RAISING THE BAR:

Raising the Bar provides a fresh, unencumbered analysis of the topics that pervade our daily lives, including race, leadership, politics, government, violence, the position of women and the taboos that haunt us.

South Africa faces enormous challenges brought about by the legacy of its horrible past and the actions of its present. In the twenty years since the advent of democracy the country has come to believe that the ailments of its soul will be solved by state bureaucratic interventions. While at a material level this may be true, at the core of its failure to confront its demons successfully is a missing moral and philosophical foundation to the future it wants to build. Desperate to build a new, positive and uplifting narrative of itself, South Africa has failed at the task of constructing a society and instead sought to maintain a fragile truce between bitterly competing interests. It explores why we are the people we have become and the future our present state is building. Uncomfortable and littered with vulnerabilities and problems, this is a task we can no longer delay. It is the only way to lay a solid foundation to ensure that we become a prosperous nation. SONGEZO ZIBI is the editor of the Business Day, South Africa's only standalone and highly respected business daily. He spent the first fourteen years of his career in corporate communications at multinational companies, Volkswagen South Africa (1998–2006) and then at Xstrata South Africa (2006–2013) where he served in its executive structures. He has written extensively on politics, society and the economy for various national publications before taking up his current position. Raising the Bar is his first book.