Reflections of a youngster
IT’S in his smile. President Cyril Ramaphosa has a way of reeling one in. Not quite like a moth to a flame or a spider’s web. More like a kindly uncle in a sweet shop. He has a lot to offer but you’ve also got to tell him that too much sugar is not a good thing.
As a young South African I was enthralled by his charm offensive in Durban at the weekend. In spite of the torrents pouring from the heavens, I did not need too much coaxing out of bed at 5am to get to the Princess Magogo Stadium in KwaMashu to join him on a dawn walk.
Two minutes into the trot and my mind entertained a few doubts. My T-shirt and tracksuit were stuck to me like a second skin. My takkies will need a few days to dry on the roof. With raindrops stinging my face, I took each step under the glow of a president’s gleaming set of teeth and ceaseless chatter with fellow walkers.
Something historic was under way. There are not too many countries where a president is prepared to walk the streets come sunshine or storm. Metaphorically speaking, it is a stormy time the president is having. I have my ears pricked enough to know that all is not cosy in his ANC household.
My mother is travelling overseas soon and she weeps at the price of foreign exchange. Filling up petrol also brings out the waterworks. My father is an idealist. I ask about the recession that is all over social media and he tells me a recession is not necessarily a bad thing. He believes that it might just be the urgency to light a fire under the economy.
Not being schooled in words like cyclical trends, I’ll hold out for a more convincing explanation. It is historic that I got to walk with the president. As I looked around the crowd, I was struck by how few people shared my hair texture and physical features. Growing up in a politically diverse and cosmopolitan milieu, I was never really conscious of my race or ethnicity.
It is three years since I left high school and pretty much fending for myself now. That’s where I notice the difference. My access to university was not easy. My knocking on doors for part-time jobs was a slog.
When I talk to people about this, the popular refrain is race. I try to keep my eye on the prize. Lo and behold I meet an influential man at the walk, incidentally not from my gene pool, who offers me an opportunity to write for him when he hears that I pay my university fees from being an occasional scribe.
There is no need for favours when one can trade value. The race matter jiggles in my mind again. There are so few that look like me among the president’s walking companions.
Phoenix is just across the road from the Bridge City Mall but very little of Phoenix is in the walk. Still soaked to the bone, the president prattles about social cohesion. The words are a bit higher grade but I know that he is talking about people from different races and backgrounds getting together to make a united nation.
I bristle at my cousins in Phoenix, who are still in bed complaining that they are left out. They have not made the effort to walk across the road to take the president’s invitation. He can do the inviting but my cousins will need to put on their takkies and walk across the road.
I am not captured by Ramaphosa. I am captivated by him. I like him. I like the sound of his ideas. He is doing what leaders do. He is leading from the front. I am eager to reach out for his sweets but not everything.
There are many questions in my mind. Questions about crime, about corruption, about access to education, about jobs especially for young people like myself whatever our colour.
Taking a historic walk with the president convinced me that there is a positive movement building in the country. I want to be part of that change. I share these thoughts with my father and he throws a quote at me from Frantz Fanon: “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it.”