Carl Niehaus, blame-shifting and what we can learn from this

Blame-shifting is self-destructive energy.

Carl Niehaus is obviously a desperate man. Desperate men do desperate things, therefore the gush of confessions coming out of his mouth needs to be closely checked.

For instance, already Rhema Church has denied ever lending Carl Niehaus about R700 000; a spokesman claims the church only stood as surety on a property he bought. My first reaction to his confession about owing Rhema money was: why is he telling us this? How does it help him? He need really only confess to the fraud, the crimes, not list for the Mail & Guardian and the public every debt he owes, which are not crimes against the state. They are civilian disputes. A staggering amount of people in the first world live in debt. So why bring an influential church into the spotlight?

If he does not owe Rhema any money, why on earth did he lie about it? And why quote such a colossal amount that is almost specific? (In other words, saying more than R700 000 is far more precise than saying, “I owe them a lot of money”.) If he is telling the truth, he therefore wants to bring Rhema into the limelight along with him, for reasons we can only guess at. Revenge? Bitterness? Some kind of perverse cry for help?

I have thoroughly read the Gospels, and, though no longer a Christian, I respect the “walk and talk” of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. One of the basic teachings of the Gospels is to uplift the poor and needy. It is everywhere in Jesus’ teaching and his ministry. Niehaus’s confession therefore brings Rhema into disrepute and begs questions about the church’s integrity. It is an obscene amount of money for one person to receive from a church. Even if Niehaus retracts his statement about owing Rhema money, it is still interesting to know why he made it in the first place, and why he would retract it later.

The matter could easily be cleared up with some forensic auditing of both Niehaus and Rhema’s bank accounts. Dare I say that there is a fat chance of that happening? Is Rhema transparent enough to allow an impartial audit of its financial affairs, with a particular focus on any loans to political and business stars?

Niehaus’s blame-shifting is the worst thing he could do at this stage. Now is not the time to blame his stint in the eighties in prison on his behaviour, or to blame apartheid, the latter being ridiculous. Nelson Mandela served 27 years in prison and went on to lead a nation. Jeremy Cronin served roughly the same time as Niehaus and is the deputy secretary-general of the SA Communist Party and a fine poet. Breyten Breytenbach went on to make solid contributions to SA literature and became an influential teacher of creative writing. Tokyo Sexwale went on to become an extremely successful businessman.

There were enormous problems in the home in my childhood, not the least my sister and father passing away in separate incidents in my matric year, leaving my mother and I nearly penniless except for her very ordinary job. To blame my lot in life or my behaviour on all that now at the age of 45 is giving power to those events to victimise me and programme me for failure. To hell with that; I have chosen “I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.” But I would like to stop feeling like a displaced, country-less person in China and am working on that.

Niehaus does need counselling, given his spectacular addiction to spending, making my wife, the Chook, look like a penny pincher. I sometimes go shopping in Shanghai with the Chook but after two hours I have had enough and need to find a pub or at least a coffee shop; she has not even warmed up. (There is a great Irish pub in a shopping mall not far from where we live in Shanghai with a board outside saying “Creche for husbands — wives, just leave him here with some beer money while you shop — we’ll watch him for you”.)

Niehaus’s blame-shifting immediately reminded me of Hansie Cronje when he was found guilty of match-fixing. Cronje, while undergoing counselling at Rhema, told us the devil made him do it. Cronje’s blame-shifting was just as ridiculous as Niehaus’s.

I have taught and trained all age levels from kindergarten to sales organisations. The first step in getting people to grow is to sell them the idea of taking personal responsibility for their lives. I love teaching on the slogan, “It does not matter who messed up, it only matters who cleans up”. The slogan is simple, risking being simplistic, but I see it not being followed often. The laws of physics underscores the truth that everything is in vibration, everything is energy. Blame-shifting is also energy, but sloppy, negative energy.

Let’s look at this perspective on energy. I remember once when my business in South Africa was really on the skids. For the first time ever, instead of coming up with solutions, I started borrowing money, though only from one person. Then I focused on who else I could get away with borrowing money from. Whilst making a mental list, I stopped myself. My focus was wrong: I realised I was using the wrong source of energy. Instead of focusing on who I could borrow from, I should have been focusing on how I can earn. Switching focus, I came up with the idea of marketing through private schools. It worked like a charm and within weeks I was earning more than I ever had.

Now that may sound like a schmaltzy, American, “get-rich-quick” success programme anecdote, but it is true and I am sure it illustrates my point, Mr Niehaus. Take responsibility; don’t blame-shift.

As a current teacher of Chinese children, I am amused, annoyed and sometimes baffled by their inability at times to take responsibility for their education. Boy, can Chinese children cheat and copy. (And China is infamous for making brilliant copies of various brand names; it still goes on here despite the efforts of the World Trade Organisation.)

One game is the Memory Game. I place a number of objects on a desk, a mixture of things for which they know the English name for (pen, mobile phone, keys) and items they do not know (nail clippers, file, receipt) to improve vocabulary. I then cover them with a towel. Looking up with a glint of mischief, I then ask them to write down all the objects they can remember in English. They all gasp with surprise but readily rise to the challenge, eyes going up to access the visual cortex area as children are great visualisers. Then I get them to do it again, adding to the list of objects. To ensure they do not cheat, but rather focus on improving memory skills and vocabulary, I tear the list of items they have written from their notepads and bin them. I kid you not, I catch kids looking at the fresh page and trying to read the indentation of their pens when scribbling down the list on the previous page!

Now these are 12-year-old children; it is our job as teachers to teach them to take responsibility for bettering themselves. Cheating ain’t going to do it. We really do learn all the rules of life at kindergarten and school, Mr Niehaus, and your schooling was long before your jail experiences. So don’t waste energy on impugning others or circumstances for your situation now as an adult. You cannot talk yourself out of a situation you have behaved yourself into. Believe you me, I know from experience. Please apply those simple school rules now for your own benefit. We can all learn from that.