A good story

I have been following our South African narrative for a long time now, and have been blessed to also observe from afar to get another perspective on this. So I want to present two stories that I see emerging from our beloved country.

Let me start by just throwing out some words that come from the first story.

Zimbabwe here we come, corruption, crime, load shedding, Zuma, Nkandla, BBBEE, taxis, cadre deployment, genocide, farm murders, service protests, strikes, blah, blah, blah.

How does this make you feel? What’s the mood around these words? Where’s the sunshine? Where’s the darkness? How do you think this story will end?

Now I need to share some observations about this story. It’s not meant to judge anybody who follows this line of thinking, since I am not in a position to judge anybody (I’m in the same boat as all South Africans). I’m just offering these consequences, i.e. by subscribing to this we disqualify ourselves to contribute to building a better country; we infect others with toxic, negative energy; we contribute to paralysing our country and offer no hope.

We are contributing to destroy our beloved country in the long run. Think what kind of legacy we are leaving to our children and the generations following them. In essence, we effectively become commentators from the side-lines only.

Now for some words from the other story, i.e. more people have water, more homes, growing middle class, freedom of speech, friendly people of all races, good food, growth in opposition political parties which means democracy is growing up, more goodwill amongst ordinary people, South Africans for Change initiative, Homecoming Revolution South Africa. Admittedly I had to dig deep for these, which just demonstrates how endemic the cancer of the first story has become.

With every word I wrote down I thought: “if crime, corruption, and so on don’t take it first”.  These words don’t make the news, the media keeps on feeding the first story.

So if you can close off your judgement and put the first story aside, how do these words make you feel? What’s the mood around these words? Where’s the sunshine? Where’s the darkness? How do you think this story will end?

Again, some consequences in following this storyline. Its hard work, and we have to become part of it to make it work. People are sceptical about this, thinking rose-tinted glasses and are not optimistic about the chances of this story going full out.

These are the challenges to overcome, and just like light trumps darkness, this story is a much better story with a much better ending than the first one. And it lies within each of us, we have the power and the means, if we just start feeding the second story it will grow.

We’ll become contributors, and what a wonderful cause to contribute to – a South Africa where everyone will have equal opportunity to live a fulfilling purposeful life!