Embracing 2025: a call for unity and active citizenship in post-pandemic South Africa

Looking at the end of 2024 and into the new year, one is filled with a mixture of fatigue, excitement and optimism brought on by the happenings this past year.

A few weeks ago, I hosted the launch of Zapiro’s new annual, Have I Got GNUs for You. Seeing and hearing his visual take on different parts of the year, as well as the varying responses to them from different quarters of our society, made me realise just how much we lived through in 2024 and what it was possibly setting us up for in 2025.

In many ways, my column serves a similar function as I make sense of the world through words, discovering what is important to me, what troubles me, what gives me hope, what brings me joy and what buoys me as I cobble it together weekly to order my thoughts and also mark significant points in time.

2024 was rife with so many firsts and precedents being set that I really am looking forward to 2025 being a year of solidifying and building, of pulling together as opposed to apart. I hope it is a year in which South Africans work towards a common cause, and that consensus is finally reached about investing in our collective strength and not in our division as the most sustainable way of contributing to our country.

It’s common this time of year to reflect on the journey that led us to the moment we are in, while asking ourselves how the year has shaped us for the better.

What I know is that we are more than the sum of our political, social and economic problems. I am optimistic that we are heading towards the new year with a renewed sense of active citizenry – as ordinary people who realise that power does not only lie in the hands of politicians.

I think 2025 is an opportunity to further entrench this, after having forced political parties to put aside their differences and form a government that looks to serve the country according to our constitutional imperatives and, dare I say, our errant moral compass.

The truth is that the shifting and shaping of our society cannot be outsourced. All of us need to roll up our sleeves and get knee-deep into the grit and hard work needed to ensure that the country does not implode as has been forecast. Imagine if 2025 is the year in which civil society, government and business finally click into sync for our collective benefit. It’s not a utopian ideal – it is possible.

The love I have for South Africa means that I will always challenge, critique and have difficult conversations, but I will also highlight and revel in our moments of inspiration, beauty, kindness and downright audaciousness, because that is how love works.

Love doesn’t leave when the going gets tough, and even when it seems as if the country is battered and bruised and has forgotten its heart song, it is incumbent on us to sing it back to ourselves so that we remember who we are and the kind of society we aspire to be. Here’s lookin’ at you, 2025! DM

Zukiswa Pikoli is the managing editor of Daily Maverick in Gauteng as well as Maverick Citizen.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.