When I was younger my sisters and mama used to brand me as an irritatingly inquisitive one. Observing and trying to understand things, is one of my favourite pastimes. Human beings fascinate me no end, but before I proceed with my musings, I sincerely hope that this post finds you well, sane and safe during these interesting times the world finds itself in.
2020 has been A LOT! Floods, earthquakes, senseless deaths. Kobe and Gigi Bryant. Escalated tensions with Iran (the General, US base attacks, Ukrainian flight), Brexit, Trump non-impeachment, Harvey Weinstein conviction, East African locusts, Australian bushfires…and it is only just about 8 tenths past June J
The showstopper thus far though has to be one COVID19. And a stopper it has been indeed. Its effects sadden me, not so much for me, but for the person who relies on a daily wage to eke out a living for themselves and their families. The businesses that employed many who due to social distancing, are no longer able to do this. School children who can ill afford this break or have no internet connectivity or relied on school feeding schemes…and so many more… BUT I always try and look for the positive in situations I find myself in. The beginning stages of this pandemic gave me such hope for humanity, there were people rallying around to help those less fortunate, much of that has continued. I am neither here nor there about the lockdown. I try and listen to the experts (not the newly qualified social media virologists and economists) in order to form an opinion. The President and his team did what they thought was right initially. They must have done something right because there are world subject matter experts that lauded their efforts. Did they get it right? I found and find some of the regulations nonsensical, but a story for another day. What they did do was buy us much needed time to develop alternative healthcare facilities if the need for them arises as evidenced by some countries that reacted too late.
What this thing has done is it has help some of us accelerate things we have been thinking of for years. For example digitization of some of our processes and the way we work. We have been umming and ahhing about these things for months if not years, COVID19 hits, boom it is done….in weeks. It has helped remind us what really matters. I’ve been driving my old school mobile for the longest time and I keep on wanting to replace it and I keep asking myself why, spend a couple of hundred grand on a machine that spends most of its time in a garage, either at home or at work…since lockdown it’s been chilling hard, battery unplugged. Clothes, no need to have work clothes, gym clothes etc, just one set a day and we’re good to go J. Eating habits are so much healthier me thinks because we have time to make stuff (I even learnt how to bake for the first time). I found time to exercise in the early months, not so much since it started cooling down. Work has been a whole lot busier though, less travel time, the line between work and off times have been blurred, there is a lot of information and requests coming at you from all over, but over time you learn to deal with this.
It is a mess this COVID19 thing, but man it is also an opportunity. An opportunity to analyse value and supply chains that were crippled, businesses may now have a chance to look to diversify or shorten supply chains to prevent this in the future. An opportunity to recreate a world we want to be a part of. A world we want to leave for the next. The world pre COVID19 was clearly not the best one to come from and our stillness has allowed the world to react or speak up. What happened to George Floyd was plain murder, if anyone had done what that officer did, irrespective of what Mr. Floyd had done prior, they would go straigtht to jail, do not collect R200 full stop. It wasn’t the first time such has occurred, nor will it be the last as evidenced by the killing of Rashard Brooks in Atlanta a few days later, shot in the back running AWAY from a police officer with their taser. The difference though, was the world stopped and said enough. The words Black Lives Matter rang out. What I don’t get is why people want to “but this that and the next”…no one is taking away from anyone else, the importance of their lives or ability to create a livelihood, no one is asking for any special treatment. People are just asking to be seen, given an equal opportunity to be, that is it! I’m a pretty harmless fellow, I have no need nor desire to steal anyone’s belongings, how many times have I walked into an establishment and someone taken their bags and pulled it closer? Crossed the road because I am walking down the same road minding my own business? People lock their doors when I’m in my car next to them? Huh?! A few months ago a dude hysterically runs out of his gate ordering my carrot eating ass to drive off else he will shoot me, my crime, I’m sitting outside a friend’s house, waiting for him to open his gate, he actually pulled out a gun on me.
Drug cartels, recessions, stock market crashes, AIDS, COVID, the plague, world war 1 and 2, Korean war, Vietnam war, great depression, War on Iran, Auschwitz, slavery, colonialism….it wasn’t us, so I ask again, WHAT HAVE WE DONE? Why the fear or the hate or the inability to want us to just to be? It is a struggle just to be equal and only then can journey begin… it isn’t about belittling or discounting anyone else’s right to be…
Clearly there must be something amiss for so many people from all nations and all walks of life to step up in the face of illness and possible death to say we hear you and it is enough. This pause to what was life, I believe has given people the opportunity to voice their disapproval and we need to, if nothing at all hear if not listen.
With the same boisterous voice, the cry against gender and child-based violence should ring out loud. It must end. The mindset I questioned above, is the same mindset that we men apply towards women. What are we so afraid of? Why can’t we just let them be? So much needs to be unlearned. I am trying to find words to give gravitas to this topic that weighs so heavily on me, but words fail me, comprehension fails me. I can’t get what is so broken or inadequate in a person that this is even considered an answer. Even typing that I feel like I am helping people find a scapegoat to this behavior?!
Statues being torn down. If I am honest, I have never been enamored by statues of people that we want to glorify, because somewhere down the line, ‘a people’ must have been aggrieved by their actions. Even people like King Shaka, from what I read, a smart and brave strategist, warrior, leader of men, but not the most pleasant of humans to some right? A great man in our history with a place in our museums perhaps a statue, I don’t know so much. I don’t see any statues glorifying Hitler or the 3rd Reich in Germany and that was a significant part of their history right? Let’s be honest here, that statue of the slave owner in Bristol, how many knew of it’s existence before its removal, I sure didn’t, if they had to remove all these statues and put them in a museum would anyone be up in arms?
A few months ago I was fortunate enough to be added to a group of pretty influential people in this country. There are quite a few sub groups on there so I decided to join the politics group in order to learn from people and hopefully give my viewpoint too. Recently the rhetoric had been quite angry and hateful (I ended up tapping out for a while because I felt like they wanted an echo chamber sometimes). Conversations around BEE and the ANC being useless socialist thieves and derogatory terms were loosely being flung around, followed by there is no room for socialists on here. Hmmm.
BEE, as it stands now it is not optimal, there is no measurement that is being monitored to gauge its effectiveness or progress. But it is also not optimal because of us. In the old days when I used to work at the bank, the majority of the deals that I looked at involved the seller being the only one guaranteed most if not all of their cash up front, the buyer would have to wait till the bank was paid before they could hopefully make some coin. Many of those deals needed to be refinanced. Let’s not get it twisted, BEE, helped create a middle class that fueled the south African economy for quite some time. As a business, no one asks you to sell to Cyril, Tokyo, Saki etc. but because we hope to curry favour we gleefully sell to them and complain about how only a select few have been made rich from BEE. The codes are there, they have 5 sections with a large portion of the points being awarded to new entrants and enterprise development as well as skills development. You can achieve 93 points (level 3 without selling 1% of your business) and if you do sell why not sell to your employees? They are an integral part of your business, incentivize them to work even harder and protect your…their asset. You can bring in the community where you operate…wage strikes, vandalism for what? Let’s be like Rassie Erasmus, embrace the spirit of the codes, not the letter, don’t use it as a tick box exercise. You see the results he produced? We have so much power to make these BEE codes work for everyone if we embrace it.
Socialism
What is that in this day and age, who is this socialist you refer to Norway? The UK, Portugal (where many of us seem to be shipping our riches to), Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden (do you know that in Sweden you can only buy booze from a government controlled body) all these countries have socialist tendencies, or are we referring to big bad China, the economy that has been amongst the fastest growing for the past few years, the country that many supply chains rely on, the country we support daily? iPhones, Macbooks, Nike, Adidas, Prada, amongst others, all manufactured in China. Shouting ‘NO Socialists’ is a very lazy soundbite, qualify what you mean. No thieves, no corrupt officials, competent people, now we can have a conversation…
The ANC
I can’t think of too many people that I consider reasonable, who would argue that the ANC is not a compromised organization. No one has been convicted of a crime yet, but man some of the reports are quite damning and frankly sad, because who suffers?! But I sit here and wonder, all these people shouting the odds about the ANC, love their country I’m sure and want to see it reach its full potential, I certainly do, but who does this thieving and looting affect the most, unfortunately the poorest of the poor. Not us screaming lot. If I sit back and look at the Zuma years, the worst of the years, other than not being able to do my job as well as we could, to serve the people we work for, my life was hardly affected. Travelling abroad was more expensive, sending money to Ghana was more expensive, but did it stop me from doing any of those ehhh not so much! So will we not be better served focusing on how to build a cohesive society instead of focusing on the politicians? All us smart people, sitting here on the sidelines, building businesses, making top dollar but then we complain about how government is being run, if we are that much smarter, why don’t we roll up our sleeves and put up our hands to join government and make the changes that seem so easy to make instead of shouting from the sidelines?
I so desperately want to believe that Pres Cyril and ministers Naledi, Pravin (not sure about the quest to keep supporting SAA, but I’ll watch) Patricia, Zweli, Tito, Barbara, even Lamola have the best interest of the country at heart and will keep fighting the good fight. I’m not in the party but if what I read is correct, the man had to make a deal to get to the helm of the country. I shudder to think of what the alternative would look like had he not. As soon as he took office, he strengthened the independence of NPA and the Hawks so that they could independently do what they need to do. He took control of SARS, Finance, SOEs DIRCO and even tourism, all the levers of the economy that are key in generating and spending cash. Sure the wheels of justice are taking their sweet time, but I believe the powers that be need this time to build a winnable case because if a case is built and is not clear, the thuglife element within the party could rise and deal him the same end that met Pres Mbeki and Zuma before him…once again hypothesis.
What do we do? Instead of expending energy and spewing vitriol about why people keep voting for the ANC, understand why. Understand that not too long-ago people were shot dead, finished, DEAD for protesting the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction at schools. People had no electricity, running water, ablution facilities, tarred roads…yes the path to servicing everyone is long and much needs to be done, but prior to 26 years ago, a lot of people had none. Dogs would be set on you for walking through the streets of YOUR OWN DAMN COUNTRY after a specific time, and that was if you were lucky, some met their end, a beating, arrest. It may not have been the reality for some of us, but it was the reality for many. Let’s get off this all-knowing horse of ours overlooking the crashing waves of Camps Bay or sipping bubbles with the Franschhoek mountains as our backdrop and try and understand why this land, as beautiful as it is, is as complex as it is. All this energy we are ploughing into having the Cape secede from the country will it not be better served in trying to forge a better path for all? I mean where does it end, this Cape we want independence for, is it just Franschhoek, Plett, Constantia, Fresnaye, the Seaboard, Constantia? Things work differently down here, hell that is why I’m still here, and my job is to sell this amazing country, province and city but a simple search of the deadliest cities in the world and Cape Town pops up at no 8! It may be great for us oyster slurping, wine gargling folk, but the story isn’t entirely the same for all.
I say this often, but people say it’s 26 years we should be past this by now, but man, if we listen to ourselves, the hate the anger the name calling that we belch, how can we move forward? Those words we yodel, take root in the hearts and minds of the young ones we rear, and it becomes their truth, and then the cycle continues.
The narrative that renders us useless and absolves us of playing a significant role in changing the trajectory of this land is lost on me. We the people are more powerful than any government if we constructively apply ourselves for the greater good and not for the good of my little patch.
The story doesn’t change if we don’t change.
