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Over the past two weeks, while attending courses, I had a rude awakening.
At these courses you meet people from different walks of life and you try to strike up conversations.
I found it easy to relate to most of them as we all shared the same sentiments – what have we become as black people? This had nothing to do with what we went there for – negotiation skills, conflict resolution, time management – but about what we experienced daily. Almost all our conversations centred on the bad things happening around us – be it at the companies where we work or the communities where we live or grew up.
Most of us agreed that, as black people, we have let ourselves down for far too long now – and continue to do so in many respects.
There are hardly any positive things to say about us.
One of the attendees from a government parastatal could not stop talking about how embarrassed she was that things kept falling apart at her workplace. She said this was a bad indictment on us as black people that everything we touched seemed to fall apart, yet we were quick to complain and point fingers. She was not alone. Others also told of deteriorating conditions at their workplaces.
Not long ago, I witnessed a crime happening in Alexandra, in front of many onlookers. While driving home in the early evening I saw two bakkies loading paving bricks which were meant to pave London Road. Those who were loading the bakkies went about it as if the bricks were theirs. They were not at all bothered by passers-by.
I thought of the construction worker who would take the flak if he did not meet deadline or if he ran short of materials. The poor person would be chastised and called names for failing to deliver on time and could even be penalised.
But some of us obviously don’t care about the consequences of our actions.
Although others among us felt defeated by the status quo, we decided that it was time to take the bull by the horns.
In the end we all agreed that it is in our hands and we need to stand up and do something.
We cannot just let things go from bad to worse under our watch and do nothing about them.
It is high time that we stood up as a society and fought for justice and what is right.
We cannot continue to be the laughing stock of others who are watching from a distance while we self-destruct.
It starts with us – all of us.
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