Do you remember where the Rainbow Nation started? Do you remember 1995 Rugby World Cup?

I remember 1995! I remember the 1995 Rugby World Cup. A time when there were countless hopes and tremendous fear. Just 5 years previously the white "regime" of South Africa sent Tata Madiba free, and then 4 years later he stepped into being the President of South Africa.

I remember that time, as a white child in a country ready to come apart at the seams, I remember experiencing the fear of a civil war breaking out. I remember my father's fears of the new powers taking everything away. I remember how the fears of my parents making me feel all fearful where I had dreams of my family being killed and houses being burnt down. I know it was the fears of the adults that sparked my fears.

Then I remember the day our school integrated and how when the Rugby World Cup started, how black or white cheered and went crazy on the school playground and in our maths classroom with Mr. De Bruyn where we gathered to watch the various games the Springboks played, we all rejoiced when the Springboks won. Black and white were singing, jumping, hugging, cheering - just going mad together. Together a generation of Rainbow children experienced patriotism and what working together can achieve.


We had just come out of an era of hatred and sanctions, white and black never mixed but this occasion showed that it was where all differences were forgotten and forgiven.  It was a time where the world was pro
missed that the world will never see with South Africa a time where one would oppress one race or dominate over them. Yet I ask where has that disappeared to?

In 1995 these Rugby Players were normal men. You must understand that at that time rugby players were not professionally paid athletes. They had day jobs and commitments. They were students, employees and businessmen that had managed to balance their work career with their sport. They willingly chose to sacrifice time at work, studies and their businesses to build something great. They did this willingly for a regime that they feared would take everything away out of revenge. I see our National Flag wave in the wind and I wonder why they believed so strongly in peace and chose to use a simple weapon like a sport to help unite a country?

The funny thing is that round this time their fears were not completely wrong. Just before the World Cup the National Sports Council almost voted to abolish the cherished Springbok emblem, name and the hallowed green and gold colours in favour of the emblem and name of the Proteas.
However at that vote Madiba himself made an appearance to change the vote. Some of his words still stick in my mind: "We have to be better than that. We have to surprise them with compassion, with restraint and generosity. This is not time to celebrate petty revenge. This is a time to build our nation, using every single brick available to us even if its wrapped in green and gold."

Needless to say the vote was changed.

I think back on those times and saw how my friends - our generation integrated and rejoiced in the fact of the Rainbow Nation. I mean I was one of the first kids in my standard to invite "black" friends to my birthday party at my house.

However after 21 years as a rainbow nation we have lost the "human calculation" teachings that Madiba brought us. Somehow we have managed to forget what it felt like that day when South Africa won the 1995 World Cup. We have forgotten what it's like to stand together as a rainbow nation.

I see all the posts and newspaper articles on disturbing facts about farm murders, crime rates rising, load shedding issues. Fear and we see the sparks once again in various printed forms and articles of white and black issues. I then see the various comments where eventually the people who comment turn on each other with such malice, hatred and contempt. It's basically begun to revert back to the way it was in the period during apartheid where different races, tribes and cultures are filled with hatred for anyone that is different.

Where has the "Proudly South African" elements, feelings and hopes gone. The funny thing is that my generation is the generation that has raised and is raising the generation that is now so full of hatred.

What saddens me is that in 1995 the youth could not wait to achieve greatness. We worked hard together. We dreamt together and never once threw anyone to the wolves. We would jump in and stand up to bullies and never stoop to be a bully.

Why then are our young people of today so angry? So upset? So full of hatred?

Madiba once asked Francios Pienaar during a tea they once had: "What is your philosophy on leadership? How do you inspire your team to do their best?"

So I ask you the youth of South Africa How do you inspire yourself? How do you inspire others around you?




If it's through your example then what is your example saying about you?
Perhaps it's time to allow ourselves to change. Time to rebuild. Who is with me? Who will build with us?

A picture is worth a thousand words

 “Is a picture really worth a thousand words? What thousand words? A thousand words from a lunatic, or a thousand words from Nietzsche? Actually, Nietzsche was a lunatic, but you see my point. What about a thousand words from a rambler vs. 500 words from Mark Twain? He could say the same thing quicker and with more force than almost any other writer. One thousand words from Ginsberg are not even worth one from Wilde. It’s wild to declare the equivalency of any picture with any army of 1,000 words. Words from a writer like Wordsworth make you appreciate what words are worth.”

Jarod Kintz

I am always surprised by other people – their perspectives continue to amaze me. This is mostly because, in the day-to-day rush of life, the perspective we rely on the most is our own. It is our default setting to always enforce our truth as absolute. Somehow it makes us feel safer in the chaos of what we encounter. As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, very little in our lives is cast in stone. And so we cling to our beliefs, our attitudes, our opinions, in the hopes that we will find certainty in that.

But are these beliefs, attitudes and opinions we hold of any real value? How can we know for sure? Jarod Kintz provides some interesting insight in this regard. I’ve read his observations about the connection between pictures and words many times, and looked at the connection as being one of trade-off. Either say the words or present the picture. Both cannot exist simultaneously. An exchange must occur. However, in reading it recently, a new revelation came upon me. The value of pictures and words is not quantifiable. The true value of picture and words is, rather, qualifiable – it lies in the value the poetry of words and pictures add to our understanding of our own worth, and our own capabilities as human beings.

And so, words and pictures do not exist in an either/or scenario. They exist in a relationship. Pictures can speak, and words can show. They are our teachers, and neither can be disregarded at the expense of the other. Consider the following:

Below is Steve McCurry’s photograph of the ‘Afghan Girl’. To know her suffering is to see this picture. Her eyes speak volumes – they communicate her beliefs, her attitudes and her opinions about her world:

(image courtesy of http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b4/Sharbat_Gula.jpg)

Now read the description of this image by Laura Cole:

Her “haunting” “sea-green” eyes became the talk of many and the nameless girl was soon the face of humanitarian campaigns and photographic journals alike (Braun; Newman). Those green eyes that lift off the gloss of the page and her “ambiguous” expression are at once a profound message and a work of art (McCurry qtd. in Phaidon). Entirely myth-like she provoked the dark associations of her war ravaged country as well as those of her age and sex, her connotations encompassed by both halves of her only namesake “Afghan” and “girl” while her name encompassed the issues of her entire country. Thus, in having no name she represented the children, women and conflict of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan: a child of the socio-political context of 1985. Lacking her own, the Afghan girl acquired the names of thousands of other Afghans as well as the might of the Soviet campaign and conversely the Western interest in the region. She is by extension, the culmination of all these myths.

(taken from http://tracklaura.com/2012/04/10/the-afghan-girl-revisited/)

Is McCurry’s photograph more valuable than Cole’s description?

If we can answer this, I believe, we will truly know our own worth.

Author:

Mary-Anne Potter