I have news for you. Yes, you. South Africa is going to succeed.
I’ve come across you several times on the interwebs. You like to brand yourself as the ultimate thinking person and a visionary. The amount of energy you invest in foretelling South Africa’s doom is simply astounding. You gleefully link every article or blog post that decries corruption, lawlessness and mayhem. You rant endlessly about the ANC Youth League, about Zimbabwe and about crime. Your Caps Lock key is permanently in. Your life is going to be so much better in Australia, you roar. It may be easy for you to cynically predict our downfall, then watch things fall apart, but it’s laziness on your part. You’re far more comfortable breaking down than building up. It requires less effort, doesn’t it. To actually get up and try to make a difference is just too much effort. It’s too … plebeian. It is far more intellectually gratifying for you to shoot everyone down from the comfort and safety of your ivory tower. Well, I have news for you, buddy. South Africa is going places.
What about you? You’re a rational, logical and responsible person. You work hard, you pay tax and you bring your children up right. Everyone acknowledges how smart you. You get dinner invitations all the time. Poverty, violent crime, corruption, the scourge of HIV/Aids — you have all the answers. You know what’s best for everyone. So it is utterly unthinkable that there’s someone out there who deigns to oppose your views. Your worldview is the correct one, don’t they know? Anyone who disagrees is immediately reduced to a puerile level of intellect. You tsk-tsk at their childishness. How could anyone be so stupid, so naive? And you try your best to enlighten your foolish neighbours. You use small words and short sentences, so they’ll be able to understand. But the truth is, people who disagree with you threaten the very core of your existence. The truth is, you’ve been born and raised into a life of privilege and comfort. You didn’t ask for it, but it happened and that’s fine with you.
When Julius Malema talks about nationalising the mines, when Gugile Nkwinti talks about nationalising the land, this is not only a threat to constitutional values of property ownership, it is a threat to your way of life. The reason why these men can talk like this, the underlying causes of all of this don’t matter to you. So it is far easier to imagine that this is just Africa being Africa. I have news for you too. South Africa is going to succeed. Despite the pessimists, despite the naysayers and despite the racists among us.
We live in a difficult time. Our country is undergoing changes that seek to redress and reorder the balance of power in society. It isn’t an easy task by any measure, and the transition is upsetting a lot of people. The fact that those who are supposed to be the guardians of that transition — our government — display worrying traits of corruption and cronyism only makes things worse.
Thank God for people like David Gemmell, who choose to praise the things that are right about South Africa. People like him are everywhere. It is so easy to be pessimistic, but it is the eternal optimists among us who will save this country.
Look at all the good things that have happened over the last 20 years. This country was on the brink of civil war 17 years ago. But we’re about to host the most splendid event the world has to offer. There was no black middle class to speak of in 1994. Today, the euphemistically named black diamonds are numbered in the millions. South Africa’s economy continues to grow, despite the level of unemployment. What has been achieved so far is nothing short of miraculous. That miracle can and will continue.
Success isn’t a zero-sum game. My gain isn’t your loss. The isn’t a finite amount of achievement available. South Africa belongs to all of us. A guaranteed way to for all to succeed is for South Africa to succeed.
Take my word, South Africa will succeed.
yejaundicedeye@gmail.com
‘The fellow doth protest too much ….methinks’ Hamlet Act 3, scene 2
Of course in Shakespeare’s day the word ‘protest’ meant to ,’ declare solemnly’ as opposed to todays usage, which is more concerned with denial and objections.
What Gertrude means in the original text is that she tends to disbelieve what is said because the speaker [writer] insists too strongly that something is other than it is.
In your case you have produced eight paragraphs two of which are one line assertions of minimal import, being primarily cliches. The penultimate paragraph is a flurry of relatively unsubstantiated empty cliches and the third last paragraph contains a confused economic concept … ie “that growth has come despite unemployment… we are living in the era [globally] of jobless growth… What we want is entrepreneurial growth and this is not happening.
The rest of the article is profoundly depressed.
Sorry to burst your bubble. Note that only days before Lehman Bros collapsed, employees who pointed out that having a debt to cash ratio of 97 to 3, was not sustainable on a normal balance sheet were fired for “negativity”.
In your case you seem to be saying that no matter that we are tied to the railway line and there is a train coming, if we huddle sidewise and think thin it WILL miss us.
Your sentiments are appreciated notwithstanding that the common definition of success concerns the progressive realisation of goals…
Perhaps the problem your bitter nemeses face is uncertainty regarding the goals.
there are problems with your basic premise:
Success isn’t a zero-sum game. My gain isn’t your loss. There isn’t a finite amount of achievement available.
sadly, the people running the country believe that not only is success a zero sum game, but that there is a finite amount of achievement available.
furthermore, there are people throughout the upper echelons of the anc who do *not* agree with the following:
South Africa belongs to all of us.
if they did believe it, see, “that song” wouldnt even be making the rounds these days. [personally, i dont have a problem with "that song". but if the anc wants to have that song unbanned, then it also must stop trying to ban the old flag. they are two sides of the same coin.]
A guaranteed way to for all to succeed is for South Africa to succeed.
you’re absolutely right about this. however, a good way to check on a country’s true to desire to succeed under its own power is to look at its schools. and south african schools, collectively, are a joke — and the universities, as a result, are filled with barely literate people. this is not a good sign for the future.
many of the so-called naysayers are naysayers not because they are actively hoping for failure, but because the schools are in such bad nick, which means that the future will be worse and not better. understand?
@ryan peter: the comments aren’t necessarily negative. they’re realistic. the writer is just offering hope, which in itself is nice and fuzzy, but in the context of south africa today and in light of the argument here presented, it is a commodity fast depleting. those that hold onto it in the face of all that is going on are either saints or stupid. and i’m not one to believe in saints.
i agree. let’s get up and do something for the good. but what? how? where? with whom? will it have any effect? will anyone join me? will anyone oppose me? will anyone threaten me to be quiet? these are not small questions to answer, ryan. and it is absolutely of no use to tell us to be optimistic and offer no reasons why or how.
Sipho, South Africa will succeed, sorry,the current Government, the ANC, will succeed in destroying the country, like every other so called freedom movement has done in Africa unless these gangsters are stoped in their tracks and out to the sword for crimes committed in the name of democracy.
Nkosy Sikelely.
It’s called chronic apathy, people. This country is full of cowards and naysayers and ‘intellectuals’ constantly offering advice and woeful tidings, hiding in internet forums and behind their ‘comrades’ feeding on the fear and greed and corruption. As Europeans we pretty much deserve what we get. But we ain’t gonna get much. The tribes here are all too concerned about self enrichment and are just incapable of looking after themselves. At their peril. The man in the street will rise up one day, when he’s hungry and poorer, when it’s all too late, and there’s nothing left to take. Best part is you can’t run anywhere – the world is in a sad state – rather take it like a man (garden fork in the back, after you’ve just placed the tea and sandwiches on the patio table) here than die in some tunnel in England, by a bomb set off by a cowardly misguided brainwashed zealot.
Way to go Sipho. Dont let them grind you down. There is nothing much you can do about them. Their confident assertions time and again betray their ignorance, but they are so arrogant they think they have nothing to learn and so they will remain ignorant and non-comprehending till the day they die.
Your quote, Sipho: “To actually get up and try to make a difference is just too much effort. It’s too … plebeian. It is far more intellectually gratifying for you to shoot everyone down from the comfort and safety of your ivory tower” Interesting…that’s exactly what I see almost all SA’s doing these days. The average Joe makes not the smallest real effort to try to help the beloved country get back on course. And that includes all the optimists who express the view that they would never leave SA and expect it to all work out. Their inaction is no better than the efforts of all the naysayers/pessimists you refer to here. Their words of ‘support’ without action are just as useless as those who knock the country at every opportunity.
South Africa will succeed. The world is watching and hoping the emergence from being an apartheid leper to a democratic nation eventuates. It truly doesn’t want to see another African failed state as is the current case with Zimbabwe. The litmus test is whether the various tribes of South Africa can unite and grow rather than tear the delicate social fabric which would benefit none.
@guy
Some are negative, some are realistic, but you ask where or how you can do something for the good?
There are PLENTY of organisations doing good things into this country. Heck, even your local church is probably doing SOMETHING for the community.
Every little bit counts. Changing the mindset of people involves not only writing articles such as this or being involved politically, but getting to people at a grass-roots level, so that the grass-roots level of society would stop voting for useless leaders and would never support a tyrant etc. etc.
There’s a lot going on at grass-roots and one needs to just actually change the mind-set at this level. I’m not one for blindless optimism, but I am one for saying, “look, telling people to get out of the country is no solution. Telling people to get involved with this or that organisation or their church — there’s a solution!”
I’m just tired of people sitting in their leather couches watching sport on TV and drinking their beer complaining about the country. Why not spend those hours they watch TV getting involved DOING something.
Let’s be doers, not complainers. We’ve all got skills, are we just using them to make money or are we also using them for others? Many of the negative people just want to make money and fill their own pockets, but nothing more. So they’ll complain and complain and complain…
Sipho, this is not one of your better articles.
Please, give us some definition of what you consider success and the measure you use to determine success. After that, as others have mentioned, some reasons why you say SA will succeed. It is not enough to just say so with some vague references to world view.
Some of these might do. I reckon they are pretty culturally nuetral.
Unemployment (I’ll accept a number of people that are self sufficient)
Gini coeeficient
Infant mortality rate
Life expectancy
Crime statistics
Food production for local consumption
Looking forward to your analysis.
@mundundu – Spot on – Education. Everything else radiates from that hub. Even Blade is starting to cut through to that truth. Too little too late.
@AllThePessimists – Gee Guys, the time spent moaning could surely be better spent giving some extra lessons to ANC-education-disadvantaged kids? To save the current and perhaps future generations is going to take a lot of work, I suggest we make a start. They will remember your efforts next voting day, promise.
Sipho here lies the problem. We are all different and have different expectations of ourselves and for our own futures.The human race has always strived to better themselves and improve on their lot, to us advancement of society and technology is as old as the world itself.In the famous words of JFK “We chose to go to the moon,not because its easy, but because it is hard”. The basic fact of the matter is that progress is of the greatest importance and secures a prosperous future for those who want to achieve it.Once you are use to a certain standard of life , it is hard to go back.So your argument is valued, only as far as the fact that you get what you want or strive for. The basic fear of most whites in this country is not black rule or equality (Which we voted for by the way)but that South Africa will look like Nigeria,Ghana,Uganda,Liberia etc. in a few years . That is if the goverment doesnt change its views and attitudes soon. So if you dont want to progress and live in grass hut in the future continue on the same path. We cannot go backwards in live we have to go forwards, the problem is their is not one example of this in Africa. Why is the goverment so scared to educate the children of this country,why can blacks not accept that Africa is a mess.
@mallencolly – Gini Coefficient – This one has a colour map and pretty much give the unpretty picture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.png
Ordinary people like me just take the president’s package and compare it with their own and relate it to the tax collected for the year. (Much quicker and usually more accurate, depending on how accurately government audits were done.)
I find that statistics, these days, only serve to reduce people to inhuman numbers and do not really solve anything for anyone except to help the politicians and economists lie about the situation and to justify the “collateral damage” many are suffering. Much better to look around you at the reality, that is where the real answers lie.
I agree with you 100% Sipho and really like your blog. SA will succeed because of its ordinary people of goodwill, black and white. However we will succeed despite our politicians and our new elite, not because of them. They are a burden on our success, and a handbrake on our achievements. We need to stand together in these difficult times and not yet our politicians divide us so that they can plunder the nation whilst laughing at us.
@ X Cepting
It does give the unpretty picture. But also only half the picture. It doesnt really show population dynamics. I reckon the list of indicators I gave is a fair list if you want to determine the culturally (and ideologically) nuetral “success” of a country. Food, Health, Safety and relative wealth.
Right on the button – ouch. Sadly those whom you write about wont read your article, or will self-comfortingly dismiss your thoughts as ‘undecated’. We need change, too many are hungry. I cringe when I throw my steak on the braai and gaze down the road to see people dripping with sweat dragging a trolly full of metal for a few rand. I’ve tried changing my behaviour over the last few years, I try to help, but there are so many. It is so frustrating to hear of Billions being wasted when that money would have changed so much over the last years. Now we have a new ‘Broederbond’ stealing from all & sundry. We will succeed together, but only together.
@Dave Harris “When almost 40 million black S African are moved from sub-human state, our country is guaranteed to succeed.”
And when will they be free, according to you? When all whites have been chased into the sea, or when all white property has been seized and the remaining whites have been enslaved?
Remember, the black people have been in total control since 1994.Whites do not get contracts, or bursaries or jobs, and the blacks are still not free?
Nigeria has been free for a long time and is one of the most corrupt countries on earth. Their population is dirt-poor while the black elite live in luxury. It has no shortage of foreign income. Many of their citizens flee to S Africa.
Zimbabwe is “freeing” its black citizens at the expense of white farmers; their people also flee to S Africa.
Is that the freedom you are talking about? Please tell us! I can’t wait to hear.
thank you for a beautiful article. you have said it all and made my day. now those who like complaining, stop complaining and just go where you think you will have a good life. Bon voyage.
You surprise me . Sipho. Show me a country that has removed God from the Constitution and has still succeeded and I may believe you. You should know better.
PLEASE TELL ME MR EDITOR where can this WHITE WOMAN STAND and applaud this young man?! Viva Sipho for Youth League Leader Viva!!
man, this country is full of short-sighted pessimists. black and white.