Open Book

This was a difficult journey, purely guided by instinct and an affinity for life.  When he found, what seemed to be the promise land, he moved his family.  During the honeymoon of the new neighbourhood, they were challenged by a severe drought.  The scarcity of water subsequently translated to the scarcity of food.

While hunting for birds and hare, the youngest of his children (at the time six years old) followed a trail, which led him to a flowing river.  The young man searched and found a big container and made it his business to roll it over stones, boulders and through bushes to fill it with water every day.  I hear stories from my aunt’s, telling me that by the time he got home, sometimes well into the night; the container would be close to empty.

As I write this article, I can almost hear his thoughts, drilling through the mantle of time, saying, “The little we have is better than the nothing we had”.

The water helped to sustain a small vegetable patch that would yield a thin lining of nutritional lubrication in their continuously grinding stomachs.

At this moment, I visit the remote memories of my humble childhood, running around with my cousins, playing all sorts of games and plucking our lunch from the strong peach, orange, mango and fig trees in our back yard.  We were literally inheriting the fruits of an older generation.  I am happy and lucky to be writing to you today, this short and very true story of heritage.

The six year old would later become my father.  He has passed away now, but his legacy pins me to ask the question, how much water have you fetched to contribute to our society of African heritage?

While blessings are in abundance, it is true that when we search mountains, we do not see the trees.  When we search for the moon, we do not see the stars. When we search for independence, we do not see interdependence.

One may ask, “How do I know if I’m being who I am meant to be instead of who I want to be?”  The answer to that may be found in traces of history.  When a tree grows upright despite the curvature and steep slope of the mountain, it is meant to grow.  When a man continues to fight for peace albeit twenty-seven years of imprisonment, he is meant to fight.  However, we do not have to endure suffering to find ourselves, oh no!  Sometimes there is a need to explore; it is sort of like dating during a youth and eventually finding the one.

We must explore many selves to find the self we are meant to be.  because when the wolf huffs and puffs he will blow away all the opportunity houses that are build from the straw like spirit of want to be, and we will continue to take refuge in the heritage houses,  built of stone and the spirit of “meant to be”.

In our pursuit of the Africa we want to see we must abide by the truth that independence is on its deathbed and the nurses are on strike but God willing, I will attend the memorial service.  The waters of possibility have broken and now more than ever, we must graduate from independence to interdependence and become patriotic midwives to Africa and its future.

I would like to close by putting before you this question, “how much water have you fetched to contribute to our society of African heritage? “ As you answer this question, remember to do so in the context of what you are meant to be because at this crucial moment in our history, there would be no greater cancer to body of heritage than that of a tree trying to be a mountain.

As we continue the intercourse with poverty, we must recognize the importance of personifying, understanding and solidifying this unwelcomed guest. Coming to think of it, poverty seems to carry similar properties to love, to some extent. It is infinite because it is intangible.

Even so, we need to remember that we are born loving, but not poor, therefore there is something unnatural about poverty. It seems to come about, as one continues to see more dawns and dusks, and inhales misguided notions of what it means to come alive. Poverty, like money is unnatural. We need to create a World Bank of Poverty and deposit xenophobia, despondence, ignorance so that we can come to see, appreciate and grow the little unity that we have, the little hope that have, and the little education that we have.

It is said there are only two ways to change things. Change can be achieved by brutally ramming down the doors of resistance, the problem with that method is that one would have permanently sold their right to peace and safety at the cost of impermanent anger and rage.

de Klerk and Mandela 1994

Change can also be achieved through understanding. We do not have to be lovers that consume more strawberries and cream than water to understand one another.

We do not have to be comrades that crawled under the fences of apartheid during the liberation struggle to understand those that erected them.

We do not have to be of the same racial divide to understand, because we do not bleed our skin pigmentation.

We need to sincerely enter into a genuine consultative frame of mind with the unrelenting pursuit to understand because were it not for that Nelson Mandela and Frederik de klerk would not have come to the point where they clutched and raised one another’s hand at the inauguration of in 1994.

Perhaps being poor will mean having enough resources to take one’s children through school and tertiary so that they can fathom their dreams.

Perhaps being poor will mean that our brothers and sisters who are in the midst of an intercourse with wealth will see the value of weaving ropes of opportunity and throwing them down to the valleys of misfortune to pull up those that are willing to climb.

If we have a civilized intercourse with poverty, perhaps we can rewrite the meaning of poor so as pluck the xenophobic lice that feeds off our tolerance for one another as Africans.

We need to get to know this “poverty” that so many of us seem to be fighting.

Poverty prevails when we categorize people as poor. The problem with being branded poor is that it implies that our humanness is defined by what we possess, and those that do not have much to show are less human. We need to realize that that there’s no such thing as having nothing, because when we declare ourselves as having nothing to lose we can still lose a leg, or lose an arm, a family member or our lives; surely that must count something.

We need to take a stand and ask our friends that call us poor to explain to us, without economic jargon, “What is poor”. And if they are well spoken so as to overwhelm our broken English with their polished words and accents, then we don’t need to feel defeated. We need to organize ourselves to build our own schools, roads, homes and clinics for we have proven countless times, that out poor backs are strong enough to have built the hotels that they find so much pride sleeping in.

One of the strongest symptoms of poverty are seen when we blame others for our own misfortune. Yes, there are those that have caused us great pain, and misfortune, probably more than they envisaged, but the pen of history belongs to those that have taken the initiative to change their misfortunes into fortunes. That is the opportunity in poverty.

As I conclude, I wish to send a message to all that find themselves embroiled in poverty. As you read, you do not know the depth of my bank account, and yet I’m certain you can sense that if it were shallow and I had nothing to show for my 25 years of life, I would not be poor, for I am too mentally claustrophobic to be contained in a four lettered word.

Coincidentally at the time, we were playing chess, and our Chairman (Mr Mawere, Chairman of Africa Heritage Society) had just begun the journey of getting to know the founding fathers of South Africa, the Rand Lords. The conversation started swinging towards some of the statistics I’d picked up on the internet, indicating that white South Africans, in their minority, are still controlling the majority of the country’s economy, Albeit there being a black government for sixteen years.

At that point my friend was implicitly expressing a profound sense of a deeply connecting with me, since I “seemed to be dishing out statistics that justified his point of view”. Well… a after a few game I asked him, “If you discover that you cannot beat me at chess, do you think it would be better for you to stop playing with me, or organize more games so you can learn how I play?”. He chose the latter. To which I followed by asking, “then why do you say, “The less white people you see the better”, when there’s clearly something you can learn from them, economically at least?”

He started by clearing his throat, and I could almost see him aiming his forty-fifty years worth of life experiences at my, supposedly twenty odd year naivety. “Young man, you have much to learn” he said boldly. “You see these whites came to this country and robbed us off our land. They crooked your great grandfather’s land, which was rich with minerals and gave him nothing in return. How can you bring yourself to like people like that?”

I felt a subtle confusion sinking in my mind as I popped a question, “Why didn’t my great grandfather build mines before the whites got there? Moreover, how could he allow such few people to take over his land when there were many friends and family on his side? This means that my great grandfather had much to learn, don’t you think?”

The conversation continued with a tug-of-war and satirical verbal skirmishes, but my points were simple. Firstly, it holds true that being many in numbers does not imply one’s immunity to loss. Secondly, knowledge and education without a frame of reference, or context is literally a goldfield without a gold mine.

We travel through the avenue of memories and introspection, to the archaeological fields of the past to discover manuscripts that help us demystify the challenges of today, but we should not be stuck there.

We should travel back to the present times through the inexplicable experiences of excruciating pain and profoundly inexhaustible wells of pleasure to deal with the responsibilities of building meaningful lives, but we should not be stuck there.

We should travel to the future through the subways of dreams and freeways of hope to tell our children that there’s so such thing as poverty but there is a disease of the mind that gets one to blame his or her circumstances on others. Moreover, there are people that will broadcast those circumstances a sheer poverty, and another handful with dangle fancy words such as CSI to soothe their conscience with photo’s of ten R50 blankets while they sleep with one R1000 blanket, but we should not be stuck there.

We should march along with the understanding of time in our minds, the ambidextrous ability to organize ourselves with the left hand, and the ability to drink from the deep wells of knowledge with the right hand and pursue an intercourse that will see light permeating through the dark prisons poverty.

We must vaccinate this man made mental sickness with knowledge and organization as primary ingredients to life without poverty.

Last night I went to bed around 11PM, perturbed by a deadline that I would have to make before my client woke up today. I was too tired to stay awake and also in fear, that if I did, I would not be able to work efficiently through the night and meet the deadline.

I took a decision to set my alarm to awaken me at 3AM and crawled into bed, bothered by the amount of work that needed to be done, and the time available. As I sank into the tranquillity of sleep, I could not shake the vivid imaginations of myself, awake, working, meeting the deadline; it was important.

Flashes of vague consciousness interrupted my sleep. I was almost still dreaming but in a way aware of it. I know this feeling all too well and normally the need to get back into sleep devours me, ever so inevitably. A “wake up” call manifested itself into the forefront of my mind, yes; I am all too familiar with this too. Somehow, I have become immune towards it. Although it originates in my mind, it never really feels like my own thought – not when sleep is tugging me back into its arms.

However, this time it was different. My last thoughts, “awake, working, meeting the deadline” resounded and shattered the sleep as sudden burst of energy tossed me out of bed. I was feeling great, almost as though I had been sleeping the whole night.

I continued with my work and finished on time – before my client work up – as planned. Then it was crunch time; my client saw the work I had done, but the constructive criticism outweighed the compliments. I am a perfectionist, and I should not offer my clients any less (I thought to myself)! This also made me realize that sometimes we work hard to make progress that reveals just how much progress needs to be made.

I think of the displacement we have made as a democratic nation (South Africa) in the past, almost two decades. While many are frustrated by the minimal outcomes that our three governments have produced in the context of their promises, I choose to be humbled by the amount of work that has unfolded before us.

In my career as a young entrepreneur, I have been broke countless times, with countless pending legal issues from unpaid debts, evicted from two apartments with my family. I have found myself rationing R50 over countless days, while still having to feed my 2-year-old son and pregnant fiancé.

When I realized that I had exhausted the philanthropy of all my friends and family, I also realized that I was by no means poor. During our initiation in 2005 we went for 2 months without a penny. In fact, one our friends picked up a R10 note and we all found it hilarious because we knew there was not use for money where we were. The only thing that gave us credibility and a sense of worth was our ability to convey the values that our elders and brothers had taught us. For a very small space of time, I experienced a life where I was truly “judged by the content of my character” and nothing else – in any event, I had nothing else.

These two experiences corner me to conclude that poverty is an ailment of the mind. Poverty can only be determined by the symptoms in the behavioural characteristics of its victims. We cannot throw money at someone to make it go away, neither can we take away money from a person to bring it about.

I have come to a mild consent that there are two types of poverty stricken people. Those that hold others accountable for their own wellbeing are poor. No matter how many houses are built, payouts or grants thrown at them, they will never escape the grip of poverty because they are poor in the mind.

The second victims of poverty are those that fail to realize that it cannot be alleviated by giving free houses, grants and other “free-bees”. To these people I ask, how must the “poor” sustain these houses? One may say, “we are fighting hard to create jobs”, and to that I ask, what kind of continent are we building that creates jobs to fight poverty instead of creating jobs that help us fulfil our search for meaning?

It has been proven many times, that those that pursue their daily discourse, invigorated by their gem of meaning that they have discovered in their lives, CHANGE LIVES!

Today, Martin Luther King Junior Inspires me. I will not delve into the details of his life (as I usually do), but do honour me the privilege to say this;

I HAVE A DREAM

I have a dream that one day; the children of Africa will be born into life and not into poverty.

I have a dream that one day; the poor will realize that life expects them to justify their privilege to live by leaving a mark in history; even so, they should not expect anything from life.

I have a dream that my young children will produce outcomes that equate and surpass the challenges that confront them.

I HAVE A DREAM
I have a dream that one day; the leaders and affluent citizens of Africa will measure their wealth by the number of minds they pour themselves into; by so doing, they will realize that they have fed more mouths than their money could ever attempt.

I would like to close with a quote from Martin Luther King Junior.

“On day, we will have to stand before the God of history and we will talk in terms of things we’ve done. It seems I can hear the God of history saying, THAT WAS NOT ENOUGH!”

“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”

The issue of labour brokering has been termed, “modern day slavery” because the brokers negotiate high rates and do not remunerate the work force sufficiently. Without taking away any of the grievances; If labour brokers suddenly disappeared (as many people wish), it would bare the same effect as shoes suddenly disappearing. If China exploits its labourers to manufacture Zakumi Dolls, it does not say anything about manufacturing as an industrial process, and the consumers will not be affected by this (unless there are quality or price issues).What needs to be done though, is that the Chinese people and all those affected by this act, need to take it upon themselves to improve their circumstances, likewise, those affected negatively by labour brokers.

The reality of the matter is that cheap labour digs gold mines and builds long roads and railways. When labour becomes expensive, people will invent machines (because they do not go on strike and, and they work far more efficiently that people – we are naturally wired to want more outcomes with less input).

The other reality is that WORK NEEDS TO GET DONE, whether paid for or not. I stumbled upon a realization a while back. Employers are drawn to skilled workers. Skilled workers never look for jobs, they are head hunted! The key to this realization is that no one is going to pay you to acquire the skills that give you an edge, and yet the way to acquiring the skill is to “get things done”.

It strikes me that today’s greatest weapon against AIDS (condom) was made possible by a man who landed up in jail 6 times for unpaid debts, about 150 years ago. Charles Goodyear (21 December 1800 – 1 July 1860) is the man who researched and developed the manufacturing process for making rubber durable (vulcanization).

After some time experimenting with gum, he went to New York and was struck by the poor quality of the tubes used to inflate lifebuoys (life preservers). He went home to Philadelphia and made better tubes with the gum he had been experimenting with and showed them to the managers of Roxbury Rubber Company. They were impressed…

Roxbury told Goodyear that his product had to be tested for a year prior to approval. To his surprise, thousands of dollars in goods were returned because the gum was rotting. It is then that Goodyear made up his mind to experiment with the gum.

The first major breakthrough

When he returned home, an investor had him arrested and imprisoned! While there, he experimented with India rubber, magnesia and turpentine, and discovered that it removed the stickiness. He had made a breakthrough – or so he thought. The first thing he made was a pair of shoes (with the assistance of his wife and children).

However, it was not long until he discovered that the gum became sticky again. At this point, his investors pulled the plug and decided that he should not continue with his research. NEVERTHELESS, GOODYEAR WAS NOT DETERRED!

The Second major breakthroughAfter selling his furniture and children’s schoolbooks, he continued experimenting with the white sticky gum, he discovered that adding nitric acid to the rubber curs the surface. This process almost suffocated him albeit was a great discovery that led to a partnership with an old friend. He received world acclamation for this discovery. They opened a factory and produced clothing, rubber shoes, life preservers and a whole range of rubber products. Just when things were looking good, the panic of 1837 totally obliterated their fortunes and was left penniless.

The Vulcanization process
Goodyear met Nathaniel Hayward, who had also been researching this material. Hayward showed Goodyear the progress he had made and they agreed that Hayward would patent that process, and Goodyear would purchase a license to use it. Hayward had solved the stickiness problem by adding sulphur!

At this point Hayward and Goodyear got a good contract to produce mailbags. To their horror, these bags were returned at the signs of decomposition. Goodyear was pressed!

Goodyear discovered that exposing his compound to an open flame charred by also left parts of the concoction perfectly cured and more elastic. He perfected this process, and later patented it as the famous process for manufacturing vulcanized rubber!

Goodyear was certain that he had solved the puzzle and invited friends to see his work, however investors had listened to him once too many times. He and his family suffered from the extreme consequences of poverty. Throughout their marriage (with his wife), they lost six children in infancy and a son who was slightly older.

Goodyear, together with his brother in law started a small factory producing rubber products. He went to Europe in 1852 only to find that Thomas Hancock claimed to have invented the vulcanization process and patented it in Britain. Goodyear contested the claims, but lost the legal battle.

He died in 1860. Almost 4 decades later, Frank Seiberling founded the Goodyear tire and Rubber Company (that we know today). Although Goodyear never lived to taste the fruits of his hard work, he was later (after his death) amoung 6 who selected in the National Inventors Hall of Fame…

Africa has a long way to go, and no one is going to pay for it, but many will pay to be in Africa once the road is travelled and it (Africa) has become what we want it to be.

By exercising the spirit of Ubuntu (ensuring that no African goes unfed, when we can feed), we can build a work force that is geared to getting things done and is never deterred, like Charles Goodyear.

With this Article, I challenge the members of AHS to join hands to create the Africa Heritage Trust Fund for Inventors, which will seek to provide for people like William Kwamkwamba and Charles Goodyear, and nurture the ideas that will shape the Africa we want to see tomorrow.

With this article, I propose that we raise 1 million Rands to build the first Africa Heritage Hub of Inventions, with all sorts of tools and apparatus to make it easier for inventors to give their best shot at creating the Africa we want to see.

I also invite 60 members to pledge 4 days in a year to teach, motivate and mentor the inventors that will task themselves with the big responsibility of shaping our children’s heritage.