Race, in a fair-skinned world!

I am not one to play the race card or to let peoples ignorance and blatant stupidity get to me but today i am just angry!

I do not appreciate when the color of my skin or the color that it may not be hinders the ability of those around me to hear what i am saying. I do not appreciate being referred to as the only ''colored voice" in the room when i choose to disagree with a statement or have an opinion; the fact that i am the only one of "my color" here clearly signifies that the problem is the room and the other voices here and not me. I do not appreciate being asked excessively where i come from, as if the way i speak is all that different, I am not from Joburg and just so you know most people here aren't from here incipiently. My fair-skinned friend like you we do not all look the same, speak the same or have the same dialect.

I do not appreciate going into a store one day and because of my clothes i am either greeted with a friendly "Hello" or followed around because my skin color just happens to be different than your other clientele. I refuse to live in a society where the label of my clothes, the position i hold and the car i drive defines the service or respect i am entitled too as a human being. We should be beyond defining people by what we see, we should be over staring because someone is different, we should be over the need to pass judgement on each other.

This bigotry is overrated and it makes people like me bitter to have to encounter it daily.

So yes i am not white and i am not black, i do not need anyone to point this out for me because i know it. Though this should be irrelevant in 2015 i can acknowledge that it is not nor will it probably ever be in my time. I will however not sit by ideally to be belittled or treated differently because my race or my background is different to yours!

The politics of the Underdog

When did our political system become such a joke? 

There has clearly somewhere already been a decision made that Zuma should not pay back the money from his massive Nkandla Estate, built with millions of tax payer money. These ad hoc committees seem to clearly be going nowhere slowly, with MPs walking out because witnesses cannot be called in to give account to this spending and with the ANC members being solely left at the table to decide the fate of the man who inevitably signs their pay checks. Why are we giving one party so much power; I thought we lived in a democratic country where the "people" in principle rule through the parties that we vote and place in power. 

I am also a tad confused at how many committees and reports are in circulation at the moment on this Nkandla Estate. Do we really need that many and to waste more money. In my head it is rather simple, the president committed a crime so he should return the money. I am sure he, his many wives and children (with all those lucrative jobs) has the money jointly to return it to the government coffers. 

That money could have been used to improve our education system-transport those damn textbooks, it could have been used to pay for 3 years of University for approximately 34 underprivileged students, it could have probably fed 24 500 and more families who live under the poverty line for a few days. It could have been used to refinance some of our dormant industries and would have in turn created the much needed jobs people between 18-40 yearn for in communities. 

I am grappling to understand the notion of unquestioned power which is clearly what we give these political figures. 

Make it COUNT

Since the election season is in full swing one cannot help but marvel at how talented politicians or at least most of them are at the gift of the gab. They all want to sell something for that seat in parliament, be it their party campaign or manifestos which are all laced with promises. They all in one way or another speak housing, speak unemployment, speak education, safety and family playing on the hopes and dreams of ordinary South African men and women who will march out in droves to voting stations on May 7 to cast that ballot for change.

My issue is not the campaigning per say, it is the falseness of it all. I cannot help but wonder if these politicians know what being unemployed is like for the ordinary men and women who on a daily basis need to search, beg and borrow in order to feed their families that next meal. I wonder if they know what its like for a child to sit in a class room not having eaten a meal the evening before.

I wonder if any of their immediate family members are on those housing waiting lists that have been floating since the 1980's. I wonder if they know what it's like for those who want an education but cannot get it because in all honesty there just isn't enough bursaries or educational loans out there that caters for individuals regardless of their racial merit or biography, in addition there are also just not enough seats in our Universities to cater for every single person regardless of how desperately they yearn for it.

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu indicated a few days back as a nation we should vote with our heads; we should not falsely be led by loyalties that we cannot understand, we should look at all the facts, review all of the information and then vote. It is your vote after all, so make it count!

A Man and his work

A few years ago i read an article in the Daily Mavrick where Jonathan Jansen speaks about servant leadership and his work at the University of the Free State, i have also had the privilege of meeting this giant of a man at WITS and yes he is indeed a giant in humility and spirit, i have never met a man more dedicate to the needs of his children (students) or that resonates such peace. His love for people and his mission for change literally speaks without him needing to say a word.

Recently some of his other work has been making its way into my inbox and around Facebook, the more i read the more affirmed i am that it should definitely be shared. One of my favorites is his writing on South Africa through his eyes.

My South Africa by Jonathan Jansen (Published: 9 February 2011)

My South Africa is the working-class man who called from the airport to return my wallet without a cent missing. It is the white woman who put all three of her domestic worker's children through the same school that her own child attended. It is the politician in one of our rural provinces, Mpumalanga, who returned his salary to the government as a statement that standing with the poor had to be more than just a few words. It is the teacher who worked after school hours every day during the public sector strike to ensure her children did not miss out on learning.

My South Africa is the first-year university student in Bloemfontein who took all the gifts she received for her birthday and donated them - with the permission of the givers - to a home for children in an Aids village. It is the people hurt by racist acts who find it in their hearts to publicly forgive the perpetrators. It is the group of farmers in Paarl who started a top school for the children of farm workers to ensure they got the best education possible while their parents toiled in the vineyards. It is the farmer's wife in Viljoenskroon who created an education and training centre for the wives of farm labourers so that they could gain the advanced skills required to operate accredited early-learning centers for their own and other children.

My South Africa is that little white boy at a decent school in the Eastern Cape who decided to teach the black boys in the community to play cricket, and to fit them all out with the togs required to play the gentelman's game. It is the two black street children in Durban, caught on camera, who put their spare change in the condensed milk tin of a white beggar. It is the Johannesburg pastor who opened up his church as a place of shelter for illegal immigrants. It is the Afrikaner woman from Boksburg who nailed the white guy who shot and killed one of South Africa's greatest freedom fighters outside his home.

My South Africa is the man who went to prison for 27 years and came out embracing his captors, thereby releasing them from their impending misery. It is the activist priest who dived into a crowd of angry people to rescue a woman from a sure necklacing. It is the former police chief who fell to his knees to wash the feet of Mamelodi women whose sons disappeared on his watch; it is the women who forgave him in his act of contrition. It is theCape Town university psychologist who interviewed the 'Prime Evil' in Pretoria Centre and came away with emotional attachment, even empathy, for the human being who did such terrible things under apartheid.

My South Africa is the quiet, dignified, determined township mother from Langa who straightened her back during the years of oppression and decided that her struggle was to raise decent children, insist that they learn, and ensure that they not succumb to bitterness or defeat in the face of overwhelming odds. It is the two young girls who walked 20kms to school everyday, even through their matric years, and passed well enough to be accepted into university studies. It is the student who takes on three jobs, during the evenings and on weekends, to find ways of paying for his university studies.

My South Africa is the teenager in a wheelchair who works in townships serving the poor. It is the pastor of a Kenilworth church whose parishioners were slaughtered, who visits the killers and asks them for forgiveness because he was a beneficiary of apartheid. It is the politician who resigns on conscientious grounds, giving up status and salary because of an objection in principle to a social policy of her political party. It is the young lawman who decides to dedicate his life to representing those who cannot afford to pay for legal services.

My South Africa is not the angry, corrupt, violent country those deeds fill the front pages of newspapers and the lead-in items on the seven-o'-clock news. It is the South Africa often unseen, yet powered by the remarkable lives of ordinary people. It is the citizens who keep the country together through millions of acts of daily kindness. 

* This article originally appeared in Mango's in-flight magazine.