A friend sent me an email last week and I thought wow, this is such a fabulous example of a nation, a collective, ‘stepping into their grandeur’. Have a read of the attributes demonstrated by the Japanese people during and after the tsunami crisis, as listed below:
•THE CALM: Not a single visual of chest-beating or wild grief. Sorrow itself has been elevated. •THE DIGNITY: Disciplined queues for water and groceries. Not a rough word or a crude gesture. •THE ABILITY: The incredible architects, for instance. Many Buildings swayed but didn't fall. •THE GRACE: People bought only what they needed for the present, so everybody could get something. •THE ORDER: No looting in shops. No honking and no overtaking on the roads. Just understanding. THE SACRIFICE Fifty workers stayed back to pump sea water in the N-reactors. How will they ever be repaid? •THE TENDERNESS: Restaurants cut prices. An unguarded ATM is left alone. The strong cared for the weak. •THE TRAINING: The old and the children, everyone knew exactly what to do. And they did just that. •THE MEDIA: They showed magnificent restraint in the bulletins. No silly reporters. Only calm reportage. •THE CONSCIENCE: When the power went off in a store, people put things back on the shelves and left quietly.
The last line of the email is unexpected, as it asks the question ‘now, ask yourself what would have happened in Africa? This hints that as a collective we would not respond as the Japanese have done; would we degenerate into carnage, chaos and looting, all behaviours rooted in a society that knows and fears scarcity? Do we really see ourselves, our country and our continent, in this light? Yes, it’s understandable we might share these expectations as corruption and criminal behaviour so dominate the media (and our conversations), and yes terrible things happen to good South Africans every day, but we are so MUCH MORE than this. Surely we could refuse to accept this limited vision of ourselves? Let’s not strengthen a thought system that says Africans are incapable of grandeur in the midst of chaos, by sharing that view. We should ask not what ‘would’ happen in Africa but what ‘could’ happen? What would we wish to see? Then hold that vision.
The article below is written by a South African who has chosen to see the grandeur that is displayed all over this country on a daily basis by ordinary people. He is seeing through all the dross to the grandeur within the heart of Africans. We can do the same!
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 centres 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 gentleman'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 the Cape 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.
Let’s be possibilitarians (and not pessimists) and hold the grandest vision of what
we would like to see in our country!
A nation steps into its ‘Collective Grandeur’ ..
.. in the face of catastrophe. What would WE do?
Links to organisations who are actively promoting the good in South Africa:
