I’m not someone who has travelled to many countries, but it’s never failed to be a very educational experience whenever I’ve had the chance to visit a new place.

Unfortunately it’s also never failed to make me quite depressed because as soon as I set foot back on South African soil I realise again just how far behind some other parts of the world we have fallen.

No two places are the same and it would be unfair to compare Mzansi with a huge country like America, which has been rich and highly developed for a long time, so that’s not something I’ve ever done.

But I think it’s fair to compare South Africa with other, small countries that were once poor and have since developed at a much faster pace.

In fact, things start looking really bad for us when you look at some countries that are much smaller than us and have less resources to work with.

I’m thinking of tiny places with maybe a tenth of our population. Places with no gold, platinum or other precious minerals, little water, and almost no farmable land.

Despite these factors, which you might expect would have stood in the way of their development, these countries have managed to build massive, thriving economies and societies where poverty is rare and almost everyone has a job, a home and an income they can survive on comfortably.

And don’t think they had an easy time doing it. They’ve also had their conflicts, even wars. So how did they do it, and why haven’t we been able to do the same? I think it has a lot to do with having the right mindset. Lifting people out of poverty and growing the economy has to be more important to politicians than ideology, party loyalty or holding on to grudges from the past.

Yes, not getting stuck in the past is important because that helps you look to the future. I don’t think many of our leaders are managing to do that.

Let me give you a good example. There are quite a few politicians obsessed with land reform and with nationalising mines. I’m not saying there isn’t a lot wrong with the current distribution of land or the ownership of mines, but those things really belong to the past.

The most successful countries in the world are the ones which have long ago changed from agricultural and manufacturing economies to service economies and beyond.

Service economies are described as ones where knowledge becomes the most important resource, not land or minerals or stuff made in factories. Blue-collar workers become less important, while professionals become more valuable.

What does this mean? It means that a leader who is forward thinking doesn’t  talk about plans to give young people a bit of land to plant mealies or shares in a mine that will run out of gold in a few years.

Instead, he or she would be thinking of ways to give a child the chance for a free, quality education that will prepare him or her for this new world where knowledge and professional skills are more valuable than anything that can be dug out of the ground.

When you think about this situation you soon realise why unions may be against the changes needed to achieve this. They don’t want to see a world where they will become irrelevant, as the sort of jobs held by most of their members disappear.

But that’s just plain selfishness. The reality is that the new jobs that will be created in the new type of economy will leave those same workers better off than ever before.

This is a new world that’s taking shape all over the globe. And this new world needs a new kind of citizen and a new kind of leader.

If we change quickly enough, it may not be too late for us to catch up after all.

- Let me know what you think! Send your thoughts to [email protected]

Until next time, salani kahle!