The day Jacob Zuma will never forget

The late Grammy-winning American stand-up comedian, actor, author, and philosopher, George Calin once said, “never underestimate the power of 'stupid' people in large groups.” I am sure Mr. Calin could have witnessed an incident or occasion that made him utter these sentiments. 

 The famed quote materialized into my psyche when part of the crowd that gathered at Nelson Mandela's memorial service held at FNB stadium in Johannesburg to pay their last respects to a leader who curbed them from apartheid, booed and scoffed off their leader President Jacob Zuma in his own country and in front of a global television audience let alone in the presence of world’s most powerful leaders. 

I am not labeling whoever contributed to the booing of Zuma a stupid because that would be out of context, but i rather envied to feature this quote with regards to how influential a large group can be irrespective of what names we call them. 

   
One would say the jeering and that kind of “mental attitude” exhibited by South Africans who thronged at this renowned event, which is thought to be the largest since Winston Churchill's 1965 state funeral, was ill-timed and uncalled for.

I beg to differ with anyone whose line of thinking rests in the above sentiments taking into consideration quite a number of aspects that materialised the kind of embarrassment President Zuma encountered on a day that he was meant to boost the his party's (ANC) political mileage ahead of the country's general elections in the coming six months. 

The aggressive reception granted Mr Zuma is a clear reflection that South Africans had always wanted an opportunity where they would clearly tell their leader there were not a happy people hence they had to capitalise on that illustrious event.

Mandela’s passing on came so soon after contentions such as Nkandla and the government’s refusal to shift on the broadly rejected e-toll payment strategy for upgrades to Gauteng’s highway system. 

 

While this was the first international event at which Mr Zuma was booed, it is not the first time South Africans have called for him to be recalled from his post. The Democratic Alliance threatened to call for Mr Zuma’s impeachment after the Mail & Guardian printed extracts from Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s draft report on the Nkandla saga. Ms Madonsela tentatively found Mr Zuma had misled Parliament and profited considerably from about R20m worth of work that had nothing to do with security features at his home, including a swimming pool. 

 

The crucial aspect to note about yesterday is how representative were the people who booed? If they did represent the view of many, then the message is that its high time the president should practice self introspection, not that citizens must behave in a way the elite group wants tantamount to what happens in other countries where the credibility of a leader is is not directly questioned but rather the masses hide behind the media for fear of being silenced.

Its common knowledge that Mandela had carefully managed the anger and frustration of the oppressor and the oppressed in South Africa’s transition to democracy. He had also never hesitated to speak his mind, no matter who he was speaking to, or how uncomfortable his words may have been to his listener. It is in line with this background that part of the crowd that gathered on that day did not hesitate to speak their mind to their president whom they have many a times accused of corruption and poor administration.

Mr. Zuma was wrong if he took his people for granted, not to mention undermining them and tag them a 'stupid' people because such cannot happen in a country like South Africa where civilians are not afraid to independently express their feelings to anyone despite their race, political affiliation, gender you name it. 

Lets not forget that this is also election season and people would believe that (the memorial) is a platform to express themselves and to say that everyone who behaved in that manner should be ignored is a huge mistake.

Democracy is a system of rules in which, if masses want to boo a sitting president at a memorial, they can freely do that without interference and this is what happened to Zuma yesterday in sharp contrast to the cheers that greeted his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, and the vast cheers for US President Barack Obama, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and even for former apartheid president FW de Klerk. 

 

People cannot celebrate Madiba's contribution to achieving democracy and at the same time scold people for exercising the rights which democracy brings. That day was a warning for Zuma to act up and put his house in order, the crowd spoke and that was something one should not ignore hence he (Zuma) should walk the talk. 

 

Presidential Spokesperson Mac Maharaj shrugged off the booing and maintained that Zuma remained a popular leader. He might have wanted to dampen the humiliation by saying, "It passed – in four minutes it was over, and it didn't happen again," and that "we will not take a small event and make it into a crisis in our democracy," but the fact is that his boss and the world over realised that his (Zuma's) popularity was fast becoming a history let alone loosing credibility in the country's politics.

Twitter handle: @AnoShumba

Where are the leaders of our time?

 Where are the leaders of our time?...The Mandelas, the Ghandis, the Kwame Nkhrumas, the Martin Luther Kings, the Joshua Nkomo, the Josiah Tongogara, Edgar Tekere...etc? Are all gone...All we have left with are their quotes and speeches that we love to recite and quote but never put into practice ...Are we a generation of cowards? Or is it because the issues those great leaders stood for are no longer a part of our struggle? Are we truelly a free generation? Are we no longer oppressed? Or has globalization made us blind to think we are living in a globalised world where we are all equal? Or has the technology of our time and the journalism of our time distracted us from the real struggles? This is food for thought!

Twitter handle: @AnoShumba

SA's big three!

Three provinces contribute overwhelmingly to turning the country’s wheels. They come to the fore in more ways than one.

Together, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Western Cape occupy only 20% of the total land area of South Africa. But Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, the country’s most populous provinces, account for more than 40% of the total population. Higher levels of urbanisation are also evident, with Gauteng having as many as three of South Africa’s eight metropolitan areas. The United Nations also ranks Johannesburg and Cape Town (located in Gauteng and the Western Cape) seventh and eighth respectively among the ten most populous cities in Africa.

Gauteng alone accounts for more than a third of total South African gross domestic product. The fi nance sector is the single largest contributor to the economies of the three provinces. Manufacturing and trade also
account for significant shares of economic activity. Almost two thirds of all employed people and just over 70% of individual taxpayers are registered in the three provinces combined. Gauteng and the Western Cape have the lowest ratios of people who do not work and are dependent on those that are employed.

Educational outcomes are also significantly better in these areas. The proportions of adults with no education are lowest in Gauteng and the Western Cape. Those that are literate and have higher education are also
most likely to be living in these two provinces. The proportion of people who have attained grade 12 is also relatively high in KwaZulu-Natal.

People in Gauteng and the Western Cape are also better placed to afford medical aid and are more likely, because of their education levels and income status, to have better nutrition levels. Not surprisingly, many of South Africa’s internal and international migrants head for Gauteng and the Western Cape. Statistics South Africa’s estimates for the period 2006-11 indicate that most of the people moving out of the Free State, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, the North West, and the Northern Cape headed for Gauteng. Those from the Eastern Cape largely chose to move to the Western Cape.

The data presented in this article bears witness to the disparities between the provinces. An improvement in the fortunes of poorer provinces would certainly help to ease the burden borne by better performing ones.

Courstesy of South African Institute of Race Relations

Twitter handle: @AnoShumba

Captivating action is the means to procrastination

Many people often fall victim of resolving issues just by thinking about them, captivating act is

the means to countering such tribulations and if you see yourself going through this kind of setup,
then know that procrastination is taking a dig on you. 

To make this whole subject more remarkable i would propose that i define what procrastination means.
According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, in psychology, procrastination refers to the act
of replacing high priority actions with tasks of low-priority, and thus putting off important tasks to
a later time.

Considering this description, do you often find yourself “fiddling around” when you know you should be working, studying or doing something more than “fiddling around”? If so,chances are very good you are procrastinating. What would one do when they become typical of this horrible conduct? I would suggest that they stop, " talk the walk but rather walk the talk,” so as to get out to this. This is especially the case with regard to self-help, just thinking about things that trouble you, but not taking action to change them is likely to be effective. 

Even though it is ineffective, the tendency to just think about things that trouble you and avoid taking action to address them is so common that other multiple names which go along with procrastination have been developed to describe it, including “intellectualization”, “rumination” just to name but a few.

Keeping away from intriguing action on troubles is not an effective or useful strategy for self-help because at the end of the day nothing happens when you do this except that your thoughts go round and round hence Eva Young argues that, “To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.”

Young’s submission on this subject is a “Stop Planning and Get Started Now” tip, taking into account that each plan, operation or procedure ought to be designed out with an objective in mind but a lot of over thinking and over-planning can be nonconstructive since there is no such thing as a “great preparation” so sketch out a plan and get on track now.

Distress and meditation not including action require an essential component required for forward motion and optimistic change. A bicycle cannot move on its own unless one rides on it and do what it takes to keep it in motion thus like a bicycle with no-one to cycle it, prevention and anxiety in the absence of an action plan cannot get you where you want to go.

One can consider reducing tasks to the next step. How? If you have a pile of papers on your desk, take the first paper of the top pile and start there. To get started, just take the first step. To finish, take the next step, then the next until your task is completed. To prop up this tip, one King said to his servant, “Begin at the beginning, then go until you reach the end. Then stop.”

When one procrastinates, they want to do something but they do not take the action that is in alignment with that thought and they become conflicted within. The easiest thing to do when confronted with such circumstances is to make a decision hence Theodore Roosevelt put it that, “In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

Most people occasionally procrastinate but not enough to interfere with functioning at home school or work. However, for some people procrastination becomes a major obstruction to their success in school and to their ability to earn a living. For these people life is fraught with the fear of being fired from work or failing out of school.

Fearing that a task is above one’s ability is something that often annoys adults and children. In my research on this subject i have revealed that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a dominant cause of procrastination amongst children where when they are excellent in school work often get more privilege calls like being a prefect, attending various workshops and meetings. Such will result to paying attention to a number of things hence they can quickly fall apart, feel overwhelmed and stop performing well in school work.

To counter ADHD i would recommend that one should focus on aspects or challenges they are able to tackle. Having a horde of errands at your disposal can shift attention on some other important goals one might need to achieve and such breeds confusion, boredom, anxiety, despair to name a few. When one feels this way is one aspect which usually lacks amongst them, a sense of belonging. Why, because when you are working as a team and you discover that at the end of the day you have not archived what others have, you consider yourself a misfit.

A chain of strange activities normally occur when people go through procrastination, if you consider yourself a misfit the next thing you do is isolate yourself from others whom you feel they are better than you hence you cannot associate yourself with them. My advice is that one should make it a point they engage themselves into activities which meet their adequate attention lest they find themselves in such scenarios.

Procrastination thrives on displacement hence you often hear people say, “If i watch a movie instead of working, I don’t even enjoy that movie because what i should be doing is just hanging over me!” When you procrastinate it feels uncomfortable, so the way out is to focus on how you will feel later if you do not do what you need want to do.

 There is a kind of purity to doing what you should that you just never get when you pursue displacement activities. It might sound funny but you will find it worthwhile in the near future, i am talking about signing a
declaration of independence from this “ghost” called procrastination which keeps on haunting you.

Research has it that signing a letter of intent in front of witnesses makes it much more compelling to honor your intent. Write up or print out a letter of intent in the presence of trusted friends or colleagues. Tell them that when you have completed your task on a certain date, you will sign off in front of them. This may sound a little insane, but can be incredibly compelling.

There are numerous special ways of helping yourself overcome troubles, and not all of them will turn up at first glance to be remedial. Doing your own taxes, fixing your own car or even serving yourself at a buffet lunch is all legitimate and useful self-help activities that can make you feel better about yourself.

Twitter handle: @AnoShumba