Marriage...when Yaw? When???

I have wanted to tackle this topic for many a year, but I haven’t because there are so many angles to it and I don’t even know where to begin, but I just cant seem to escape it. I seem to be attending weddings every other month and I am starting to notice that I am more often than not in the single minority, my concerned friends are always asking me why and in other cases keen to to set me up (bless you) and without a doubt every Sunday, like this past one, and the one before, when I am at my parents, the conversation rears its head without fail.

Marriage, an absolutely beautiful thing if you get it right, but a horribly destructive thing if you get it wrong. Society’ has fed me the rosiness of the institution, yet, as I sit here, I have more questions than acceptance. And that concerns me. I’m inching ever closer to my 39^th orbit around the sun, my existence is by no means perfect, but currently, it’s perfectly mine. I lack not too much and want for even less. It is not the worst place to be I suppose... BUT I am very concerned as to why the committed relationship I have with my passport, laptop, couch and remote supersedes any desires I have for companionship.

A little bit of context shall we. I started quite late with this whole relationship thing. Kissed and dated my first girl at the age of 19, that lasted 5 or so months, lovely lass, but I was way too young in my mind (not much has changed since then) the next one was at 28, another fabulous young lady, but through circumstance I guess, that ended a few clicks shy of 2 years…and that my friends, is the sum total of my ‘relationships’. And no I am not a player, well at least I don’t think so. So here are a few factors that I think contribute to the current state of many like me:

1. The influence of parents and the community

I constantly debate with my parents, uncles and aunts and older family friends, who I hardly ever see yet they wish to prescribe who I should settle with. That debate is more infrequent now because they know my position and I guess as a factor of my and their age, they are willing to concede. ‘Yaw, Just come home with any girl and we will be happy’ I tend to hear them say more often. The older Ghanaian folk hold the desire that their children should settle with Ghanaians.

An argument that makes some sense given the fact that relationships of any kind are constant toil in themselves, throw in the complexities of different cultures, religions, ethnicities and you could have yourself a quagmire of epic proportions. But my counter is this. I on the other hand, have no innate desire to settle with a Ghanaian, if it happens sweet as, but right now if I were to do such, it would be to appease the family and the elders around. That doesn’t really make any sense to me because if one day, I do end up married, I’m in it 24/7 and the interaction with these ‘prescriptive elders’ will more than likely amount to attending the wedding, a child naming (if we are blessed enough to have one) a few phone calls, etc., I.e. next to ZERO influence or accountability.

Secondly, if I were to date a Ghanaian for example, the whole Ghanaian world would get involved. Unnecessary pressure. I speak to my younger cousins and family friends in SA and the sentiment is the same. The parents mean well but they actually aren’t aware how their influence is counter productive (and man are they stubborn, so you try and explain this to them…Your typical response would be along the lines of ‘who born you? We know best…’). Ofcourse I am generalizing to a point because there are some amongst us whose only desire is to settle with a Ghanaian.

Thirdly there are absolutely no guarantees. People are people and ish happens! I mean a lot of these ‘prescriptive elders, have marriages that just seem to just be one of 2 people co-existing, sometimes you hear arguments between them that sound exactly the same as when you were 12 years old. Married men are out chasing skirt. It leads a person to think that if this is what I have to look forward to man perhaps the passport, couch and remote isn’t such a bad option is it? I strongly believe that as long as you find a person who in you believe is your person in mind, body and soul, and you are both committed to making it work, that’s the best base to build on. But what do I know…

2. Marriage as an institution

My parents have been married for 41 years!! My good friend Ingo and ‘cousin’ Dr. David just got engaged a few weeks ago, and I am superbly thrilled for them, but my thoughts re. Ingo were, damnit man, who am I going to travel with now? J My youngest bro got married last year, too chuffed because he found his person. My uncle and aunt are in Vegas renewing their vows after 25 years. I went to visit my mates in the LA last year, married for 10 years this year, 3 lovely kids and they just seem as into each other as they were on day 1. Went to my ‘big brother’s’ house this past weekend. He has been married for 11 years, been with his wife 20 years. 2 kids growing up and developing personalities. Love that stuff!

They found their person. The saddest thing for me though is they seem to be amongst the minority in this selfish, self-centered world we currently find ourselves in. Nowadays, the roles of men and women in my mind, are the same. We all work the same, get paid more or less the same. It’s not the same as in the past where there were roles to be played irrespective of who does what, there were roles. In my house both my folks worked, but they both had more than enough time for us, be it sport, feeding, prize giving, homework. We knew what we could and couldn’t do, mother issued upper cuts, pops was the guy you didn’t want to go to. He issued no beatings but the thought of one day getting a beating was enough to make sure that your ish ended with ma and the wooden spoon, the belt, the jacket…shoot anything she could get her hand. Saturday was library and pops doing the shopping, moms looking after the food and the helper…etc. Stuff worked, nowadays we are all kings of the castle.

That’s one part, another part is fidelity. I don’t know how many people who are married/in relationships still seem to find a thrill in stepping out of bounds. See I am not married nor am I in a relationship, so I guess it’s easy for me to pass such comments, but what I want to know is why bother getting married or being in a relationship if you are keen to step out when an opportunity presents itself? Why not just stay single and save your partner the heartache and yourself the headache? And its not just guys cheating anymore, oh no!! The ladies are properly out there now. So it leads me to the next question, how relevant is marriage as an institution in this era? Add to that the fact that it’s for life “Till death us do part”… Is marriage natural?

3. General

So last week I was sitting with a friend out here from Gabon and a friend of hers. My mate is married and her mate isn’t. So I start talking to the single lass, trying to gain some info for my blog. And I’m not sure her exact words, but she was all about the fact that her man must have money and be able to provide for her. Mind you this lass is educated in a pretty good job. I tend to find that a many of my ‘sisters’ I converse with are about it’s all about what he can do for me tip and not what we can do together, I’m not sure if its because of the exorbitant weave prices or what, but I find that more sad than infuriating. Cash like beauty can fade, but the soul of a person is generally more lasting than either of those 2 above mentioned. If what attracts you to a person is one of the former, know that if and when it dies, the probability of your relationship surviving tends towards zero.

A lot of us have also built a lot of preconditions and expectations in our minds as to how it should be. We see it as like a “Mills and Boons” happily ever after kind of story then we get into it and realize oh shaize, hmm this stuff is hard work, not quite what I had in mind….off to the court we go…I want half! Perhaps some of us also go into it for the wrong reasons. I like the little people and I’ve wanted kids for the longest time, my ma wants grand children like now! I look forward to the day I get woken up at 2am by a helpless hunger cry picking up my little missy and rocking her back to sleep with a bottle in her mouth. But is that enough to for me to get married?

That institution is hard! Don’t get it twisted, go in with eyes wide open and know its HARD DAMN WORK!

I feel I’m of the old school. There is no way I’m going through the admin of organising a wedding only for it to end a few years later. If I’m in, I’m all in.

Anyway, plenty thoughts float through my head on this topic and it all gets a tad confusing, so I choose the ‘safe’ option. I go back to my otherwise pretty decent life as it is, open to whatever possibilities the universe might throw at me, with the knowledge that the current flow of my existence fills me with much contentment.

Have a beautiful week ahead and if you are in love…long may it last, if your heart longs for love, may the longing be no more!! And for the rest of us, there is Champions League this week and a Currie Cup Final this weekend.

Much respect always

Yaw

Self (un)employment...

The end of this month marks the 5^th year of my self (un)employment. I term it as such because I spend more time conjuring up the dream as opposed to executing the dream. I say 5 years, but it’s more like 8 years. I suppose this is the kind of thing a person writes when they have made the cover of Forbes magazine and they are now relaying their story of their journey to success.

In between my little triumphs, I tend to have a lot of time to reflect and this is such a time. I have some of my peers and relatives on the one hand who think I am a raving lunatic after spending so much time, effort and money chasing quite a ‘prestigious’ profession I just walk away from it chasing a seemingly far fetched dream, and on the other side I have quite a few peers who seem to think I live a rock star life.

Well here is my story. In November 2006, life was superb. I was an Investment Banker in one of South Africa’s top banks. I had a great job, I was based in Cape Town, worked at a great institution, fabulous bosses, great clients and superb work mates. I had a pretty cool place, cruising around in my black 147YAWGP which was about to gain a brand new German, drop top sister in December, black ofcourse. I was an ambitious so and so. A few months earlier I had realized I was tired of the pace of Cape Town. I realized that I was about to hit my ceiling workwise and so I was keen to get back to Joburg because that’s where all the action was, not to mention a lovely girlfriend living there too. So mind was made up. I was in the pound seat, a ‘black’ CA earning pretty well not to mention millions of rand worth of shares in a publically listed entity (not vested yet but still a great bargaining chip) a pretty attractive offer on the table from an equally well respected financial institution in South Africa. Man, I had no worries going to sleep, I still don’t really.

The funniest thing though was that cash, attractive employment offers, I was still undecided, something was gnawing at my soul… Now that I am thick in it I now understand what it was. Ever since I was young and I mean like 12/13 or so, I have always felt the need to find my own way of making cash pocket money was for the birds. It began when I saw an ad in the Sunday times I think it was, for a company called the National Sales Association. It was a catalogue of personalized stationery (before emails and the internet), cards, teddy bears, mugs, cups etc. I ordered my catalogue and woe betide any neighbor, teacher, uncle, aunt who crossed my path, I would bring out my samples and pitch the feces out of my products. I spent many an hour walking the streets of our neighborhood looking for clients. I also learnt how to cut hair with scissors and working a fade with a blade and a comb, so I’d cut my mates hair for a fee. A few years later came my next little venture. You see we played a lot of tennis growing up and I used to break strings like they were made of cotton, it was most annoying because restringing them was time consuming and expensive. So I got wind that the guy who owned the sports shop in Umtata was selling his old one. I went in for a few lessons on how to use it and I think I paid R100 for it, bought enough string to restring 30 racquets for roughly R150 and I was charging R35 a racquet and it took about an hr and a half per racquet, supplementing that with offloading trucks at the local Spar, waiting tables at La Piazza, man I was set J

So anyway back to my story…so one day I go to gym (in Cape Town) and have a conversation with an old university ‘friend’ he asks me my plans, I tell him I want to head back to Joburg, he says come and speak to me. I wasn’t too sure what about, but I hoped…. So I went…He told me about his business and that he was looking for someone to run the Joburg business, I was like I’m in, without really thinking too much about what I was giving up, but finance and banking was something I learnt, networking, yakking to people, doing my own thing, was something I felt came naturally to me. We had a few conversations, went through a few iterations of the shareholders agreement, and to my discredit very naively on my part as it would turn out, but that is part of the learnings on this path called life. So off we went, I was a 26% shareholder in my first business that had R0 revenue R0 assets. But the business idea was sound and my partner was most helpful. In the first year we turned a few million rand, margins were crazy high, second year we turned even more millions and half way through the third year we were set to turn plenty more million, unfortunately not too much of that came to me, my naivety! Man I had fun, we had fun, it was a small business when I joined, perhaps only 8 of us when I left we were about 40 or so. Anyway things changed as they tend to when money starts to flow, maybe it was me who was at fault, a few things I thought we had verbally agreed on were not to be, my enthusiasm was waning and I realized that perhaps this isn’t the environment for me, so I started hoarding cash as if it were cans of food and the apocalypse were coming and we parted ways, company was turning millions, profit also millions, you would have thought 26% would net a fair bit ehhhhh!! NO SUCH LUCK…NAIVITY…But alas 5 years later we are still alive right?

So on the 30^th July 2009 I packed some items of clothing into my little German love (girlfriend was no more, relationship unfortunately died before I left CT…life right J) …my happy place and headed to Durban for the All Blacks v Springbok test match, then to Cape Town, my second love for a wee break. Mindset was (and still is) from now we create a job instead of take a job. First port of call, hook up with my mate Zulfiq, set up our business ZYNC (Zulfiq Yaw iNCorporated, cool right? J) to pursue opportunities. 2 weeks in Cape Town became 8 mths, as it does…A business we had been looking at strung us along forever and I drew a line in the sand saying if nothing happens by the end of March, I would head back to Joburg, nothing happened so I returned, but during that time I tried my hand at steel trading, oil trading, sugar, rice, coal, gold, airtime, came close so many times, but inevitably failed even more times. Fortunately for me, through my network and past employers and colleagues, I obtained pretty decent consulting contracts, Venture capital, sustainability, energy conservation, business plans for stone quarries, setting up bank infrastructure. A lot of these I have had zero experience in but learnt on the job and delivered in most cases an acceptable result for the ‘employers’. Not the smartest around I know, but man am I mastering the art of operating smartly J

It’s been a rough ride I tell you, for the first 4 years or so German love was disposed of in a flash, replaced by a didn’t pay a single cent as a salary, all the cash that the business earned has been reinvested into it to take advantage of any opportunities. Like right now as I sit here and type I don’t factually know where the businesses next win will come from. Working on a few things here in Ghana, but they rely on other people to make them work and their urgency isn’t anywhere near where mine is. That being said, right now even though I am not getting any younger, there are fewer other places I would rather be. I am superbly blessed to own my time, blessed with the gift of having travelled more in the past 8 years (searching for business opportunities) than I have in all my prior life twice over, should it happen that my folks or siblings need anything I should hopefully be in a position to help. I also feel very fortunate to be learning to live within my means and also not to live for others. It is very easy to get caught up trying to keep up with the Jones

I realized that I was never going to be wealthy working for someone, I may well never be wealthy working for myself neither, but what I don’t have is the stress of worrying if my job is secure (because I know it isn’t J). I am yet to directly create the job I hoped to. I may have done so indirectly through all the deals presented to investment committees during my consulting work, but I want someone else on my payroll.

If in your heart of hearts it is your desire to do your own thing, I would strongly recommend it, but if you think it will take 2 years to be up and running, cater for 5, cos it no be easy oooh! So am I successful? Man, those are other peoples concerns. My concern is waking up in the morning with a grateful heart for the opportunity to live like I do, hoping one day the golden goose will be found, but till then making mistakes, learning from them, having opportunities to do something meaningful and to live. I have and will continue failing, but as long as we live to tell the tale with a smile what more can one ask….

How do we change this thing?

At the end of the week, I would have been in Ghana for 2 months. It’s definitely the longest time I have spent in Ghana since we left here in 1983. Not too many of you know this (unless ofcourse you lived in Ghana during those times) but life in Ghana before we left was pretty rough. There was a coup and Rawlings had just taken over. There was also an insane famine, I was about 7 at the time and I remember very clearly how when an uncle came from overseas with a box of cornflakes it was like the Messiah had returned to deliver us to the promised land. During many meals we would pat down our serving of rice so it would cover the whole plate and every time we took a bite, we would pat it down again so it looked like the plate was still full. Ish was real back then I tell you. Where tall trees and a seemingly bustling metropolis now perch used to be littered with lush vegetation.

Yes, in many ways Accra is quite different from back the city my 7 year old memory remembers. 30 years on and its been emmm quite emotional being back! The country has come a long way from where it was, but in my humble opinion and let me add based on very little else other than pure observation, I wouldn’t be popping any bottles and setting off fireworks. This place is a far cry from whence it came…in many aspects. But if I have to be honest, I think as a continent we are guilty of mistaking mediocrity as greatness and worse still we the normal folk praise this mediocrity and endorse it by not holding our leaders accountable.  57 years ago Ghana gained independence, we are supposed to be a gateway for many companies into West Africa, in 2012 we were rated as the country with the fastest internet on the continent, yet in many places, everything is still written on paper, many roads are crater-filled suspension testers. We walk and drive on roads that have open sewers on both sides and that’s fine. It is commonplace for folk to just toss their rubbish on the floor because we couldn’t be ar sed about putting up dustbins.

I bemoan the fact that someone in a place of much power would sooner take offence to the fact that I handed him a piece of paper with my left hand as opposed to my right hand, than notice the archaic and inefficient driver licence conversion process. It disappoints me that the inhabitants of a country that can boast the largest reservoir (Volta Lake) by surface area in the world (the fourth largest by water volume) still suffers days where water doesn’t flow through the taps in urban dwellings! The fact that due to poor foresight and planning, indefinite rolling black out schedules have to be published. These are some of the many things I have spent daily moments pondering. Wondering why is it that things that seem rather simple to mend (to me ofcourse) are totally overseen by those in power. But dare you tell them Tweeaaa (similar to saying ‘whateverrrrr’), whilst they are on the podium making a speech, it will invoke reaction akin to threatening his family with the 10 plagues of Egypt.

Then it dawned on me, pure observation though but bear with me. Our colonial masters may have left, but colonialism is still very alive in these parts so too slavery. It is ingrained in our psyche. (But I will come back to that shortly)…couple that with the fact that many of our politicians go into politics primarily for wealth creation. We have a very close, very educated and well off,  family friend who is in politics. I went to visit him a little while ago and we discussed politics. From our discussions it was very clear that the amount of cash he had put behind his party during the election campaign was seen as an investment, the rewards of which he hoped to reap plenty fold once his party were in power. The willingness to ease the burden on the population was a distant secondary objective…well from what I gathered.

But back to the colonization/slavery…There are people just longing to serve others, because in their heats of hearts they believe its their place in life, not a bad thing, but I feel horrible having a man older than my pops and half my weight begging to carry my bag upstairs or hooting at 4am so the ‘houseboy’ can come and open the gate. I understand there is a place for everyone in this life but is it right for me to keep another down or in ‘their place’ because through some magical, natural, phenomenon, my place in the human eco-system is seemingly ‘higher’ than theirs? You see, in my minds eye, and mind you I am no psychologist, this thinking and behavior, on the one hand, breeds superiority and entitlement flanked disgustingly with arrogance and draped with a veil of godliness! It takes our leaders to a place where they believe they have the right to do as they please and who are we to question them. Sadly on the other side of the coin, it breeds a majority enshrined in abject poverty of both means and mind, keeping the masses in a place where they dare not question what goes on ‘above’ them, feeling as if it is not our place to question.

It blows my mind when I think that one man can deem it fit and proper, knowing very well the plight of his people, to build a residential enclave to the preposterous sums that some of our leaders have. Even if it is allowed by the governmental structures, when you open the newspapers do you not read what I read, public service protests, mass load shedding, lack of housing, lack of medical facilities and practitioners, yet let me buy 10 range rovers, live in a monstrosity of  an abode, well because I run this ish and forget you who voted me into power to help you, it is my right!

But I blame myself. I sit and write a blog such as this, speak to my mates over coffee/a pint, then I go home in my car, switch on my DSTV and tweet on my iPad, cos inspite of it all my life is still ok. I blame myself because I accept this as the status quo, I mean he is an oga in power and who am I to question him. Same colonial/’slave’ mentalityUntil they realize they are there because we put them there and they are there to make our lives better not just their lives, we will stay as we are. Right?

I write this not because I am fed up and want to leave this continent of saviges. Au contraire, I write this because I see hope and prosperity in this beautiful land of ours called Africa. I see a diamond dying to be polished. I write this because to fix this place merely requires a willingness of the whole to set off a chain reaction…but then again therein lies the challenge, so I guess in the end I write this, well because I can..

DA's long walk to government

Greetings to you all from a superbly sticky Accra. To think it has already been 2 weeks.

So let me lay the platform for this blog. A good few weeks ago I watched 2 movies 12 years a slave and Long walk to freedom, soon after that it was announced that Dr Mamphele Ramphele had joined the DA as their presidential candidate. As we all now know, that marriage like most marriages nowadays (yep I had to stick that in there) hardly lasted. There was a lot of mixed reaction to the marriage and even more to the to the divorce.

So why did I mention those 2 movies? I guess 12 Years a Slave really just a reminder of colonization and slavery, but that Mandela movie reminded me of what South Africa was and why it is now, how it is. I will say it loud and I will say it clear. Ye who says 20 years is enough and we must get over it and move on must just sit down right now! I don’t hear anyone telling Jewish people to get over the holocaust do I? Imagine if some brute slapped you and spat on your wife/husband, you would be spitting mad and baying for blood, now imagine someone who has been driven off your land, relative murdered made to endure what feels like a lifetime as a sub-human.

South Africa is potentially a time bomb waiting to just fizzle a little and it has every right to be. We all understand and know pretty well the ills of times gone by, what many of us timeously fail to grasp is the depth and breath of it and  its far reaching consequences. Yes we must build this nation and move forward but I believe we live in a fool’s paradise if we think it will happen just like that. The DA as a party is not without its faults, but it has proven it can govern. Say what you will, but I spend a fair amount of time in the Western Cape and things work. I will even site a quick example. So I am in Accra for a little while and I needed to convert my SA driver’s licence to a Ghanaian one. This was quite a process that involved getting hold of the SA vehicle licencing department to confirm the validity of my licence. I called the Joburg office and got the phone dropped on me 3 times, run around twice, after 30minutes or so of getting nowhere, I had a brainwave, call the CT office. I googled, called, phone was answered after 3 rings, got through to this very helpful lady, asked me for my email address, she sent me a list of things I needed to submit, I sent it later that evening, the next morning by 8am I had my confirmation. Super impressive.

Now let me say this out right too. I like the ANC, the party is pretty fantastic organization, started by what seems like very highly principled and selfless individuals, who were banned from their own land, made to feel and treated like less than human, their parents before them too. Many were killed or sent to prison because they just wanted the right to live in and on the land from whence they came. Where was their crime? Yet their punishment so severe! The current crop that they have at the helm, in my humble opinion, is littered with some questionable characters. Which is sad, but alas they will continue to rule this land for some time to come. Be that as it may, as I sit here in my super comfortable bed, watching Al Jazeera news, whilst I type on my Apple laptop, I will without reservation say I owe a lot of the freedoms and privilege in my life to that party and its selfless members.

Yes we all know SA’s history, but we gloss over it as if it was a trivial little speed bump that we need to get over and move on from, but then if it was trivial why do we find ourselves in a situation where we have a government who some believe to be grossly incompetent and self serving, yet come the national elections, very few of us believe that they will be voted out of power?

It was not trivial. There are some amongst us who fail to understand this, I am not psychology/sociology major, but after watching both those movies I was reminded of something. The facts are simple. This lovely country of ours suffered a deep and gaping wound and it was through some grace that we weren’t plunged into civil war, that in itself is something worthy of praise and gratitude. The country is immensely divided along racial lines. This sense of togetherness we sometimes feel when we win rugby games or when the great man (rest his soul) passes on, is all a big farce and as fake as the Louis Vuiitton bag purchased at the Oriental Plaza. How dare I say that you might ask, well where is that togetherness now? A few weeks after we laid him to rest, the status quo was reverted to…We are back to us and them. Such was the effectiveness of the evil system called Apartheid, and shoot it was evil!

I look at myself for example, I am undecided as to who to vote for during this upcoming election. Agang featured strongly because their leader was my former Vice Chancellor a pretty accomplished woman and the fact that she is a woman comforts me even more because she will more than likely want to help her people and not be sidetracked by things like a big house in the middle of nowhere to show the world how big her **** is (one would hope). So her merger with the DA should have been a good thing for me, because I was the type of voter they were trying to convince to come on board, but it had the exact opposite effect on me. It just made me think oh well there goes another party into the questionable pile.

Being a born a black foreigner, raised in South Africa, I have a chip on both shoulders, I feel very balanced but there is just something about the DA that just doesn’t sit right with me. My cousin relayed a conversation he had with a black South African colleague about this topic. He said, until the day, that I am not made to feel inferior to a white person, I will never be able to vote for the DA. And therein lies the simple truth. As a person of colour one has to always work that much harder to prove themselves worthy, be it in the office, on the sport field or even walking on the street, you are a criminal until proven otherwise. Now this is no self pity party, it’s just the reality of the situation that is South Africa. The DA has proven that they can deliver, they may not be getting it all right, but they are more than they aren’t. The province they run has created the most jobs for the last 2 years running I think. In a perfectly ‘normal’ world, they should easily govern this beautiful land of ours, but the reality of the situation is that the majority of this land who are the ones who are being hurt the most by the current status quo, are the ones who have long memories of times gone by. They remember and they remember very well come the time to make their X. This here is no ‘normal’ world.

What we have to understand is one plus one isn’t necessarily always equal to two. I do believe this will change but not anytime soon.  

I watched a clip the other day. It was all an act where a black guy comes to a barber shop and his white girlfriend comes to wait for him and there is a black hairdresser lady giving the white lass a hard time cos she is white and with a black man (these 3 characters are all actors, but the patrons of the salon aren’t). The reaction of the people in the salon is exactly what we need right now in this here country of ours.

We need to get off our high horses and realize that we need each other to move forward in a constructive manner. One half judging the other won’t solve any of our woes. Being at polar opposite ends of the spectrum will assist us none. We need to rise as a collective. When a black person walks past your car, he is not necessarily going to rob you. White people aren’t nice to you because they have an agenda. We need to rise above this but it requires both sides coming together and working together and trusting each other. But the sad thing is from what I see it’s not the will. The minority do not trust the majority and after what the majority suffered at the hands of the minority it is very understandable, but its 20 years on and no real ills have begotten the minority right? They continue to live as they used to. Crime is on the rise, oh well we pay ship our cash into offshore accounts, pay ADT, get beams in the garden, build higher walls, because we can, but what of the crime that besets Vuyani in Diepkloof, aint got no money for high walls, ADT. But yet we are more than happy to pay lip service to BEE etc. because it must be done so we will just pay what we need to pay so we can tick the box. Instead of seeing it as a real opportunity to make a real and telling difference.

We need to sincerely tear down these self-imposed/constructed Walls of Jericho we build around ourselves. Make a sincere effort with all around us. Your helper, your gardener, petrol attendant, beggar on the street… aren’t beneath you, they may be less fortunate in some ways than we are (more fortunate in others), but they aren’t less human. They aren’t fools or idiots, they perhaps just didn’t have the same opportunities you had.

One thing to always remember is hate begets hate…right? Sing with me now...what the world needs now, is love sweet love J have a fabulous week all.