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Transition, the current state of democracy, cultural movement, pollution of class, cross-class-pollination and diversity preparation are all realities of an accelerated growth in the past ten years of the South African people. As the disadvantaged burgeoned, the advantaged slid to the side to look on. Some emigrated, some watched simply to observe it failing, some were happy and some felt guilty.
My objective here is to create a window into a world not often explored or discussed across the unstable class/race/economic fences. The consequences of the divide between those who have and those who have not, amount to large numbers of topics and subjects. I merely discuss the secret language of the guilt therein and mostly thereafter. There is so much dependence these days on a democracy trend, for example. We concentrate a lot on how we are doing. Are we doing it right? Are the right steps and building blocks falling in the right places? There is no history to look back on for the South African people for a South African example. We are still trying to understand and analyse the African democracies, like Tanzania, Namibia, Mozambique and even Zimbabwe. We all conclude that various people and peoples have different opinions even on the basic contents of a democratic machine. Without a doubt we find one of the ingredients to be guilt as one of the powerful feelings alongside truth and reconciliation. Attuning oneself to these, we feel and listen. The whispers that nobody hears, the voice that nobody speaks with, the feelings that never find the notes in the melody of the South African heart. I look inside the way of being with our guilt. A way to harvest our guilt. A way to measure mortality. To do nothing but embrace the emotion that tries to show us so much, but makes us see so little in the end.
Democracy ... the birth, prenatal and postnatal, complete with its fertilisation, incubation period, labour pains and complications, political opposition contractions, the actual journey of the People from its womb down through the birth canal, into the world with its soft bald head first. From between Mother Africa's legs, gasping for its first breath of the new land, followed by a loaded, joyous scream of life and placed directly onto the warm breast of the Mother, filling its gaping mouth with rich milk sprung from our soil that is African.
I, however, am discussing only the amalgamation of the past and present emotions we experience every day. I have chosen a number of characters and given them names to make it easy for you to follow instead of a laborious time-consuming explanation. I, too, occur here as a character and will refer to myself as "I" and "me", etc. The names are general, their statements are simple and their opinions not forced.
I lead with the example of "Jane".
Jane hails from a white Rondebosch middle-class home. Catholic upbringing and from a two parent-home. Schooled at Rhodes University and has two brothers and a sister.
Jane and I often talk of the transition and how it has affected our lives. The last while we unconsciously concentrated on guilt. My working-class, non-matriculated, single-parent home. My two brothers and one sister environment in Steenberg in a public school was the comparison. The last ten years of a relatively close friendship with her and her family has provided me with great insight into her world. She has gained great insight into my world and found it unfair. I thought her situation was attractive, being surrounded by so much knowledge, books and wisdom. They were never rich, of course, but then also never struggled to keep food on the table as was the case in our home. Jane was amazed at the fact that I function as well as she does in the world. The only brown people she'd ever met were very wealthy in some way back in the 80s. Those brown children, she says, were much better off than her family and therefore we have a straddling of other lines concerning her understanding of middle and lower classes. Growing up with bad examples, I later added, was the essence of solidifying class and race boundaries. She thinks that if she had lived my life she would hardly find herself in my shoes. It is impossible for her to plot my life, do the maths and end up being here. Often astounded at people from similar backgrounds to mine and those of my ilk. I in turn find it amusing that she finds my life strange in that way. For me it was just a matter of being, and existence. Euphoria, maybe.
Jane expresses a growing amount of guilt almost daily. She compares her one-bedroom flat with that of a shack in Langa. She carries guilt for owning her flat, including electricity, hot water etc. The shack in Langa has no running water, an extension cord from a neighbouring house for electricity and the possibility of flooding and cold temperatures. Her concerns are not limited to the "haves and have nots" between her and, say, Tabi of Langa. She worries that Tabi lives in a bungalow with her mother, her sister and her sister's baby and her grandmother. Jane and the grandmother are friends but Tabi is the same age as her and thus the comparison. Tabi has done a number of free community courses, did a full year of a computer-based course in design etc. Tabi is employed and wins bread for the tiny home of five. Jane still complains when the plumber doesn't arrive for two days to fix her leaking tap. She then feels guilty because Tabi's house doesn't even have running water, let alone money to afford a plumber even if they had plumbing or plumbing problems.
Jane finds that her daily struggles against this guilt escalate more rapidly every day. For example, she sometimes complains about completely relative things and then disregard them immediately because Tabi has nothing. Jane believes that Tabi does not complain at all as she goes through her life grateful for everything. When Jane has a meal at a restaurant she pulls back and thinks of Tabi sacrificing a meal in a restaurant for, let's say, clothes for her sister's new baby. Tabi thinks that Jane's flat is beautiful and wishes that she could also live on her own like that, but would miss her family too much and that makes it unfair for her. She doesn't feel that she has to remain the breadwinner, but prefers to, as opposed to feeling guilty the whole time and missing her community and family and friends. Tabi was also of the opinion that buying clothes for her sister's baby would give her so much joy, when a meal at a restaurant might not equate to the look on a child's face.
As you can see, their opinions are realistic only relative to their own lives and that guilt at this level becomes a mere extension. I thought of my guilt as in Jane on Tabi, Clive on Tabi. I don't think of the Tabis of Langa as a primary but more as a tertiary. I think of the truly homeless. I feel it when it rains. For those who have absolutely no shelter. Street kids. Strollers ("bergies"). I feel guilty when I sleep too warm. When I have great meals with wine and pudding.
Enter Johannes, the stroller. Does that mean our guilt goes one unfortunate/disadvantaged level down? Jane has never mentioned the homeless in our discussions. I've never expressed any guilt toward the Tabis of Langa. Although I feel for her situation, it's not an immediate concern of mine. For me it's incomparable to place the "suffering" of Tabi before Johannes of the street. I think of my community first, the gangsterism, the stray-bullet killings of children, the raping of babies and other such atrocities painted on to newspapers every day. Just yesterday Hamieda's daughter kicked her ball into my garden. Today she's on the front page of the Argus.
I see the Tabis as my contemporaries and feel guilt more towards those less fortunate than Tabi and me. Tabi feels for the people inside her community that live in tin shacks or live under plastic sheets in the bushes. Jane toward the Tabis and Mes of this world. Who feels guilty for the Janes, then? Are there people out there that might drive past Jane watering her garden and mouthing a worn-out phrase of how sad it is to see such a bright girl living in that decaying Rondebosch? Surely the humour in this situation is all I can draw from this "impossible to occur" situation. Many of you will find it hard to imagine.
Who does Johannes walk past every day and feel guilty about because he has more than them? Johannes and his wife live in a dry alley. He feels he works hard, gardening, collecting cardboard etc. He has a cooked meal on the little fire and extends a plate of food to Tokkie. Tokkie sleeps under a bush under a plastic sheet. He has long since forgotten the luxury of parents, hygiene, clothes etc. All the elements that make a child a child. Toys, family, play, sharing, a home, bath-time, school. All he knows is survival. It takes up all his time. Every day. He has less than Johannes. Johannes feels for him.
Enter Simon. Simon is a CEO of a multinational. When I asked him, all his sentences started with "of course". He therefore assumed that I knew that he cared for Jane, Tabi, Me, Johannes and Tokkie. The lines between us were non-existent. He could identify only Jane and claims not to have guilt for her. Says he was her when he grew up and that he worked for what he has today.
Surviving for food and shelter leaves no real time to make wealth in Johannes's world and making wealth leaves no time for fussing over food and shelter. Provisions are things that are automatic in Simon's world of food and shelter. When shelter is defined by location and not much to do with a structure with a roof for keeping dry, we create confrontation/insidiousness. Not reverence.
I felt that four years of Communism (prior to our Democracy, of course) would have miniaturised the differences between all South Africans. I feel Communism would have made us all equal so that we never have to say or think that you never had a chance or got done in because you never had a choice. It is clear that Tokkie and others like him never had a choice and that things would have been different if they were allowed it.
Now faced with the often offending environment I've created above, we are asked the question, does what lingers inside, in the form of guilt, reflect how we regard others less or more fortunate that ourselves? Do we think, action? Do we think, emotion? Leaving us with the undefined guilt of Simon and our inability to make a connection between Simon and Tokkie. It's almost inconceivable to think they share the same town.
Thinking of how we can help less fortunate people is as complicated and difficult as actually doing something about it. For example, to give a tenth of your salary to the church. Herein you are then exempt from any guilt. The church absorbs your guilt and your money goes to all the chosen charities, so chosen by your church. Some of us often feel that a consistent help to the same people would be more fruitful than scattering small amounts of money, clothes and food to a vast number of people. This method is the least used of all the methods, as it makes everything to grey and vague. This method prevents one from seeing any real change as opposed to giving directly to Johannes and his wife. Later you will see them looking healthier. Wearing cleaner clothes, etc. The more an improvement you notice in their lives the less guilt you feel.
So, too, then does Johannes feel about helping the Tokkies of the world. He then is able to give Tokkie more in quality and volume. This will improve Tokkie's situation and improve his self-esteem and his view of society and the community. This view is important, as he often feels that his community and the general society has forgotten him, let him down. Therefore he finds himself in a situation where he is owed something. He feels nothing toward anybody, being the last in line for anything. Crime, pity and violence comes easily for him. He becomes fearless as he has absolutely nothing to lose. Having missed out on an education he lacks the valuable lessons that no one can give but oneself. A lesson that makes you feel alive. A lesson that makes one feel part of the living whole. Never having felt a gentle word on his ear that would make him otherwise believe that his life is the most treasured thing there is in this world, and that it matters to all of us in the world.
As long as we hold the guilt barometer active in our daily lives we will be able to keep young children like Tokkie closer to life and further from slipping away from it, further from a forward escape into crime, violence, hunger, neglect and even death and starvation.
It is difficult, for all of us, to find the place in the world that we fit into. We think and ponder where that place might be all the time. We assert and relax our opinions daily. We trade guilt with money, money for peace of mind. Love and hate nice car or shelter for the night. Guilt trading is a constant reminder that we are living in a world with other people. Next to other people. Above and below other people and often in conflict with other people, on a varying array of complex social levels.
Therefore I return to the lay person, who seeks only to live a mundane but successful life. If we all abandoned our guilt, or traded it out, how would we know our place in the world? How would we know if anything was enough or too little? Would we know that we were even alive, or dead, and for how long? By seeking to live a good and humble life we are blessed with the splendour of a great emotion, a sense, to measure our longevity, humanity and mortality by. Guilt.
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Clive E Smith: I'm 34 and live in Woodstock. All I
ever wanted to be was a writer. I've been published for about
12 years. Adult literature, columns, novellas in both English
and Afrikaans, agony columns, internet fantasy series writer
and creator, and short stories in both languages, are amongst
a few things I've done. I dabble in carpentry, building my
own furniture from waste wood, gardening, bass guitar playing,
weekend mechanic and my great love, cooking. I have no formal
education. Everything I know I taught myself. I love books
and read a lot and also buy lots of research and reference
books for my library at home. I love music and still listen
to and collect vinyl. I'm probably the only country music
DJ in Africa, but I love it (it's massive at the moment).
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