What Mckay maybe means when he says 'we tried'?_3.1

Fools guide to saving the world_part 3

The finest feature of our home is our lounge. It's paneled with color-coordinated bookshelves and decadent creepers that walk unrestrained across the white open walls, their emerald leaves are our art pieces. Light from the huge windows streams inside liberally and the city hovers almost within touching.

In the centre of the lounge is our wine rack. On the wine rack is an ivory skull. Its owner was a prize-winning bull who one afternoon was resting his proud head on a fence pole. Two hundred meters away lighting hit a tree and the tree was touching the fence. Zap.

My wife and I, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed decided once the racial profile of her beautiful, two-bedroom apartment in an upper market suburb was not reflective of the trajectory we hoped for. We’re white. There’s only nine percent of us in a nation of fifty-seven million and yet still, almost thirty years after the ANC came into power, the mall in walking distance of her doorstep served mostly our kind. Rich white people. To make it worse those people who did have brown skin were manning brooms or counters, the lingering and ghastly effect of white supremacy a generation or two after liberation.

Harmony was Nelson Mandela's great dream. We were and still are fools to believe it’s an attainable reality. So back then, we upped and left. Moved downtown, as close to the inner city as we could muster.

That was pre-COVid. 2018. Before the world got turned upside down. Way back when just sixty percent of us lived below the poverty line, now I would hate to think what that number is. No one knows for sure. But I think it is high, scary high. For clarity, this means that sixty percent of our nation can’t afford food, toothpaste or school shoes depending on what poverty line you use.

What's makes our doorstep especially violent is we’re still sharing a verge with lots and lots of other one-percenters who control seventy point nine percent of all the money our nation has on offer. That insane difference between those of us truly, truly balling and those suffering is the biggest in the world and still largely governed by race. No surprises then, four of the ten most dangerous places to live are in SA, we live in the second worst.

Way back in 2018 there was a street security guard to protect us. A brown-skinned gentleman of course. But our neighbors lost faith in him and each other and he left. Then COVid hit. Pretty soon stuff started to disappear. First it was the brass on our wooden door. Next the light. Next the water pipes. I figured out why when taking out the trash one Monday morning. Streams of men and woman were moving like an army of ants up and down the road feasting on the fresh tidbits of food hidden between tampons, used condoms, and rotting food already wobbling with maggots.

I’ll never forget the one man, he walked up to me as I was lowering down my two black bags already full of the stench of decay and said with a brimming smile, ‘Got anything lakka¹ in there for me’. I was stunned. I think it was the smile with not a hint of resentment that hit me like a heavy-weight boxer. Behind me, two meters away, was my million Rand home. In the bags he would easily see my standard of living. How could he not want to attack me instantly with a knife?

So after that, I took to serving soup on some Mondays mornings between six and seven. It was mostly for me, so I didn’t feel so bad, and so they could have a warm, nutritious meal to make the work lighter (they recycle too). I try put effort into my soup, I am a good cook, I can get away with not; but if I can I slow it down and force myself to cook as I would for friends.

I learnt some of their names too, heard some of their stories, watched them work while I sipped coffee and read the sad, political news. There are clearly some drug addicts, others are just in a tough spot. One was a stowaway from Tanzania and said emigration was as easy as walking down to the docks and hitching a ride, he practically invited me to come with him to Russia.

Then in July of last year a large number of humans in our country got tired of eating out of trash cans. So they rioted and looted and twelve hours later we were guarding our street with neighbors and talking about headshots and severing femoral arteries with the knives and spears we were carrying while feasting on sweet things around a fire. We watch our city burn in that week, almost to the ground. I couldn't make soup then, not for almost six months; I was just too angry.

Law and order, that's what I learned. An essential and easy lesson to see when looters are pillaging buildings and shops just because they are so bloody mad. Mao, Lenin, and Stalin, they seem to show making everyone equal is hardly a solution to their anger sadly. That might be a more complicated one to figure out. And estates? Pockets of Elysium surrounded by endless kilometers upon kilometers of decay? A friend whose a fancy economist says they're the bedrock of our economy which has the biggest social grant system of any comparable economy in the world. This year more than thirty-five million people will eat each month not because they work but because rich people like me pay taxes and employ people and just want to feel safe when they get home so live behind very high fences. I think she might be right but it still hardly seems ‘fair’.

This week will be the third in a row we've met as a street. Finally a bit of progress towards a common goal. Our ward councilor is coming to meet us but it still feels like pulling teeth. People are just so tired. It's been years and years of having Nelson Mandela’s hope deferred slowly and I guess that leads to the sickest hearts of all? I feel sooooo tired too.

I suppose I just don't want to be like that bull. Asleep thank’s to my hopelessness or full tummy. I don't want to be drowsy to my neighbor’s pain. Dozing off to the fact that I live in the most unequal country in the world and that means something for me, for my friend across the road who regularly has no food despite being a super hardworking and smart dude.

I suppose I just don't want to be doff², standing still when I should be looking around a bit. Maybe I just don’t want to be blamed when the lighting finally falls? Or maybe, just maybe, I want to be able to say with conviction as Adam Mckay can, ‘oh boy did we try’.

1. Lakka - very nice in Afrikaans

Doff - Afrikaans works for stupid

2.