Can we just enjoy South Africa for once, without reality ruining it?

There has been so much good news in the last week.

Local boy Charan Moore won his division in the Dakar Rally, we’ve launched our first private satellite into space and despite DA maths, we’ve got an improved set of matric results. Those are just some of the things you’ve heard of.

Things you didn’t know include how the Hawks nabbed some elephant tusk traders, the SA Youth Choir made an appearance on Dutch TV, and a Dan Mace scored a job working with Mr Beast. The list goes on.

ALSO READ: ‘The real 2022 matric pass rate is only 54.6%’ – DA

In any other country, half of that would be enough to get the country excited and positive but alas, our front pages are reserved for other things: electricity woes, horrid fatalities, and Godongwana’s delusion that we don’t remember Cyril’s identical promise of ending load shedding several years ago, with the magical splendour of a non-existent plan.

You know when people say, “this is why we can’t have nice things”?

Well, this is why we can’t have nice things.

No matter how nice things get, we’re just not able to enjoy them because we know that collectively we’re coming back to the same awful mess.

Imagine if Bafana Bafana made it into the World Cup, got into the finals and then won. It would be amazing, but after their SAA flight gets delayed and they land in 11am darkness to parade the cup through our filthy streets, it wouldn’t be expected for the elation to last too long. How could it?

What would that victory represent? Luck? Chance? Maybe some talent and training? It certainly wouldn’t represent our prowess as a country and definitely not any form of disciplined leadership, especially not the kind it would take to win a World Cup.

There is no amount of good that can make us forget about the basics not being in place; food security, job availability, electricity, clean water, housing, etc.

It would be one thing if we had stats to show that in the last few years, those things have steadily been on the rise, but we can see pretty obviously that the direction is the opposite.

ALSO READ: SA cannot afford to become both a failed state and a mafia state

There are so many people doing so much to keep the motivation up, and working hard to keep gears grinding. There are so many people bringing great praise and attention to South Africa.

We have what it takes to introspect and think “wow! We’ve done some good things here but we need the basics in place before any of that becomes enjoyable”.

For a state that loves to pride itself on ideals like empowerment, dignity, and equality, we’re not really getting much of any of that, and that which we do impose on ourselves tends to get bombarded by challenges of failed municipal services, flat laptops, or a day off work to renew a driver’s licence.

Just think back to that awesome day you were having before the sound of a tyre bursting changed all of it. It’s enough to make you want to go home and cry.

There are so many reasons to be positive about South Africa and actually very few reasons to be negative.

Unfortunately, this is less a numbers game and more one of impact. Those few reasons to be negative are massive reasons, and we need to sort them out before we can really enjoy the spoils of the good things happening around us.

What we cannot do is continue to pretend like things are okay just because good things are happening.

Bafana making the World Cup wouldn’t make not having electricity anymore okay. It’s really depressing that right now, Bafana making the World Cup seems more realistic than Godongwana’s prophecies.