Shamabil Yacob

It has to involve people a lot more.

Because that loss of trust in institutions means that it's the wrong question to ask.

We can't say that on the one hand, I don't trust government.

And on the other, what is government going to do to fix this?

It just doesn't add up, right?

So I think that's where we're getting a little bit stuck.

So some of it is about earning back the trust, starting from our local communities.

It's not quite clear to me yet what that looks like.

But what I do know is that it's kind of the right combination of activities that happens in our small communities.

So for example...

If I'm a central government and I'm commissioning a project in, I don't know, Belcluther, it shouldn't be just that one-off project that funds that project for the 12 months.

We also need to think about how do we create a community infrastructure so whatever you're starting there is actually going to be enduring.

So the question has to be a little bit broader than this one-off thing that quite often we do in policy circles, something a little bit bigger.

But there's also an element of we can't think about social cohesion as something that sits on the other side.

It's actually integral to everything that we do.

When it comes to policymaking, when it comes to decision-making, we are quite good at the technical stuff.

but we're not good at taking the community with us.

And it's that bit, if we could bring the community with us, if we could build an engagement, building that patience in our ways of doing things, I think we would start to make a lot of progress.