What a birthday!
Started with breakfast with tbV [aka the beautiful Val, my lovely wife] and our former housemates from Oakland, California, Aaron and Sarah at Martin’s, a local bakery/restaurant just down the road from us.
It finished with a drive along Chapman’s Peak, some Sticky Ribs and a game of Lords of Waterdeep [which i totally crushed, although it was my birthday so who knows what was going on].
But in between all of that there was Mapula. A young black woman in South Africa with a university debt to pay off so that she can start looking for a job.
My hope for my country is to live in an all inclusive society, where people can actually begin to perceive each other as human beings.The world is made out of so much love by God we ought to start giving it, there is a Pedi proverb that goes”Motho ke Motho ka batho”roughly translated it means you are only a person through other people that is my hope for a new South Africa.
SHOW ME THE MONEY
With an approaching birthday, there really wasn’t anything i needed and not really anything i wanted either, and so i was quite happy to less this one sneak by… until i heard Mapula’s story, and suddenly that Pedi proverb rings true: “Motho ke Motho ka batho” – i am a person through other people.
That echoed the strains of Ubuntu and the idea that in Africa the village raises the child. Suddenly i knew what i wanted for my birthday. My friend Tristan had started an Indiegogo campaign to see if we could raise the $2, 400 needed to help Mapula and so i quickly put together a post, inviting my friends to be a part of raising the money as a birthday gift to me.
It was SO EXCITING to watch the percentometer rise throughout the day as people started to give. Before i went to bed, i wrote these thoughts in my status:
More than 350 birthday messages, from who knows how many countries around the world – THANK YOU – each one means so much – and so many of the messages flip stories back into my head of how i met you or a conversation we had or an event we attended together – so many memories in one beautiful day…
# i imagine i am one of the few people who responds to each message personally [or tries to] and probably the only person on Facebook who has ever spammed 350 people with a Birthday Present link [so much so that i had to start identifying tigers and watches and lions in groups of photos to prove my non-botyness]
# BUT i absolutely believe in the link and it has been great to connect with Mapula and see the fund-raiser start the day small and hit 67% by the time i am heading to bed – you can check the results here: https://www.generosity.com/education-fundraising/mapula-s-dream
# i REALLY want to thank each and every person who gave from R100 to $400 – the time and energy and effort and money may feel small on an individual basis but for one person it is life-changingly-significant and i hope this is a story we get to hear more about…but THANK YOU really to everyone who gave… you have helped to make a difference. Most of you saw the birthday ask, but not everyone got to read the follow-up post shared by Mapula giving us a glimpse into her life and dream:
https://brettfish.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/meet-my-new-friend-mapula-diale
# Lastly, my friend Leah Rudman had this to say:
I reckon you find one of these a month:
(1) people trust you so they trust you trust who we are giving to
(2) you’ve got friends across the whole world and if we all do something small it can do something big.
(3) people sometimes need to find opportunities to exercise their generosity
(4) most people can set aside $8 or R100 each month!!
(5) habitual generosity will hopefully become a more frequent habits in their own daily lives.
Thoughts??
So i will leave that with you… If you are someone who would be up to committing R100 or $6 or the currency equivalent of your choice to a worthy cause once a month i can definitely do the ground work in finding it… but maybe let me know below if you’d be keen and we can gauge interest…
Thank you for celebrating my birthday loudly and sincerely – i feel much loved and i am SO SUPER EXCITED for the possibilities of this year ahead and especially for South Africa that i know so many people feel so bleak about – there is so much reason for hope and optimism.
You are loved,
brett fish
When i woke up this morning, the counter had jumped to $1, 692 or 71% which was really exciting. i was hoping we would have nailed the whole amount, but that still is a really great effort by so many people.
Although, then i saw something that bummed me out a little bit – the bit that says, ‘raised by 69 people in four days’… [especially knowing that there were other networks of people getting involved and that at least two of the much larger amounts had come from people outside of my circle]
i have 4500 Facebook friends and another almost 4000 followers on the Twitterer and only 69 people came to the party [well probably less cos those weren’t all mine].
i guess some people get overwhelmed when looking at a $2, 400 goal… but when you break that down into a R100 gift [the equivalent of $6 and even less pounds] it really is not a big deal for most people i know, but it does require that a whole bunch of us [400] show up.
Just 118 more people at that rate [and i know at least one person gave $400, in fact most people gave over the $6 we asked for] and so i’m hoping this post will help get us there…
In fact if 59 of you grab a friend and do it together, then that is all it takes.
i love South Africa and i have a whole lot of hope for her. But for the kind of change needed here, we are going to need everyone to start showing up. Listening, engaging, committing to a movement like #NotOnMyWatch when we see or hear racism around us, and also digging into our pockets for time, money, energy, and resources.
Another amazing thing about the birthday gift was that it was international with people from the USA, Australia, England, Scotland, New Zealand and beyond all getting involved. That really was great.
Lastly, in the greater scheme of things, you might be thinking, ‘One person? What’s the big deal?’ What difference does it make? Well, i imagine for Mapula, it makes a bit of a difference. And then for her family. For the company where she is going to work. For the younger people that she is a role model too. And so on. i imagine that seeing how one person can be helped SO EASILY by everyone putting in their little bit, we can hopefully be more prepared to be doing it more often and hopefully have our eyes wide open for the next story we can be a small part of. Maybe we might even consider being part of something like Common Change and joining with friends regularly to share our resources with people we know and care about who are in need.
But what a birthday day it was. Although in 29% time it will have been so so much better, Thanks for giving, if you did. Now is there one other person you can invite to help us inch that one little bit closer?
For over 21 years, black South Africans have largely forgiven the majority of the white population who repeatedly voted in a racist government that dehumanised and denied them their most basic human rights. Despite the prolonged emotional, mental and physical suffering to themselves and their families, black people have, in the name of freedom and reconciliation, and “a better life for all”, willingly forgone retribution.
Have whites responded with the same generosity of spirit? Not even close.
Most whites in South Africa are racist. Even those who profess not to be racist are racist. Unless it is especially blatant most do not even recognise racism – especially in themselves.
When it is pointed out, they become defensive and angry, instead of humble and apologetic.
Racism is in our psyche and in our blood. Centuries of conditioning have genetically engineered us to be racist: to genuinely believe that we whites are superior.
For thousands of years the Biblical lexicon has associated darkness with sin and evil and whiteness with light and good. Most whites accept without question that Western culture is desirable and should supersede all others; that black culture is barbaric and undesirable; that whites are more intelligent than blacks; that whites are hard workers and blacks are lazy.
Whites see black people living in conditions they would never contemplate and fallaciously presume that black people are okay with it or, worse, deserve it. They see black people exclusively cleaning our homes, our gardens, our pools, our streets, our businesses and our schools and collecting our garbage. “They” are the labourers who dig the trenches in our streets and dig the diamonds and gold from our deep rock. “They” have done these things forever. More recently “they” are the faces of crime and of the incompetent and corrupt.
So “they” are nothing like us.
Except they are.
“White supremacy” conditioning has been thorough – but, in South Africa today, there is no place for racism and nothing will excuse it.
White South Africans regularly abscond from the burden of responsibility that the past places on their shoulders in the present: “I wasn’t even born / I’m not responsible / I never voted NP / It’s the government’s responsibility.”
This attitude cripples our ability to work together to build South Africa into a peaceful, prosperous democratic state.
Julius Malema, in an interview with a Sunday newspaper earlier this month, is spot on when he says white people will continue to feel superior – to regard black people even as animals – until the material living conditions of black people is equal to that of the whites. It’s a Herculean task – it needs every South African on board, working together.
To move forward we have to accept that our superior economic freedoms today (ie our superior access to resources) have come at the expense of our black compatriots and continue to do so, and that we are obligated to assist in whichever way we can.
Whites need to take on board the criticisms that we are racist; that, unconsciously or consciously, we too often say and do things that are hurtful and damaging to the majority of South Africans. To understand racism we have to listen more and deflect less. We have to demolish “us” and “them” and just be us.
The present government has failed to build a more equitable society. Economic development is stifled by nepotism, corruption, inefficiency and unaccountability. Our leaders’ shortcomings feed into whites’ tendency to stereotype and generalise in terms of race and so all black people are judged by the actions of a corrupt minority. The ANC government itself regularly fuels the fires of racism by labelling white critics as racist. (Black critics are either coconuts or counter-revolutionaries.)
Black people are tired of waiting for access to the only real means to acquire economic freedom: that being a quality education that will enable them to lift themselves and their families out of poverty and hardship.
They are tired of broken promises from the government and of their harsh living conditions; they are tired of the total lack of empathy from their white counterparts; and they are especially tired of white people’s racist and fallacious criticism that their material circumstances result from laziness and attitudes of entitlement.
The magnanimity of black South Africans is cracking: service delivery protests are rising in number and violence. Racism with a strong anti-white sentiment is becoming commonplace on all social media platforms.
Wake up White South Africa. You cannot hide in a laager. You cannot all emigrate to Australia! Be an advocate for change. The more the government fails, the more we need to pull together and build together.
Our children and grandchildren’s futures are intrinsically tied to the futures of all South Africans. We need equality no matter what. We all need the same houses and same structure no matter what. Agree?
We will sink or swim together.