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Well, there we have it. I am not a frog.
I’d hate to sound like one of this whiney white guys that always complains about everything that is wrong in this country, but it seems I am.
I was raised in apartheid, but was too young to know what was going on. After the first democratic election, we also ate “oorlogboontjies” for a few months and my dad probably still has a few candles left – just in case. I was too young to vote in that election, so I mainly observed. Being mostly an only child, that is a skill you learn.
After school, I wasted a few years at varsity, then went to England on a working holiday and returned in 2004 to a country that changed a lot, and yet not so much. Finding employment turned out to be a mission for a 25 year old white male, but eventually, I got there and after two years I hit the glass ceiling.
I sit here, 8 years later, pretty much in the same position as I was 6 years ago at the same company. Whilst grateful for being employed, I have poured the best years of my life into a lost cause, still trying to complete my degree that I resumed six years ago, but battling to finish as there was always something at work that popped up.
Perhaps it is my own fault, for allowing it to happen, but what do you do? I have been seeking alternative employment for the past three years, but nada. I out-performed my peers at work for little reward. After eight years of loyal service to my company, I won’t even get a sniff of my thirteenth cheque.
Admittedly, I knowingly forfeited it, but still after sacrificing time and studies, at least they could have pro-rated my thirteenth cheque seeing that I am such a blindly loyal employee.
But I am not complaining about that. And why am I missing out on that most marvellous thirteenth cheque you ask? Because I resigned to pack up and try my luck in another country. My wife could tell you more or less the same story.
Quite frankly, I have had enough of paying some old Afrikaner fart’s brilliant apartheid-debt to society. If I can earn as much for flipping burgers as I do as a white collar worker here, well then why the heck not? At least I won’t be required to take my burgers home to go flip them some more.
Crime is appalling. I have been a victim of affirmative redistribution more often than I would have liked to be. Our politics is a joke, our president a clown and our economy is circling the drain. I am not going to try to open people’s eyes. The current system is not my idea and neither was the previous one.
I just woke up one day, as all these things suddenly became apparent to me and decided to pack up, at thirty five, with my wife and just go.
And why am I not a frog?
So, apparently frogs are to be cooked alive. First, you put them in a pot containing cold water. Then you turn up the heat just a little bit. Just enough that the frog does not realise what is happening.
Then, after a while, you turn up the heat another notch and so the process continues until…… Paddaboudjies!
