Let’s make the right noise in these trying times

Vuvuzelas, pot-banging, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, hand clapping, hooting, That’s what friends are for.

I hear it all on the third day of our imposed isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. People who can’t sing, sing – and I’m so proud of my elbow-bouncing fellow citizens.

Not that we bump elbows anymore. We talk on WhatsApp; isolation groups; street groups and, closer to home, family groups.

But I learn early.

One of my big ANC buddies posts an irresponsible update on the day of the lockdown: “Nobody is ready yet. Do your shopping.”

Really, Marion? I respond like Judge Dredd: this is the law.

And I get crucified: “You from your privileged background. These are the same people doing shopping now who packed your grocery bags on Monday when you were panic shopping.”

I am furious.

Don’t make assumptions because my skin is white, is my response. Walk in my shoes, girl. Do you have state health care in these dark days? I, like millions of South Africans working hard at keeping my job, am living from hand to mouth: money from payday gone in five days.

Like the poor.

Not that you’ll understand, Miss Flag-waver, because that is what I am with a single household income.

You may subscribe to a middle class, but I’m so over it.

Don’t preach.

I am living your pink dream: yes, I have a house; yes, I have a secure income for three weeks.

But my company can also turn around and I can lose it. I can tomorrow become the “poor’’ you see queuing and pity.

But you, green-and-black soul as you are, didn’t respond to my counter-attack.

So, in the absence of your guidance, I’ll fall back on the philosophy I adopted 40 years ago with my first pregnancy: I read too much and was at least dying.

I stopped reading.

I will now stop reading politics, invincible President Cyril Ramaphosa and all.

He dons a mask and gloves. And asks us to sing our hearts out every night for the healthcare workers; our country.

You? Apart from your bleach? (Hah. Hand sanitiser from Woolies, no doubt.) You’ll probably still attack poor souls like me.

But join me. I’m banging a pot or six every day at my unpaid-house-that-I-don’t-have-a-payment-holiday-for.

I know I belong. And at least I care…

Carine Hartman.

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