Imagine a country, filled to the brim with bickering toddlers, raging and crying over their dropped ice cream, each blaming the other. Now imagine these toddlers all grown up, still holding passive-aggressive grudges and trying to govern a society with a sense of entitlement as their only compass.
Of course, that could be a metaphor for the entire human race, as none of us have ever really grown up to the point where we take responsibility for our world. It’s always someone else’s fault, or someone else’s problem. However it’s in South Africa that these flaws in the human condition are most prevalent.
The diversity and rich culture, the borderline economy teetering on the edge between first-world and third-world, the extreme paradigm shifts over the last century… South Africa is for all intents and purposes a funnel through which the majority of human culture is poured, dripping down into a cauldron that can be both depressingly and amusingly volatile—a potion of which any historian or social analyst would be happy to partake. Ah, but the potion is grainy and demonstrates the heterogeneous nature of human mentality. Some things simply do not mix well: oil and water, fire and ice, tooth paste and cola, tequila and Stroh rum, culture and politics.
Don’t get me wrong, culture is a wonderful thing and politics, well—a necessary thing. But when such diversity is present in a population and so many nuances are at play, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep the peace and maintain the status quo, let alone revolutionise much of anything.
So what is it that needs to be achieved with such effort you ask?
What needs to be achieved is a Meritocracy in South Africa. Why?
This series takes a look at a few reasons of the many that Meritocracy is the effective antidote to South Africa’s case of the whinies and delivers optimal power-packed nourishment towards thriving individuals and community. We’ll view specific people and events in the nation through the lens of possibility for Equal Opportunity for Every Child—in South Africa and throughout the world.