The national conversation stimulated by students through the #RhodesMustFall, #FeesMustFall and #NationalShutDown campaigns has highlighted once more the power and influence of committed, resolute and young South Africans. The past week was a unique opportunity for all South Africans to reflect on how we collectively take this moment forward.

Education is a basic right afforded to all South Africans by our Constitution. The #RhodesMustFall, #FeesMustFall and #NationalShutDown campaigns are not simply a case of students protesting. This is not just about percentage increases. This is about defining our future by the way we treat our emerging cohort of leaders. And already our real leaders have something to say. We had better start listening.

We must confront the disproportionate use of force against young South Africans and how many tried to confine the conversation to simply be about university fees. We must ask ourselves why privileged South Africans remained silent and disengaged from the debate.

At its root #FeesMustFall is about the story of sacrifice. The story of many mothers and fathers who rise at 4am in order to provide for their children in the best way they know possible. It is about how despite that sacrifice and hard work they continue to struggle to shake off the burden of a broken and destructive past.

We have seen the class of 2015 boldly embrace their own leadership, throwing off the shackles of the divisive party political system. They have confronted a system underpinned by inequality and privilege by demanding that higher education should be accessible to all and also challenged the system of outsourcing taking place on our watch.

However, this past week was also littered with disappointment and sadness – at the incapability of leadership, across the aisles of Parliament, to meaningfully engage in that conversation with students. It seems more convenient to try to limit the conversation to fee level increases; 6% or 10% or 0%. Students are right when they say that if leaders continue to talk about percentages, they are not listening.

In the most unequal society in the world, leaders find it fitting to deny the marginalised their education – the great leveller – and kow-tow to the nonsense that a university education is a privilege.

Under our collective watch, South Africa is now in need of urgent and decisive leadership matched with real interventions, which will honour the values of those who have come before us, and our Constitution, in order to meaningfully deal with inequality and poverty.

More concerning is the fact that many political parties and institutions came to the party very late and then tried to appropriate and hijack the #FeesMustFall movement and sentiment. We see it in the infographics created and the embracing of a hashtag that was previously interdicted by these very people. We have seen your inaction. You now warmly embrace the movement publicly yet when the chips were down you were nowhere to be seen or heard. It will be important for us to confront these hypocrites, vultures and opportunists for what they are if we are to honour the #FeesMustFall movement.

We would be naïve to think this was only about fees. We know that this fight was for the many millions of South Africans – people who have been forgotten by the system, who remain out in the cold and alone.

The fractured nature of our society is often viewed as a symptom of the legacy of apartheid, or the unemployment rate, or the failures in our education system or the failures of leadership. However, it is not a simple equation but rather a combination of time and a lack of decisive leadership by all the role-players in confronting the issues. This past week has emphasised how out of touch our political leaders are with what South Africans are calling for and need.

It is far too easy for so many South Africans to be dismissed out of hand and if the privileged (and political leaders) were perhaps honest with themselves, they should accept their role in that broken system. They have the necessary tools, networks, and capacity to forge a social compact that is able to confront the issues of inequality head-on yet they sit idle while people are degraded and suffer.

Thomas Piketty’s closing remark at the Nelson Mandela Annual lecture earlier this month was: “It is very difficult to organise a society where thousands of people just want to decide for themselves how much they want to contribute to the public good.”

In order to deal honestly with the #FeesMustFall movement, we will have to confront this idleness and ambivalence. We can’t simply allow a business-as-usual approach because new taxes, the reallocation of budgets or policy discussions won’t be enough if we don’t have meaningful conversation about creating that social compact to confront inequality and privilege in South Africa. We must listen. DM