Isidingo - The Need

A friend of mine recently returned to South Africa, full of optimism for life in her home country. I warned her about the rampant crime, the rapes, the murders, the sliding services and deteriorating standards, but all to no avail. She was, in fact, so confident that she left the blissful security of Asia's Singapore, ripped her son from his school and bought a house in Johannesburg.
Now she is seeking to leave again, thoroughly disillusioned with life back home.
Now this is a woman who in her professional life has dealt with the tigers of Asia's buisness world. She has taken on the male-dominated world of corporations and finances and survived.
So what was it that sent her reaching for her plane tickets?
The fact that dear old South Africa is murder capital of the world? The fact that Jacob Zuma might become the next president? The rampant rape, theft, car hijacking, murder? The strikes and road rage? Out of control AIDS and drug resistant TB? Nope. It was the saddest of things...the South African man.
Only when one has been away from South Africa for some time can one truly appreciate how pathetic and impotent this thankfully endangered beast is. They firmly believe that the mere accident of their birth endows them with superiority - whether they have it or not. Working for their places in life is a foreign concept. Reminiscent of the worst of Europe's inbred royals they are convinced they are strong, intelligent, intellectual, witty and worthy of the utmost respect. When someone has the backbone to stand up to them, they believe they can be rude and crude and this will send lesser beings fleeing from the impossible brightness of their... well... whiteness.
In reality they are mommy fixated children, unable to cope with the reality of their world.
And oddly enough this is a two way street. South African women are forced into one of three roles, the brainless "poppie" or doll, a daughter to be patronised, or the matriarchal mommy. Never, ever as an equal.
This was brought home to me by accident in an email sent by a secretary to her boss. It should have been a simple query... This journalist wants to speak to you about ...xxx... do you have time? Instead it was worded in such a way that it sounded like a mother addressing a three-year-old. Loosely translated it went something like this: "Oh gosh, perhaps doctor could spare a teensy weensy bit of time for this journalist".
A quick trawl through white South African nationalist websites throws up the rusted relics of the past, incapable of dealing with the reality of the present. They resort to calling blacks "apes" or "monkeys", railing against anyone who might try to engage them in loftier discussions or point out different facts with sexually abusive rants that serve only to show them up for the impotent losers that they are. It's like listening to the death throes of a dodo that doesn't quite understand it's supposed to be extinct. Lots of honking, little sense, and no ability to adapt to a changing world.
They long for things to be the way they were, when they were guaranteed a social leg-up because of the colour of their skin. God forbid they should have to compete with the masses. They still sing the blues about how the west has done them wrong in a repetition of rhetoric, unable to see that this is the cause of their malaise. They're whipped and still whimpering about it being "not fair". It seems they are uncapable of understand that their previous system was "not fair", and that life is not fair. Perhaps it's genetic. Perhaps they don't posses the "move on" or "get over it" gene.
Whatever the reason these old-school South African whites are doomed to failure while they deny the truth. The irony is not lost on those of us who have moved on and gotten over it, for just as they berate blacks for being unable to organise or having no logistics, they are "incapable" of getting themselves out of their own self inflicted dillemas.
Whatever happened to the real men in the world, I wonder. Those strong, men who stepped up to the plate, who owned their own lives instead of whining about circumstances or making excuses for their failures.