Illusions of competence

A penchant for reality television is not an entirely useless habit. Aside from whiling away the shiny hours it provides a fascinating look at the vagaries and conceits of modern behaviour.

Take Idols, in which wannabe-singers from across the land take part in a protracted televised knockout competition to determine ‘The next South African Idol!’ as the show’s catchphrase goes. The most striking aspect of these auditions is not the nuggets of talent that the Idols‘ judges unearth, but the prevalence and astonishing persistence of mediocrity.

True talent is a rare commodity; it is mostly dross that surrounds us. But this being the age of the individual, the apogee of selfishness and self-involvement, a distressing number of the talentless nitwits who enter Idols truly believe that they have great potential.

How could it be otherwise? Not only have they been encouraged in this delusion by soft-hearted and softheaded family and acquaintances, but this is also the century of entitlement.

Every kid is imbued with the fallacious belief that all are born equal in talent, that wealth and celebrity are a birthright, and all that is necessary to obtain this bonanza is to peel the blinkers from a recalcitrant world.

On Idols this means that there are literally thousands of contestants who — after warbling, screeching and without a shred of embarrassment revealing to the nation that they are total plonkers — just cannot accept the judges’ verdict that they have failed.

‘Gimme another chance,’ they beg. ‘I am passionate about singing and I just know that I have what it takes to be the next SA idol,’ they parrot.

It’s ugly stuff but, as befits a reality show, it is a slice of what happens in real life. Workplaces are full of people with ambitions beyond their ability.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with ambition, but it has to be anchored in a sense of what is realistically achievable. As importantly, to be socially useful it implies a willingness to prepare and to learn.

Success is not, as many imagine, a new category of human birthright, rather than the sometimes fortuitous result of a lot of effort, of slogging away determinedly even when undervalued. And entitlement is not an attitude that afflicts only celebrity-seeking kids.

Many African National Congress politicians and deployed cadres have succumbed to a particularly virulent strain of this kind of entitle-itis. And although the disease is rarely fatal to the carrier, it can ravage the society in which it takes root.

Pan Macmillan’s publication of former trade unionist Jay Naidoo’s autobiography, Fighting for Justice, is a reminder of a briefly different ANC. This was a liberation movement suddenly turned political party that was determined to change South Africa for the better by pulling it up by its bootstraps, by involving the brightest and best.

Unlike the useless drones that now overwhelmingly make up the ANC benches in the House, that first Parliament was blessed with an array of committed, capable people, who genuinely believed that they were there to serve the people.

How things have changed. Though Naidoo did not abandon his ideals — he remains deeply involved in independent social activism — he tested and found wanting an institution increasingly dominated by political manoeuvring and corruption. Like many other disillusioned parliamentarians, he left to make his fortune in business.

The kind of entitle-itis and lack of personal awareness that one sees on Idols is hilarious, albeit sometimes cringingly embarrassing. It is a different matter when it infects government, the civil service, and increasingly the business world. The antidote is a rare and strong medicine: critical introspection and the courage to recognise that one is not the centre of the universe.