New Brooms

At the end of last year Njabulo Ndebele wrote about shake-ups in the ANC in an article in the Mail & Guardian entitled “Toxic politics: diary of a bad year.” He asked how successful societies replicate their success over time? His answer is that, “They provide opportunities for their citizens for seamless cross-generational interactions within the network of private and public institutions that give definition to national effort.” 
  This hasn't been a feature of recent South African political life: “Consider the sudden and unplanned departure of then-president Thabo Mbeki, when the ANC threw away in an instant years of institutional knowledge. It was more than an individual who left. A body of knowledge and experience did too, regardless of how they may have been understood.” As a result he continues, “younger members of the ANC have little access to an aspect of their organisation’s contemporary history.” He believes, “A deep chasm has emerged in the interactive space between one generation and another, which will take years to rebuild.”

This reminded me of an organization with which I am familiar and in which the staff turnover is high.
Like many NGOs this organisation sheds staff who leave during periodic financial and organisational crises. New managers, who have not come through the ranks, may feel they have to make their mark by changing existing structures, whereas newly-appointed young people use the organisation as a stepping stone in their  professional lives. One of the consequences is that the institutional memory of the organization gets lost or isn’t valued. Recently even the new leadership, in attempting to deal both with the toxicity that has developed in the organization in recent years, and the difficulties in obtaining funding, has succumbed to the new broom approach.

Will it turn out the way Njabulo Ndebele fears; that lessons learnt and a culture painstakingly built will not be passed on, or will it be just the shot in the arm that is needed to revive what was once a radical NGO, seeding new organizations on an almost yearly basis?
Do the current staff even know about this history? Is it useful to remember the glory days if one cannot recreate them?

What do you think?