that I’m deliberately choosing to address the sexually transmitted kind of HIV in this article for the purposes of my larger argument about leadership, because after all, in Swaziland, like in many parts of Africa, the disease is mostly transmitted from one person to another via sex.

There seriously should be many other useful life skills that ought to be taught from as early as 10 years old; the same age that is targeted for sensitizing (especially girls) to HIV/Aids prevention and care messaging. 

We need new ways, new norms and stuff because we need to change the way we function as a society…we need to think outside of sexual reproductive health if we hope to catch up to the world’s realities and competencies in our lifetime.

Even if my name was Thabo Mbeki, you guys wouldn’t allow me to say let’s not teach African children about HIV so no, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be teaching our young about HIV, but I’m worried about the ratio of HIV (or sex education if you like), to ‘real life’ skills lessons – leadership lessons.

Think about it, sex as a subject is historically taboo in large parts of Africa, and yet over the past 20-something years we’ve been borderline shoving it down the throats of our youngsters. 

Worse, parents haven’t been doing the shoving down themselves but  ‘experts’ such as ‘qualified’ Guidance teachers and development workers seem to be the sole proprietors of this insurmountable task. 

HIV-linked sex talk isn’t even the nice kind of copulation discussions; it is instead, the fear-riddled, worse-than-basic-sex- taboo kind of sex talk that a teenager can encounter.

Leadership 101:Our countries ought to make provision for classroom lessons in leadership from an early age.

How did we get here, where we have neglected our day-to-day struggles with life and health in general? Or is sex really our main focus and struggle? 

To make things worse, evidence keeps revealing to us over and over that in a typical social setting, only one in 10 people could accurately tell you how HIV is NOT transmitted. 

Only a few people hold positive attitudes towards those living with HIV – stigma and discrimination remain high.

At the moment I’m temporarily living with Ayanda - a young man in his late 20s whom I’ve informally adopted as a younger brother. 

Over the past month he’s been going to bed hungry most days because he refuses to indulge in my new found vegetarian diet. 

He won’t cook the available meat because “You know sisterrr, as a boy, I never spent much time in the kitchen, so cooking doesn’t come easy for me. I need a woman to help with these things, women know better.” Grrrrrrrrrrrrr…..

My counter argument to him; “So I suppose as a boy, you spent a lot of time in a brothel because you are the sex god that you make your girlfriends believe you are? ‘Cause you even know to buy condoms ahead of every sexual encounter?”

He had to beg me to stop because I kept the questions coming; “So I suppose as a boy, you spent a lot of time in New York, the largest city in the United States of America in preparation for adult living in Johannesburg, the largest city in Africa?”

“Is it because I spent my girlhood at an orphanage that I ended up being everybody’s mom including yours?”

And then there’s Nqobile who was a virgin when she completed her Master’s degree in her mid-twenties. She wanted to know (from me, a.k.a everybody’s mom); “Now what? I find a job and a guy to marry?”  

This is because Nqobile’s needs outside of sex [education] were overlooked even by feminists and the ‘experts’ of the development field.  

Parenting is demanding, nobody trains for it and every parent (even though they hate to admit it) will tell you that they can do with help. 

So Ayanda and Nqobile could have benefited so much more life lessons early in their lives if personal leadership was part of our curriculum. 

Alertness to personal development and leadership should be encouraged as part of societal norms. Be your first cheerleader; leadership begins with you.

Personal Leadership is a trait that must be developed and nurtured from a young age because it offers the ability to define a direction for your life, and to move in that direction with consistency and clarity which leads to personal confidence and success.

It’s not too late. 

We can start by substituting that one class period dedicated to painting Easter Eggs in celebration of Easter (sigh) with a creatively packaged inspirational engagement. 

If we focus on grooming a generation of leaders, our children will know that leadership is about each one of them walking the talk so no one will look to be led without offering to lead too. 

Each will learn to complement the other’s strengths and weaknesses – human relations will improve and maybe we could top the World Happiness Report for a change instead of topping the list of countries with the highest HIV prevalence. 

So I ask; how really has it served us to dedicate all manner of resources to sex talk?

I say we should continue to teach about HIV and general sex education but alongside a wider scope of healthy living issues. 

Additionally, I think it would benefit us greatly if we all made it our responsibility to lead any of these discussions with the desire to grow as individuals and as a nation. 

So at home, at work, at church, at gym etc., be that somebody who is ready to teach and learn; talk as much as you listen. Let’s be deliberately purposeful Maswati lamahle. Let’s make this the new norm.