SA Rocks

After yesterday’s post on the number of expats who are registered to vote and the debate that ensued, I decided to look at things from another perspective perhaps.

I had dinner with a very good friend of mine last night, let’s call him James. James always has a wonderful perspective on life and not surprisingly he had an interesting argument here too.

James suggests that what we as South Africa (the nation) should be doing is investing in our expatriate community, starting with one simple vote. Giving them that vote and allowing them to have that ownership of possible change and decision making would more than likely win many expats over.

The basic premise is simple: There are resources, foreign currencies and very, very good people who have moved overseas for a variety of reasons. An increasing number are moving over to other countries purely for business purposes. Because they are the best of the best and this might mean that they are pushed to thrive in business by leaving their home country for ten years. Who am I to judge? Good point James.

There are always going to be people who leave for the irrational reasons, for the valid reasons of violence, crime, curroption and expect those problems not to exist where they move to. I am more interested in the expats who are wanting to experience the world, to live life to the fullest and who have the ability to do so. It is hypocritical for me, in today’s world, to think that we cannot be South Africans abroad when the world is globalising and shrinking at such a rapid rate.

I am impressed with this argument and this side of the coin, I think it could possibly be the way to go. I am still disappointed in the small number of expats voting, but maybe it’s time that I took some of the blame for that and started embracing expats in to the culture and community of South Africa?

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Thanks to the Homecomingrevolution blog I found a great little community initiative started over at Ning. It’s called Fans of South Africa and does exactly what it says. It brings fans of South Africa together. The community is relatively small right now but I am hoping to help it grow.

So if you are interested in supporting SA and joining a community head over to Ning and join up or go straight to Fans of South Africa and sign up there. If you are already a Ning user then you have no excuse, simply pop over and join the chatter.

For now, here’s something that I found in the community:

Why do I love South Africa?

by Arnd Herrmann

I love her for the perfection of her days
The crisp Karoo morning
The Joburg winter noon
The late summer Cape Town sunset
The star-filled Free State night

I love her for her people
For our warm smiles
For our resilience
For our I-am-because-we-are

I love her because she delights my senses
Highveld thunderbolts
Jacarandas in bloom
Sunday braais
African sun
Icy sea

I love her raw power, her intensity, her strength

I love her because of how she makes me feel
Sometimes angry, sometimes joyous
Sometimes fearful, sometimes love-filled
Sometimes frustrated, sometimes hopeful
Always alive

I love her because she intrigues me
And challenges me
The Chinese have a curse: “May you live in interesting times”
I see it as a blessing

I love her because she helps me keep things in perspective
By reminding me how privileged I am
Every day

I love her for being a microcosm of the world
A world in one country
For what we can teach the world
About compromise
And sharing
And forgiveness
And tolerance
And hope

I love her because she’s imperfect
And full of opportunity
And potential unfulfilled

I love her because she has come so far
And has so much further to go
And whether we ever get there
Will all depend on us

I love her because she’s been so good to me
And she inspires me to return the favour

I love her because she’s my country
No matter what
I love her because she’s my home
And where my soul is at rest

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Go back and read Chapter 5.

Writing is a passion for me and one that has taken me to heights that I haven’t even begun to consider. I love it. I love it almost as much as I love South Africa. However that love is not always present and accounted for. Yes there are things that I am unhappy with and yes I have considered leaving SA because I can. But I am not leaving because I truly believe that my attempts to better the place that I call my home are making a difference.

South African’s exist, we live, we love, we are passionate and we thrive where others would probably not. But sometimes contributing to this state and nation is a very difficult task. Sometimes enough can be enough, with the traffic, with the crime, with the absolute rubbish that we all have to put up with sometimes (the recent “xenophobic” attacks to name a recent incident).

But sometimes these things are tiny little blessings in disguise. And sometimes simply existing is not enough.

The Individual

Every human being has the desire ingrained within them to do two things:

To Live
To Procreate

Obviously this is very base and simplified. There are, and have been proven to be, other desires but for the purposes of this piece let us speak of two for now.

When I speak of living I do not mean comfortably or successfully. I mean to literally stay alive. Death is of no practical assistance to anyone in anyone’s life.

Procreation is important for obvious reasons that I wont delve in to. But when children are placed in to the equation as a focus then things change and options become more limited. Bear with me. Imagine you cannot afford to fend for you children, to keep them alive – breaking the first basic human instinct – then you begin to fight for your life and the lives of your offspring. This is where I believe that many South Africans are right now. Poverty rates are high in SA, employment is low, and educating the masses is not happening and is thus leaving those with jobs unsatisfied and relatively poor anyways.

The point here is that when your basic human rights are infringed upon the individual can be forced to react in any ways possible. This can be violence, innovation, entrepreneurship, charity or any means that comes to the fore.

It is at this point when individuals begin acting without a community. The human experience exists in different ways for every person in the world. This others people and leaves them feeling alone. When people in a community begin to feel alone, they begin to act alone and act dangerously for themselves and the greater community.

The current state of affairs in South Africa (SA) make the above clear and present. Desperate times call for desperate measures. There is no justification for harming another human being and many criminal acts are just that; criminal acts by people who deserve to be in jail. But one thing leads to another and before you know it you have anarchy.

The recent xenophobic attacks in SA are an example of individuals acting without a community and pulling other marginalised people towards one another. Then you have mobs forming and criminal acts occurring that should not be taking place. My personal opinion regarding the attacks is that the people committing these acts are people who would otherwise probably be committing other criminal acts anyways. It irks me that these crimes are being called xenophobic acts when in fact there are South Africans being affected and the crime is just as bad whether it happens to foreigners or to locals. Crime is crime.

The Community

The greater community is an important faction of any group, organisation, country, family or any gathering and co-existing of people. Individuals make up communities. We all know this and this is not a new discovery that I have just made. But for some reasons communities do not realise their power and strength. This strength comes from the individual within a community acting together and sharing a common ideal. I have chosen the word ideal specifically. I do not want to share a goal with another person. I want to share and ideal, a way of thinking, living, being and existing. Goals are things that people who share an ideal achieve together.

There are many different ideals that exist in SA right now. There are many ideals that exist everywhere in fact. But in many places some ideals are shared by many people in a community and that community can thrive and achieve their common goals.

The xenophobic attacks are proof of this. A small group of people (when you take the entire countries population in to account) banded together and displaced thousands upon thousands of other people. This is the misguided strength and power of a community of people acting with a shared and horrifying ideal. This is mob mentality and unison at its worst. This is not the way that our country should exist. If only the thousands upon thousands of foreigners shared an ideal and acted on it. They would have rightfully defended their basic human rights to live and protect their offspring. But the sad truth about marginalised majority communities is that they never see the power that they hold by the sheer numbers that they have.

Since I started SA Rocks I have been hammering on about a mind shift that I believe is taking place. It is taking place in my opinion. SA Rocks is proof of this. Thousands of people visit and experience this positive blog every month and take in the positivity that my readers and I exude. This is a start.

I am an individual acting within a community and making a difference. The only catch is that it is not quick. Nothing that is ever great, long lasting and memorable is every quick. Change is never quick. Ever. Yet it can be viral. Positivity in SA has gone viral. Individuals who believe in this country have begun to feel confident in this ideal enough to start spreading the word. It takes on catalyst to throw change in to motion. One person to tell ten, ten to tell ten more, those hundred people to tell just one and those hundred people to tell two and so on and so on.

The community thrives off the success of the community and the individuals within the community.

Two things have come out of the xenophobic attacks. Firstly people have realised that life is not all roses for everyone in SA. Secondly people have begun to want to change, help, aid and be charitable. People have woken up. If anything good has come out of these attacks it is a greater sense of community that marginalised people have begun to feel. We have vociferously defied these acts and revolted against them with acts of kindness. The fact that we can stand together whether in thought, action or opinion, against these acts means that there is hope. There is hope if we all believe that right is right and wrong is wrong.

The community is starting to defy these acts of horror, whether 50 people are murdered or on child is harmed the reaction is beginning to become action, positive action.

I am not going to discuss the individuals who leave the community because free will, choice and economic bracket allows these individuals to leave and contribute to other communities. That is there choice and their right and I applaud them for making the hard decision to uproot their lives and move away. It is difficult. But it is not helping our community practically.

It might be helping our community theoretically and mentally. Negativity within a community only breads negativity and negative action. The opposite also applies.

Positivity breads positive action.

The Leader

Thabo Mbeki is the perfect living, walking embodiment of the community electing a leader and a leader acting and marginalising him. Mbeki’s idealisms got in the way. His African Renaissance blurred his vision and in all of that he lost his Africanism and his people. He is now an individual without a community. Mbeki has so distanced himself from his own community that the community began acting beyond the power of his government. He is no longer the leader of his community he is now the figurehead of a government that does not relate to its community and often does not act within the community’s best interest. This invariably leads to the demise of the community and that of the country as a whole. All in all, it’s a bad thing, to put it plainly.

The Action

Action is the key to the resolution of our problems. Not just any action, positive action.

There are many different types of action that form different value points to the community. Negative action has its place. It creates unity and binds people together in their misery, sadness and discontentment. If people are unified in their dissatisfaction they rally to find answers and solutions. Everything takes place can yield positive outcomes. It all depends on the mind set that you have while you are experiencing something and the mindset that you have when you come out of something. Negative or positive.

The Million Man March is a fantastic example of negativity resulting in a community of individuals who share the same ideal, coming together in the hope of change. Change might not be the outcome of the march but hundreds of thousands of people coming together, out of adversity – in this case crime, to stand together and fight for their ideal is magnificent.

Now let us hope that one person changes the attitude of another and this mid shift begins to spread across the nation. Change begins with one person changing his or her own attitude. Positive action stems from this change.

Go forth and read Chapter 5 from Paul Jacobson.

This post is a chapter of the SA Blook: A Piece of Significance, an online book written by a diverse group of writers with strong views of our country and the reality we find ourselves living in. The other chapters in the Blook are here:

Introduction
1. The new South Africa – is it real?
2. Is SA rich or poor?
3. What the world thinks of South Africa and what our global opportunities are
4. The importance of each individual’s contribution collectively
5. SA Inc and the business of doing business in SA
6. The beauty and grandeur that surrounds us
7. The importance of technology in SA’s global emergence
8. Building brand South Africa
9. Making the most of SA’s creative talents and abilities
10. Innovate for a better South Africa
11. The role of the younger generation in SA, and what we need to do to support them
12. Connecting South Africa – Communities that transcend technology
13. We are African – the role of collaboration in South Africa’s growth

Copyright Nic Haralambous 2008. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No-derivatives 2.5 ZA license.

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Ed’s note: Today’s blog is yet another great sumbission from a reader! I like the idea and in essence the below does what SA Rocks is trying to do, we just use different media to portray a message.

Here’s a video to see in the post:

Dear SA Rocks,

I dont know if you have heard about this but it seems like there aren’t many South African events on this day.I am not even sure if any of the South African TV channels are broadcasting it.

Pangea Day taps the power of film to strengthen tolerance and compassion while uniting millions of people to create a better future.

In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it’s easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that – to help people see themselves in others – through the power of film.

On May 10, 2008 – Pangea Day – venues in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro will be linked to produce a 4 hour program of power films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music.

More importantly, the program will be broadcast live to the world through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones.

Of course, movies alone can’t change the world. But the people who watch them can. So following May 10, 2008, Pangea Day organizers will facilitate community-building activities around the world connecting inspired viewers with numerous organizations which are already doing groundbreaking work.

Please take a look at the following videos for more information. I have also created a facebook group for South Africa.

How the idea was born

You tube Vids

Pangea Day

Kenya Sings For India

Japan for Turkey

Main Web Site

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I’ve ranted before on this blog about community responsibility and people owning the problems of the country.

Along this train of thought I read a great post on the roadsafety blog that basically says, instead of moaning about potholes, report them. Call in and tell the proper authorities exactly where the potholes are. Great idea.

Now there are critics out there who will read this and immediately revert to: “But no one will follow up”. That’s absolute rubbish because I have always been extremely impressed with the time period between me running in to a pothole and it being repaired. Usually less than 4 or 5 days.

I believe that with the guiding hand that the roadsafety blog is providing and people starting to take some responsibility for their property (cars) and community (roads) that things can only get even better on our roads.

Here’s a little snippet, but I wont give too much away, go and read the post for yourself.

Should you come across potholes on the SANRAL managed sections of road (see the web site for details of road conditions – www.nra.co.za_ please report them to the appropriate authority whose details appear on large boards at the start of each section, together with the marker identification – the small blue boards at the side of the road, and they will be repaired within a short period, usually 24 hours.

Alternatively you can let me know about pot holes on this e-mail or info@nra.co.za and I will see that they get reported. Unfortunately many of the roads on which one travels fall outside the responsibility of SANRAL, and belong either to the provincial or to local authorities. [ The details of the appropriate authorities are available and can be provided to you.]

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I read on Jacaranda’s news blog that the Freedom Front Plus have called for citizens in Pretoria to come together at a crime summit.

According to Jacaranda’s blog this comes after “a family in Pretoria East was robbed three times on the same night and after another family in Waterkloof Ridge was robbed twice in the space of four days.”

I think this is an interesting idea and one that I have been talking about for a while. Community involvement is essential in the betterment of our country. Many will argue that it is not our job to curb crime, that the government should be doing it and all that jazz. I agree but don’t think that we can be standoffish. We need to band together and take our communities back. This does not imply violence of any sort, this implies unity, community and ownership. Own your problems and make them go away, own protection and start a neighbourhood watch and own your safety and that of your family.

I think this sort of initiative can work very successfully. What do you think?

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