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YPF Perspective: Deputy Chairperson

Keamogetswe Mmekwa

This speech was delivered during the Gauteng North and South Presidential Visit

I would like you to cast your minds back to this years’ theme: ‘Meeting socio economic challenges through infrastructure
investment.’

What if I challenged that statement and asked what good an investment in infrastructure is if we don’t have the capacity to
undertake the work? In the past month two people that I know left the industry to pursue other interests. Let me rephrase that, two
young engineers (that I know personally) left the engineering industry. One, a civil engineer by trade to become a restauranteur,
the other a mechanical engineer went back to school to study medicine.

This is nothing new to the industry, in fact it is part of the reason why the Young Professionals forum was established as far back
as 2004 and as long as we keep experiencing this brain drain it means that we, as organisations advocating for the sustainability
of our profession, are failing. It got me thinking about why we are failing, about the future of our industry and about our country
and I realised, amongst other issues that my generation has too many options.

I consider myself privileged to be born in the 80’s. What this means is that I am old enough to converse about the lives of Steve
Biko, Martin Luther King Jnr. Chris Hani or even Thomas Sankara while being able to talk about Nicki Minaj and Justin Bieber.
It means I can finally appreciate the movie Sarafina and the contribution to the arts by John Kani, I understand the impact of
the literature of Nadine Gordimer (of course I didn’t in yester years) and the poetry of Maya Angelou yet I am still able to ‘LOL’,
LMAO, Hashtag and TBT. It means that I can get down to Brenda Fassie, Billy Ocean, Justin Timberlake or Pharrell and it means
that I can watch and relate to the Wizards of Waverley Place and the BBC all in the same hour.
But being born in the 80’s goes beyond our addiction to apple products. My daily literature for instance, besides engineering
codes, is a combination of twitter, eNCA, Forbes, Facebook, the New Yorker and books such as ‘Nothing left to steal’ by Mzilikazi
wa Afrika or ‘David and Goliath’ by Malcom Gladwell (two books I’ve found myself indulging in at the same time) and that in itself
is testament to the plethora of options we have at our disposal. As diverse in our options as we are, ‘Generation Y’ as we are
sometimes categorised, are very fickle in nature.
The thing is we understand that we are the upcoming leaders, that we are next in line, that we are at the change point where
we need to take over the baton, but really who wants to inherit our current political atmosphere, an overstressed and over taxed
working class, the current crime rate, famine, a housing crisis, unmaintained infrastructure, a people that use the education of
their kids as a protest tool? Who wants to inherit our energy and water problems? It’s a huge burden that YOU our current leaders
are leaving to us.

As arduous as effort as it is though, shimmers of leadership are emerging, but we’re still very much a country set in its patriarchal
and geriatric ways. I mean our president is 73, and this seems to be the going age for African leaders. Basically the transfer of
the baton is not happening and neither is it happening in our industry and that is why we keep seeing so many young people
leaving engineering. You see, Generation Y don’t fight, we talk and we are opinionated, but mostly we’re couch advocates. We
push as far as we feel comfortable then we are on to the next thing. This ranges from #BringBackOurGirls, #SaveTheRhino to
even changing careers. So again I ask: ‘What happens if we DO get the money to fund infrastructure, but we’ve lost our young
engineers while you’ll be enjoying retirement?’ Will you be enjoying retirement if your basic socio-economic needs are not taken
care of? Will you be proud to hand over an industry to an uncertain youth who go to work simply to get paid?

The baby boomers aren’t perturbed, as they are approaching retirement, generation X are too cynical and have a ton of baggage,
generation Z, characterised by an addiction to their phones and a disdain for spelling and anything that forces them to get out
of their cyber bubble, kind of leave it to generation Y, the largest cohort since the baby boomers, but as with any generation we
need to be heard and trusted. Take a leaf out of the chapter titled ‘Set people free’ from the Greatness guide 2 by Robin Sharma.
He states: “The best leaders turn their teammates loose.
They clearly communicate the vision, coach and develop their people and once done, set them free.” He goes on to say “People
want to be a part of an organisation that lets them bring their gifts to work and be fully alive. People want to be engaged and feel
proud of their contribution (especially generation Y). He concludes by saying: “At the deepest level, each of us aches to know
the work we do and the lives we lead make a difference.
So I guess what I am trying to get across is that we need to find alternative ways of leadership and searching for leaders in the
engineering realm, who are passionate about their work and industry and would like to see it grow. This is what we try to do as
the Young Professionals Forum. We would like to build an industry that espouses reputability, dignity and quality, but we need
you to go back to your companies and call on more YP’s to join us.

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