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We have been a sold a lie that life is simple and orderly, and that the obstacles we meet in the path of progress are both unnecessary and unjust.
This oversimplification has been exacerbated by the corporatisation of politics, which has changed the voter from a citizen who has genuine social needs, to a consumer of politics, as if policy is a product that can be bought and returned if found to be defective.
Politics has, sadly, become part of the entertainment repertoire, which is why people who understand media, such as US presidential hopeful Donald Trump, will thrive.
We live in a time where people have short attention spans, and this blanket amnesia has given politicians the cover they need to make spurious promises, with the full knowledge that no one will remember if they remain unfulfilled.
This is the reason politicians promise jobs and higher wages without regard for where the money will come from.
Many nongovernmental organisations have become complicit in this mass misanthropy as they align their strategies to suit donors instead of society’s needs. They are in the business of fleecing the rich by laundering their guilt away.
Times are tough, and we must find ways to overcome the difficulties instead of peddling empty promises. Winter is here, money is tight, the good times are gone.
Recently, at a robot in a suburb in Johannesburg, I asked a street beggar how much he made a day.
“It used to be R400 a day,” he replied. “But times are tough, so I now make about R300.”
Understandably, competition has increased. There were beggars on every corner of his road. Perhaps there are now fewer drivers, or they have become stingier. If what he said is true, he earns more than many people in this country, such as domestic workers and gardeners. So why don’t more people leave their menial jobs to become beggars on the street?
Dignity is the answer that comes to my mind, and we know that it does not come from choosing the simplest and the easiest, but often it means traversing the harder road.
Hardships make us better people. Oversimplification, on the other hand, makes us weaker individuals who are susceptible to the cruel and unforgiving laws of nature and economics.
Oversimplification starts at school, where children are told that if they get an education, a high-paying job in an office will follow, and then it’s a good life from there. The logic falls flat when young people see uneducated people wielding tenders, and our president living in the glory of blue lights and sirens.
When the unemployed find education to be an empty promise, they fall into despair, and the enterprising among them find ways to cheat the system, which leads to corruption.
We live in an age of instantaneity, where people become millionaires even before they are old enough to vote, and this has made us expect to reap without sowing.
The corporate world, and it is that because it now rules our lives, has conditioned us to a life of rewards, and so we now do nothing without personal gain.
Isn’t it shocking that people now expect rewards for doing things that pertain to their own health? We expect our medical aid to reward us with ice cream for going to gym.
It’s time to rethink the future and drop our tolerance of mediocrity.
Cream should be allowed to rise to the top, and trash should be allowed to sink, not suffocate the rest of us.
Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive, an advertising agency
