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When we finish school we are expected to get a job. And what getting a job seems to mean is joining another institution. Superficially it's a lot like tertiary. You pick the companies you want to work for and apply to join them. If one likes you, you become a member of this new group. You get up in the morning and go to a new set of buildings, and do things that you do not, ordinarily, enjoy doing. There are a few differences: life is not as much fun, and you get paid, instead of paying, as you did in tertiary. But the similarities feel greater than the differences.
Suddenly in my early thirties I find myself wondering if this is all there is to life. Life seemed so much more fun in Tertiary. I’ve gone from visitor to a worker. It's possible to have fun in this new world, among other things; I now get to go behind the doors that say "authorized personnel only. But It’s a job not my life. It is what it is.
The big surprise about money, in this age of grotesque and growing economic inequality, may be its limits. At any rate, it’s not at all clear how the swelling heap of money controlled by the extremely rich is changing us, actually it does absolutely nothing for us.
Our assault on inequality in South Africa has to start with the change of our mind-set and education system. At this moment looking at the quality of education in public schools – it is clear that life is now officially unfair for some children in South Africa irrespective of their race. We need to cultivate an education system that prepares young people for much more than just a job. They must aspire to create and produce, then be empowered to grow.
The outrageous inequality between the haves and the have-nots is seldom outlined as a problem that the haves might privately help to resolve in fact the wealthy don’t want to change the world. The world as it is suits them nicely. Instead, it is a problem the have-nots must persuade their elected officials to do something about.
I believed for a while that if a few rich people had all the money, it left less for everyone else. There is obviously not a fixed pie and I wonder why anyone would think there was considering that the number of wealthy people has been rising. So while doing this job thing I’m passionately thinking of ways to accumulate wealth and disprove this pie fallacy. And by wealth I’m not just talking about money – I want the all-encompassing kind.
