nice vision. it reminds of something marginally related: how America's attack on communism, via popular culture, was to mainly posit it as a threat to individuality, and also, as a way for 'the lazy' to do nothing while 'the diligent' worked for everyone's well-being. i feel like a lot of South Africans have taken up this sentiment. people actually rely on money, to some extent, to derive a sense of self-worth, and also through the help of advertisers, they buy their identities through brands. not to mention corporate professions. while what you say makes sense, it would take some serious indoctrination. capitalism, at this point, i feel, is more than an economic system, its a way of life - its embedded culturally in people. nice idea re: workers protesting service delivery failures. that would move things along, i think.
And here I thought I was the only one who noticed the American genius. I have been saying for a few years now:
'The greatest trick the Americans ever pulled was convincing people that the opposite of socialism was democracy.'
The opposite of democracy is actually totalitarianism/ fascism. Socialism - like capitalism - is a MONETARY system and not a political system.
If you look back historically at African people, we were very communal by nature. There was a village and everyone in the village contrinuted and took care of the village as a whole. Everyone in the community was valued. In fact, you still see a lot of this kind of nature in the townships - ko Alexander, Soweto and Gugs to name a few. Look at the very nature of a stokvel. The community contributed into the basket of money and when a need in the community arose - like a member facing a death and having to arrange for the funeral - the stokvel was used. No beef, no people wondering 'When is it MY turn?' This kind of thinking was so foreign if you introduced it to a TRUE community like that the people in that community would look at you like you're crazy.
Everybody knows everybody on that street in the township or at least in that 2km radius. Doors are wide open during the day until maybe the evening when it's time to sleep, gates unlocked and alarm systems are a rarity. Dogs are there but they're mostly for show. There's a sense of community there - people look out for each other somehow. Everyone knows uGogo lo and uMama that. The scary part is that this is the DILUTED sense of community - ubuntu - that I am talking about. The one that prevailed in history before we lost our identity, our culture, our sense of who we are was so engraved into us that the western thinking of 'this is mine and that is yours' was so absurd it was inconceivable.
Read the ancient African history books - the concept of land ownership was ridiculous. That's why the Blacks clashed with the Boers in the early days of colonisation because to the Blacks you couldn't own land - it belonged to the earth. They grazed cattle freely and to the Boers - with their western culture - this was trespa**ing.
To speak of that communal culture of Black people is so quickly called Communism and as soon as you do that - people immediately think 'Stalin' and dictatorship - tyranny - that people run away from it. You are spot on the money Panic - it was a great marketing stunt by the Americans and since our universities teach from their text books and our business schools teach from their models our 'educated' and 'skilled' population has heavily adopted their culture on that matter - hence capitalism is engraved in them (us?) and anything slightly resembling socialism is stomped to death.
This is why I re-iterate. We won't see success if we keep trying to attain why
they call success and keep doing what
they do to attain it. I firmly believe that deep down inside, every black person just - on a gut level - does not buy into this HEAVY 'free-market, no welfare' capitalism because it is not in our culture. It's not a matter of it being right or wrong - it's a question of it being compatible or incompatible with our cultural fabric.
African people are used to taking care of our own and pulling our own weight, we're just losing it in exchange for this 'new' model which we KNOW is not ours but we thing is the only way. After all, it worked for them, why won't it work for us?
