Upward mobility: The pros and cons
What does it mean, being on top? To a musician in Zimbabwe, being on top means filling up the venues and defying the pirates by undercutting them. It can also mean having your latest song blaring in most kombis . . .
HOW many times do we hear people talking about where they are now when accepting awards or when they receive recognition for something? On such occasions people usually acknowledge certain others who may have played a part in their new-found success? But what does it all mean, really? The way things are going these days, you wonder what the world is coming to. When one people or nation conquers another, the tendency is for the subject peoples to then want to emulate the vices and/or virtues of the new rulers.
For obvious reasons, going up in the world, what is often referred to by some as upward mobility, is relative, depending on how those in power or positions of influence see things.
To a very large extent we situate ourselves by comparing our general welfare and well-being with that of others, most likely our neighbours or members of the extended family or the community at large. For that reason we are always watching what others are doing and measuring ourselves against them.
This is how such expressions as “tiri veclass” (we are of a high social class) have come about. The way people look at themselves in comparison to others makes them adopt certain practices including those they may not really be familiar with. Take for instance, some of the peculiar things now going on at funerals.
You now hear people saying they were not invited to a funeral. This, of course, is something quite foreign to us, but which is beginning to creep in. When that happens, even the cars people drive become important, and the clothes they wear. The whole affair is changed from being a bereavement to being a social gathering and a sort of “who is who?”
From the attire to the dainty tissues and handkerchiefs, everything is exquisite. The corpse may also be wearing make-up in a macabre kind of imitation of the excesses of Salvatore Dahli the Spanish avant garde artist. That guy was raving mad. He even directed what his face should be made to look like in death. You sometimes wonder if the cameraman will not ask a corpse to look more realistically dead.
In some cases, after someone makes it or imagines they have, they do everything they can to discard former acquaintances and to shun poor relations. This often leads to people taking up new hobbies. Suddenly you have someone who previously was a guzzler getting inebriated on opaque beer insisting on Johnny Walker Black Label or marinated Famous Grouse.
They become members of exclusive clubs where they have regular sundowners and converse in affected speech characterised by exotic nasal tones - kunoza! Conversation is mostly about smartphones, cars and annual turnover at the place of work. Some advertise the fact of their being on the prowl for any deals they can get. Deals are struck while playing golf and some of these Johnnycome-latelies (omafikizolo) can be quite obnoxious.
They just cannot resist the opportunity to show up someone whenever the fancy grabs them. With a mischievous glint in their eyes they might innocently ask you what your handicap is when they know full well that you have never played golf and that you’re an absolute rookie. This just makes them more vindictive and vicious. They dig into your ego with lots of gusto, talking about birdies and eagles and so on. At lunch they order prawns, snails and lobsters and revel in eating foods that make your skin crawl.
In today’s consumer world we have become more and more acquisitive. We are obsessed with getting more and more of everything and if we can have what we want, exclusively, it gives us boundless joy and gratification. We then feel that we are on top of the world and everything is going our way.
Social mobility is vertical rather than horizontal. Even the language we use shows this. When things are not going well we say they are bad/low/scrappy and so on. We are then at rock bottom or in the doldrums. When things take the shape we want them to take we say we are on top of the world or in a seventh heaven. These are the things that make people speak about being where they are now as if there is a uniform place to be. We could all be in the same places but we choose not to be. We also choose to be elsewhere and be markedly different from everyone else.
What does it mean, being on top? To a musician in Zimbabwe, being on top means filling up the venues and defying the pirates by undercutting them. It can also mean having your latest song blar- ing in most commuter omnibuses and on shop verandas. Your cash liquidity rises sharply when these things happen and you are able to do status symbol things like buying a new car, the latest model, and building your own house in a posh area of town where people see each other but don’t know each other.
If you are a soccer player at the top of your game and you are scoring goals and making money, you can safely say that everything is good for you. Things are good for you because you are marketable and can make it with some of the best teams in the world. In your twilight years of football, even with your free transfer you can, if you stay fit and focused, still make your way to China where you earn huge amounts before you hang up your boots.
If you are a boxer from Africa or from Zimbabwe the struggle is always going to be somewhat grim. There are no real mega success stories in boxing in Africa. Boxers would find it hard to talk about where they are given that success has been limited and has definitely not had too many material rewards in the majority of cases.
Ghana’s Azumah Nelson was World Boxing Council (WBC) featherweight champion and later the super featherweight champion. He also added a Commonwealth champion’s belt to his collection of titles and could, in that respect, have spoken about the wonder of being where he was.
Light-heavyweight Zambian boxer Lottie Mwale could also have boasted about his exploits which included defeating Zimbabwe’s Man Mountain, Proud Kilimanjaro. But, for Kili, as he was popularly known, the rise was meteoric from a common bully and street fighter to a world class boxer. There was definite upward mobility there. Charles Manyuchi, a WBC International welterweight champion, can also rightly claim that distinction - rising against the odds, but more still can happen for him, financially.
There are people who can afford a boat cruise for two weeks or more on Lake Kariba where they join the kapenta rigs for the fun of it or take part in tiger fishing contests in order to sound as sporting as possible. After one such experience on the lake, a friend of a friend was keen to show that something had changed; he was now more knowledgeable about a whole lot of things.
He spoke ceaselessly about a fish called the tropical angel and how whenever it detects danger, the mother fish swallows her young until the danger is past. Sometimes the tropical angel spat out its young just before dying from the stress. I could swear that there were tears in his eyes as he related his story and that his voice broke. What this character liked best was roasting fresh fish on a gas stove on a boat far out on the lake. You could see him salivating and drooling as he spoke.
The wife of a friend of mine, being British and coming to Zimbabwe to live for the first time in Zimbabwe, had the shock of her life. She was flabbergasted by the strange things people did as a matter of course without seeing their weirdness.
After a bereavement, low-density neighbours drive past your house to go and place their condolences in the condolence column of a newspaper. All this, when it would be easier to simply walk in and commiserate with you. My friend’s wife said she thought the strange behaviour was a relic of Rhodesian social practice
here the Diaspora is concerned, strange things are happening. Some people think they are up there while others are down there. If someone they look down upon should arrive from home some people are quite disturbed and appear to resent the fact that this poor so and so has “made it” too. They can suddenly become unavailable on their phones until after you are back home.
Whichever way one looks at it, according to most, social stratification is money-based. People think money is everything, and that wealth can only be measured in terms of money in the bank.