It is interesting to gauge the reactions of people when you tell them you are leaving one country for another – not something I could comprehend or contemplate when my parents left Scotland for South Africa in early 1970.
Regrettably this wasn’t something I ever felt the need to discuss with them until now and unless I connect ethereally with them for confirmation, I’m unlikely to get their subjective opinions on the matter.
In my own recollection of their “need” to emigrate at that time, bolstered by what I came to know of their marriage and relationship dynamic, it always appeared to me that my dad was running from something rather than to something. It’s not to say that he didn’t believe he might be travelling to a land of opportunity (for South Africa certainly was that for a white minority elite during those times), but it was more of an escape than a new beginning I think. I believe my dad thought he would make his marriage better by changing it for a newer, more expansive lifestyle while subconsciously disregarding the looming reality that he was heading off to a white working-man’s paradise and plunging my mother into an alien culture that would isolate and polarise their relationship even further. He was exporting the problems from Scotland to South Africa while creating a whole range of new ones that my mother had no way of dealing with.
Needless to say, it didn’t fix their marriage – it served only to exacerbate their fragile relationship until it broke completely, at which time a new setting (Australia, ironically) was contemplated as the final place of therapy for an unhealthy domestic situation.
However, Australia merely became the battleground for the ultimate assault in the final analysis. So the venue didn’t resolve anything and they both died bitter people – bitter toward each other. It was a tragedy that I would have preferred not have been part of and fatefully was spared the ongoing destruction by dint of the oceans that separated us. My little brother and sister who were forced to emigrate with them weren’t so lucky. They got ringside seats.
My dad’s way of (not) dealing with things was kinda like a simplistic version of cognitive dissonance such as the way smokers constantly reaffirm that their habit is something they want to give up, cannot give up, know it’s bad for them but are virtually powerless to do anything about it. So instead of doing something positive – i.e. empowering themselves and their wellbeing by simply not smoking, they grapple with this concept that they are giving up something they actually need then go on to argue how much easier it is for people who don't have an addictive personality or how there needs to be a replacement habit to fill in for the damaging one. Or they just carry on as they are, bemoaning their lot, continuing to knowingly screw up their health as if it was the tobacco industry’s responsibility for their life choices. In the USA, some plaintiffs have even gone as far as to prove that it is the tobacco industry’s insidious marketing that got them hooked and once they were in, they couldn't get out.
What I battle with in any of those scenarios is this ongoing affirmation that we are victims of some heinous agenda which denies us the right or ability to make our own choices. Regardless of the physical addictiveness of nicotine or any other drug to which we find ourselves slavishly beholden, we still have the choice (no matter how difficult it may be) to stop taking the stuff.
It is remarkable how many people drop destructive habits when a modern-day god such as a medical expert tells them that unless they change their lifestyles, they are going to die very soon. Point is – we all have the ability to make different choices and evolve from the victim reality. But some of us choose to continue on potentially dangerous paths. So be it. In the case of moving to Oz – that has nothing to do with danger but everything to do with simply making a new choice.
I look on our impending migration as something akin to the preceding analogy – we decided to empower ourselves by doing something different in a new place – a place to go to rather than South Africa being a place to run from.
If we were running from something: fear, crime, apathy or the like then I don't believe for a moment we’d have been addressing the root of the issue but rather that we’d be merely supplanting our own fear of those things and hiding from them. We’re not. We’ve never had issues with any of those aspects of existence in South Africa or anywhere else for that matter despite me going through life as one of the most confrontational personalities I know. I attract that in my work as project management-related challenges require swift, resolutionary (my word) confrontation that has to be managed positively in order to succeed and progress but it doesn’t necessarily invite chaos or mayhem into my personal life which, although a work in progress, is a deliriously happy, idyllic one with the best woman in the world who shares the way I view our reality.
And although we have always created our own personal reality regarding health, wealth, safety, security etc., we are still surrounded by a largely fearful society that tacitly condones the ethos that the New South Africa has created. That isn't a criticism – it’s an observation of what we experience through interaction with friends and colleagues in our daily life and it’s not necessarily an ethos to which we subscribe. Which, I suppose, could make us hypocrites or could simply mean that we need a change if we cannot change the outlooks of everyone else around us – and clearly we can’t do that. So we need to change. And so we are.
Once we’d arrived at the decision to initiate the migration process and we spoke of this to people, a knee-jerk reaction from many was that they envied us the ability to be able to do it. Others sneered at the decision assuming we were heading off to Perth (aka Pretoria Far East) to continue with the careers we have in SA. When I abstractly tell people that no, it isn't Perth it’s Adelaide and Karen will most likely teach or work as a ceramist while I focus on my writing seriously, they think exactly the opposite of that – I’m not serious. Oh but I am.
Others said it is “easy” to run away from SA with a foreign passport and I guess that’s true if you want to run to an enclave under the sovereignty of the passport you hold – in my case, the United Kingdom with its vast but dwindling empire. But the bottom line is, I, a vegetarian would rather eat MacDonalds than live in a principality of the UK or heaven-forbid, the UK (Mud Island) itself. I just don't want to be there. Scotland will always be the land of my ancestors and lineage, a land I love dearly and the place where my morality was largely shaped by (despite their own shortcomings toward each other) loving, caring, and open-minded parents. But it isn't the place I want to return to, not is its managing neighbour, England nor Wales nor Ireland. I crave the wide open spaces and the climate that Africa or the broad expanses of Australia can offer.
And for the record – it is anything but “easy” to migrate to Australia what with the reams and reams of paperwork, a requirement to be younger than 45 and have some kind of formal qualifications in a field that they desire and may wish to sponsor. Not to mention her, as a South African, having to undergo English language aptitude testing on more than one occasion.
Having family there, which I have had for almost a full generation – direct blood-relations among many cousins, aunts and uncles – assists you in no way whatsoever. And Karen just makes it by virtue of age & qualifications; even so, she required additional points through state sponsorship which dictates the region and style of work she would be required to do for a prescribed period of time.
We are (or at last she for the most part is) working extremely hard just to qualify to move there so let it be known to all the sneery know-it-alls that it isn't easy just because you have a British passport. It means sweet FA, bru!
While it may be true to say that nothing stands still and South Africa is changing, if we examine the Jacob Zuma situation – that hasn’t changed at all – oh with the exception than unsurprisingly he is now the president of this wonderful country.
The fact that:
Zuma didn’t go to trial;
he wasn’t acquitted;
the charges weren’t dropped (no they weren’t – go back and re-read the court transcripts),
exemplifies the ethos that is prevalent in this country and presents this case as a microcosm of the macrocosm.
Given enough time, our passion for justice (not revenge) fades into apathy and we slip back into a numbed acceptance of the status-quo and go through the motions of everything being ok again. Everything isn't ok. Just because the NPA decided it wasn’t going to proceed with this case (despite the presence of prima-facie evidence compelling them to do so), a contrived and disingenuous story hinged on two key players in the NPA & (now defunct) Scorpions produced enough smoke and mirrors to allow Zuma to slip out the back door and become the president of the country.
The upshot of this – business as usual and the inevitable spin accompanied by absolutely zero accountability and a seemingly national acceptance that to proceed now with Zuma’s prosecution would be more damaging to SA than it would be helpful. Well, in my view, that remains to be seen but I doubt if it ever will be. Seen, that is.
And it’s not about being unforgiving either. It’s simply that it’s not the public’s position to forgive Zuma – it’s the judiciary’s job to do that or convict him as the case may be – a job that they haven’t been allowed to conduct in favour of political expediency with a horribly loaded agenda.
But the precedent that’s been set by this debacle, the arms-deal saga, travelgate and a myriad other corruption cases that have produced enough smoke to suggest a fire somewhere within the ANC’s upper echelon, remains the core of the pervasive mindset that poisons this land of ours.
In this terribly flawed and abundantly corrupt political landscape, the suspects and (in some cases) the guilty remain miraculously free from any manner of punishment or retribution. Is it any wonder that South Africans emulate this behaviour through all walks of life from corporate corruption to the cops on the take and the generally anarchic attitudes of the average citizen to the concept of law and order? Let’s face it – we don't obey speed limits, we jump traffic lights and stop signs, we make a national sport out of drinking and driving and the cops about whom we complain as being dense and corrupt are kept that way should they dare stop us for speeding (or some other irritating aspect of law enforcement) by the R50 we slip them rather than admit to our wrongdoing and allowing ourselves to be subjected to the inconvenience of the judicial process.
Well, by the same token, it would have been much more inconvenient for Zuma to have gone through yet another trial after they found his mate Shaik guilty (oh, hang on, I forgot – he’s at home in Durban courtesy of a tame physician, living on his ill-gotten spoils, the stolen boodle padded by a significant interest accrual – all at the taxpayer’s expense). Yeah why should our esteemed president have to go through the due process of law when we can’t be bothered with that tedious bullshit either? Glass houses and all that...
The answer is a simple one: Because – we are above the law in this fair and pleasant land – or at least that’s the way it seems. And working in corporate business, believe me, that’s exactly what we think.
Therein lies the issue that I have with South Africa and the so-called systems of governance in place here fomented by the corporations that ran and continue to run SA beyond the apartheid years. The same white elite that ran things back then are the same cronies (not the new black elite) that concocted the vehicle of BEE to protect the existing white oligarchy while ensuring the existing and emerging black elite are well looked after.
The saps (it is alleged) that BEE is supposedly designed to empower sink even further into abject poverty through the perverse machinations of BEE while our mercenary elitist hierarchy sucks the country dry through de-industrialisation and a potentially fatal dependency on imported commodities that we should be making ourselves to:
a) Provide basic employment & training programmes
b) Combat spiralling poverty and the consequential crime, and
c) Protect our economy now and in the future
But we have weathered the media circus of the general election, quietly forgotten about the issues that were raised during this process and now we pat Comrade Zuma on the back for simply meeting the triumphant Tri-Nations winning Boks at the airport. We waste copious media column-inches on the worthless (albeit fascinating to none but the terminally bored I’d imagine) issue of the gender identification of an award-winning South African athlete. I see it as a bonus if Caster Semenya has both sets of business parts – can’t he/she simply enter into the 800m men’s and women’s events and have two shots at gold? Yep – it’s the usual neverending servings of inconsequential drivel and smokescreens while the real business goes on in the backrooms of corporate boardrooms, on golf courses and in political offices countrywide.
It’s not to say that South Africa is poised on the brink of destruction – it’s not. It’s poised at the intersection of a very significant crossroads – one which offers the leadership the choice of doing the right thing and re-industrialising the country, putting wealth back instead of funnelling it offshore and creating an real equal-opportunity economy or continuing along the path upon which we now find ourselves, a tortuous, unsustainable one that will bleed the life out of the country in a very short space of time.
I have given my lot to this country from the age of ten, volunteered to enlist at the tender age of 17 being summarily exempted due to changing laws and my dual citizenship, paid my dues as a manual labourer, a tax-paying worker and someone who has tried throughout my life to do the right thing. I’m not about to hang around while South Africa decides what it’s going to do. And in my experience, as a global business (as any country surely is), it has mostly ignored the “right” choice in favour of self-serving agendas as has all of sub-Saharan Africa without exception while its citizens suffer as a consequence.
The right thing for us, as a couple, to do at this moment is look further afield and try a change of landscape, ethos and possibility. So that’s what we’re going to do.
But as it is with moving provinces, this does not compel total abandonment – as a Cape Province resident for a few of my years in this country, I remained and remain still, a long-suffering Lions rugby supporter. No matter how much my love of my intended new home, I will forever remain a Bok supporter through and through only shouting for the Wallabies whenever they play anyone else...
It was complex enough being a Scottish South African but adopting the mantle of a Scottish South African Australian – Digger Van der Murray – is going to be a whole new ballgame altogether...
Watch this space.
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