The Big 5 unconscious blunders of our time in South Africa

There are things that we have created in our sleep. Those responsible for the creation of these things were either deep in their sleep, sleepwalking or sleeping light. And if we as the new generation do not awaken – we might as well kiss our collective potential goodbye. Let me expose these biggest and famous unconscious creations of our time. It’s the big five unconscious blunders of our time in South Africa.

The emancipation of the black majority from the rule of the white minority is South Africa’s biggest and famous unconscious creation of our time. From a black man trying to set himself free from apartheid he was accidentally bestowed with power; unconscious and unprepared. Blacks woke up the morning of the 27th of April (1994) as the descendants of oppression and they went to bed the same night as the ascendants of governance and political power. A black man woke up angry at Mr De Klerk (as the ultimate white master) and went to bed weary of the tension between Nelson Mandela and prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi and their supporters (as the killing between IFP and ANC diehards continued to spread threats of a civil war).

Democracy and the drafting of the constitution by politicians was another biggest and famous unconscious creation of our time. The idea of documenting all the inalienable rights of South Africans with no clarity on their responsibility (and even going to the extent of relying on an honesty system) is a wishful freedom exercise, and getting politicians to do this was an awful mistake. Maybe the Codesa negotiators needed to work on a settlement agreement first, and then maybe, maybe I say again, maybe the focus would have not been for our ANC grandparents to unconsciously rush to Union Buildings with the message of peace but to consciously draft a real-time solution that would address systematic and structural problems of society as the litmus test of true freedom. The unconscious quagmire of Codesa was to balance between the interests of politicians (who were present and negotiating) and the real interests of the people (who were out there grappling with unwanted realities), and I can see a Conscious Creator Steve Bantu Biko turning in his grave at our resultant mediocre politics of the day and the insult to see people as just mere votes that can be bought, counted and trashed.

The formalisation of South Africa’s eleven official languages was another biggest and famous unconscious creation of our time. Instead of questioning King Shaka’s legacy of ethnic overthrow (which continues to divide Zulus and Xhosas) we accepted racial tolerance (and assumed the task to be the reconciliation of blacks and whites). Instead of uniting under our common troubles I see us perishing in our separate pride. Instead of improving the versatility of our vernacular and intensifying its relevance I see people using English to make fun of each other. There is a new language, technology, and its artificial intelligence. It can only work progressively if its users are conscious.

Another biggest and famous unconscious creation, the one that makes my stomach to turn in disgust, is the normalizing of three layers of tertiary education. The notion that university, university of technology and FET (or TVET as it’s now called), the notion that the three are the same or serve the same purpose, is unconscious. I don’t understand why other people find it acceptable to invest so much in education and still be told that South Africa has a shortage of skills and the graduates are unemployable. Either there is something unconscious about business and its private nature (particularly the modern industrial monopoly schemes) or there is a public unconsciousness when it comes to proper and real education (which remains important to superpowers but impotent not just to South Africa as a country but Africa as a continent).

The fifth biggest and famous South Africa’s unconscious creation is its historic inferiority/superiority complex: the fallacy that we are greater than Africans but lesser than Westerners. This is clearly not displayed through how we put our overseas friends on high pedestals but how we are contemptuous and undermining to our own neighbours. South Africans are so afraid to choose they would rather suffer through a bad deal than lose one. To be talented and doubtful is such an unconscious thing. To be capable and inferior is such an unconscious thing. To have so much to give and yet continue to beg is such an unconscious thing. To have so much potential and remain in mediocrity is such an unconscious thing.

Freedom. Democracy. Language. Education. Talents. These are the 5 biggest and famous South Africa’s unconscious creations of our time. I dream of a day where the wave of consciousness will awaken us to begin to realize that we may not be truly free; our democracy may not be that radical; our cultures may not be that relevant; our education may not be that competitive and our talents may not be that obvious – but we have the power to create the reality that we want. We can become Conscious Creators and transform our unwanted realities and move from ‘the big 5 unconscious creations of our time’ to ‘the big 5 conscious creations ever created in South Africa by South Africans’.

Like Woolworths, we are ‘the difference’. Like KFC, we are born to be ‘so good’. Like ABSA, we are here to redeem ‘today, tomorrow, together’. Be Nike: just do it! Why? You ask why? As L’Oreal would say “because you’re worth it!” Let’s go to work. #ReinventYourselfNow

Checkmate!