The racism of accepting the status quo

Democratic South Africa is nearly twenty years old, and the prosperous and peaceful rainbow nation we dreamed of has, as yet, failed to materialise. There are pockets where our dream has become a reality, but in general most black South Africans remain poor and marginalised and that makes a mockery of the South African dream.

At the launch of her new book a few weeks ago, Dr Mamphela Ramphele said something which suddenly brought clarity to the whole issue for me. She urged the audience to ask themselves why we are in this predicament of black poverty and exclusion. “When you ask yourself why, you are bound to confront the question: is it because black people are stupid and lazy?” she said.

The question is bluntly phrased, and for a very good reason. It helps us to cut through all the crap we tell ourselves to justify our lives. Dr Ramphele is right - there really are only two possible answers to that question:

1. That we believe black people are stupid and lazy
2. That we believe there is systemic exclusion of huge swathes of our society. 

Anything else is a candy-coated version of one of those two.

Dr Ramphele’s question made me realise that it is racist to accept the status quo. It is not just apathetic, or defeatist or apolitical. It is racist.

If you do not believe that black people are stupid and lazy, you must concede that the conditions many find themselves in are random. The lottery of birth dealt that hand, and it could just as easily have been thrust on you. 

It should make us feel sick because it means that there is an oppressive structure in South Africa; that we are part of a system that excludes, exploits and ignores people. And not just “people” in some vague, detached collective. Actual people exactly like you. They could be your mother, or your daughter or your uncle or your grandfather. And this is not some “Apartheid legacy” or “historical context” either – those terms are some of the more common candy coatings we find. This is the current structure of our society. This is the reality of our people today. It is the life that most South Africans wake up to.

It means that if we are not trying, every single day – in one way or another – to break down that social and economic exclusion, to free people from this oppressive system, then we are racist. Only a smug, deluded and racist sense that 'we' deserve to be where we and 'they' deserve to be where they are could possibly justify being able to live with the inequality in our society. 

Twenty years of pointless blinkers

There have been so many events this year to prove that we have a long way to go in terms of social cohesion in this country. The Spear showed how easily cultural sensitivities can be both overlooked and inflamed, and the scuffle at Joburg Pride was a sad reminder of how little unity there is in the “gay community”. Worse than that, there seems to be very little knowledge of one another's lives and histories. Until a month ago, I had never even heard of Simon Nkoli.

The fall of western hegemony should have presented white South Africans with a beautiful opportunity to wake from the terrible spell we were under – the delusion that we are part of the western world – and to finally see what a rich, interesting and incredible melting pot we live in. Surely it’s time to wake up to our real context? (The lyrics to Binding by Florence and the Machine spring to mind: “no more dreaming like a girl so in love with the wrong world”)

The greatest regions in the world were built by diversity. New York celebrates its status as a global melting pot. Cities at the crossroads of diverse cultures are the most creative, the most innovative, the most interesting.

We are sitting on a cultural gold pot, South Africa, and yet we hate it. So many of us are still stuck in our old, dull, segregated comfort zones – almost 20 years after the fall of the system that put us in them. Heritage and culture are not genetic – so why do we continue to mindlessly reproduce them in segregated ways? The parts of South African culture that I love and am most proud of are certainly not the Anglophone lineage, from which I suppose I technically come. And isn’t it time we started constructing a composite South African culture with elements from all of them?

It breaks my heart that listening to Simphiwe Dana or Miriam Makeba or Thandiswa Mazwai is met with surprise. Why is it more cool to have some arb Australian “indie” band on your iPod? Why is it so hip to have a Peruvian restaurant in Cape Town, or even Ethiopian food now (it’s so trendy and African!) – but we don’t see umngqusho anywhere except cringey restaurants intended for tourists? What the hell is wrong with us that we idolise anything foreign and have no curiosity for the wonders of our fellow South Africans’ culture, music, food, traditions?

Why are we so scared to get to know one another and to celebrate one another? I’m so fucking bored of the idea that there is black music and white music, black culture and white culture, black drinks and white drinks. We live in one of the brightest, most incredible countries in the world, and yet we choose to pretend we're in a bland, monotonous one. Until, of course, foreigners come and make documentaries about us to tell us how interesting we are. When will we wake up?

Between black and white

An edited version of this post, How whites can reconcile, appeared in City Press in July - you can view it here.

Many excellent pieces of introspection and reflection have been written recently, and it is about time. We haven’t done enough introspection to date in South Africa, and this is especially true among white people. We are a nation emerging from a mass tragedy – much like the Germans after World War II – and yet too few white South Africans have ever questioned their complicity in the atrocities committed, or how we can play a part in rebuilding our country.  Too many have just coasted along since 1994 and expected the country to ‘move on’, without realising how much we have to work on ourselves to build a new nation.

Being White in South Africa

I did not grow up feeling white. I don’t come from a particularly racialised home, nor were my parents political. My family all voted Progressive and my aunt was arrested once or twice for protesting against Apartheid when she was at Wits, but they were by no means a revolutionary family.

As soon as I could piece together what had happened in South Africa (I was ten in 1994) I became truly disgusted by white South Africa. I was angry that the older white people I knew had not been more active in opposing it, and I wanted no part of white society – and have, to this day, prickled with irritation if white people assume I share some sort of solidarity with them.

Luckily for me, it was the Golden Age of Mandela and South Africa was bursting with excitement. As a new nation, we were getting to know one another. I had black friends at school, and new realms of popular culture were opening up to me. I listened to Yfm and bought Miriam Makeba CDs. I felt proud of my country watching as every year there were more wealthy, successful black people in our malls and on our TVs.

Throughout my teenage years and early twenties the Rainbow Nation was fully real to me. I felt like “my culture” was a composite of the previously disparate cultures of SA – and “my people” was South Africans. There was no ‘us’ and ‘them’ – and if there was, it was between the young, integrated generation with which I identified and the older, conservative, divided racists.

It has only recently become clear to me just how much of my self-esteem derived from being accepted by black people. I needed that acceptance to give me a sense of belonging, to legitimise my identity as a proud citizen of a non-racial new South Africa. It was an acceptance that I felt among young people, but also an acceptance that I took for granted.

And recently, I feel like that acceptance is being withdrawn. South Africa, more and more, wants to define me as white.

Here is why: not enough white South Africans have put in the work required. Not enough white people have genuinely committed themselves to this new nation of ours or grasped just how different it needs to be from where we come from. Too many seem to think the change has already happened; that the political transition is over, so can’t everyone just get on with things? They feel the pressure is off, when in fact the pressure is only now starting to build.

Here is the thing that white people need to understand: Apartheid was that bad. It was a ruthless, evil, cold and dehumanising system of structural oppression, deprivation and violence. People were tortured, people lost their homes, people had their salaries capped at near starvation levels and people were subjected to an education system designed to enslave them.

It was not, as FW de Klerk is so fond of saying, just a failed experiment in separate development. That was never the intention and it blows my mind that anyone can buy into that hogwash.

It will take decades to recover from Apartheid and get to a point where every child has equal opportunities in South Africa. The status quo is still completely unacceptable. Our Constitution envisages the sustainable and equitable transformation of society based on socio-economic rights, and we should all be anxious to accelerate that process or risk being derailed by radicals who are also, rightly, unimpressed with the pace of change but whose solutions will only make things worse.

Apartheid was also – and here is another penny that needs to drop – psychologically damaging for white people. White South Africans are psychologically damaged. We need to acknowledge this in order to move on. Apartheid desensitised white South Africans to human suffering and filled most of them with an unthinking sense of superiority and fear.

Perhaps most damaging of all, Apartheid blinded white South Africans to the enormous privilege they enjoy. The result is the bizarre situation we now find ourselves in, in which many white people are enormously privileged while simultaneously feeling marginalised and put upon.

I saw an exacerbated comment on twitter the other day about reconciliation in South Africa from a white guy who said: “Why are we still talking about this? Haven’t we done enough?”

No, we haven’t.

We haven’t all become fluent in the indigenous languages of our home country. Worse, some will judge a black South African’s intelligence purely on his or her accent in English, and completely overlook the humbling and impressive multilingualism of so many black South Africans.

We haven’t yet learnt to listen to differing points of view before trying to ram what we think down people’s throats. But we demand to be listened to ourselves.

Most of us don’t yet even notice, let alone feel uncomfortable, when there are only white people in a boardroom or in an advert or in a restaurant. But I know many who would leave a club if it were ‘too black’.

In short, we haven’t yet freed ourselves from the blindness of privilege and the last vestiges of subtle racism.

The consensus is emerging to call this paradigm ‘whiteness’. I dislike the name because generalisations are never true and seldom useful. They almost always lead to prejudice. “Whiteness” does not afflict all white people, and nor do I think there is anything inherently white about it – it crops up in various parts of the world at various points in history. It just so happens that in South Africa, at this point in time, it is a paradigm typical to many white people. Name aside, the phenomenon is real. It is a disconnected, insensitive sense of arrogance and lack of self-awareness.

Think of how many people rant about affirmative action without considering just how many more opportunities they had before they got to that job interview than the other guy had. As children, they almost certainly had more books at home, never went hungry, and attended better schools. They were also probably more likely to have been given a leg up. If it’s not what you know, but who you know that matters, then white South Africans are already at an advantage in terms of economic inclusion. And how many will actively try to hire from outside their social circle and expand opportunities to previously marginalised people?

Think of how many will speak about ‘their tax money’ as if they should have more say in government because they have more money, implying those without money are somehow lazy and not, in fact, suffering from decades of Apartheid’s deliberate restriction of skills and asset accumulation.

South Africa is angry at the moment and many are giving up on the reconciliation project. This upsets me because I think we could be an amazing country, and it frightens me because things will get very ugly if we give up on ourselves.

White South Africans have an important role to play in dissipating that anger. We need to genuinely commit to being part of the transformation of South African society, and to realise that transformation is as much about transforming ourselves as it is about numbers or demographics. It is not what other people must do; it is what every single one of us must do. The real work of building a new South Africa is less in the grand, national government programmes and more in the hundreds of interactions and tiny decisions we make each day.

The real work is in becoming conscious. 

From obvious to subtle: the shifting face of racism

Why it's surprising for many to discover racism in Cape Town


The sad truth is, there are still plenty of racist South Africans. No one can guess the percentages, and I would imagine (and hope) that it is a tiny minority of people, but they are there. Those of us who grew up in the golden years of Mandela don’t like to see it or to admit to ourselves how far we still have to go, but racism is still a problem that we have not yet laid to rest in this country. 18 years is not a long time in which to change the entire paradigm of 50 million people.

As a “white” South African, I have been subjected to those skin-crawlingly awful and infuriating situations in which other, usually older, white South Africans say something derogatory about another race group in my company on the assumption that I will be okay with it. I’m sure many of us have been in those situations. Nothing makes my blood boil more than racists who think I share some sort of solidarity with them because we’re both white. And more than that, I find white racism so much more offensive than racism from black people towards me. It is worse because a nation that chose to forgive the unspeakably evil things carried out during Apartheid is deserving of nothing but awe and gratitude from white South Africans and those who continue to believe they are superior to other race groups should be ashamed of themselves.

But I digress. My point is this: in my experience (I know, my experience isn’t the point – I’ll get on to that), I find Cape Town one of the least racist places I have been in South Africa. The kind of exchange I mention above, where some racist asshole says something they assume everyone will agree with, has never once happened to me in Cape Town. It has happened to me a lot in PE, for example, and I imagine it happens in small towns all over the country, but not once in Cape Town have I had to go to war with an openly racist person. I’ve never had the feeling that “white Cape Town” sees itself as a community in a laager. And white Capetonians, in my experience, have never struck me as racist. They are chilled, easygoing and pretty liberal, and that was one of the things I loved about the city (Incidentally, I feel the same about Johannesburg, where I grew up. It’s not surprising that our biggest cities are the most progressive.)


Why white people’s experience in this debate doesn’t really matter

The only thing my experience of Cape Town proves is that we have succeeded in creating a city in which racists do not feel safe disclosing their views to others. We have a city in which it is simply not okay to say racist things, and a lot of us, therefore, assume that no one thinks racist things. We should be proud of that, for sure. It is a step in the right direction that racists cannot spread their poison openly here. But we should not be smug. Open racism is only the most obvious kind and it is also, perhaps, the easiest to stamp out. Getting rid of it is only the first step in a long process of growing social cohesion.

Why the defensiveness?

I would guess the simple reason so many white Capetonians got defensive in the "Cape Town is racist" debate is that they don't like racism, and because they probably never hear other white Capetonians saying anything racist (as they still do, sadly, in other parts), they believed the city was being maligned for something they did not see to be true. It was not a particularly sensitive or useful reaction, but it makes sense. When a city sees itself as progressive and liberal, it is quite a shock to hear that it is not experienced that way by another group of people. I was also surprised by the massive discrepancy between my experience and that of my black friends when I first heard the assertion that the city is racist. Clearly, the racism that exists – by the accounts of black friends and twitterati – is precisely the kind that white people would not see unless they looked really hard. It is not obvious, and it is not directed at other white people in the way that racist jokes are.  By definition, white people cannot experience it, but that does not mean it does not exist.

So where to from here?

If there is a problem of pockets of racism in Cape Town, it needs to be addressed. Ranking our cities on their level of racism is a bizarre and completely useless exercise. But what we should be doing, in every city that we live in across SA, is trying to stamp out all forms of racism – even the quiet, underhanded, hard-to-see kind. All that really matters, in the end, is how people interact, and how they treat one another. If black, coloured or Indian people have been treated badly by certain institutions in the city, then ALL of us need to listen to that experience and do what we can to change it.

The problem is the subtle, underhanded racism is much harder to deal with than the obvious kind. It is something that lingers in certain people’s minds and can only be addressed by introspection, not legislation. Those of us who would like to make Cape Town as welcoming and open as we believed it was before our blindness was pointed out should be boycotting establishments that treat black Capetonians with disrespect. All of us should consider every action we take with increased sensitivity. Privilege is blinding - try to see when others are not afforded the same opportunities as you, and take on the person responsible. You may not consider yourself racist at all. But, for example, are you hiring a new intern because you know his parents? That has pretty racist outcomes if your family friends are all the same race as you. Do you get irritable when someone is battling to express themselves because your language isn’t their first language? Do you strike up conversations with someone of a different race when you’re sitting at a bar, alone, waiting for someone?

There are a thousand different interactions every day that contribute to how others’ feel about us and our city. Slowly but surely the infrastructure of the city is reintegrating and drawing our communities together, but that will only lead to co-existence rather than cohesion if we do not look deep within our behaviour and our assumptions. The problem has not gone away until none of our residents experience it. And the problem is also not going to be fixed by other people.

Why I don't like talking about race

Everyone keeps saying we need to have the “race debate” in South Africa, as if that is so revolutionary and enlightened and cutting edge to do so. And it isn’t. Getting over race, in fact, was what the Struggle was for. The victory against Apartheid was a victory against thinking that someone’s race is the most important thing about them, and that they should be treated differently for something as arbitrary as their skin colour. And it was a victory against prescribing to other people how they should behave or think because of our own categorisations. Overthrowing Apartheid meant South Africans standing up and saying that we want to be counted as human beings of worth, independent of any system of classification.

Far from being progressive, race is a concept that had it’s heyday in the 20^th Century. It has been proven to be scientifically invalid. It is blunt, dehumanising and has only ever done the world harm (from Hitler’s genocide to Rwanda to our very own Apartheid). It is a social construct, not a genetic one. And like all social constructs, it only exists for as long as we believe it does. So I find the increasing mention of race in public discourse profoundly depressing.  (Though not all that surprising, considering the pressure mounting on government for delivery and the need for a scape goat.)

But only recently did I start to understand why so many of my black friends think it is important to discuss: because they think white people saying race does not exist is a cop-out.

White people, so the story goes, created this mess that we’re in and are now trying to say that everyone must just get over it because actually we’re all equal. It’s a cover for being anti-affirmative action, or for perpetuating the bubbles in which so many wealthy people live. And that is not what I mean at all (I can only speak for myself, of course.) That interpretation would piss me off, too. It sounds like the person saying it refuses to acknowledge how horrific Apartheid was or how much still needs to be done to fix that.

I fully acknowledge what a mess Apartheid made of South Africa. It ripped the social fabric apart, it stripped people of their dignity, their livelihoods and their opportunities. It was an awful, evil regime steered by monsters. It breaks my heart that people can do that to one another. And I have fought with older people my whole life about how they did not do more to overthrow it.

And that, I think, is the challenge of many young white South Africans. We cannot believe that such evil was carried out in our name. It makes us angry, but our anger doesn’t help those who were screwed over, and our anger isn’t even recognised because we are seen as the “beneficiaries”. But we didn’t want it, we didn’t ask for it. We don’t want this to be our history. But we have no control over what came before us.

And so yes, admitting that white people benefitted from Apartheid is a step. In one sense it’s not even controversial because it’s so obvious. But then “benefit” is a strange word to use when I believe all of us (black and white) would have been better off had Apartheid never happened. We would live in a much more prosperous, cohesive society. Black South Africans would have been accumulating the same wealth and skills as white South Africans for generations by now. We would be an upper-middle income country with almost none of the social problems we have today. But that is the spectacular short-sightedness of the architects of Apartheid: screwing the entire country for their misguided belief in the importance of race.

And yes, more needs to be done to fix it. I think every citizen in this country should be doing all they can to address the poverty and hopelessness that exist. I’d love to see a national volunteer programme. And I’m not against the idea of a white tax for the sake of atonement and reconciliation (though I think, unfortunately, that wealth redistribution won’t fix our problems – only education and wealth creation will). I believe in transformation, and enterprise development and BBBEE. These measures are all necessary to mend our psyche and they are important to address the historical imbalances in our economy. I think everyone should be furious to hear of the glacial pace of executive transformation recently announced in the press. We need more black CEOs and more black entrepreneurs. But what we really don’t need is the increasing trend to believe in things like “white tendencies” or “black Twitter.” Realising that race-based measures are still required in SA does not mean seeing the world through the lens of race is ever good for anyone.

So while the debate around transformation does need to happen, it must never assume that “race” is a permanent, real, or worthy way to segment people. It disguises obvious things, like that there were white Freedom Fighters, that inequality has increased in South Africa since Apartheid and is no longer all that racial, or that wealthy black people who treat poor black people badly are just as cruel as wealthy white people who do it. Making everything about race detracts from what really needs to be done to make South Africa fairer. And it inhibits us personally in our relationships with everyone around us.

Wouldn’t it be great if we lived in a South Africa where “my people” could mean fellow cyclists, or marketers, or people-who-hate-scary movies? Wouldn’t it be great if we chose which communities we belonged to, and which we identified with, and we didn’t have the media, and politicians telling us what we think or who we feel affinity for? I am just as entitled to be furious with white racists as black people are. I’m just as likely to like chicken. I know for a fact that I have much more in common with my black friends than I do with many white people. So why, why, are we STILL looking for commonalities or characteristics of “what makes us black” or “what makes us white”? Nothing does, is the short answer. We’re all just people. Motley and diverse and opinionated and wonderful.

We need to listen to one another. We need to get to know one another. We need to trust that we all want South Africa to do better, and to be better. That was the whole point of the Struggle. And if we see each other as black or white first, and individual people only second, then Verwoerd and his bastard crew won. 

What do you see?

Being a good guy is inconvenient. Our brains are hardwired to save time by filling in the missing detail before we have grasped a concept or seen something fully. We needed it for evolution. We see what could possibly be fragments of a lion between the rustling grass, and we think we see the lion. And we baleka. And we live. The guys who didn't want to assume anything until they saw the whole lion probably got eaten. And ended that evolutionary line.

And we do it every day, in every tiny action. I'm no linguist, but I'd guess it's a necessary part of language, actually - to use experience to fill in the missing detail, and categorise everything. Instead of spending all morning trying to grasp the intricacies of the contraption in your friend's kitchen, experience tells you it's almost certainly a fridge - even if you haven't seen that particular model before. Happy with the judgement call, you move on to more interesting discussions, like when the brownies will be ready. But when it comes to concepts and other people, that in-built pattern-recogniser is exactly the problem: As soon as we have found a category for someone or some idea, we disengage. We no longer spend energy trying to understand them or it. We think we have, already.

The labels we give one another certainly save time. But they stop us from really seeing the other person. Once someone is "woman" or a "Marxist" or an "accountant" or a "boyfriend", a whole bunch of expectations, beliefs and prejudices kick in in our dealings with them. We become guided, to a large extent, by our experience with that category of person, rather than with the individual. And the same is true of ideas. Once we recognise enough in what someone is saying to classify it, we stop listening. We can write it off as "religion" or "capitalism" or "environmentalism" and we'll miss the interesting new points that are being made.

It is the greatest disservice to another person to think you understand them just because you know similar people. You owe it to them not to fill in the missing detail for yourself, but to spend the time finding it out. Google outcompeted the other search engines precisely because it did not navigate the web by categories, but by the actual details of every specific piece of content. That is what turns out the greatest value. In people and ideas, too.

Development and the removal of choice

Africa has joined the urbanisation binge that the world is on, and is catching up fast. Lagos is set to be one of the biggest cities in the world soon, rivalling the likes of Tokyo and Shanghai, and our very own Gauteng megacity (if that is still the strategy for Gauteng) also fills me with awe with its sheer scale and sprawl.

But you will note that I no longer live in Jozi. I discovered somewhere along the way of my life so far, that I need to be close to nature. I developed the habit of climbing Arthur’s Seat whenever I needed to be alone with my thoughts at varsity, and have never shaken that need. One of the reasons I chose to live in Cape Town is exactly that, too: I can smell the sea and see the mountains. Nature is all around me, and it keeps me calm.

And so it makes me profoundly sad to think that Africa, the last great untouched wilderness, is giving in to the greed and ugliness of industrialisation, modernisation and “development”. Without sounding too esoteric, I often wonder whether modernisation was the downfall of our species – that we were happiest when we were in touch with nature and each other in the Garden of Eden / Avatar’s Pandora / whatever metaphor you like. I think many “indigenous cultures” have more wisdom and fulfilment in them than any modern ones do, and that the modern world is full of the exact distractions that keep us from attaining true happiness, in the Buddhist sense. Having a great expanse of untouched nature is necessary in order to restore and replenish us when we feel overwhelmed.

But aside from that hippy train of thought, the world would be a richer, more interesting place for everybody if it kept some of its diversity intact. Variety is the spice of life and all that. Even if you love the city, it is boring and monotonous to cover the whole world in it. Surely everyone should have the right to escape the modern world if they choose to?

But they don’t have that right.

Because everyone should also have the right to make of their lives what they will. And spreading opportunities requires spreading economic growth. Rural Africans have the same right to become doctors or physicists or actors as Americans or Japanese or Germans do. If we believe in equality of opportunity as an ideal for human society (and I don’t believe there is anyone left on earth who does not), then we necessitate getting all human societies to a certain level of wealth in order to offer people within them opportunities.

It is a strange thing to get our heads around: we pursue economic growth in order to give people opportunity and choice. And yet, in so doing, we obliterate their choice to opt out of industrialisation. It’s sadly ironic that such a high percentage of people in the already fast-paced and modern cities yearn to live in nature, while so many in the “developing world” dream of the opportunities of cities.

It is a crisis of geography, and freedom of movement. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if, instead of turning the entire planet into one generic city with opportunities for all no matter where you are, we interviewed every child or family and asked them the kind of life they would like to lead? Those who wanted modern lives could be placed in flourishing modern cities to pursue their dreams. And those who wanted to fish or farm or live humble lives in nature could be placed in the jungles, mountains or coasts that make them happy. The injustice of unequal development would be removed, because it would no longer be an accident of geography, but an individual choice. And those “undeveloped” regions of the world could be proud of all the wonder that is in them, that today, they seem so keen to forget. 

Branding your Plumber

I am for the little guy. I really am. It's the reason I love the "buy local" movement, independent publishers, artisan brewers. It's the reason I use MTN. Okay, they're not so little, but they are the younger brother; the upstart, the second-to-market. So while I spend my days thinking about how to craft powerful brands for clients, part of me always loves when people choose not to buy brands. When they hand-make something. Or buy from a friend.

But I challenge anyone out there to be for the little guy when it comes to plumbing. Over the past few days I have had experiences that would have me all over Hello Peter if there were organisations behind them to bitch about. First off, my geyser went cold. Annoying, but these things happen. I called a plumber - who my flatmate randomly found in the Yellow Pages. He arrived, was very sweet, spent the afternoon up in my roof and left. He billed me nearly a grand, but I appreciate that there were parts he needed to buy. But how, exactly, did he get to that figure? He seemed to make it up on the spot when I asked what I owed him.

Skip to 30 hours later. I'm in bed, reading. My neighbour phones me to tell me my geyser has burst. I run through to my bathroom and see boiling hot water pouring through the ceiling. I run around like a headless chicken for a bit, decide the wisest thing to do is to phone my mother, 980kms away, and fight with her about where the water main is. It turns out, it's in my downstairs neighbour's garden UNDER A DECK. We had to unscrew all the decking and remove the planks to be able to turn off the water.

So by this point I have realised two things:
1) the previous owner was a stupid tit (but good with his hands)
2) Plumber A had no idea what he was doing.

Because of point 2 above, I called Plumber B (yes, sourced from the Yellow Pages). Plumber B tells me that the thermostat was broken (the one that Plumber A had installed the day before) and replaces the valve that blew. When I asked what I owe he replied, off the top of his head, "seven-hundred." Then he thought about that for a bit and said "that sounds a bit cheap. It was R1000." Clearly by then I looked more baffled by the process than horrified by the price yet (which I was, but my facial expressions can only do one thing at a time) so he added, for good measure "minus VAT."

And that's not it. He then proceeded to give me a speech about how my geyser is old and is going to blow again soon. Why doesn't he replace it now? I ask. He doesn't recommend it. And that judgement was given with the sage finality that I should just say thank you and move on with my life. He looked Anna Wintour-esque when I insisted, "but why don't you recommend it?" "The insurance won't pay" He told me. "Come to think of it, it was all very badly installed in the beginning. I doubt that it's SABS approved. The insurance probably won't pay even when it does blow."

It was then that I decided I hate plumbers. Each and every one (and I've spent my whole life arguing against generalisations). And in plumbing, I hate the little guy. Because if there were a big branded company, you would know who you are going to get. You would have a sense of who to trust and who is no good. Or at least where to look. There would be professionalism, and some transparency about billing. There would be a process to deal with my dissatisfaction. And, most importantly, I would be able to smear their name if they disappointed me so wildly. But there is no mass revolt I can launch against these plumbers, because no one knows who they are anyway, and no one thinks to asks their friends for advice when they need a plumber. So their reputation is protected by their insignificance and I am left writing an angry diatribe, with a geyser that's probably going to burst again, while they drink Mojitos on my money.

The Loquacious Popularity Contest

Shakespeare would have hated Twitter. And not only because all modern communication forces us to condense whatever we’re saying into easily digested, tiny nuggets of scan-friendly information. Not only because our “Glance-and-Click culture” (to use Seth Godin’s genius term for it) has damaged our ability to engage with prose, to have the patience it takes to let something beautiful and transformative emerge from the storyteller. But also because writing today is as much a popularity contest as it is a display of insightful observation and a natural way with words.

Take my friend Simon. He writes very, very well. He’s published all over the place. And a good deal of his time is spent manning social media channels, chipping in with his opinion, responding to comments. He is also a very amiable person offline, completely at ease making friends at bars with a beer in his hand, getting worked up about the stuff he believes in and arguing with people about things. And the result of all of this, of course, is that he has very many friends. And very many fans and followers. His travel update emails no longer even display the recipient addresses for fear of overwhelming them.

Were he ever to write a book, his audience would already be there. His market may be untapped, but it is identifiable and quantifiable. And I would hazard a guess that most publishers today take into account the size of a writer’s social network before agreeing to sign them. This seems like a new era for writers, that requires an entirely new skill set. I’ve always imagined the Shakespeares and Hemmingways and Patons of this world to have been reclusive, introverted and quiet. And perhaps those kinds of writers will no longer cut it.

The Importance vs Urgency Matrix

Being the ultimate nerd that I am, I attended a webinar on time management on Thursday. Actually it's less about nerdy proactiveness and more about survival. I felt I was teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown a month ago, and I've seen enough people older than me to know that we only get more balls in the air, more to deal with and more to cram into our days until we're about sixty. To be overwhelmed by 26 is relatively embarrassing.

The hosts of the webinar had English-midlands accents, a slow, serious way of speaking and exuded whatever the opposite of charisma is. The whole experience was so washed out and linoleumy that I felt like I was in an episode of The Office. And all the matrices and quadrants they introduced did was to try and help people separate the urgent from the important.

I unplugged my earphones before the hour was up, pissed off that I'd lost time that I needed to put together a presentation.

It was only this morning that I realised that's not just a handy skill for effective time management. The inability to see the difference between what is important and what is urgent is responsible for pretty much every dysfunction of the modern world. It's why we mindlessly pursue economic growth at the expense of the planet and our survival. It's why we lose touch with friends because we're always rushing to a meeting. Urgency gives us an adrenaline rush. The adrenaline hooks us. And then we wake up at 65 and realise we've wasted our whole lives chasing unimportant things.

Maybe these quadrants will save the world.

Our global story

There were some incredible speakers at the TEDx in Stellenbosch on Friday. Lots of inspiration and some amazing work being done to end child slavery globally (it's everywhere, apparently), stimulate entrepreneurship in South Africa and help uplift women. The budding digital marketer in me loved hearing about how social media had triumphed over print media in reversing international public opinion about South Africa during the World Cup. And I even got to learn about the global and barbaric persecution of sharks (though the speaker failed to mention why they are so important. It turns out they keep oxygen-generating plankton levels healthy in the oceans and without them we will suffocate. But I had to find that out from my brother)

But the most interesting talk at TEDx, I thought, was Peter Willis's The Story of our Future. He made the point that never before has there been a singular global narrative; there have only been regional dominant narratives. And that human beings cannot function without a story. It's hardwired into our understanding of the world that there are beginnings, actions and consequences. We are motivated by stories with happy endings.

And so the dominant stories we told ourselves, and that provided context for all our actions, were:

• In Medieval society, that God was  at the top of a hierarchical universe, in which everyone knew his or her place, and being humble and obedient and doing what was expected of you guaranteed you a place in Heaven.

• In the Scientific Age, that the Universe functions on rules, and that if you study and learn all the rules, you can know everything worth knowing and alter the world to make it cooperate.

• The current dominant story is that of capitalist growth. That if you work hard and buy things and spend money, you will be guaranteed a place in the mythical and always-just-out-of-reach Consumer Heaven.

The problem, of course, is that this story is rubbish. Consumer Heaven does not exist and does not make us happy, but, more importantly, the planet is finite, her resources are finite, and capitalist growth is simply unsustainable. And so we are confronted with a very bleak story: if we continue along our current path, we will destroy ourselves. If we do not, we may survive. "Maybe surviving" isn't much of a happy ending to believe in or motivate ourselves. Which is why, perhaps, there is such widespread inaction about our crisis.

The task we face, therefore, is not just one of proving the science of climate change. That has largely been done, and isn't galvanising people into action. Our task is to collectively define a narrative to believe in. And his suggestion, which echoes my man Ekhart Tolle, is that Heaven is right here. I'm thinking we need to make that a little more ordinary sounding for politicians and business leaders to get their heads around.

You know you've arrived

Since name-dropping seemed to be the favourite activity of the organiser of TEDx Stellenbosch (she must have mentioned the fact that she studied at Harvard as many times as ordinary people use the word "and"), I think it's safe to mention that I was stopped by no less than five people who wanted to know about my laptop bag. That's right people, five. And one of them even wanted a photo.

After 18 months in Cape Town, I'm finally a trendoid.

The meaning of work

My flatmate and I were discussing some work this afternoon, and how we find it almost impossible to motivate ourselves when we're not interested in something. Our initial hypothesis was that we are spoilt brats, torch-bearers of the Entitled Generation. But then, we are also very good at convincing ourselves we don’t have any flaws, and so we came to a second hypothesis: that girls (and, for the purposes of this theory, gay guys) are wired differently to men.

Men can emotionally disengage from whatever they are doing. If they are good at it, that is enough for them. They can sit in front of a spreadsheet all day or crunch numbers and watch stock markets. Skills and intelligence in exchange for money. A rational, simple transaction. We, on the other hand, need to see the bigger picture, know what the work is going to be used for. And, most importantly, we need to believe in what we are doing. It needs to make a positive difference to the world and mean something. Work is an emotional investment

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why men earn so much more than women. We have got to the bottom of it. It’s not prejudice. It’s not a secret community or a global old boy’s club. It’s the fact that meaning is a lot more difficult to find than projects or tasks that need to be done.

This time for Africa

So there is a lot of buzz about the World Cup fanning the flames of xenophobia. The City of Cape Town is apparently making preparations to protect immigrants and minorities in the townships once it's over. I really, really hope I'm not missing something - but this all seems to be journalists feeling uncomfortable with constant good news and feeling like they need to bring up something scary in order to sound intelligent. 

Nationalism is a pretty scary thing. Aside from religion, it has probably killed more people than any other ideology. But it is a bittersweet pill, because nationalism also helps to build great things. It unites people in a common dream which, I think, is necessary to form a peaceful and functioning society. The trick is to balance the heart-lifting feeling of "us" without creating an exclusionary "them". And the only way to do that is to ensure the sense of nationality comes from living in a place, not from genetics or bloodlines. It needs to be an "opt-in" nationalism; whereby if you live in South Africa, believe in South Africa and want to help build it, you're a South African.  And I think that is the kind of nation we are trying to build.

And as for our African brethren, the World Cup has done a lot to foster a feeling of continental community. It has always been the African World Cup. Shakira has us all singing "this time for Africa" at the top of our lungs in the streets. And never have I felt such a strong sense of unity as on Tuesday night, when everyone in Cape Town was bedecked in orange to rally behind Netherlands for the simple reason that their opponents (Uruguay) had been the team to kick "our" Ghanaian team out of the World Cup. The world cup has fostered pride in where we come from without making us exclusionary at all. In fact, we have been delighting the world with our genuine interest in other cultures and other stories.

It may have been luck that we never played against another African country, but we didn't. Instead, the World Cup helped us to rally behind our neighbours and take pride in ourselves; a serendipitous leap towards the right kind of national community, and away from the horrors of the 2009 xenophobic attacks. I really hope we keep it up

Breaking up

There comes a time in every break up, when you suddenly stop hearing the onslaught of excuses, the world goes still and you find yourself thinking: fuck, I am going to end up a strange old spinster with cats, living above my best friend’s garage and being invited for pity-dinners by all my happily married friends. The eccentric - and by then safely asexual - token gay at the table, that all their future kids think is hysterically funny and confide in about their teenage crushes. It is usually at that point that I start to cry.

That is, of course, if you are the breakupee, and not the breakupper. I realised the other day that I only really ever think of the breakups in which I was the breakupee. They form my whole frame of reference. In fact, I only consider the relationships in which I was broken up with proper relationships (the kind that get a whole finger when you’re counting). Which makes sense, I suppose. Because much as any decent person will claim they hate to be the bad guy, and they hate to hurt other people, it is much, much worse for the person who wasn’t expecting it and didn’t want it to happen: he or she was the partner who was more involved and more invested. The relationship meant more to them. And the breakupper, no matter how lovely, feels a sense of relief.

But there was an interesting twist in Friday night’s scene. Out of nowhere, it forgot to shatter my self-worth. I felt the usual shock and despair, obviously, and disbelief. And that nauseating feeling that I was about to lose someone who meant so much to me and defined so much of my life and experience in the past few months. The loneliness that pounces before the door has even closed behind him and the frustration that all the shared moments and imagined futures were for nothing. But not once did I think I had screwed up, or, as per previous self-flagellations, that I deserved it and it was obviously going to pan out that way.

Have I reached the end of teenage angst? At 26, have I finally grown up and learnt the Oprah (or was it Buddha?) lesson of valuing oneself and not taking things personally? It was a much healthier relationship than I have been in for years. Easy-going, natural, respectful and equal. Perhaps healthy relationships translate into less damaging breakups. Which is counter-intuitive, as there is more being lost. Or perhaps the man in question, a gentleman to the end, just put more effort into softening the blow, so the bruising will take longer to show. Whichever it turns out to be, I am going to hold on to the fact that my flat is too small a place to start collecting cats.

Noticing the happy person in your body

I have been told by three different people in the last month how happy I’m looking, and by the cleaner at work that I’m looking healthy (which, obviously, I assumed meant fat) The strange thing is, I hadn't noticed feeling particularly happy. I'm not unhappy at the moment, but I do have my usual background stress buzzing away in my head. And the propensity to overthink anything that could make me spontaneously happy hasn’t gone anywhere, either.

Which got me thinking about the bizarreness of not realising you’re happy, and then on to the nature of personality. How we feel about life is determined almost entirely by our own personality type with very little to do with external circumstances. Whether it’s chemical or spiritual or genetic, the point is the whole world is filtered and adapted so much by the kind of person we are that what we perceive often bears no resemblance to what others perceive. Think of the boyfriends you’ve had who you thought were fantastically wonderful to the utter disbelief of your friends.

And in the case of a depressed or judgemental person, or a bully, that personality type is abusing the experiencer within it as much as it is abusing others. It is the personality that makes us unhappy. So we are removed from our personalities; like they are behaviours and patterns and filters that float about out there annoying us about ourselves, or annoying us in other people.

And the experiencer is always the same. Simunye, the Hindus are right.

Trusting those who weren't paid to tell you something

On Wednesday to Friday last week I attended Dave Duarte's Nomadic Marketing course at UCT, and on this course I discovered what is supposed to be this year's Next Big Thing, Foursquare.

Foursquare is a social networking platform for mobile that centres around reviewing and sharing knowledge about a city. How it works is that people 'check in' to various spots around their city and leave comments, suggestions, ideas and feedback about the place that they're at. These comments also notify their friends.

So if I want to try a new restaurant out, for example, I would log in to foursquare on my phone and it will tell me where the nearest restaurants are to me right now (via GPS and googlemaps). I don't need to know this beforehand, and so essentially I don't need to have ever heard of the restaurant. As a marketer, it makes me think: is there therefore any value in 'brand awareness'? I don't need to have been bombarded with messages about which restaurants are the best in Cape Town, and I don't need to try and remember information that arrived when it wasn't relevant to me? (ie. when I wasn't looking for a restaurant at that exact moment).

We all know that 92.3% of stats are bullshit, but even so: a vast majority of people (between 70 and 90%) would trust their friends or even strangers over advertising. People have been barking on about the power of word of mouth for years. But now this word-of-mouth functionality is easy, instant and mobile. Assuming foursquare takes off, you will be able to see exactly what everyone (and especially all of your friends) thought of this restaurant just down the road from you.

Obviously, it means that marketing communications can't lie. No more fluff, no more exaggeration. But will there even be a point to advertising? If awareness is of limited value, and reputation is built by delivering something that people value rather than saying anything in particular, then why say anything? Your consumers will do the talking for you.

And what will the role and value of a brand be in the future? Brands are supposed to be shortcuts to make consumer decision-making easier (you don't have to think about the functional benefits or social ingredients of every soap in a store because the brand already stands for something in your mind) - but the route to mass peer reviews is becoming almost as short as the shortcut in your mind.

Granted this only works for location-based businesses at the moment, but I'm sure similar things will emerge for products and services soon. I've loved the platitude that "people are the new media" for ages, but only now can I appreciate what a massive shift this is going to be.

Some real green action in SA

Thanks to a cunning little banner ad on the Mail and Guardian this evening (making me wonder if they are starting to sell their adspace on user behaviour models or interests, and if chrome is mining me for every click and search and rss feed... a topic for another debate, another time) I discovered that South Africa has its very own electric car design. Granted, an electric car is only as clean as the national grid's electricity supply, which, in our case, is hideously filthy thanks to Eskom's obsession with coal. But it's an exciting step towards a cleaner future. Good on the Government and the IDC for the investment!

And on the same day that I drove past the first enormous wind turbine being erected in Coega. Maybe we won't be the last country to come to the table, after all

The future of Collective Experience

I had a strange thought while debating the growth of closed social networks with a friend this morning: that the only things that offer true collective experience are mass media, and terrorism.

Everyone remembers where they were when September 11 happened. Everyone remembers what they were doing when the London Underground was bombed. Massive and terrible events like that shake us from our little bubbles that we move in. It's not that our lives are isolated - we are more connected than ever before - but our connections are still exclusive; they are determined by shared interests or passions or careers. It takes something like that to make us break out of our closed networks and feel empathy for a larger group.

The other thing that let us do so was mass media. You used to be pretty sure that when you went to school in the morning, your classmates would have watched the same show as you the night before. You could discuss the stupidity of the star-crossed teen lovers characters, or argue over who looked hotter in the beach scene. Tannies had heard the same joke on the radio as their gardener's nephew, and seen the same ad. Mass media was blunt and irrelevant a lot of the time, but the very fact of its inability to target accurately meant it forced people to have collective experiences that had the potential to bring them together. They had something in common to talk about.

As digital media becomes ever more fragmented and targeted, we are fed information and content and shows and advertising that is supremely relevant to us. It taps into our interests and idiosyncrasies. We never have to sit through shows we hate anymore, waiting for something better to come on. But we also never get challenged. We read things about matters we already think about. We chat with people whose opinions we admire or agree with. It's great that we can connect around shared interests with people from around the world. But does it mean we no longer share experiences with the people from a few blocks away?

Is personalised media ultimately divisive, widening the rift between a Constantia trustafarian and a Gugulethu mom? What collective experiences do we have left, other than terrorism or natural disaster, to bring us together and spark our human empathy? We think we're throwing off the shackles of geography and building global community on our own terms, but perhaps the most local connections are the most real and seeing only what interests us limits our ability to grow.

The guy you met last week

I managed to make an instant enemy a couple of weeks ago. I happened to be looking at a beautiful leather Fossil laptop bag; a bag I could never afford but couldn't help trying on. My friend walked past with a friend of his. I gushed about how much I loved the bag. His friend decided I was a pretentious knob who spends his life buying R2000 bags and condescending to everyone who doesn't own one.

Admittedly, I wouldn't normally bother myself with someone who makes judgements so quickly, but because that particular summary of my personality jars so startlingly with the kind of person I think I am, it got me thinking about the randomness of first impressions. The timing of when you meet someone really does determine what they think of you. If I were weeping that day, or eating at Spur, I would have seemed like an entirely different person.

But it's much more than impressions. All of the perceptions we have about ourselves and each other and things are time-specific. I feel a particular way about lawyers now, for example, that I did not a few years ago. I have opinions and preferences that are new. I relate to my friends as the people they are in this particular lifestage, in their particular circumstances. I identify myself as 26, and a brand strategist, and a Capetonian. But not one of those identities is permanent, and not one of them was true two years ago. We have good days, and funny days and days when we're too tired to make conversation. We are generous and stingy, young and old, idealistic and jaded. We miss great loves because we were perfect for each other at the wrong time, or in sequence.

The more I think about it, the more I think we are are just balls of constant change blaring through life. So the trick is to never take anything personally, because the conditions that form people's perceptions of you right now are transient, and relatively random. Timing isn't just the key to great jokes, great loves and great brands.

All there is, really, is timing.