As 2020 gets underway, I’m almost afraid to look.
Is this brand-new year – nice round numbers, don’t you think? – going to be more of the same that we saw in 2019, or are we going to turn a new corner?
Over the holiday season it’s easy to forget the dark days of last year when the electricity was off, when SAA wasn’t flying, when the Zondo Commission droned on and on.
When, to be honest, very little that should have happened, did. The crooks are still out there, free as a bird, the Guptas (remember them?) are thumbing their noses at us and spending our money on more weddings back in India, our roads are still in a shocking state and, worst of all, the fascists that the EFF and the like have become can say what they like and nobody tells them otherwise.
Over the holidays when I ran out of books to read, I turned to social media in idle moments. Isn’t it astonishing how many people can find the time to complain, moan, take offence and generally be unpleasant about the most trivial matters?
I appreciate that some don’t like fireworks, barking dogs, power failures etc, but they go on and on and on to the point of distraction.
If someone complains about fireworks or monkeys, for example, you can be sure that there will be an endless string of supporting Ayes and Yesses.
What is really interesting is how few people will dare to hold an opposing view. Pity the poor souls who disagree with the mob – they get torn to shreds! There’s no rational argument or discussion – it’s just ‘my way or the highway’!
And that’s just the discussions by real people, because I recognise many names in the local discussion groups.
What I hadn’t realised before was the extent of fake accounts peopled by computer bots. (An Internet bot, also known as a web robot, robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone.)
For example, Helen Zille, the DA national chairperson, just has to say the sky is blue for her to get swamped by a tsunami of ‘people’ insisting she only says that because she’s a racist, and variations on that theme.
Through a little detective work she discovered that of her 1,4 million followers on Twitter, 600 000 are fake accounts, or computer bots! Whose job, presumably, is to be on the lookout for anything she says and pounce on it.
Say what you like about Zille, she’s no ‘hensopper’. She doesn’t surrender at the first shot just because the world appears to be against her. She further discovered that Twitter isn’t prepared to delete the fake accounts, she has to block them herself, one by one. Good grief, she’ll be dead before she can go through that lot!
Zille’s bot army caused cartoonist Jerm to become famous overnight for a cartoon which depicts a black man saying to a white man “Give me back the land you stole”, to which the white retorts “You raped my wife”.
The black guy looks alarmed and says “But I didn’t”. The white guy exclaims: “My point exactly.” The point of the cartoon, Jerm says, was to expose the fallacy of generalisations and stereotypes. He drew the cartoon last June, but it wasn’t noticed until Zille ‘liked’ it last month and evoked a storm of protest. Consequently, Jerm has been banned from Facebook!
I thought the cartoon a little insensitive, sure, but not offensive.
It was clearly satirical, which seems to have gone right over the heads of the protestors.
But my question is, are those protestors real people? Or are they yet more cyber-warriors from a political army dreamed up by some calculating agency?
Remember Bell Pottinger?
They weren’t the first and won’t be the last professional PR outfit to design campaigns that target the ‘woke’ brigade for spectacular results.
I can say ‘I wish things will get better’ but what good will that achieve? What English author Charles Dickens said still holds true: “The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.’ Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.”
There is plenty of encouragement all around us, if you take the time to look.
There are individuals doing well in business, there are businesses doing well.
Take the entrants in last year’s Entrepreneur competition.
They were a group who had stopped saying ‘I wish’ and said ‘I will’.
Many of them from fairly humble backgrounds, they devoted their spare time over three months to learning the skills that could lead to success.
Most will remain small – no shame in that – but some will grow spectacularly in years to come.
Success doesn’t come about because some fairy godmother waves a magic wand. It comes through dogged hard work, through disappointments and successes.
So many people are defeated before they start. “I’ll never have a job. I’ll never be able to buy a home. I’ll never have a good car.”
Hard times didn’t start yesterday.
I remember my parents talking of their first home. It was a converted garage in Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg.
My father had a lowly job in the bank and wasn’t paid at all well.
The open drain from the main house ran through the middle of their room, so when someone emptied a bath in the house, the water would slosh through their bedroom!
But they survived. They went on to start their own business and did alright for themselves, even though there were plenty of ups and downs.
I’ve learned through years of being involved in the Entrepreneur compo that the winners are those who have a plan, but above all show guts and have a strong desire to win.
The defining characteristic of so many of the entrants in the competition, not just the winners, are people who have recognised that they need to learn more.
They know that they don’t know.
The iLembe Chamber of Commerce Entrepreneur comp is a particularly positive endeavour in a sea of negativity, but there are many stories of success wider than that.
I particularly admire the Partners for Possibility project, where bright souls (retired and active) partner with schools to help them overcome difficulties.
And some have taken on projects off their own bat. I know of one retired principal who advises two disadvantaged schools as a ‘retirement project’. There seems to be no shortage of need for good schooling, is there?
Come one, let’s make 2020 the year when we say ‘I will’, not ‘I wish’!
* * *
Baby Bear, sitting in his little chair at the table, looks at his little porridge bowl. “Who ate my porridge?” he sobs.
Pappa Bear looks at his big porridge bowl. “Who on earth ate my porridge?” he demands angrily.
Mama Bear sticks her head through the kitchen door and shouts, “I haven’t made the porridge yet . . .
BECAUSE IT’S LOADSHEDDING!”
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