Oh New Zealand … would something please HAPPEN?!? We humans are Happening People, and “happening” stuff collocates with happy. I see from the etymology that “hap” has a common root in both words: “fortuitous circumstances”, from which we get other terms like mishap.
The guys in SA just don’t know how lucky they are with their “thrill a minute” news. My flavour of the moment is the tannie Annelie Botes scandal because she doesn’t like blacks and the only positive that may flow from that is at least she is being honest and — we wonder — is perhaps speaking for a number of whiteys and other races (hey maybe even other blacks) too scared to take off their politically correct masks. In her interview she said “If black people are hungry, why don’t they, like in the old days, break in, steal the fridge and walk away? I know where their anger comes from. It has fuck all to do with apartheid. They are angry because of their own incompetence”. Man, I winced at that one, especially the nostalgia for the “old days”. As I read it I felt that delicious thrill, that mixture of shock and glee (not unlike a bowel-moving, scary amusement park ride) as her real prejudices gushed out. At least Tannie Annelie is not a fake. Her story is superbly and sadly human, a miniature of our global history: a tale of stupidity, prejudice and ignorance which we would do well to look for and root up in ourselves. There’s nothing like sheer self-confrontation with what we are all about to feel alive again, to wake up, to stop denying. And we humans need happening stuff; we need that chemical mix of serotonin and/or endorphins and/or adrenalin to keep us stimulated and therefore happy.
My point here is SA news does not betray the human race. The daily news from my home country often invites me to confront myself, to think through my own prejudices. I don’t want those character traits. But, like weeds sprouting in an unattended garden, they come back when I am not vigilant. Life is about growth, which can be likened to pruning and caring for a garden so it can flourish more. SA news helps me remain observant, true to myself.
That fascinating, large shoulder chip at the bottom of the African continent is also just never boring, and you blokes still there maybe don’t quite get that. Let’s take my Google News page today (Friday 3rd December) and just a selection of the confrontational, compelling, “in your face” headline news that South Africans flip through over the morning coffee every day. Or over a stiff whiskey or four every evening, which could be me:
Media gets access to ET murder trial
Husband-killer case: Judgment resumes after lunch
Mark black matric results carefully — Sadtu
(Wonderful Orwellian language trying not to say that blacks should receive positively biased marking. But hey, aren’t I being prejudiced in just thinking that? Hmmm … honesty check. Let’s inspect that garden for weeds again.)
Man in hostage drama has psychiatric problems — family
‘Rehabilitation’ for rape case pupils
Police arrest third suspected serial rapist
All this, and sooo much more. And that’s other than the Delwani murder case and the Cougar from Silver Lakes scandal, both of which are already so yesterday. (However, betcha in the Delwani case some of you are still placing bets on whether or not it was the husband; he’s my favourite.)
And what, on the same Google news page does New Zealand have to offer? Here, I kid you not, is the leading story. New Zealand triumphantly proves they invented meringue-based puddings first before Australia in, ta daaa … New Zealand Wins Pavlova War. That top headline just comes out with guns blazing, doesn’t it just?
And I assure you the news headlines here do not get much better after that. Women winning medals in some cycling tour, oysters dying off the north coast, all the excitement of ditchwater, nothing to make your balls shrivel with apprehension, your scalp crawl, your skin tingle as you look at what the human race is all about. For that, you click on SA news. If you’ve stopped having those sensations, then you have become desensitised.
Where there’s humans there’s mess. We develop that habit of messing early on; look how little children tear up the Christmas wrapping and forget about the present, completely absorbed in the mess they are making and drooling over it. We can’t sweep our mess under the carpet and we are not going to find it in a leading column arguing the history of who first invented a pudding, for God’s sake. That somehow just betrays the human race, doesn’t it?
Oh and if you are one of those fine readers who just hate comparisons between SA and other countries, I understand your possessive jealousy. You’ve got something special in SA. It’s not just our Sterkfontein Caves being the cradle of humankind. My beloved country still cradles and nurses on its bosom the brutally ugly and potentially beautiful truth of what the human race is all about. That’s why those South Africans who confront themselves, get ruthlessly honest with their “stuff” and choose to be the best humanity has to offer (which is something magnificent) are very special. But I know, I know … I’m also just biased.
Follow Rod MacKenzie’s The Mocking Truth column on NewsTime
See a revealing interview with Rod MacKenzie here .
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