The Rules we See

The way we see the world is path-dependent. Which means occasionally we have to reassess the way we remember seeing things. I didn’t grow up feeling like I was wealthy. I grew up with money fights and money anxiety. I felt like my life was quite simple. 

In retrospect, and in a South African, or global context... that is not true. I was part of the Durban Youth Council when I was 16 years old. In 1996, Theresa Mthembu was the mayor of the South-Central Durban Council and took me on a tour of some of the areas I had never seen. We went to her house in Umlazi, and though it was on the other side of the hill from where I lived, I had never been. 

In the Apartheid world I grew up in, you had the highway winding through Kwa-Zulu Natal, and you could drive from bubble to bubble. This is the same highway the Comrades Marathon is run along, with suburbs along the route. 

On the outside of the suburbs, you had the areas that supported them. In the whites-only areas, you would still have domestic workers, gardeners, and people working in shops. People who kept the system going but were hidden. Like in the connected world we still live in where we still limit the movement of capital, goods, service, and people. 

In that transitionary period when things started opening up, you could go over a hill and see an area that is home to half a million people. Something you can’t unsee. 

Wealth is always relative. When we consider how well we are doing financially, we tend to benchmark aspirationally against those doing better. This means people seldom feel like they are doing well financially, and are at peace with their finances. We are communal animals and our communities set the rules we see.

KwaZulu-Natal

Where You Are

I lived in the UK for 12 years. When I arrived, I admit I was skeptical about the idea of poverty there. The UK is a rich country. There is a tendency for us to only care about the poverty we can see. 

South Africa is notable as the worst country in the world for inequality, and yet it is only as unequal as the world-as-a-whole (using Gini Coefficient as the measure). What is considered poverty in the UK is very different from South Africa. 

By the same token, my eyes would be opened by going to South Sudan. A friend of mine’s job was removing bombs there! 

I gained some appreciation of UK poverty when I was in the US, walking (probably unwisely) around areas of Chicago, and it definitely felt like poverty. It felt like Apartheid. 

Poverty is scarcity. When a single thing starts taking on your full attention. When you have to focus not on choice, in the context of all your decisions. The immediate becomes so important nothing else is relevant. Even a financially wealthy person can have time poverty, because they no longer have choice in their moments. 

It was an eye-opener to see tough, difficult to solve, poverty in rich countries. 

I went to a play in London where the actors paused and took suggestions from the audience, and re-acted. A theatrical version of the film, “I, Daniel Blake”. Where the wheels (illogically for those watching) fall off. “If only they had done [this]”. The punchline being that it is almost meaningless to suggest alternate paths to someone not in your situation. 

We don’t see the same. We can’t see the whole situation, and make decisions FROM where they are.

poverty

On Repeat

My understanding of South African history and the clashing introduction of Europeans was very different from the “New World” rushes where adventurers were promised a land of plenty. Almost everyone at that stage was working the land of the VERY old world in some form. None of this modern “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. 

Some people did well out of that, but the vast majority were struggling along. The “teach a man to fish” parable probably still worked because all the fish weren’t *explicitly* owned. On top of struggle, there was war. 

The Xhosa Wars/Cape Frontier Wars were a series of nine conflicts from 1779 to 1889. After the Napoleonic Wars, the English got more involved. Britain was facing serious unemployment problems, and sent a group of poor “1820 Settlers” to set up in the middle of where this conflict had been. 

A bunch of wars followed to set up various people’s dreams of unity. To create identity. 

Fast forward to the question, “why spend so much time thinking about history?”. Why not move forward? Leave the past in the past. I spend a lot of time thinking, and rethinking, through my history. I believe it frames how we think and decide. 

Learning history is like group therapy. Decisions and behaviours all happen in context. Many of our choices are simple repetitions of what we saw done. Repeated, repeated, repeated, till they are a part of us. Even if we can come up with made up justifications if challenged, we don’t understand why we do everything we do. 

Most of our choices are automated. Life is too complicated and intricate for us to constantly reflect on everything. A lot of our wisdom and bias is inherited.

amathole mountains

a setting for war

Self-Sacrifice and Self-Reliance

The irony of growing up in Apartheid where a privileged minority received various advantages, is that that is not part of the deep soaked self-identity. 

Reach further back and the scars are of tough-love and self-reliance. “No one owes you anything” and “Life is hard. Make a plan”. That perspective is a positive-optimistic-negative view of the world. A Ja-Nee view that got baked into the stories of Racheltjie De Beer and Wolraad Woltemade. 

My great-great-(forget how many)-grandfather was Jacobus De Beer, who was a signatory at the peace of Vereeniging (the treaty that ended the second Anglo-Boer War). I had ancestors on both sides. The story of Racheltjie is of her saving the life of her brother by sacrificing her own. She removed her clothes to cover him in a snowstorm. 

There are repeated stories of self-sacrifice, but also self-reliance. A willingness to give to others, but not rely on or expect from others. A cultural sense of loneliness. A sense of fleeing others. 

I don’t have a full handle on how I ended up here. My Maiden name is Black. A surname given to expelled sheep thieves in the Scottish borderlands. All sorts of dodgy people, explorers, refugees, and randoms found their way away and down south. Unpacking stories is complicated.

Bloemfontein Concentration Camp

Understanding Connections

What we do, matters. What has been done, matters. History plays out its consequences. For me, being (randomly) born in South Africa at the tail end of Apartheid had, and has, consequences. 

I come from a family where politics was discussed, but I can’t remember the Rubicon speech. I was just starting to form memories, and that was not one of them. I do know it was a difficult time. 

As a kid, you are really just aware of being a kid. You gradually gain consciousness of the world that you are in. In the first few years after you are born, you don’t even have the place to store your memories. You are just experiencing. It takes time to realise that your parents are separate individuals from you. 

We all go through the terrible twos and tantrums, and discovering our Ego. Discovering that we don’t necessarily have to listen to all the instructions we are given. There is a process too of realising that there is a world beyond your family. A world beyond your school. A world beyond the groups that you are a part of. Gradually we get the chance of understanding our place, and our history. 

There is a concept called the “veil of ignorance”. What rules for the game would you create if you didn’t know which character you were going to be? 

I was 14 in 1994 when the first democratic elections took place in South Africa. Part of grappling with my story has been the existential crisis of being a white male South African. Without falling into the trap of self-flagellation, what is the balance between playing the cards you have and understanding your connection to the rest of the world?

Me, in a group in the year Apartheid ended

Unpacking

A cornerstone of my personal story is having grown up in South Africa during Apartheid. I was born in 1980. Nelson Mandela was released in 1989. 

One of those events where everyone remembers where they were. Like seeing the Twin Towers coming down, or hearing about the death of Princess Diana. I can remember being at close family friends, sitting on a big, puffy, pink cushion. That was where I watched on television as Nelson Mandela left Victor Verster (now Drakenstein) prison with his fist raised. 

The 80s were a tumultuous time in South Africa. A collective existential crisis. Who were “we”? In 1985, P.W. Botha delivered the “Rubicon Speech” as the world’s objection to white minority rule reached crescendo. He attempted to say there was no turning back. Nelson Mandela would not be released. He was wrong. 

We constantly have to renegotiate the way we interact with each other. Our agreements. Who we see ourselves as. What we include in our identity. What we exclude. Who we support. Who we hold down. Who we are. 

Some of these stories are inherited. We have to do the hard work of unpacking the consequences of past decisions. Unpacking shared stories. So we can raise our fists and walk forward.

Bubbles

South Africa is the most unequal economy in the world. It is also not an outlier. How can those statements both be true? We keep our inequality in containers. The Global version is wrapped in national flags. It is as bad as South Africa’s. 

People just don’t have to look at it. Politicians don’t get voted in and out based on it. Inequality is more comfortable when it is hidden and vote-free. 

Apartheid did the hiding with hills and distance from the highway. I grew up in Kwa-Zulu Natal where the N3 stretches from Durban to Johannesburg. You could drive easily from bubble to bubble. 

South Africa of 2021 wears its inequality much more rawly. There are lots of uncomfortable conversations about different capacities to create capital. Different sources of financing to invest in skills and knowledge. Different abilities to work from home and deal with gaps in basic options to earn. “Same storm. Different boats.” 

The most obvious current example of inequality is the rich country vaccine rollout, and the different impacts of lockdowns. The challenge we face going forward is chipping away at the barriers that hide potential.

Happy 27th Birthday South Africa

Democratic South Africa turned 27 today. 

We experience life as a controlled hallucination. We interpret our experiences and the information we gather through the stories we have soaked in. It takes about 25 years to settle into our own adult perspective. 

I think you get a few more years, maybe a decade, where you have some grace to work through all the baggage that entails. Sins of the father leaking into the next generation. Stories colouring stories that are not our own. If you do the work. If you unpack all the obstacles that obscured your way of seeing. If you want to release burdens to look with fresh eyes. Relooking. Relearning. Reworking. Reinvesting. 

A 27-year-old is verging on being able to claim their story. Claim their community. Claim what it is that matters to them. But Freedom is not the ability to impose yourself on others. It is not the ability to do whatever you want. Freedom includes the messy work of caring what others think, and respecting that freedom. No adult is unconstrained by the past if they want a future that matters. A future linked to the freedom of others.  

Happy 27th Birthday Democratic South Africa. The messy work of building Freedom continues.  

How do you see?

Healthy Disrespect

Whether it is from growing up in Apartheid, or being the youngest of three brothers, I have the common South African trait of a healthy disrespect for authority. I don't, by default, necessarily respect presumed authority. I don’t, by default, do what I am told. Sometimes in quite childish ways. Like if someone tells me that it is my decision, then I will make a decision. And if they suggest that I do something else, and I don't agree with them, I still want to do it my way. Unless they want to say it is not my decision. If they say that, I'll do it their way. Most people can read between the lines and go, “Well, actually, they want to tell me that it is my decision, but it is not really my decision. I just need to suck it up and play the game.” I'm not very good at that. I like clarity of decision-making processes. I like honesty about where the accountability and authority lie. I object to the delegation of responsibility without authority. I like it when decision makers have dirt under their fingertips from sharing the load. But everyone is different. A lot of people don’t have the baggage I do. Doing as you are told often makes life simpler.

Nelson Mandela burning his pass book

 

Barriers that don't Serve

There is irony in one of the existential questions of being South African. Wherever you earn a living or sleep, there is a should I stay/go/return question that hovers. I think this is ironic (don’t you think?) because SA is also the country that gave the legal name to Apartheid. Apartness. Separate development. Self (and separate) determination. I did not leave South African as a big statement in 2008. I went to London to explore, make some money, and connect beyond my container. I do not support the idea that your opportunities and community should be determined by a random lottery of birth. When I came back to SA at the end of last year, the reasons were complicated too. It is also not a big statement. Your story is yours. The world is connected. I believe in the four freedoms (capital, goods, services, labour). You should be able to sleep/work where it supports your path. Your money should be able to do the same. Our goods should be made locally or globally depending on what works best. Let’s chip away at barriers that don’t serve us. 

Barriers that don't Serve

 

Creating a Why

Money and words are a form of communication. A way to hear stories. You can reflect on and learn through other people’s stories. Your reflection will change as you change. Part of my story is Apartheid in South Africa. I cannot let go of History. I refuse to let go of History. Because it is such an important part of understanding. We carry all this knowledge with us. Some written, some aural, some in the way we dance, the way we make our art, the way we build community. Part of being human is this beautiful, deep, painful, glorious, connection to everything. The future, the past, and other people’s now. That source of understanding gives us a powerful view of the why of why we make our decisions. I believe that life does not have meaning. We give it meaning. We create meaning. Books like Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” and David Duncan’s “The River Why”. See what your values are. See what is important to you. Then create a bolder life.

Blerrie Complicated

PK and “The Power of One” created a vivid picture of overcoming struggle, and of Oxford and the Rhodes Scholarship, for me. Cecil John Rhodes casts a shadow over South Africa with a bloody complicated legacy (or blerrie complicated, as my Grandfather would say to avoid swearing). Which includes an Oxford-like university in Grahamstown called Rhodes, surrounded by places like King William’s Town, Queenstown (where my Mom was from, with family on both sides of the Anglo-Boer war), Port Elizabeth and East London, in the area where the 1820 Settlers arrived after the Napoleonic Wars. Smack in the middle of a 100-year conflict between the Xhosa Kingdom and earlier European settlers. Rhodes’ statue also used to preside over the Rugby fields, looking with South England ambition towards the mountains, outside my leafy residence at the University of Cape Town. I applied for the Rhodes Scholarship, but didn’t get an interview. I still ended up in Oxfordshire on a different path. Living just outside the city in a small medieval market town called Burford. A Buhr is an old English fortification. A ford is a river. Crossing rivers. Crossing continents. Crossing cultures. Unpacking blerrie complication.

Statue Removed, Shadow Remains

Freedom of Movement

I moved to the UK from South Africa in 2008, via Bermuda. My high school Maths teacher used to tell me I always did things the long way (my answers went “via Cape Town”), so it was time to up my game. I spent six months in Bermuda because it was easier to organize a work visa, and the company I was with was based there. The goal was to move to Putney, which was where my brother would be with my new niece. Reverse-Colonisation, my sister-in-law called it.  On the day the little lady was born I was still in Bermuda, strapping a celebratory cake onto my scooter to take to my colleagues. I am a supporter of the Four Freedoms of Movement (Goods, Capital, Services, and Labour). Having grown up during Apartheid, I have never understood why the lottery of birth should play such a big role in determining the container in which people are able to build their financial security. Whether the container is nationality, race, gender, or any other form of discrimination.

Via Bermuda

Allowing for Extra

How do you start? Building Capital so that you can gradually become less dependent on your earning ability, seems like a game reserved for the wealthy. Advice is tricky because we have different lifeboats in a shared storm. When people talk of being “self-made”, they are often referring to whether, or not, they inherited Capital or a pre-packaged business from Mom or Dad. It is more complicated than that. Most of us have weird relationships with money. Wrapped in our sense of worth. In our relationship with our parents. In their relationship with their parents. In our politics. The advice I give is deeply wound up in my own story. Our self is a bigger container. The bubble we grew up in. Mine is based in Apartheid and Feminism. One based on inequality and gender roles. For me, starting starts with constraint. Having a firm and absolute hold on what “enough” looks like. Then not feeling like more than that is better. I wasn’t trapped in debt, and had the option of choosing a path to develop skills & knowledge to get an income. So my first steps were pragmatism, spending discipline, and delayed gratification. Building a buffer. A few months spending in the bank. Then putting the extra to work. I realise that extra is a foreign concept for most. That is what needs to change.

Simplicity and Self-Reliance

I grew up in the Methodist Church which emphasised, among other things, two key values – avoiding conspicuous consumption, and self-reliance. There were regular debates over any money spent on renovations to the church buildings. The focus was on functionality. The founding stories were based in a break away from flashiness. A foundation of simplicity. I was in the English bubble of Apartheid South Africa, but the self-reliance stories of the missionaries, criminals, impoverished, refugees, and fortune seekers resonated with those of the Afrikaans bubble (and I had Romeo and Juliet style crossing of family stars). Protestants protesting. Fleeing the European religious wars. Hard tales and hard heroes from frontiers, like Wolraad Woltemade and Racheltjie De Beer. It didn’t surprise me when I discovered that the first stories of Racheltjie appeared a few months after those of American heroine Hazel Miner, who saved her brother in the Spring blizzard of 1920. Legal Apartheid ended and I left the church, but history and founding stories soak deep. Even if they pick up flavours that resonate from elsewhere.    

Self-Sacrifice

Tiny Bubbles

I went to school in the same neighbourhood for 15 years. 3 years pre-school and 12 years “big school”. We didn’t all like each other. There was no escape hatch. Being “like” each other (and most of my schooling was during Apartheid) doesn’t mean you are like each other. At times we were buddies. At times we were cruel. The guys I was with the whole way saw me wet my pants as a 9-year-old. They saw my rabbit teeth. My four eyes. My tin grin. They saw me cry. They saw me try too hard. They saw me not try hard enough. When I was 16, I joined the Durban Youth Council with kids from various parts. Westville is a tiny slice of Durban. I started fresh. A new context. I could be seen. I was still at school in Westville, but I got new confidence. Sometimes, realising your bubble is just a tiny part of the world lets you release the rubbish. Realising the people you are most like are probably the people you clash with the most. “Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.” (Bruce Lee).

Tiny Bubbles

Shared Words

“Do you believe in God?” This question had an easy answer in Westville where I grew up. We had a shared vocabulary. Yes, the people who went to the Catholic Church by the Robots (Traffic Lights) at the top of Westville Road thought a little differently. But God was still an old white dude with a beard. Then schools opened up to other races and suddenly Youth Group on Friday wasn’t necessarily all my buddies cup of chai. Vocabs expanded. I moved on from Christianity, but if I ask friends I grew up with “Do you still believe in God?”, I have to be prepared for a deeper conversation. The God they likely believe in now, is not *identical* to the one I grew up with. Or at least the one *in my head*. The word doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. The same is true in other hard conversations. We don’t have a shared meaning for the word “Racist” and “Privileged”. We do seem to have progressed to where Racist is an insult. Something no one wants to be. An accusation worthy of defence. Increased cultural understanding and cooperation is a fundamental part of wealth creation. Social Capital is the backbone of any ability to generate an income or capital. No one is self-made. Self-empowerment starts with shared words and hard conversations.

Words are Created

Dismantling Apartheid

Financial Security is a team sport. The former Mayor of South-Central Durban, Theresa Mthembu, invited me to her home in 1996. It was the first time I had been to Umlazi. I grew up along the route of the Comrades Marathon which winds its way from Durban to Pietermaritzburg. I was in the White bits. The other bits were further from the main artery. I spent two years in the UK in ‘98/’99 and moved here again in 2008. To me, in my “English Speaking World” bubble, it is irrelevant whether what separates me from poverty is the valley of a thousand hills or the hills of Oxfordshire and then the Atlantic Ocean. Racism was never a “South Africa Problem”. Apartheid was never a South Africa problem. We are all connected. We just create artificial divisions that allow us to live in bubbles of self-determination. I can’t unsee that visit as a 16-year-old. But the system we live in didn’t change that day. Just my personal practice of dismantling it. Starting the only way I can. With myself. Every day. For the rest of my life.

Dismantling Apartheid is a Marathon

In Context

I don’t’ write Blank Cheques. Every decision has trade-offs. Having been born into Apartheid South Africa, I don’t subscribe to the philosophy of abundance. Scarcity is real. This means you can want something, but still not get it, because the price is too high. Everything, has a price that is too high. That doesn’t mean you don’t value “the thing”. That you don’t see the value. That you don’t have the desire. In isolation, every story can be incredibly powerful. But to understand something you have to understand the constraints. You have to understand the context. You have to mitigate for unintended consequences. No single decision stands alone. Unless it is literally the only thing that matters to you.

In Your Face

South Africa is the world’s most unequal country. It is also only as unequal as the world. This is only possible because the primary tool of Global Apartheid is Nation States. While it has become less and less acceptable to discriminate opportunity by race, gender, and sexual preference, “where you were born” is still a legal tool of hereditary privilege and apartness. According to Bryan Caplan’s book “Open Borders”, we are willing to pay a Trillion Dollars in economic handcuffs to restrict the free flow of labour, goods, capital and services. The biggest loser in the restriction of four freedoms is people. I am a Soutie. One foot in South Africa and one foot in the UK. In the relief programs for 2020’s forced time to reflect, unemployed people in South Africa received R350/month (about £15). The furlough program in the UK saw about 7.5 million people receive 80% of their salaries. Capital Controls make it difficult to even send Unconditional Cash Transfers. The contrast is stark. I only see that because my eyes and heart are on both countries. South Africa takes the world’s inequality, squashes it, and shoves it in your face.