My South Africa is about its incredible people, the sights, sounds, music, smells and tastes. The stuff you only find here and nowhere else.
My South African is about a new democracy still struggling to find its feet and its voice. The heroes of the past and the activists of the present. The builders, not the breakers.
My South Africa is abundantly rich under the soil and above it. In minerals, in resources, in spaces and places, in fertile land. In people. The stuff the world wants and that we have.
My South Africa is about kindness, warmth, ubuntu. Generous people. Creative people. People who want crime to stop and to move from hope into a better reality. The ever-patient parents who just want their kids to be safe. Who themselves want to be safe.
My South Africa is the music of Hugh Masekela, Johnny Clegg, David Kramer, Brenda Fassie, Miriam Makeba, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and more. Much more. The clicks, the clacks, the rhythm, the minstrels, the drums and our unique beat. The sounds you only really hear here. That come from here. That tell our story.
My South Africa is braaivleis, bobotie, bunny chow, koeksisters, chakalaka and umnqushu. Jungle Oats and Maltabella. Mielies. Pap en wors. Our flavours. Rotis, melktert, potjies. This is home. Our food.
My South Africa is the World Cup-winning Bokke, our Wafcon-winning Banyana Banyana, the brilliant Proteas, our ever-hopeful Bafana Bafana, our Olympian swimmers and gold medallists, our incredible Blitzbokke. A barefoot Zola, a diminutive Baby Jakes, an incredible Caster. Our fate-defying heroes on the field and off.
My South Africa is a home to world class businesses in banking, finance, technology, mining, agriculture, automotive and manufacturing. Medical, the first heart transplant. A continent-leading infrastructure that now needs saving and repairing, and begging to be fixed.
My South Africa is the bush, the wide-open plains, the crashing ocean and deep, unique smell of our sea air, because of our kelp. The mountains and our trees. Our lions, giraffes, elephants, lions, leopards and cheetahs. Our warthogs and aardvarks. The animals who chose this land and stayed. The animals that people come from all over the world to see.
My South Africa is one of Struggle heroes, a people who said no to tyranny, a people who want a better life. A people who want jobs. A people who want a government that cares. Truly cares. One that solves unemployment through job creation. And restores and returns hope to our wonderful people. Ever-patient. Resilient and creative. Restless.
My country is about all of this – and more. My South Africa, a place that embraced my Lithuanian great-grandfather when he stepped off a boat in 1897 when his own country rejected him, and his new country embraced him.
My country, where my Polish grandmother arrived in 1930 not speaking a word of English, while her family who stayed behind were murdered by the Nazis and their neighbours.
A place of acceptance, diversity and multiculturalism.
A place where we found a new start, new beginnings. Our home for 125 years. A place that’s in my blood, my cells, my nose, my ears, my sight and touch. This is my South Africa.
And as I woke up this morning – for all her challenges, for all her struggles, for all we still need to do, to fix, to build, to fight against, to stand for, to create and save – I woke up happy to be here. To be home, my home, our home.
A place worth fighting for. A place rich in opportunity. For all of us. Each of us who call this our home. DM
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Agreed, but the numbers don’t lie. We are on a cliff-edge and the cavalry aren’t coming.
Thank you. I needed that.
Thank you Mike for this gift of writing. We will turn the corner because our South Africa is worth fighting for.
Eish! Most lament for a better country for all. And, yes, we can keep fighting. But for how long?
The ANC and its allies fought a worthy fight for many, many years to free the majority of the country from a terrible regime. Many were so terribly disadvantaged and many lives were lost in the process.
SA will live with that scar for a very long time.
And now we have to keep on fighting because the very organisation that freed the country has effectively enslaved it again with ineptitude, greed, corruption and a backward ideology. And if the honest politicians and leaders from all parties who purport to be able to make it all better don’t WANT to work together and would rather double-down with their bickering and disagreements can’t focus on the well-being of all the people of SA, then how much longer are we all expected to fight to make progress towards the real promised freedom? Some are tired of fighting and rather live on hope now.
There’s only one problem that South Africa needs to solve, and all other problems will fall away – the ANC lead government.
Same here, Nicola. Thank you, Mike.
We also need to get rid of the white collar crime. and criminals that don’t seem to be tarred with the same brush
On point. We live in a fools paradise but we will not let the lunatic fringe hijack all that is good here.
Yeh Mike every day we wake up, never a dull moment, think I would die of boredom in NZ. If only Cyril had lived up to expectations eh.
Thank you Mike. We all need a timely reminder of what we have. Great piece
Thank you, that was uplifting and a reminder of who we all are!
I think you might like a video clip I took for my kids, (in London), of road works in progress along some random road I was traveling on Woman’s Day.
How can I send to you?
Athol Surtees
A resounding wake up call or a fast receding dream? As a Brit, I chose to live in this country, absorb its culture and fight for its future. But the sad and undeniable truth is it no longer fulfils the adman’s vision.
Quite right. What is M&C Saatchi doing to conserve and create this community and place we love and wish to continue living in? What are each of us doing? Apartheid didn’t fall because we were all merely lamenting the terrors of the regime. People educated themselves, organised and fought back. We’re back where we need to organise from the grassroots and not expect heroes to save us. To work to find common cause and put aside petty and opportunistic politics, to live honestly and with integrity and not continue enabling the rot in our society.