NEW MINI POST …
Beggar or Entrepreneur?
Previously on 14 November 2018
Be Happy You Had The Sense To Worry
Beggar or Entrepreneur?
A regular job, the type 98% have, allows little real latitude.
Sure, there are decisions to be made but largely pre-defined. And workers are
at work because being there fits with the prescriptions dictated to the boss – his/her/its pre-defines.
Hesheit arrives in the company’s rented park-garage in the company
motor early. And not out of enthusiasm but
to miss the jam that strikes Main and Voortrekker Roads intersection at
precisely 7.04 am and lasts for upwards of an hour. Everyone sees himherit make for the lift at 7.34 - they dash
to get in ahead.
Like the army, from the CEO down the day is pretty much set to
ensuring goals of making the maximum profit possible out of as many situations
as possible without thought of the ultimate consequences to humanity or the
earth happen.
The ‘doing’ is called ‘drills’ in the army. In commerce ‘job
charter tasks’ – simple enough for workers have been trained their whole lives
to do them: Some on the job, some through Best University … left-right-left goes
the mind and the body follows. Succeed at one level and move up a step … it is
as easy as shooting a rabbit with the aim in time of being the company dude who’s
allowed an elephant.
But Beggaring … beggaring is like tackling a wounded
buffalo. Beggaring has no schools, no supportive guilds, no lines of credit or
phalanx of lawyers and holidays come only when the lights are green.
Beggaring is Real Capitalism. Possibly the only honest
example left.
The beggar industry members are there because they have had
to create their own jobs.
Beggars scratch their heads to find the best place for their
‘product’, to decide how best to market it and begin self-learning to ‘know-their-customers’
on their patch.
The destitute South African whitie
knows to stand straight with a sorrowful
look, a properly written explanatory cardboard. To do anything else will evoke
cries of ‘don’t demean us you prick, we’re glad if you at least look sad’.
Moses Mandla has more scope, is expected to be silly. He already
knows when the dude with his dark reflective glasses has a copy of the latest
Big Issue and Laugh-a- Lot prominent on his dashboard to let it pass. He’ll
watch for the signal from his wife … there, she’s saying, the brown Toyota looks sympathetic today, careful of the
Cortina, it’s angry.
Moses sports a ridiculous painted cardboard hat under which
he does a jolly quick-step dance and trip, folk laugh and call him a ‘funny Moses’ and sometimes they do
more than laugh – they toss a few coins.
For whitie and darkie alike
it is a routine they change as soon as they judge their employers sitting in
their cars are tiring.
When that happens, think up a new message, move to a different
possie. Or Missus Moses will turn from marketing advisor to busying herself
scratching through bins for raw materials. And that night under the city
flyovers they’ll make something up and practice, entertaining the others of
that branch of the unofficial illegal Beggars Guild.
Maybe if the new routine ‘tweaks-a- spot’ tomorrow when the
light is red and she stands head bowed in shame or he dances down the
white-line, a window will open, a voice will shout
‘Well-done you! I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t have the guts.
You see I have a job and it tells me what to do when and at the end of the
month a cheque arrives automatically.’
And maybe a coin will be tossed.
Be Happy You Had The Sense To Worry
I shared the horrific Welkom
park-lot murder[1] onto
my personal FB page. At first I added
the view it is time to pack up, that South Africans should consider moving
somewhere safer like Gaza, Afghanistan[2]
or one of the poorer parts of India[3].
Minutes later I was subject to a tirade. Boiled down, the caller declared I’m unpatriotic.
There is only one way
to fix a problem and that is to know it, to expose it.
The forceful President
Banda of then newly independent Malawi once explained that when addressing the
nation he repeated everything three times: once to wake the citizens, a second
time to get their attention and a third time for them to hear there is a
problem. Many concerned people/groups have for decades been writing about
horror that is the American creation of Saudi Arabia and no one gave a damn
until some obscure journalist working for a newspaper got killed. One tiny
tipping point.
For South Africa to
survive you have to fashion a tipping point. Details of every murder should be
posted on every social page until we are all horrified and very angry. Post one
new slaughter every 12 minutes. Stick
them in between before-your- mugging selfie, the rugga victory watched before
the break-in, the children’s (last to be) birthday pictures and that-was-the-bus-mom-was-butchered-in
snaps.
Because South Africans have become
so casual they’ve made murder, rape and abuse normal – ‘Oh, another one. Pass the
sugar’. The Welkom killers behaved with the nonchalance of workers idling
through a normal day-job.
Ramaphosa and crew,
and their Big Business side-kicks are useless … to the ordinary citizen. They
have, it seems, different goals like pinching paintings or sneaking money out
via the system while they launch minor ‘economic initiatives’. Economic analyst
Nassim Taleb explained[4]
it is no good handing out more expensive pain-killers to defeat diseases that
have returned stronger than ever before. The nation will feel better … for a
while then … bye-bye.
The huffing about poor productivity while the violence
and politically inspired white collar crime, the unpayable foreign debt, malnutrition
and collapse of working townships in South Africa continues is beer-hall stuff …
get sloshed and talk in circles. The symptoms scream yet the ANC does nothing. Yesterday
in Vredenburg said just that[5].
The alternates – the EFF in particular - offer only criticism or participate in
the nothing.
To say all’s okay after
the indifference of the Welkom slaughter proves the nations has dipped into a state of senselessness
that parallels ignoring the green-man light and choosing to dash across Main
Road in Sea Point on a rainy night wearing a black tracksuit. You are willing
getting killed.
Ignoring common sense rules and repressing our innate humanity is how South Africa got to 56 murders and uncountable rapes and major abuse events[6] every dripping-in-blood day. The government long ago declared ‘don’t worry about the red traffic lights, just do it’. That’s when the dominoes started falling – bigger rules, ethics and morality are suspended, replaced by a philosophy of ‘hide your actions as best you can’, and If you’re caught, find something to blame’ … Zille[7] or a not-too-smart white yapping about beaches are good diversions.
Stop all the childish nonsense
about budgets and deficits. How is it that the men and women of the ANC, supposedly
the smartest, dressed so beautifully and who live so lavishly, cannot see the idiocy
of their continued actions? Stop paying overseas lenders for the privilege of
enriching their countries and stop allowing private banks to fleece the government
and the people and start creating thousands of jobs every day.
What definitely cannot wait is
the declaration of war on poverty. The only way to do it is to introduce
national service for all. It is time to remodel and expand the South African
army to spearhead the battle through real internal growth. Maximum profit no
matter the cost to humanity and the environment must be suspended.
To carry on pretending
SA has only a sore toe is the consensus of the super-low IQ.
Credit: the southafrican.com
[2] Afghanistan: Civilian deaths hit record high, says UN … 1,692
civilians killed in first half of 2018 compared to SA’s 56 per day, 1680 per
month. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/07/afghanistan-civilian-deaths-hit-record-high-180715074759987.html
[3] At 5.5 (6x worse than
the UK) compared to SA’s 35. http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Murders/Per-100%2C000-people
[6] “99% of all children born in 1990 in the greater
Soweto-Johannesburg metropolitan area experienced violence at home, school and
in their communities before they turn 18”.
The Daily Maverick article is appropriately headed South Africa is at
war with itself. In the Gauteng City-Region “A quarter of all respondents were
victims of crime in the past year. That’s an increase from one in five in
2015/16.” Gauteng City-Region. See https://theconversation.com/life-in-south-africas-economic-hub-is-improving-but-big-challenges-remain-106813?
