The coward that saved a lady

So I've just driven out of Wits Business School approaching the St. Andrews fourway, with the Engen garage and the Nandos on my left and that building with the FNB atm's on my right.

The robot is red, it’s a cool January summer evening around 8pm, my windows are all down, I am listening to some music, kasi boy-style, when I hear what originally sounded like women laughing at the top of their voices, you know like kasi women do. But it was a bit unusual for kasi women to be around these regions at this time. I ignore this kasi behaviour, I listen to my house music, House Afrika Sessions 4, Aziwe baba.

The laughing now sounds like screaming, I turn down the volume and it is screaming all right. It pierces through the Jozi darkness and the loudness of my speakers, it scares me a bit. I press pause and I realize it is coming from a woman running up St. Andrews, she is screaming for help.

The robot is still red.

Eventually my eyes locate the screaming lady but I am trying to make sense of her screams, which are harder to make out because she is screaming, crying, running and battling to find her breath.
The seriousness of the situation is exacerbated when a white corsa bakkie pulls up in the middle of the road (towards oncoming traffic), right next to the lady who is running on the pavement.

A pretty buff late thirties fellow who looks to be irritated by the woman's screams, angrily comes out of the car, grabs the lady by her arms, pulls her, around the back, opens the passenger door and shoves her, violently into the car.

I now can fully make sense of the woman’s screams, "Hayi, ndiyeke, andisakufuni...Ndincedeni, ndincedeni...Hayi ndiyeke, ndiyeke andisakufuni" (Leave me, leave me I do not wannt to be with you anymore, SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!)
My robot turns green, I have to do something, I don't know what it is...but it I have to do something.

JESUS TAKE CONTROL!!!

This scene is happening right on the lane I am supposed to turn into, I decide to drive straight towards his car, so that we stand bonnet-to-bonnet. I stop and open the door, he has just shut the door of the passenger side, where he had just forced his unwilling passenger into. But when he arrived to get into his driver side to drive off, my silver Kia was carefully standing nose-to-nose with his car.

As you can imagine there is a bit of traffic now, I am now stuck, with one foot outside and another inside the car.
I'm in a predicament, a quagmire.
There is a traffic jam which I am indirectly part of, there is also a woman who is in desperate need of saving, and there is also the possibility that this abusive little king-kong could drive into my car...never mind the fact that I am making him angry by standing right in his way.
The other problem is I am also trying to consider my own safety here, the fellow is buff and he is angry…he may also be a pirates fan…the perfect combination to totally flatten me.

JESUS TAKE CONTROL!!!

The traffic jam continues, the screaming lady opens the door which she just got shoved into, trying to escape, she doesn't know whether to run east or west. There is traffic remember, she is panicking, confused…I am confused.

There is a fellow in a car on my right, who arrived just after me, he is still in his car...he is asking, "Kanti kwenzakalani manje lana" (what is happening here) in the comfort of his car. I was desperately hoping that some of the people in the other cars would come out of their cars, this would give me that little needed confidence to fully attend the situation.
There are about 6 or 7 cars in this traffic jam, I am the only one who is outside of his car to help this lady...well half-out at least.

The villain, who is now also in a quagmire had just opened the door of his car but his victim ran out. His attention is now divided, between the obvious attention he has now drawn and his victim whose directionless running and screams are causing even more attention: The challenges of an abuser!

The lady in all her directionless running finds direction towards my car, she runs towards me, and latches onto the handle of my right rear passenger door, it opens, she slips in, she urges me to drive, the fellow who is comfrotably in his Corolla on my right also urges me to drive.

This makes 2, I was a bit reluctant, but my black superga's found their way to the accelerator, I drive, as fast as I can, I look behind me, I don't see a white corsa bakkie.
I skip the red robot on Jan Smuts, causing a near accident, I turn left to catch the freeway, the M1 from Jan Smuts...but I dubiously off-ramp on Empire, I skip the red robot on Empire (nearly causing another accident) and turn left towards Wits University.

The lady I have just rescued, desperately wants me to go to a place of safety, a police station but I am reluctant, the king-kong saw my car and no doubt will be driving around that area looking for me and his victim. I decided rather to go into Wits University because I still have my Alumni card. I slip through the the security boom gate, and park my car opposite the planetarium...which gives me a good view of the boomgate, just in case the fellow decides to do something unsmart.

I turn the car off and talk to the lady in the backseat of my car whose face I had not even seen properly, I was too busy trying to make sure we escaped unseen by the possible blood-thirsty boyfriend.
I turn on the lamp to look at her, she is shaking and crying...she examines the bruises from her right hand right up to her arm and does the same on her left. She has been man-handled alright, the emotional pain and fear is visible in her eyes. Judging from the blood on her left-side of the collar of her nurse's uniform she would have suffered a lot more physical pain had there not been some intervention.
I inquired about this man and why he would want to do this to her. Why he would want to harm her so.
She tells me that this man is the father of her child, she ended the relationship after a couple of abusive stints, he is possessive and abusive.
Needless to say, this fellow refuses to accept that it is over...he absolutely refuses and would rather beat this lady into submission.

As we waited for her friends to pick her up, she told me how she was fed up, she wanted out but this man, this monster just wouldn't let her go...he just didn't understand.

When her friends arrived and thanked me for helping her out, they also happened to mention that this man was a medical doctor..."A whole doctor..." the friend said with evident disbelief, “A whole doctor!” as if a medical degree precludes people from being abusive.

I do not think of myself as much of a hero, as a matter of fact, as much as I had an urge to do something, I also thought, judging from the man's build that I was better of not confronting the man physically. My parking right in front of him was a way in which to cause some commotion that would, by some chance, cause a situation for other people to help or cause such a scene that he would have to back down. I tried to speedily weigh my options, the last of which was a physical fight with this monster.

I also need to be honest: I have never entertained or taken part in a “Women Abuse” forum. I remember flipping through a Big Debate forum on eNCA, I tuned the decoder to 403 but when I realized that it was about women abuse I turned it off, I just wasn't interested in engaging in these matters.
Partially because the debates were very unappealing to me, as opposed to Economic Freedom for instance, or the quality of leadership.
Partially because the issue has never really happened close to home and because I've always believed that instances where women get abused are not the same, they cannot be all put under one umbrella. When people talk about these issues they never really talk about other abuses such as they manner in which women abuse men, either emotionally and sometimes even physically and get away with it because they are women.
So our debates, I felt, were not truly representative of the full picture and were thus bound to attract dissociation from one part of society.

My experience on that Monday evening has kind of altered my view on this issue. More directly it has focused my attention on what I can do as a man to ensure that we take control of ourselves and our actions regardless of what the female species does to us.
What I saw on that Monday evening was a man who, with pure disregard of his surroundings, forcefully shoving a women into his car and from the blood on her collar there was obviously more things done to her that I didn’t see.
Of course I don't know the circumstances around that incident. This lady probably 'chowed' this man's money and left him dry. She probably entertained other men at his expense...and maybe even done worse.
I know that the law does not protect men from such abuse, neither does it provide corrective justice, I don't know how to solve this issue.

What I do know, however is that we cannot grow up and raise our sons and daughters in environments where women get abused and men standby and let it happen.

In this environment cowardice and excuses cannot be tolerated either. The funny thing about the situation is the other motorists did arrive and simply observed what was going on like the guy in the Corrolla right next to me, who shouted out questions from the comfort of his car.
The other guy was a white man, who obviously did not want to involve himself, he just slowed down and waited for the jam to die down.

The question I ask myself today is, "What if it was your daughter that was getting manhandled by a monstrous ex-boyfriend in the middle of St. Andrews? How aggressive would you be? How confrontational would you be?"
The issue of self-preservation in the face of blatant injustice is one of the most destructive in any nation. When people would rather keep quiet in order to save themselves has more costs than benefits.

It turns out that the fellow had a gun in the car and in all likelihood he would've killed me. Knowing me, I would've died by heart attack just by seeing the gun.

When I look at it now, maybe I could've died, I was a bit afraid of getting injured, which is probably why I didn't immediately charge.

But what I can say, is that I cannot let somebody else's daughter be abused and even possibly die solely because she is of no relation to me. That's just pure selfishness on my side.

I think every society and generation has the ability within it to create a new 'normal', i.e. a state of affairs that is the norm in that country. Poverty cannot be our normal, joblessness cannot be our normal, neither should corruption...neither should other people's daughter be abused in our midst while we watch on. I think watching as this happens is (tacit) consent.

(After the incident the lady through her friend called me and thanked me dearly, she had just come from the police station and is allegedly pursuing a restraining order. They also asked me if there is any gift I would like, or any thing that they could do for me, just to thank me...I replied, 'No!' Not to project false humility, but that act was not an act of bravery. Just an act of good driving, luck and the sheer fortune of my alumni card coming in handy and Wits being close by.)

-SGM

Doubting Thomas's

On the road to success there are people who appoint themselves as ‘officers of doom’. These are the people who stand on the side of the road, pull people over and tell them why their dreams will not come true, why they won't arrive at their destiny, why their business model won't work and why their proposed project plan won't succeed.

Sometimes they are family members, sometimes they are trusted friends, sometimes it is even the prospect themselves.
Personally, I have experienced all of these scenarios. I have experienced them so much that I have gotten to the point that I really believe that some people are delusional about their prophetic abilities. I mean, some people will cling to their 'Doubting-Thomas' status even when they can see that you are proving them wrong.

I find the human spirit such a stubborn gift, I call it 'spirit' because I really do believe that what we have in us is a super-natural being, that dares to believe even when the odds are stacked against it. I think it was the human spirit that lead people like the Jennifer Hudsons of this world, to rise above criticisms at the highest levels. It is the human spirit that spurred people like Tiger woods back to world number one, after he had fallen so high from grace. And it may even be that this is the same resilient spirit that got people like Nomzamo Mbatha (the lover of my soul, the one who warms the cockles of my heart) to rise to such stardom after losing the MTV Base VJ search.

The human spirit is funny, every time you tell someone that they will not do it, even though the mind, surroundings, statistics and current situation of the person may agree with you. The laws of logic, mathematics and economics may very well agree with you but if the law of the human spirit doesn't agree with you, then you've got another thing coming.

This spirit refuses to let Doubting Thomas's have the final say on peoples' dreams. It refuses to let naysayers have the final word, or the professional pessimists have the last laugh.

So I have a word of strategic advice that Sun Tzu neglected to put in his military strategy manual, 'The Art of War', if you really want an adversary to fail, or a foe to fluster...please, for God-sake, do not add fuel to his fire by telling him he won't make it, you are just causing trouble for yourself.
-SGM

Making a change in my community.

(On the 1st of July I spoke to recipients of the FNB Bursary on certain issues. We did not receive enough time to go into all of the topics we were meant to discuss. I then decided to continue the conversation on the blog. The following is one of a series of blogs on the topic, “Making a change in your community.”)

One of the biggest mistakes I see from both my friends and other fellow varsity students is that we get degrees, we get jobs in the corporate world, people buy cars, live in good suburban homes, start to travel etc. but they stop being driven. They lose that fire they once had, that desire to make a difference, that desire to be a world changer, agent of change and confront the issues of the world head-on.

They achieve these wonderful things, and believe me these are worthy achievements...but they are not the end.
We are not mere intellectual beings, we are not mere professionals, we are so much more than that.
We are beings whose existence is connected to other beings.

One of the things I am sure about life, is that just as much as we have abundance on the inside of us, there is another voice on the inside of us and that is the desire to make a difference in the world.

I know I spoke about the voice of abundance, but another voice which is connected to the voice of abundance is the voice that says, “I can make a change in my generation.”
Equal to the hunger to make a mark in the world, is the hunger to make a change in the world.
Equal to the desire to be somebody is the desire to help someone else be somebody too.
It is there, we are born with it!

But what kills it, what kills the voice of change, the desire and hunger to make a difference?

Before I answer that question I must answer this one...briefly. “What kills the voice of abundance, what kills the voice that tells us we are great?”

There are 2 short answers I want to touch on:

1) Life: some of the challenges we face in life hit us so hard that we are forced to draw a conclusion that we are not as great as we (think) are. It may be the fact that you didn't get the marks you wanted in class, or you did not get into the university you wanted, or you got in but had to drop out because you realised that you did not love the course, or a relationship that failed and you got hurt, or a business that failed...all of these failures or struggles are enough to force some people to think of themselves, "as not so great after all”?

Some of these challenges are enough to make people abandon their dreams, and think, “Oh maybe I should be like everybody else and travel the road most travelled.”

2) The feared "Comfort Zone": The comfort zone is as horrible as the friend zone.
A person who is comparable to a person in a comfort zone is a person whose belly is full. I don't know if you've been really hungry, you know that growling hunger that forces you out of the comfort of your chair into the street to look for something to eat.
I don't care how comfortable you are, but if you are really hungry you will get up and make a plan. The effects of hunger are so lethal that in Zulu we have a saying that "Indlala ibanga ulaka" (directly translated means, hunger causes anger/violence/fury). All of us know or have experienced that it is not wise to mess with a hungry person, a hungry person will deal with you now, "Not yesterday, Today" *Leon Schuster Voice*

But there is a feeling on the opposite end of the spectrum, the feeling that one gets after they've just had a satisfying meal. After a meal, all I want to do is sit and relax as my digestive system goes into full gear.

That's the same with contentment, it kills the drive to go and look for food. It kills the drive to look for opportunities, for growth for development...so you're fine...you've got a pay cheque every month, why should you go to school and study some more. Why should you read all these books? Why should you develop yourself?

Just like food satisfies the drive for man to look for food to fill himself, so does contentment satisfy the need for man to look for tools of development and opportunities for growth.

Now what kills the voice of change, the voices to be agents of change?

Well that's even more complex...

1) Passing the buck:
I think during the transition of democracy, one of the biggest mistakes we all made, as a country , is we took to much power and/or responsibility and put it on government and politicians. That is one of the biggest mistakes that we all made. The job of building a country is too big for a political party.

In doing this we shifted the responsibility to institutions and made it their sole responsibility to fulfil some of the challenges in our country. This mistake was a grave one, because it also lead to people assuming that they need to be elected or hired into certain positions in order to make a difference.

The mistake of passing the buck to government has only served to exonerate us of the responsibility to play an active role in our society. And that's why we as a country are good at complaining, we cry about the quality of education, lack of leadership, lack of accountability. We do this because it makes us feel like the real failure is the government, and not us the society.

It is important to note that it is not political office that suffers directly when young people do not have the tools to express themselves and resort to drugs. It is the community that suffers when these young people resort to criminal activities in order to finance their habits. It is the community that suffers when young ladies get pregnant at young ages and have to leave school early in order to support their children.


2) Exodus:
It is common knowledge that when most young people dream, they dream to leave the township. There is nothing wrong with this, I would easily leave a double storey in Diepkloof to live in a Sandhurst mansion. And Soweto is a very advanced township, as President Mugabe alluded to: it is not a bar.
All townships were created to be oppressive, the system that created them was a well orchestrated system of oppression.

The problem though is the unintended consequences: When the good crop of people leave for the suburbs they leave behind a township that is short of role models. People to whom the young people will look up to, whom the young people will seek to model their lives around.
When the people who have the experience, skills and education to help alter the situation in townships and rural areas...leave the township, they leave a void that is hard to fill.
The same principle holds when they put their children in private schools, and participate in those school governing bodies...the result is the great divide between the private and public school education systems right now.

When the proverbial "out of sight out of mind" process happens, the desire for change is slowly overshadowed by other pending more urgent matters.
Both of these are contributing factors...the list is not exhaustive, there are other reasons, but these are the 2 most prevalent.

(To Be Continued…)

-Simon Mtsuki and Ziyanda Khumalo

When God Closes One Door

I'm sure many of us have heard or even used the cliche: "when God closes one door, He opens another."
Basically this phrase means that when an opportunity, or what seemed to be a great opportunity, is taken from you, God (or fate) will reward you with another one. This I believe, because I believe that God is too great and life is too long for the well-being of our lives to be dependant on one person, opportunity or 'big-break'. Our purpose is bigger than that.
The problem I have, however, is that this phrase does not fully capture the truth of reality, there is something missing.

There are 2 other important points that this cliche fails to capture:

1) Sometimes people are kicked out of doors.

Many of us for whom doors were shut, they were not shut under peaceful or serene circumstances. Some people were kicked out while they were still enjoying the fruits of comfort, after they had poured the 2nd teaspon of sugar into the tea and still salivating over the tastiness of the chocolate cookies.

Just as you were getting comfortable, you were dragged by the scruff of your neck and booted out.
Some people were dumped by people that they had already dreamt of a future with, others had already signed off on future life plans after grand promises were made.

Some people have been fired from jobs while they were still hoping for a promotion or whilst they were still strategising on the best way to fund their first car.

Some people were robbed of business ideas and plans, others were kicked out of contracts by conniving adminstrators that wanted a share in the spoils.

So the exit out the door is not as uneventful, as the phrase suggests. Sometimes the doors are not even closed, for some of us they are kept open so we can still witness the enjoyment that still occurs without us, for others the doors were slammed in their faces mid-sentence, just as they were about to motivate for their stay.

2) There is a very dark and long hall-way in between.
When the doors are shut, and you can still hear the slamming of the door ringing in your ears, you are stuck in a very long and dark hallway. That hallway is probably the darkest you will ever see, much darker and even longer than the fourth watch of the night.

Yes you heard that there is another door that will open for you, but the problem is the process is too long and confusing.

Trying to find your door in the dark is a pretty testing process, one that stretches your faith and tests your boundaries, one that involves a lot of trips and stumbles.

I know people who have been in the dark hallway for 3 or even 5 years, I know people who have even given up hope on the existence of another door and decided to get comfortable in the darkness. I have even heard of people who have even died in the darkness.
It's tough in the darkness.

The trick of the darkness is that one must be patient, persistent and have an ear for direction.
Don't lose heart in the darkness, don't doubt in the darkness, dont die in the darkness.

Because the truth is that the next door does exist, it is bigger than the previous one.

Behind it lies treasures and spoils never heard of before, that you had never even imagined with your mind.
When God closes one door, He doesn't just open one, instead He opens one, that leads into other doors of opportunity.

The intention with allowing the previous one to be closed is that you would've gotten so comfortable in Egypt while the land of Milk and Honey awaits.
If you hadn't been kicked out there you would've been comfortable with little when much awaits,
You would've been comfortable with being Good, when Greatness awaits.

So whether you're already in the darkness or are still about to be kicked into it, I just wanted to let you know that there is nothing wrong with being in the darkness. It's part of a mandatory process. Fall but don't stay down, fail but don't stop trying, cry but don't stop dreaming. Remember: The Other Door Awaits.

Passionate Performance

So this past Sunday I caught one of the very few Pop Idols shows I have watched in the entire lifespan of the show. I just can't bring myself to watch reality shows that capitalize and make revenue off people’s passion and talents. Some people have a genuine desire to sing and take their talent to the world, for some it is the only ticket out of their circumstances, so to make a show out of (some) peoples desperation, to play survival of the fittest, and knockouts with peoples lives is (to me) a manipulation of human beings and an offence to the Giver of talent. But that's just my 2 cents opinion, who cares what I think anyway?

Anyway back to my point, I saw some of the acts and fell asleep...and happened to wake-up half-way through one of the most passionate, fire-filled musical performances I’ve ever seen. It was that guy from KZN that everybody's been talking about, who started singing in church and has shared 'classical' gospel stages with the likes of Mthunzi Namba. Yes you know him, I won't name him because everybody will start thinking that my blog is a partisan blog created to influence the constitutionality and democratic process of the South African Idols. But it was a powerful performance, not one of the best, but with a great amount of dedication, fire and passion that I have witnessed in a while.

The man took us to church, transformed an 80's version of Otis Redding whopping 'Try a little tenderness'. He gave meaning to the song, 'stretching' and 'pulling' his voice to the maxim. Part of it was probably the desire to be voted in to the top 3 or 5 or whatever stages they are in. Another part of it was sheer passion, to transform himself, to pour himself and to 'forget about' himself for the sheer purpose of his art. And that was what made it a great performance.

The one lesson for me, from that one performance is that Mr. Joyous-Celebration-Guy-From KZN is dedicated to his craft and willing to pour his heart and soul out for its full expression. That's a trait that is really hard to come by these days. A complete and utter dedication to an art, a go big big OR home type of performance. Look I don't want to be drawn into the Idol-Politik, I am not part of any political camp or faction, but I do just want to say that Mr. Joyous-Celebration-Guy-From-KZN got me fired up about my art, and since then I've been thinking, "If you're not going to do it with oomph, with umjunju, with gusto, with passion, with fire then rather leave it undone. Don't waste your time and don't waste the time of the people who are depending on your deliverance.”

The Children of Children

The children of children by the time they’re half grown have habits like rabbits and young of their own The children of children from their mamas laps hop down to the ground to be taken in traps The children of children trapped by dark skins to stay in and play in a game no one wins The children of children while still young and sweet are all damned and programmed for future defeat The children of children are trapped by adults who fail them then jail them to hide the results The children of children unable to cope with systems that twist them and rob them of hope The children of children of sin and ashamed keep pairing and bearing and who do you blame The children of children cry out every day – they beg you for rescue and what do you say? Oscar Brown Jnr

An Opportunity's Lifetime

In 2007, my first year of Varsity I lived in the United States of Braamfontein (USB), I call it the United States because there is no other place in South Africa that has a diverse mix of people than Braam. Nigerians, Cameroonians, Vendanese, Zulus, Christians and Muslims all together in harmony. Braam was so harmonious in its diversity we even had a night club that served as a church on Sundays. Serious, ask around if you don't believe me.

Anyway, Braam's residents are predominantly young people that come from across Southern Africa to come to study, from Wits University to University of Johannesburg Campuses. From the so called Rosebank College (I still don't understand why they call it that when it's not even in Rosebank, but anyway) to Boston Business College, the only Gauteng institutions that were not available in Braamfontein were University Pretoria and Vaal University of Technology . Knowing the perpetual laziness and constant hungriness of students you probably know that take-aways would be the order of the day (excuse the pun). We chowed take-aways like nobody’s business and there were many outlets to cater to our stomachs and laziness, from Nandos to Steers to KFC, to those small Nigerian stores that sell that funny Nigerian food with the dumplings. Still, amidst the fattening variety there was a student favourite fast-food joint that was missing, "McDonalds". At times our Mcd's craving would get so wild that we had to catch taxi's to Auckland Park to satisfy the spicy chicken cajun fix.
My roommate and I felt this void and we devised a plan to try and get a Mcd's franchise into braam, considering the already growing market we had no doubt that we would make a killing off of it.
So we sought the franchise information out but were shocked when we found out that we needed approximately R3000 000 to buy the franchise, that put a big fat damper on our spirits. We didn't give up though, we purposed that an investor would probably be the best option to follow. After a while I got busy with school, and he got tied up at work...and we ended up forgetting about having a business relationship with Ronald McDonald.
Fast forward five years later as I was walking past what used to be the Indian jewellery store that I walked past every school day, stood a very big fat store packed to capacity, with a big yellow M on the front…somebody else had taken the initiative on something I had been procrastinating on. *sigh*

Procrastination is an evil thing don't you think? And it has affected us in so many different ways.

Thing is, when we procrastinate well enough we end up forgetting about our goals and are reminded about them when we see somebody else doing the exact same thing we once hoped to be doing...like building that unique business, or registering that degree or even going for that girl you didn't go for, she always looks more attractive in the arms of another punk doesn't she?
It’s even worse knowing that owner was not necessarily a better a businessman than you, or the other guy was not a better man than you...the only difference is they had the ability to take initiative faster than your sorry self.

The worste type of procrastination is when we delay until we forget, and ideas are the most spiteful things in the world. They don't just die unpursued, they go off and find somebody else that will pursue them relentlessly. Months later they pass by your home or job and flaunt "See what you missed brother?"

Many of us think that good ideas come to life because their good, because their noble but that is a butt load of bullocks. Ideas don't come to life because of how excellent they are but because of how excellently their pursued, that's why we have not-so good ideas coming to life. You can have the greatest idea but until it comes to life, it remains a theatrical performance in your mind.

You see ideas are like relationships, you must nurture them, love them and make sure they grow, if you don't...you'll find yourself like me, passing by a McDonalds that could've been yours.
I guess their right, The opportunity of a lifetime should be pursued in the lifetime of that opportunity.
-SGM