SA’s overwhelming woes always ruin our little happiness

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 Democratic Alliance 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 Dan Mace scored a job working with Mr Beast. The list goes on.

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 (Ramaphosa’s) identical promise of ending load shedding years ago with the magic of a non-existent plan.

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

No capacity to be happy

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 the World Cup, got into the finals and won. It would be amazing but after their SAA flight got delayed and they landed in 11am darkness to parade the Cup through our filthy streets, the elation would not last much longer.

How can it? What would that victory represent?

Luck, chance, maybe some talent and training? It certainly won’t represent our prowess as a country and definitely not any form of disciplined leadership; 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.

ALSO READ: South-Africans-are-a-miserable-bunch-study

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

There are so many people doing so much to keep the motivation up and to keep the gears grinding.

We have what it takes to introspect and think wow, we’ve done some good things here but we need the basics in place so that becomes enjoyable.

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

Let’s get the basics right

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

There are so many reasons to be positive about SA and actually very few reasons to be negative.
Unfortunately, this is less of a numbers game and 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 good things happening around us.

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

It’s really depressing that, right now, Bafana making the World Cup seems more realistic than Godongwana’s prophecies.

NOW READ: The-spirit-of-ubuntu-will-triumph-as-SA-rebuilds