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What Our Times Require of Us
Church in the Community - Media Release in the Herald: 1st August 2022
Source: TCN / Alain Walljee
Date Added: 2022-08-01
Category: General News, TCN News, Issues - General, Issues - Politics, Issues - Social upliftment,
Date Added: 2022-08-01
Category: General News, TCN News, Issues - General, Issues - Politics, Issues - Social upliftment,
The world I am living in today is not the same one I was born into.
Times have changed and things have changed. I have changed. Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher is credited for the quote, “there is nothing permanent except change.”
Jack Welch, legendary CEO of General Electric, was more direct, “Change before you have to.”
I remember when our local municipality came to install electricity in my grandparent’s home in Kokstad where I grew up.
Before that, all we had were coal stoves, steel irons, boiling water on the stove, etc. But life changed.
It became easier.
Our town was slow on the take, but modernity and technology eventually caught up with us, and more so with the rise of the global human rights era.
It was not long before having electricity became a basic right that governments were held accountable for. The same could be said of healthcare, education and modern conveniences such as flushing toilets and accessible roads, etc.
These fruits of modernism were associated with human dignity and moral concerns regarding equality.
Today, however, we have stripped it of any sentiment and simply call it service delivery, which explains perhaps why excuses can be made as to why we are not getting it, or not getting it on time, or not getting it properly.
I fear that we have gotten used to not getting what we deserve, settling for what is being made available.
We are in a toxic relationship, it seems, with our government on all levels where they are the narcissist and perpetrator, while we are the victims and the enablers.
Abuse is a sensitive topic because you cannot blame the victim for the abuse of the abuser.
But when all is said done, the victim must take responsibility for getting out of that abusive situation – and those who have ever survived abuse or made it out of an abusive relationship, or even helped anyone out of abuse will know what I am talking about.
We have a social compact: our constitution, where government and the people are the partners in the relationship.
And our abuser has made us believe that loadshedding is normal; understaffed schools and hospitals are normal; potholes and high fuel prices extenuated by levies and taxes are normal.
We have been duped into accepting, albeit unhappily, that billions of rands worth of wasteful expenditure by government on all levels are the norm.
We have been oppressed into accepting responsibility for the failures of government by paying more for services that we are not getting anyway. And if this was a counselling session, I would be accused of holding back, because our issues are so much bigger!
But why talk about this at all? Because there is a bigger danger.
Our national government wants more power, as they have shown in their recent health regulation proposals that the public rejected.
And senior officials in government have begun to refer to dissenting voices as treasonous and counterproductive.
That is an ideological strategy – it is characteristic of how abusers treat their victims: blame the victim for the actions of the perpetrator or call the victim’s attempts at freedom evil to mask the evil of the actions perpetrated against them.
It is called psychological projection, or blame shifting. And our leaders have learned to change the narrative to undermine the people’s efforts to hold them to account or to stop their dishonest when they have failed or when they purposefully mislead us.It seems to me that our world is placing a demand on us to either begrudgingly accept abuse of power and lack of services, or to use every constitutional remedy to stop this from continuing.
I am grateful that I am of the group that wants to make a change.
I will not go silently into the night.
After all the changes I have experienced, I cannot accept a change that requires me to change my principles or compromise on my worth or dignity.
I wish to implore my fellow citizens to wake up to the reality that all is not well here at home in South Africa.
All is not well here in our beloved city. Will we succumb to defeatism or will we begin to rise against this injustice perpetrated against us?
The call to be good citizens is a misleading, oppressive one, in my view.
A good citizen is expected to reduce water and electricity usage to compensate for government’s lack of providing them, or at least to excuse government’s incompetence to manage those recourses effectively.
A good citizen is expected to comply and not complain.
I am in a tight spot because I must comply, although I really do not want to.
But what I will not do – indeed what I refuse to do – is to sit back and accept this as normal.
As George wrote in an earlier column, I will do my bit where I can.
But I will do one better, I will address the elephant in the room.
Our country needs better management. Our metro needs better management.
It is my desire to see a better South Africa and a better Nelson Mandela Bay that calls on me to confront those forces that are actively engaged in destroying our heritage and the future of our children.
To my fellow South Africans, please wake up! Or have you not yet realized that the world we’re living in is not the one we want to live in?
Alain Walljee
Pastor - Bay Christian Church, Gqeberha
Times have changed and things have changed. I have changed. Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher is credited for the quote, “there is nothing permanent except change.”
Jack Welch, legendary CEO of General Electric, was more direct, “Change before you have to.”
I remember when our local municipality came to install electricity in my grandparent’s home in Kokstad where I grew up.
Before that, all we had were coal stoves, steel irons, boiling water on the stove, etc. But life changed.
It became easier.
Our town was slow on the take, but modernity and technology eventually caught up with us, and more so with the rise of the global human rights era.
It was not long before having electricity became a basic right that governments were held accountable for. The same could be said of healthcare, education and modern conveniences such as flushing toilets and accessible roads, etc.
These fruits of modernism were associated with human dignity and moral concerns regarding equality.
Today, however, we have stripped it of any sentiment and simply call it service delivery, which explains perhaps why excuses can be made as to why we are not getting it, or not getting it on time, or not getting it properly.
I fear that we have gotten used to not getting what we deserve, settling for what is being made available.
We are in a toxic relationship, it seems, with our government on all levels where they are the narcissist and perpetrator, while we are the victims and the enablers.
Abuse is a sensitive topic because you cannot blame the victim for the abuse of the abuser.
But when all is said done, the victim must take responsibility for getting out of that abusive situation – and those who have ever survived abuse or made it out of an abusive relationship, or even helped anyone out of abuse will know what I am talking about.
We have a social compact: our constitution, where government and the people are the partners in the relationship.
And our abuser has made us believe that loadshedding is normal; understaffed schools and hospitals are normal; potholes and high fuel prices extenuated by levies and taxes are normal.
We have been duped into accepting, albeit unhappily, that billions of rands worth of wasteful expenditure by government on all levels are the norm.
We have been oppressed into accepting responsibility for the failures of government by paying more for services that we are not getting anyway. And if this was a counselling session, I would be accused of holding back, because our issues are so much bigger!
But why talk about this at all? Because there is a bigger danger.
Our national government wants more power, as they have shown in their recent health regulation proposals that the public rejected.
And senior officials in government have begun to refer to dissenting voices as treasonous and counterproductive.
That is an ideological strategy – it is characteristic of how abusers treat their victims: blame the victim for the actions of the perpetrator or call the victim’s attempts at freedom evil to mask the evil of the actions perpetrated against them.
It is called psychological projection, or blame shifting. And our leaders have learned to change the narrative to undermine the people’s efforts to hold them to account or to stop their dishonest when they have failed or when they purposefully mislead us.It seems to me that our world is placing a demand on us to either begrudgingly accept abuse of power and lack of services, or to use every constitutional remedy to stop this from continuing.
I am grateful that I am of the group that wants to make a change.
I will not go silently into the night.
After all the changes I have experienced, I cannot accept a change that requires me to change my principles or compromise on my worth or dignity.
I wish to implore my fellow citizens to wake up to the reality that all is not well here at home in South Africa.
All is not well here in our beloved city. Will we succumb to defeatism or will we begin to rise against this injustice perpetrated against us?
The call to be good citizens is a misleading, oppressive one, in my view.
A good citizen is expected to reduce water and electricity usage to compensate for government’s lack of providing them, or at least to excuse government’s incompetence to manage those recourses effectively.
A good citizen is expected to comply and not complain.
I am in a tight spot because I must comply, although I really do not want to.
But what I will not do – indeed what I refuse to do – is to sit back and accept this as normal.
As George wrote in an earlier column, I will do my bit where I can.
But I will do one better, I will address the elephant in the room.
Our country needs better management. Our metro needs better management.
It is my desire to see a better South Africa and a better Nelson Mandela Bay that calls on me to confront those forces that are actively engaged in destroying our heritage and the future of our children.
To my fellow South Africans, please wake up! Or have you not yet realized that the world we’re living in is not the one we want to live in?
Alain Walljee
Pastor - Bay Christian Church, Gqeberha
Source: TCN / Alain Walljee
Date Added: 2022-08-01
Category: General News, TCN News, Issues - General, Issues - Politics, Issues - Social upliftment,
Back to News IndexDate Added: 2022-08-01
Category: General News, TCN News, Issues - General, Issues - Politics, Issues - Social upliftment,
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