I salute those who equipped us to build a better future

It’s not unusual for older people to allow nostalgia to cloud their common sense. I’m no different. I am fully aware of our wonderful country’s terrible history and I sincerely believe it has prevented me from becoming the person I should have been. Nobody is immune against the inhumanity of our past.

But there are little things in my childhood that I remember with a nostalgic smile. I remember how cash (and possibly a cheque) was considered the only way of paying for stuff.

Smoking was seen as normal. I can still remember how my dad used to put his cigarette between his lips to free his hands to count out the required money at the cash register at a main street supermarket. We weren’t rich. My father worked, but my mother was a housewife. Somehow they managed to keep us dressed and fed on a single salary, albeit with difficulty at times.

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“R47 for a trolley of groceries!” he said one day as he wheeled the trolley to our family’s car. “I won’t be surprised if a trolley of groceries costs R100 one of these days!” I thought he has lost his marbles. R100 for a trolley of groceries? That’s lunacy!

That wise old man has been gone for 12 years now. “You look just like your father,” people keep telling me. I can’t think of a greater compliment.

Of course he was right. How times change. Nowadays, R100 can hardly buy you anything. R1 000 can hardly cover the bottom of a shopping trolley. He built a home that harboured a slower, kinder world and protected us against the heartlessness that raged outside in the terrible apartheid South Africa of the ’70s and ’80s.

“Love all people,” he told me. “If you can’t love those around you, you don’t have much of a purpose now have you?” he said one day. Today, I’m privileged to see the country I live in. There’s a lot wrong with it, but that is why we are here – to change it. And we can do it with love – even if a trolley of groceries cost thousands of rands.

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Dear reader, I love each and every one of you. I salute those people who helped us to learn from the terrible past and equipped us to build a better future.