ATLANTIC INSTITUTE
CONVERSATIONS ON CONFIDENCE PODCAST SERIES

PODCAST 05 | TRACEY NALEDI

Music Thoughts in G by Cheyenne Mize.

T Naledi If we do not deal with issues of poverty and inequality and unemployment in our country, we will never be able to have that collective confidence.  It's just not possible…At the end of the day, the politicians might have let us down but we as South Africans are actually the heroes of the day and that gives me hope.  That is what makes me believe that we have a future.  That makes me believe that actually we're going to be alright because the people of South Africa are not giving up.  And when I think about our youth, our young people, they’re so fantastic!  

F Sweeney: Tracey Naledi, founding chairperson of Tekano, Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity in South Africa, on the role of confidence in political activism in South Africa today. A mother with two daughters, she is also Deputy Dean for Health Services at the University of Cape Town.

Welcome to CONVERSATIONS ON CONFIDENCE with clinical psychologist and neuroscientist Professor Ian Robertson from the Global Brain Health Institute in Dublin, and me, Fionnuala Sweeney.  Ian is the author of HOW CONFIDENCE WORKS: THE NEW SCIENCE OF SELF-BELIEF.  In this series, we speak to Fellows from the Global Atlantic community about the role of confidence (or lack of it) in their lives, both growing up, and in their work today as Atlantic Fellows advancing fairer, healthier, and more inclusive societies.

Now, over to Tracey on growing up under apartheid.

T Naledi: I was born in a little town called Hammanskraal in the north of Gauteng, almost on the border of Gauteng and Limpopo, two Northern provinces in South Africa.  That’s where my mom is from.  But soon after I was born then I went back to where I grew up for the better part of my childhood, in a small township called Duduza on the east of Johannesburg.  

Genetically, my family is actually from the Xhosa tribe.  We are of the Zizi people, which originally came from the Eastern Cape.  My great, great grandfather migrated to Gauteng to go and work in the mines many years ago and settled there, never went back home to the Eastern Cape.  So, my family ended up living in Gauteng.  Where we lived, whether you were Xhosa-speaking or Zulu-speaking, you all lived together, and we only had one school which was a Zulu-speaking school.  So, I grew up speaking isiZulu.  

Then when I was a teenager – I think when I was about 13 or 14 – my dad got a job in Cape Town, and we moved to Cape Town.  Cape Town and Johannesburg are very, very, very different, especially when you're African black like I am.  The Western Cape has been said to be quite hostile to black people.  So, my family only lasted about three years here in Cape Town and quickly packed up and went back home to Jo’burg.  At that time, I went to boarding school in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape, in one of the old homelands called Ciskei, in a town called Bisho.  So, I went there for the last years of my high school.

After matric I was a Rotary exchange student for a year in Australia, in Perth.  Then I came back and started medicine at University of Cape Town.  And I also did my postgraduate training here in Cape Town.  I specialised in Public Health Medicine.  And I'm currently doing my PhD in Medicine.  I've been working in the public sector for the last two decades practising public health.  

F Sweeney: What was life like for you, family life like, particularly during those three years your family was in Cape Town?  Were you aware of the hostility or were you protected from it in some way?

T Naledi: Yeah, that was a very difficult time for us because when we came to Cape Town, we were ostracised a bit even though we lived amongst other black people.  We were foreigners, and they didn’t like us very much so we kept pretty much to ourselves.  This is in the ‘80s - there were a lot of political wars in Cape Town.

I remember when we first moved to Cape Town, we didn’t have a bed and we had to go buy a bed, my dad and I.  We bought the bed but then when we got to the shop, they told us they couldn’t deliver it because of the political strife in South Africa at the time.  And so, we had to carry the bed on the top of the car and it was a hilarious situation.  And then on the freeway the damn thing fell off.  And I was a self-centred teenager and I refused to get out of the car to help my dad because I was too embarrassed to be carrying a bed on the freeway with my dad.  

Both my parents were teachers and they understood that the one gift they could give us that nobody could ever take away from us was education.  So even though my parents couldn’t really afford private school I went to private school from when I was in Grade 7, I think.  

F Sweeney: Did that affect you, Tracey, going to a private school when your parents could barely afford it and you might have been presumably in class with girls who came from families who were quite well off?

T Naledi: Absolutely.  That whole bed incident was because we were so close to my school and all the rich kids live there and I was just not about to be seen in my dad’s [skorrel-korrel] car, carrying a bed.  That was just not something that was going to happen.  I was the only black kid in school.  It was the most horrible feeling ever.  I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb.

F Sweeney: I didn’t know that you could be black African and go to school with white children.

T Naledi: There was a quota system at the time.  In the ‘80s they did allow a few black kids to go to private schools.  It was surreal because I lived in the township, and then I would trek every morning to the suburbs to go to school, be the only black kid there.  And then have to go back to the township where I had no friends, where nobody actually liked me because I was a foreigner and so kept very much to myself.  So, I had friends at school, who couldn’t come visit me because it was too risky in the township, and I always had to be the one going to visit them.  It was a very chaotic, difficult time.

F Sweeney: So, would you describe yourself as a confident child?  And I ask because your parents were obviously very supportive.  They wanted you to be educated.  They made you believe, presumably, that you could do anything with education and yet you were living in not only apartheid but also this sense of not belonging even within your own community at times.

T Naledi: Yeah.  I think my confidence is both genetic – I think I was born with confidence, and I think I get it from my dad.  Both my parents are very confident, especially my dad – my dad is a charismatic pastor.  My parents pretty much allowed me to lead.  The decision to go to private school was definitely not mine.  That was actually my mom’s decision.  But that’s pretty much the only decision as far as my education and my future and big life decisions that my parents made for me.  Everything that I've done – my parents made me believe that I could make my own decisions and they just went along with it.

I Robertson: Tracey, there is some evidence of some of the personality qualities that contribute to confidence being partly heritable.  If you hadn’t had your dad and your mom behind you so solidly and if you hadn’t had that very, very supportive family background, do you think that confidence would have come through in spite of that?

T Naledi: I guess I would never know but based on my own life experience I can certainly see children who have not been brought up with that level of support and that level of agency and autonomy, they don't seem to have that level of confidence.

I Robertson: The thing about confidence is it works on a kind of compound interest basis, that is the child who’s equally talented to the other child but who has a little bit more confidence will venture new things, will take a risk, will ask the question, will go forward a little bit more, and as a result of that will get certain benefits, which will then multiply.  

And that happens as a kind of exponential way over time so that a small initial, possibly genetically determined difference in confidence then becomes amplified by the consequences of that quality in the interactions with the environment.  I just see you being willing to take these risks, and the successes they produced to you and this kind of compound interest acting out.

T Naledi: Absolutely.  Before I was even 10 years old, I used to do the grocery shopping for my family.  My mother would give me a list of shopping. I'd get on the bus.  I would go to the shops, and I would do groceries for my family.  And the deal that I had with my mother was that as long as I bought everything on the list, if there was change, I could buy myself a Milky Bar.  So, I made sure that I calculated everything so that I always had enough money for a Milky Bar.  

And I did that many times.  My parents trusted me.  I think also the times were different.  They could do that safely because my recollection is that wherever I went there were always adults that I trusted that would look out for me, even though I didn’t really know them.  I felt very safe and confident.

F Sweeney: And when did you consciously become aware of apartheid?  

T Naledi: I think it was when I started attending private school.  Only when I was a teenager, all of a sudden I felt different because up until then I was very much with other black people.  I never felt different.  We were a very close-knit community and I grew up with my extended family, everybody on my father’s side, within a 2km radius.  

It was a very strange time for me as well because I went to a white school and found that I would be one of the few black kids there.  But even though at school it was quite horrible and we felt we didn’t belong, when we went back home we were made to feel like we were special because we went to these schools.  

The first time I went to private school I was in Jo’burg, in a school that started from Grade 1 all the way to Grade 12.  We all fitted in a small little minibus that took us there every morning and took us home.  So less than 20 of us in a big school of I don’t know how many, couple of hundred?

In the school that I was in here in Cape Town, I was the only black person in the whole high school from Grade 8 to Grade 12.  That was not pleasant.  You feel like everybody’s looking at you.  And remember, I was a teenager, very self-conscious.  When you’re a teenager all you want to do is fit in and I didn’t.  I was different.  I couldn’t even speak English properly at that time, so I got things wrong.  People would laugh at me.  And also, I didn’t quite understand the nuances of the language so I couldn’t understand jokes.  I would find myself either asking a lot of questions, or just not understanding a lot of the time.  But more than anything it was just this sense of feeling like you stick out.  

The other school when I was in Jo’burg, at least I had my crew that I came with on the bus.  At break I could still go hang with them and sit with them.  In Cape Town I had nobody.

F Sweeney: One would think that that experience would affect your confidence.  Do you recall that at all?  

T Naledi: No.  By then I was very clear that I wanted to be a doctor.  I think I was about eight, nine and I told my parents that I wanted to be a doctor.  So, I was on a mission.  By then, it was a sacrifice that I had to take.  And I had so many racist incidents even in the school in Jo’burg.  But I never told my parents because I knew they'd pull me out of the school and I knew that I needed to finish and get a good education and I wanted to go to the big universities, either Wits or UCT.  

F Sweeney: And you didn’t feel like a failure, even though you felt you stuck out like a sore thumb when you wanted to fit in?  You still had a sense of a mission and action that you wanted to take?

T Naledi: Yeah, but I won't lie.  In the end I had to leave that school because it was just too difficult.  There came a time where even I could not manage with all that resilience that I had and everything, and it just became too much.  I was just unhappy.  So, when my cousin told me about this boarding school in the Eastern Cape that he went to, and invited me to apply and go for it, that’s what I did.

I Robertson: That experience, in colloquial terms did it toughen you or did it weaken you?

T Naledi: I think it toughened me because I didn’t break.  I did struggle, but more than anything I was determined to prove everybody wrong.  When I came to the private schools, I was always in at least in the top three in my Grade.  I’ve always been the clever kid.  So, when I came to the private schools, the white schools and I was struggling, that was tough for me because I was so used to being at the top and all of a sudden I was at the bottom.  But that made me want to prove myself that I can do it.  I knew that if I wanted to be a doctor that was part of the journey.  I was crystal-clear that I wanted to be a doctor.  

I Robertson: That confident girl who got on the bus to do the family shopping at age 10, I'm imagining that that was the same stuff that got you through the three years in Cape Town and got you out to Australia?  I get the sense that each time you faced a really tough experience it's actually made you more resilient and maybe made your confidence more deep-rooted.  There is evidence, there is scientific evidence for that from Albert Bandura’s work that mastering adversity is a real source of confidence – doing stuff in spite of feeling miserable or getting things done in spite of feeling anxious.

T Naledi: My parents had this knack of making things exciting for me because even when I went shopping, for example, they made me feel like it was such a huge achievement.  I was this big girl doing all of these things.  And also I was not the only one doing that.  My cousins were doing it.  We were raised very differently.  We were raised a lot more independent so when I grew up, we lived in a really small house, and we were not allowed to be in the house because it was so small.  You woke up and did your chores and then we were on the street.  We were playing on the street with our friends.  My mom hardly knew where I was most of the time.  We were very independent.

F Sweeney: That’s actually something that’s quite common in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s.  I mean in Ireland you'd be sent out to play at nine in the morning and you wouldn’t want to be seen back home before dinnertime.

I had a question about this realisation about the existence of apartheid and how it affected you.  Was there any anger when you had that realisation?

T Naledi: When it comes to my political conscientisation, it came very late because I think my family protected us from politics.  I come from a Christian family, and you must remember also in the ‘80s it was illegal to be speaking about anything political.  If you were political usually you went out into exile so those who were left behind usually didn’t speak about politics.  But we knew something was going on but it was always done by the adults in secret.  They would meet in a clandestine way, and they always spoke in English and very big words that most of us as kids we didn’t quite understand.  

But for me, more than anger, I think I was even more determined to make something of my life.  I was very clear that I was certainly not going to suffer, that I was going to make something of my life.  My grandmother was a domestic worker, so worked for a rich family and lived with them.  This white family was relatively speaking a lot more open.  So, I also spent a lot of time there as well, where I also learnt a lot of things.  My earliest memories include spending a lot of time there with my grandmother, following her around as she’s cleaning the house and helping her.  And because I was a child nobody bothered me even though I wasn't really allowed to be there.  But I could walk the streets, I could go to the shops, I could communicate in my own way even though I couldn’t speak English.  I could go to the park, I could play.  I could do all sorts of things.

But when I look back to that time, I realise that that is where actually I was able to see a different future for myself.  That’s where I could see that there are many possibilities in life.  So, by the time I figured out that, hang on a minute, this is apartheid, even if you wanted to you couldn’t live that it was too late because I had a particular vision in my head about the life that I wanted for myself which was almost a mixture of what’s in the suburbs and in the townships.  And there was very little anybody could do to tell me that I couldn’t have it because I was determined.

F Sweeney: And that’s the kind of individual confidence that you clearly had and still have.  Were you aware of that kind of collective confidence around you in your family who were obviously very supportive of you and your goals and making you believe anything was possible?

T Naledi: My family, my extended family, is a really loving family.  We're very close, we're very happy and you have the sense that when chips are down, we will all be there for each other.

For me, an example of collective confidence I think is the country as a whole.  In 1976, high school kids had rocks in their hands, and they stood up against the apartheid system that had guns and machine guns and big Casspirs and all of that.  And even though political parties have claimed that moment, the truth of the matter is that that moment belongs to ordinary kids who decided that they did not want to be taught in Afrikaans and decided that they're not going to have it.  For me that is collective confidence – to believe that you can take rocks and stand up against a violent state.  

I Robertson: I'm wondering how that plays out now in South Africa?  How hard or easy is it to maintain that sense of common destiny, of a common goal to energise people to work together towards that?  Is that collective sense under threat at the moment or what are the constraints on that?

T Naledi: It's definitely under threat.  The former president, President Zuma, was arrested for contempt of court because he refused to give evidence at the Zondo Commission investigating the corruption under his watch.  A whole lot of people implicated him, and he was asked to come and explain himself to the Commission.  They wrote to him something like nearly 30 times to come and he came a few times.  And the last time he came he walked out before he was released by the judge.  So, the Constitutional Court instructed him to go give evidence.  He refused.  They asked him again.  He refused until they said, “OK, fine.”  They put him in jail for 15 months.  And he was refusing to even go to jail.  

Eventually he went but after he went then there were riots in the country.  Oh, my word!  People burnt down schools, shopping centres.  It was largely in two provinces in Gauteng where Jo’burg is and KwaZulu-Natal where Durban is.  It was absolutely horrific!  Horrific!  And what was even more scary was that it was very clear that nobody was in control.  Before, in South Africa when this happens usually political leaders are able to bring things to order and be able to get people to listen.  There was no leadership.  It was very scary, very, very scary.  

I Robertson: So, it's relatively easy to feel collective confidence and to get the boost to individual confidence that comes from feeling collectively confident, if you’re under a good leader and where you feel a common purpose.  

But the great enemy of that is tribalism because the more you feel bonded to a particular group the more easy it is to objectify or behave badly to the out group, the non-group.  This is a challenge not just in South Africa - this is a challenge everywhere - the two-edged sword of being confident because you’re part of a movement, part of a group but the inevitable consequence of the human brain of creating out groups whether they're tribes or other collectives.

T Naledi: There are some people that have characterised what happened in South Africa in tribalism terms.  My own view’s different.  I think that the current enemy for progress and for our democracy is actually poverty, inequality and unemployment.  

I'm not in any way excusing what people did but you must remember we were in lockdown.  A lot of people had lost their jobs.  Even people who were coping were no longer coping.  And I think what happened just before the riots in our country is that the government stopped the grant.  There was an emergency grant that people were getting

I think if we do not deal with issues of poverty and inequality and unemployment in our country, we will never be able to have that collective confidence.  It's just not possible.  

I Robertson: That’s where the leadership is critical, isn’t it and one of the most powerful tribes is the wealthy.  Wealth creates its own tribe.

T Naledi: Absolutely.

F Sweeney: Would this be a point to touch on your work with Atlantic Fellows, to talk about the importance of that in terms of a national confidence or individual Fellows’ confidence?

T Naledi: Yes.  You know, when we set out to start Tekano - I think it was about 2015, 2016 or so - what was very clear was that we needed a different kind of leader.  You must remember that was right in the middle of the Zuma administration when what we call here the ‘looters’ – people who were really just helping themselves with government resources - were in power.  The Zondo Commission has made it all clear and it's even worse than what we thought.  I'm shocked by some of the level of corruption that has been happening in our country.  So, we knew that what we needed in our country were different kind of leaders.  

In South Africa we come from a legacy of great leaders.   We overcame apartheid because we had fantastic leaders that led the nation to a democracy.  For me, the biggest example of collective confidence, even before 1976, is having the generation of the Mandelas of this world standing up against the apartheid government.  So, there are many examples of collective confidence in our country that led to our democracy.  

But after democracy what happened is that all of these leaders went into government and there was this vacuum created in civil society.  And we all believed that those leaders will take care of us.  They were the leaders that brought us to this democracy.  Never did we anticipate that the very same leaders would behave exactly like the apartheid government and want to be self-serving.

So, at the time when we were talking about setting up Tekano we knew that we really needed to build a new kind of leadership, a new kind of leader, a values-based leader that was not an individualistic, elitist leader, but a leader that believed in collective leadership.  One that believed in foregrounding the voice of the marginalised and actually worked with them and not for them.  

And I think that’s a mistake that we made in South Africa, that we believed that the leaders would do it for us.  So, that's a lesson learned, and I think that’s what Tekano is about.  It's really about creating a kind of leader that at the centre of their action are the interests of people, not the interests of themselves.  And also making sure that our leaders are connected to the global agenda, and so we're very excited that we are connected to all the programmes in the Atlantic family.

F Sweeney: And presumably that connectivity that you talk about, that must raise confidence both individually and collectively among the cohorts?

T Naledi: Yes, but you must also understand that that is a new generation.  This generation of leaders has emerged pretty much in a similar sort of way as the ‘76 youth emerged in standing up against apartheid.  You’ll recall that around 2016, 2017 in my country the young people stood up against the government around fees for education, around “Rhodes must fall.”  So, I also want to give credit to the young people themselves.

I think Tekano is, if anything, supporting what is already existing and strengthening the capacity of those leaders because of course as you know, we look for people who are already leaders themselves in health equity.  So, we are just building on that.  But certainly, I think we have a contribution to make in growing that cadre of leaders and getting them connected to global counterparts that are of the same mind.

F Sweeney: So, I was going to ask you, as a competent adult woman in South Africa did you ever experience anything that knocked that sense of confidence that you had about yourself?

T Naledi: Oh, yeah.  When I was in the workplace and things changed as things do.  Management changes, and people that you work with change, and the environment changes.  I had been incredibly successful, incredibly influential where the rank that I carried didn’t matter. What mattered were the ideas that are brought to the table.  I was on a high and I was performing, and I was doing really well.  

And things changed at some point and I found that I was no longer influential.  My ideas no longer resonated.  I didn’t feel like I was on the same page with my colleagues, you know.

F Sweeney: Ian, what was happening to Tracey at that point then do you think?  What was happening to her confidence?  What was going on in her mind?

I Robertson: Well, what you seemed to be describing, Tracey, was things were going along quite well.  You felt you felt you were achieving the goals you wanted or moving towards the goals.  And then, as you say, things changed.  This happens to us all at times in life.  And when things change and it no longer seems possible for you to achieve the goals that you thought you were delivering on, your mind opens up to think, well, what should I do?  And that opens you up to anxiety as well and anxiety’s a great enemy of confidence; it kind of undermines confidence.  

But periodically we have to do this in life.  The great antidote to anxiety is clear focus on a course of action and following that course of action.  And that can be a very emotionally secure place to be because it puts blinkers on you and you don't think so much about emotional, worrying things.  But then you hit a wall, as you seem to describe, and you think what am I going to do here, how am I going to deal with this problem?  That’s I think when you need to come up with a new course of action, but at the same time it's quite difficult to envisage that new course of action because of the anxiety that’s swirling about and the self-doubt and things like that.  Does that ring any bells?

T Naledi: Absolutely.  The self-doubt.  I could write a draft policy brief very easily and I was very good at it.  And I remember my boss asking me to write a discussion document that would lead to a policy brief on something that I know very well.  And, oh, I just could not do it.

F Sweeney: You couldn’t do something that had been relatively simple to do beforehand.  Ian, what would have been taking place there?

I Robertson: Well, what confidence does is you’re projecting yourself into the future and the future’s never certain, but you’re saying, look, I can do x, I can do that, I can write that policy brief.  I've done that before.  And even though this may be a different policy area I can rest on my previous experience to deliver on that.  

So, you predict you can do it and that very prediction that you can do it actually lifts your mood via the brain’s reward network, lowers your anxiety and boosts your motivation.  So, you do it, your brain responds with a surge of positive feelings because you predict you can do it, and then when you do it you get that surge as well.  

So, what happens when your direction has been thwarted, you start to doubt and when you doubt, your whole memory and attention systems of your brain shift.  Worrying or past failures come into mind much more easily.  You notice possible downsides and possible threats much more readily in the environment.  You notice someone frowning.  You pay more attention to someone’s catty or critical remark.  

And so, it becomes a vicious cycle where you doubt yourself and you start looking for evidence, both in the outside world but also in your memory banks, to support that self-doubt.  And that means you no longer have that incredible capacity to predict a successful outcome in the world and to get that energising mood-lifting effect of that prediction.  And that’s a real hole that people can get stuck in.  

F Sweeney: Tracey, did you get stuck?

T Naledi: Oh, yeah.  And I'm chuckling a little bit listening to Ian because I remember many a time where I would look at people and literally stop dead in the middle of my sentence because I would think that they're rolling their eyes at me.  I don't know how much of it was in my imagination or if it was real.

F Sweeney: So, this is self-talk. You’re convincing yourself of something that may not be the case.  And how did you get out of that hole?

T Naledi: Well, for me, my husband, who at the time I thought was being completely insensitive, said to me, “Tracey, you know what?  Every time you come home, you’re complaining about things at work.  You actually have only three choices.  You can either stay and suck it up, or you can change things, or you can leave, but those are the only three choices that you have.  You need to pick one.  And you need to stick with that.”

I remember at the time thinking, “Oh, my word!  This man, he doesn't understand!”  But that was very good because it kicked me in my butt, and I had to make a decision because all of a sudden I had to decide for myself which of the three I was going to do.  The first one – sucking it up – that is just not in my nature.  The second one, I did try and change things and it became evident that I just did not have the capacity to do that.  And I was left with only one option, to leave.  And so I applied for a scholarship to do a PhD and I made a deal with God.  I prayed and I said, “OK, if I get the scholarship then I know that I'm supposed to go.”  I got the scholarship, then I said, “OK then, it means I need to move on.”

F Sweeney: And do you feel a stronger person as a result of that experience?

T Naledi: Absolutely.  The one thing that I’ve come to realise is that there’s a time and place for everything and everyone.  I just think times changed, context changed, the situation changed and for me it was also time for a change because I was in such a dump.  

I Robertson: Tracey, two things.  One is sometimes feeling down and low in evolutionary terms has its purposes because, A, it can solicit care from other people, but, B, it also puts you in a state of quietness where new ideas and new directions can appear if you’re open to them.  

So, I’m just wondering, this uncharacteristic period of being in the dumps, as you say, to what extent you were able to actually end up in a new, more positive direction for yourself as a result of that?

T Naledi: I actually feel I understand myself better.  Funnily enough, one of the things that I couldn’t do before was to meditate because I couldn’t keep my mind quiet enough, but now I do.  I wake up much earlier than I used to.  So, my lifestyle’s also different.  

I Robertson: Yeah.  The second thing I was going to ask you, Tracey, was this.  I was very interested in you saying I knew if I got the scholarship then God wanted me to do it.  So, there was a sense of you gained control by relinquishing control.  Sometimes in big, big life decisions, particularly when it involves change in a new direction where you cannot be certain, confidence will get you so far, but there’s times when you have to realise your limitations, realise what you can't control and give it up to, in your case you were saying God, but it could equally be a set of values, a sense of, well, I'm playing my part in delivering on these values.  This is a complex situation.  I'm going to hand over to these values or to God to determine this and to give myself a bit of a break from agonising over what precise decision to make.  Something I call strategic fatalism but a positive aspect of fatalism.  Does that ring any bells?

T Naledi: Yes, absolutely because it's actually quite nerve-wracking to change something that is familiar to you.  That was hard for me.  It took me more than a year I think, probably closer to two years to finally, finally decide that OK, I'm going to do it because I'm happiest when I'm serving.  So, it was very hard for me to give that up.  I was a late bloomer in my political consciousness, and the one promise that I made to myself was that, since I was such a late bloomer politically then the only thing I can do is be of service now that I'm an adult and at least do all that I can to make sure that my people can get good health services.  

So, for me my work was not just my work.  It was my site of struggle.  I saw it very much as more than just a job.  It was certainly not something I did for a salary.  I did it for something much bigger.  So, to give that up for me was probably one of the most difficult things I ever have had to do.  So, I needed some other outside confirmation to know that I was doing the right thing because part of me felt like leaving was being incredibly selfish, that if I left, I was giving up on my people.  I was giving up on service.  So, that’s why I thought, OK, maybe I can go study and then I can always come back.  So, for me, making this kind of deal with God is “I need a sign that I’m doing the right thing.”

F Sweeney: I look at the Tekano Fellows now, Tracey, people like Dorah Marema and Constance Mogale who we’ve done some films about.  What strikes me is they talk about self-sustainability.  That’s where their drive and focus seems to be.  

T Naledi: Well, I think for me, actually what motivates me at this time in South Africa are the people of South Africa.  

When COVID came, when lockdown came South Africans are the ones that stood up and helped their neighbour.  I live in a very upmarket neighbourhood now.  My own neighbourhood, we raised over R1 million, as just us ordinary people and that R1 million went to Khayelitsha.  We partnered.  We had these CAN – community action networks - where each and every community had a group of people coming together.  We were donating food.  We were making soup.  We were making bread.  We were just doing so much for one another.  

So, for me I think the thing that should motivate us all is just that as South Africans we still have it in us, all of us.  For me that’s what’s keeping me going.  At the end of the day the politicians might have let us down but we as South Africans are actually the heroes of the day and that gives me hope.  That is what makes me believe that we have a future.  That makes me believe that actually we're going to be alright because the people of South Africa are not giving up.  We're not giving up.  

And when I think about our youth, our young people, they’re so fantastic.  I speak to my own daughters who are 13 and 17, they’re just so socially conscious.  You know, the things they say, the things they analyse, their perspective and their insights on things is just incredible.  

I have ample confidence in the people of South Africa and our youth.  You can't kill the spirit of South Africans.  South Africa and its people are alive and well.  That’s what keeps me going.

Music Thoughts in G by Cheyenne Mize.

F Sweeney: Tracey Naledi, founding chairperson of Tekano, Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity in South Africa, bringing us to the end of today’s CONVERSATION.  

For more CONVERSATIONS ON CONFIDENCE, go to our website at www.atlanticfellows.org.  Here you can also learn more about the seven Atlantic Fellows programs empowering emerging leaders to advance fairer, healthier, more inclusive societies.  

I’m Fionnuala Sweeney. Thank you for listening.  I do hope you will join us for our next CONVERSATION with Indian journalist Priyanka Kotamraju, Atlantic Fellow for Social & Economic Equity.

ENDS | DURATION: 38’ 40

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