Taking a break from one’s busy schedule is good for one’s mental health. Our nation’s lack of meaning and values has derailed its mental health. Even the Master, Jesus Christ, used to take a Bethany interlude, where he visited Lazarus and his two sisters.
The danger of not taking a break from work is that you may end up being physically and mentally dwarfed. Recently, I decided to hail a taxi to visit my cousin at N’wamintwa village, outside Tzaneen, Limpopo.
The heat was very oppressive and I understood why the Deputy President collapsed when he visited the place last month. On the taxi with loud unpoetic music or noise, I was the only one reading a book Betting on a Darkie by Mteto Nyathi. I received the book from my boss three years ago when I waved the Railway Safety Regulator (RSR) goodbye.
My fellow passengers were either eating or answering their cell phones. Their discussion ranged from irrelevancy to irrelevancy. Simply put, they started off with an irrelevant point such as the consumption of alcohol all night long to proposing love to drunken women.
I realised that we display the behavioural indicators of a wounded nation. Booker T Washington observed that after the emancipation of slaves, “drinking, gambling, quarrels, fights, and shockingly immoral practices were frequent”.
That was when I also realised that any progressive race needs a race alignment torch bearer such as Washington or Nyathi. Both men had very strong mothers who exposed them to hard but loving labour, and mothers who raised children who were not their own and encouraged their sons to pursue their goals.
These strong women ended up being weak and broken in health before their demise but they left strong men and women behind who bequeath something for future generations and the world. So, we could say that behind any successful son, there is a strong and supportive mother.
Our nation has been derailed by the lack of meaning and values and we need someone to rerail it. Our faith-based organisations are failing to align the nation because they have become automated teller machines (ATMs).
That is where you realise that Providence so often uses men, women and institutions to accomplish a noble mission. Both Nyathi and Washington embraced the great human law, which is universal and eternal, that merit, no matter under what skin found, is in the long run, recognised and rewarded.
I have observed that the villagers were either building or renovating their houses, congregations rebuilding churches as well as drilling boreholes. There were very few RDP houses. The suppliers of their building materials are Pakistani entrepreneurs who have read the situation correctly.
These Pakistanis are very crafty that they have mastered the local language with precision. They are also involved in corporate social investment in that they have drilled boreholes for the community as well as supplying food parcels for the needy.
The problem is that the builders do not see themselves as being in the building industry but as simple builders. They are communicating the same mistakes that led to the decline of railways the world over. The railways never saw themselves as being in the transportation industry but in the railway business.
The qualified builders have been leapfrogged by underqualified builders who charge their clients a lower price but they do not complete the projects because the environment is not regulated.
Had they seen themselves as players in the building industry they could have formed cooperatives to supply their clients with building material. These could be divided into three streams - roofing, plumbing, bricks and cement. We need someone like Nyathi to simplify Michael Porter’s philosophy to an ordinary South African.
Nyathi wrote: “I preached entrepreneurship as the best way of lifting any nation out of poverty.”
The Porterian model could assist these builders to see themselves as role players in the built environment. This consumption syndrome must come to an end!
The consequences of global warming were apparent. The drought is so devastating that livestock is perishing at an alarming rate. Most farm workers have been laid off due to the drought.
Most of the villagers are highly superstitious. People go to church on Sundays with the sole aim of protecting themselves against witchcraft.
I used a taxi back to Johannesburg. A rogue queue marshal directed me to the wrong taxi. The taxi left N’wamintwa very late and the driver never buckled up and he was consistently on the phone as well as looking for passengers.
Our journey ended at Tembisa and we were told to bear our cross. We had to hail a taxi from Tembisa to Johannesburg. I arrived home at 20:30. Our taxi industry has more to learn about customer service.
Author and life coach Mabila Mathebula has a PhD in Construction Management.