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The brilliant cosmos flower signals the coming of winter in South Africa. It is not indigenous to this country.
It came with contaminated horse feed that was imported from Argentina during the South African War.
The cosmos is fragile. It dies when the first frost arrives. Fortunately, the African bee has an excellent symbiotic relationship with the Argentine flower.
It collects its nectar and pollen, so, in return, the cosmos species is thriving on these shores.
South Africa is battling a hostile economic winter of 20 million unemployed people.
The state is bankrupt and has been recently thrown into the junk yard by the rating agency, Moody’s Investors Service.
We are at the beginning of an unprecedented Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, and our creaking health system is threatening to fall over.
Our human resources are being depleted as young people of different races emigrate, and our poor education system fails dismally in providing desperately needed graduates who can lead a technology-driven world.
Two-and-a-half billion years ago, this land experienced an “impact winter”, after an asteroid struck in what is today Vredefort, in the Free State, about an hour’s drive from Sharpeville.
Earth turned into hell as a cloud of dust and smoke blocked the sun while a hail of fire raged down like torrential rain. Once the calm was restored, a long and bitter winter followed.
The storm turned out to be good because the impact created a “great oxygenation event” that increased the presence of oxygen in an otherwise uninhabitable planet.
As terrible as that winter may have been, it was a preparation for our existence. The anaerobic organisms that lived before the impact had to change or die, because oxygen was about to become the medium of life.
So how will South Africa survive this fateful winter that could throttle its existence? What will it take for this nation to overcome its addiction to divisiveness and pull together? Will South Africans ever realise that unity makes everybody stronger?
This is not the time to yield to the interests of a single group, no matter how vociferous it may be. It is time to focus on the greater good and, where ideology clashes with reality, we have to decidedly choose the latter.
We cannot change our biology but we can certainly shed the culture of mediocrity. When those who’ve been put in positions of responsibility fail to deliver, they should be fired. It is unfair to make the whole nation pay for the sins of the incompetent.
Self-criticism is a pill that must be taken regularly, because it cures complacency and certainly makes people better.
Like the African bee, this is no time for discrimination. On the contrary, it is time to build stronger organisations by nurturing and entrenching diversity.
The foundation of powerful nations is knowledge.
For far too long South Africa has fumbled through a deep forest of ignorance, while experts who are steeped in knowledge and practice are hounded, humiliated and exiled to the gulags of obscurity.
It’s time to stop the madness of the minnows if we want to build a nation of giants.
Technology is the bumpy road of progress that is strewn with potholes of pain. It leads to new opportunities for the coming generations.
The culture of self-enrichment by using public funds should be shed and the culprits must be punished.
When setbacks unfold like buds of venom on hostile pastures, you need a leader who is optimistic.
Defeatists are contagious with their debilitating blight of despair. We need men and women who have the mental fortitude to trudge through this primordial swamp of uncertainty.
There will be no recourse for us if we ever plunged into the abyss of failure that lies before us. Pain is certain, but so is victory, which can only be achieved if we work together like the cosmos and the African bee.
Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive,an advertising agency
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