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It was clever for the GFIP E-toll Advisory Panel to use the National Development Plan to contextualise and frame their report and recommendations to resolve the etoll impasse.  But was it wise?

It would have been wise for the panel to couch their analysis in terms of the wisdom generated from the Dinokeng Scenarios back in 2009 when an inclusive group of 33 high profile leaders explored what South Africa might look like in 2020. Three possible futures were imagined, each depending on how the State and Civil Society chose to relate to one another.  Now that six years have elapsed revisiting the scenarios in the light of what has actually happened is very startling.  But the anti e-toll movement provides some hope.

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Two apparently disconnected major news stories broke last Thursday.  In Johannesburg Gauteng Premier David Makhura released the E-toll Advisory Panel report, and in Hollywood the annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released the nominees for the 2015 Oscar awards.  Look closely at the content of each story and an exquisite synchronicity emerges.  In the “Best Picture” category the Academy named Selma - a film that tells a true story about civil courage and civil disobedience in the face of State injustice.    In the E-toll Report the panel said there was “no justification” for civil disobedience by boycotting e-tolls and that to continue doing so “sets unsustainable precedents and threatens democracy and social cohesion.”

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Why should anyone weep over the death of a woman one has never actually met in person, has only known via written communications and with whom one has only corresponded for a brief five-month period?

Because she was more compassionately Christlike than many Christians (despite having given up faith in organised religion) and because her way of dealing with online serial violators of human rights was much sharper and much more effective than anything the Human Rights Commission could ever do. She helped many within the heady-hearty, arty-farty virtual-reality space of the Daily Maverick commentariat to confront reality. And she helped me sharpen my pen and find its target without having to commit suicide or cause collateral damage.

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As tributes to Dr Ian Player pour in from across the planet, his legacy will prevail to the extent that those who follow him also simultaneously undertake a journey inward and a journey outward. Inward to contemplate the gift of life within, and outward in actions to change social, political, economic and religious systems that are life-destroying.

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