There’s always tomorrow

My village in the Cape is currently inaccessible, the bridge washed away by the floods.

They’re okay though, because the winery is on that side. Also, Gift of the Givers arrived.

Hopefully the bridge will be rebuilt by the end of the month, but bridges aren’t the only thing collapsing in my beloved homeland.

So who knew that orphan Annie might have the answer to SA’s problems?

ALSO READ: ‘What’s the price of a crushed heart?’: Art dreams dashed in a carpark

Well, you betcha bottom dollar she does. I took my sister to see Annie recently.

As she has Down Syndrome, we’ll set aside her confusion that in this on-stage Annie was black. It’s not a race thing, honestly, but a face thing.

Her Annie reference is the 1982 film: she likes to pretend she is Annie but as she told me, perplexed, “I’m not black, Jennie,” before deciding on the way home she would get around the issue by painting her face.

“Good idea,” says my ever-encouraging mom.

“Noooo,” I groan, “please no.”

Our (black) taxi driver is giggling. I’m scarlet. Anyway, Annie – both the movie and broadway musical – is set in 1933 America, when Franklin D Roosevelt is president and millions are destitute following the 1929 stock market crash.

In the stage show, Annie gets the president and his advisors singing Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and soon they realise the way forward is a “New Deal” to create jobs by building dams, roads, railways and everything else a country might need.

Even bridges. This entails employing vast numbers of people, paying them, and, as an on-stage politico succinctly puts it, “getting them paying taxes again!” Roosevelt’s was a plan that echoed around the world, even in SA.

READ MORE: Amid tears… a smile shines forth

I remember visiting Pretoria Zoo with school, and learning the vast wild cat enclosures were built as part of a work-creation project for soldiers post-war.

Many were retrained as artisans. We have the artisans, often outside hardware stores begging for work. So give it to them.

Building infrastructure creates jobs as services grow to support the jobs, and spending increases, and also – imagine it – the country gets new stuff! It sounds like a pipedream, but we did it before.

We can do it again. And we have plenty of orphans for the singing.