Take care of home

This week and entire month a lot has been happening in South Africa. I mean from burning buses, to lodge racism to videos of teachers being oppressed.  It’s too much.  It’s a lot. It feels like that part of the night just before the morning.  Unbearable. And you start wondering if South Africa was once rich by robbing other continents as well, that now we are paying for it.  A lot of it feels like change, and change is good but going through the process is not. 

I believe to change, we need to take care of your own.  There are so many social ills in our country.  Counting them will make us realize the others related to those.  The most important ones for me, which I want to discuss today is ‘charity begins at home’. When you want to change the world, you start by dealing with you first.  We want a different country, a better country and better conditions. We all have to take care of ourselves first and let that rub off on everyone around us.

On a larger scale, for South Africa to be taken seriously we need to look serious ourselves.  We need to raise our levels as we would say today.  The standards must be improved.  No one will take us seriously if we ourselves are mediocre.  This applies to everything we do. It applies to how we educate, police, nurse, serve and deal with each other.  We as South Africans need to teach the world how to deal with us.  I believe when you show the world your level, they will approach you with that same or even higher level.  We need to command respect.

I saw pictures of the state of a hospital this week. I was not necessarily surprised sadly.  I realized this problem a few years back when my own grandmother was in hospital.  The hospital she was in was a government hospital, and absolutely inhabitable. I cried that day. For my grandmother.  She deserved better.  They deserve better. We all deserve better. I realized that hospitals are now employing people who ‘need’ jobs, not those passionate about nursing people.  Then they pay them just enough to keep them in but unhappy.  What do you expect from a nurse that makes peanuts? Passion? Love? Nothing? How do you pay people that should take care of the sick and needy peanuts? They render a service so high but receive close to nothing.

The same picture exists with our police force. I don’t need to list the incidents with police. I’m sure everyone of us knows someone who has been asked for a bribe by a traffic cop or police officer. Sometimes, you feel wrong for denying them that bribe.  You see their struggle but also know the law. Again these are the people that protect the community.  But their salaries are nowhere near that of a CEO of a corporate company. What motivation must this person have when they wake up?  The deal is face our crime, attempt to fight it and we pay you peanuts? 

Third one is education.  This is by far my most concerning area.  This one is a huge one because we will see the results of this mistake in a few years, and unfortunately we will not be able to correct it.  This one is dependent on time and people.  I still wonder why the education system was changed.  Not to say it was acceptable before. But changed to an even more questionable process. What is OBE? Is it working? And who qualifies to be a teacher? Are we hiring people passionate to be teachers or are those all going to private schools that pay more but not reachable for most of our people?  What kind of a generation/s are we creating through this?  Also these soldiers are not paid enough. Yes according to me. 

I am summing up 3 major areas in one article. Books can be written on each.  I just want you to start thinking. Trigger something in you and may be you could be the next person to bring change.  These 3 are what I believe need urgent attention today.  I am in no way suggesting it will be easy or even profitable from step 1, but in the long run we will not regret this.   If we take care of our own, our own will take care of us.  If the world realizes how we take care of our own, they shall bestow such levels to our country.  If our hospitals are filled with nurses that are efficient and happy, that attracts more favorable investments from other nations.  If we have efficient and happy police, crime could drop just a bit, and other nations will think twice before coming here for criminal activity. And if we take care of our teachers, I mean only GOD know what talent we could see in our future.

Some issues in our country are not necessarily difficult to correct.  They are not formulas or long macro-economic situations. They are literally linked to how we condone ourselves in our families.  South Africa is your family.  What is the world saying about your family? Why? And what have you done about it?