To skill a mockingbird

It is a tragic human failing that we find it so easy to take our elders for granted. Maybe because I am easing into that category with alacrity; maybe because I massacred so many brain cells as a piece of furniture at the Fed; but all the hype around skills shortages and development and training makes me really the moer in.

I’ve just come back from the “green Kalahari” where the rate of desertification is quite alarming. When I’m out there in parts of the planet that are among the oldest accessible (some rocks only contain fossils of the very earliest life on Earth!), I learn more in an hour from Piet Roman or my own uncle Petrus than from 40 days of the Discovery channel. And so does my 17-year-old son — whom South Africa will have to work a helluva harder to keep when he matriculates next year.

Piet and my uncle have lived there all their lives. They know things young DScs have yet to imagine. They might not know much beyond Postmasburg or the Langberge, but if you need “skills” for understanding that ancient world, ain’t none better for the job.

Companies today fall over their HR departments to shed anyone over 50 (who isn’t on the board) faster than a gymnast on steroids sheds condoms. Most jobs are no-go areas or demeaning seat-warmers for us — check out the jobs pages. We’re seen as old fuddy-duddies (and there are some) illiterate in the latest business-school bluster, heavy on the medical aid and sick leave, set in our ways (yeah, right!), or plain over the hill. Like Dylan or Young or Jagger or …

Oh, we get treated with dignity that befits our age (unless, like me, you still look like you’re Brad Pitt at 40!), but they don’t even have a decent, politically correct euphemism for us yet. Ageism ranks along with mental illness, and companies are too obsessed with pussy-footing around gender and race and sexual preference and the differently abled to pay much attention to how much the geezers know.

The treatment with which we are graced is usually culturally based anyway. Call me Gogo. Instead of a catchy Schwarzeneggerism, we get: “Watch your back”.

Yet, where are the skills every facet of this myopic country needs? Right here, baby. That’s what the “blog that caused all the trouble” was really about. Okay, I grant that Sowetan and Avusa were idling away in the line of fire, but my beef was with skills development. Or rather the decade-long and worsening lack of it.

The generation that grew up when a quart of Black Label at the Vic in Grahamstown cost 28c, the mary-jane was gooooooood shit, your hair hung below your shoulder blades and Scope still used nipple stars might drive smaller cars today, but they’ve graduated cum laude with PhDs from the University of Hard Knocks; you check out but you can never leave.

I remember my other son (the 30-year-old photographer in Washington, DC) coming to me one day. “There’s a new singer I heard, Dad. He’s probably a bit too heavy for you. His name is Ozzy Osbourne,” he said with all the reverent awe of opening King Tut’s tomb. I didn’t say a thing. Just walked over to the hi-fi (remember those things?) and took out about five or six Black Sabbath LPs. I’ll never forget how his eyes and his admiration grew.

The bottom line is there is no need for skills shortages if your wind your arrogant black-and-white-diamond necks in and ask the toppies. Most of us are happy to share.

And it’s not a new idea! Shit, I learnt more journalism in the field with Tom Roy, Dave Hazelhurst, Jannie Nel, Machine-Gun Lynne Menge, Ike Segola, Robbie Botha, Peter Bunkell, Jack Leask, Chickenman Mike McCann and the venerable Mervyn Rees than from any journalism school. And they’re all dead — or hanging in there bravely.

Skills shortage? Bullshit! More like foresight shortage or lack of humility (aka arrogance).

The real tragedy is not the shortage itself — and many of our best and brightest are producing towering outputs in Washington, New York, Toronto, London, Athens, Sydney or Zurich; it is the fact that all the authorities (private and public) would rather settle for mediocrity and adequacy in the court of the great god-king Goodenough than get off their overpaid arses and ask for help. And listen to it when it is given!

The report in today’s Business Day yet again highlights the problems and forecasts dire consequences. And is it any wonder when the companies that need the skills the most would rather fire the agitators than face the truth of their own shortcomings?