How do we see our country?

It must be Grahamstown and the National Arts Festival.

In July we spent a lovely culture packed week at the festival seeing 16 good performances, wandering through art exhibitions and soaking up the atmosphere of this university town, home to the oldest newspaper still being published in SA.

Two of the best performances that we saw were “Bang Bang” and “Best of Mamba”. “Bang Bang” is a drama which takes place in April 1994. It follows the four photo-journalists of the “Bang Bang Club” and deals with the death of Ken Oosterbroek. “Best of Mamba” is a comedy co-written with John van de Ruit of Spud fame. It is a hilarious collection of the very best satire from the previous Black and Green Mamba productions. Some of these excerpts had not been updated so they also reflected the South Africa of the 80’s and 90’s.

Both these productions got me thinking about what life in SA was like in the 80’s and 90’s when a SA passport was referred to as a “green mamba” (my recollections are obviously from a white South African’s perspective). Boys going off to fight on the border, the scroll of names of those who had died displayed on the TV, public dustbins removed so bombs couldn’t be hidden in them, hearing of a bomb blast in a CT pub the night after I’d had a drink there, fighting in the townships, army vehicles driving along in convoy, going through security screens at the entrance to every shopping centre, being the pariah of the world, not knowing how we’d ever extricate ourselves.

Then Mandela was released and talks took place, violence escalated, we expected the worst, stocked up on tinned food and learnt to bake bread. The elections went off smoothly and gradually things calmed down and our suburbs, schools and offices slowly began to reflect the new rainbow nation.

If you are over 35 then you’ll remember this. We have been through many difficult times and come out the other side. At the time one can’t see the future but so far, on the whole, the future has been better than the past.
We are a resilient nation but boy do we make our own lives difficult by always seeing the worst. We are super critical. Our country is definitely not perfect. There is plenty that we can improve on and it is up to each of us to do our little part in that. Not paying bribes to traffic cops, for example.

The rest of the world isn’t perfect either. When we were in Denmark we loved the efficiency of the public transport but I am glad my children don’t look like most of the youth we saw there. We knew we were in Spain when the efficiency fell away and it felt like home. In England our friends complained about the immigrant problems, the Mayor of London’s taxation on vehicles and developers carving up the countryside.

The current tightening of the economy is the first such cycle where I have been so conscious of feeling differently. I refuse to buy into the doom and gloom. I don’t feel despondent. There is new work coming in all the time, new possibilities every week.

I have watched people turn downward spirals into upward spirals through taking a step back and looking at their lives; what’s working and what isn’t, creating a clear picture of how they want things to look, beginning to see some hope and taking appropriate action. Once that happens the doors start opening, the opportunities come along and their “luck” changes. The exact opposite happens if they become despondent again.

thoughts   ---   emotions   ---   actions   ---   results

The same applies to groups of people. If we all keep complaining about the economy and painting a gloomy picture South Africa will go into a downward spiral. The actions that follow on from our emotions will ensure that. It will become a self fulfilling prophecy.

Our recent change of President and new cabinet appointments, rumours of splits in the ANC may leave us feeling unsettled. We don’t know exactly what the political future is. In 1994 we didn’t know either. Living with uncertainty is uncomfortable for most people. But life is full of uncertainties – do you know how long your life will be? Live each day to its maximum and very soon you will be living in your future.