Bears Repeating

The biggest pushbacks I get on the framework I use for developing financial freedom are:

1) Most people in South Africa can’t even find enough money for a living wage 

(half of all South African wage earners earn less than R3,300 and support 3.5 people), and 

2) “I can’t reduce my expenses”

The first point is heartbreaking and a mountain to climb. The second point is often true however big that income is, and despite the first point. “The lifestyle to which someone has become accustomed” is a phrase that disconnects completely from how that lifestyle is paid for. Even when there are masses of people living on less than you, our spending is often determined by the people who live in the bubble we live in. Bubbles have price tags, which either require someone else to foot the bill, or have real consequences for the available earning choices you have. 

The reality is that there is no one set of steps people need to take. There are trade-offs. There are hard choices. There is honesty required. Financial security and investment is a group sport. If those around you are spending freely, it is going to be difficult to build buffers and capital unless you are earning significantly more than them. 

That hard pill to swallow bears repeating. Half of all South African wage earners support about 3.5 people on less than roughly GBP165 or USD230 a month. 

Less than ZAR940 (GBP50 or USD65) per person per month.

Bears Repeating

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.

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

Scarcity and Abundance

Life preparation was very gendered in the bubble I grew up in. One example of this was that Mathematics was compulsory in High School for boys, but not for girls. I lived in a Patriarchal society where men ruled outside the home, and women ruled inside. Feminism was rising (at a lag), but it was very much focused on Choice for women. No pressure (different pressure). What would you like to do (you should probably do this)? Let’s chip away at the obvious obstacles (well, do our best). Girls doing Boys’ things is serious. Boys doing Girls’ things is funny. Implicitly acknowledging a hierarchy of where we place value. For Boys, choices were squashed and pragmatism was promoted. How are you going to put food on the table? Put childish choices aside. Man up. The horrible truth of the world is that if you follow what you love, it is often harder to monetise. In part, because a fundamental of love is abundance, and a fundamental of money-making is scarcity. In a gendered world, it was women who focused on love, and men who financed it.

Unwinding Scarcity

Misunderstood and Judged

I hate getting things wrong. I hate being on the wrong side of people. I find it particularly frustrating when I don't think it is justified. This makes me have to work really hard at not being defensive. The easiest way around this, is not to engage with people. I love engaging with people. The easiest way around this, is to only engage with people who think like me. I love engaging with people who don't think like me. Worse is when people think I am 'one of them' in conversation, and say something where I am the judgey one! 'No! I don't think that!'. Most of us listen with little nods and ahas that signal agreement. Just listening neutrally while encouraging someone to carry on speaking, and genuinely exploring their idea is hard.

‘’Justitia’’ by Maarten van Heemskerk, 1556

Bubble Bursting

Part of the Cambridge Analytica outrage was due to the realisation that we were being manipulated. That other people were trying to do to us, what we try to do to others. Namely, change people's opinions to match our own. We are all marketers. If you have something you care about, and feel the world is not exactly the way you want it to be. If you are in any way an Activist. The more you signal your beliefs, and surround yourself by people who agree, the easier you are to manipulate. Someone who listens more than they speak has inbuilt protection. Someone who may agree with the person on the left, or on the right. Tribes are particularly easy to manipulate. Particularly if the individuals don't think for themselves, and merely fall in line with the majority. '50% + 1' rule is salt, fat, and sugar to the Gravy Train. Popularity is easy. Empowerment takes ears. If you want to empower yourself, burst your bubble. 

Popularity is Easy

Small and Tangible

The smallest country in the world by population is the Vatican City, with 451 people. China has a population of 1,386,923,384+. The World population is 7,497,007,539+. Dunbar's Number is a theory that we can maintain stable relationships with about 150 people. Despite effort, I have to admit that my '150' are probably mostly very similar to me... and they definitely don't live in one country. It is comfortable to spend time with people I share common ground with. That isn't good enough. Most of the people in my bubble are fine. They may grumble, but we like grumbling. 7.5 billion becomes too abstract to think about. I want to intentionally figure out how to put names, faces and relationships to 150 that make the issues more tangible. I am over the grumbling. I want to crack on with micro-ambitious goals. Small, achievable goals that add up.

Unravelling Apartheid

I am a privileged South African. The nature of the connected world means the comparisons 'my bubble' make is not only to other South Africans. The sports I grew up caring about were Cricket and Rugby. This connects me to the other colonial scatterlings in Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc. I heard a British comedian joke about the 'World Cup' of Rugby, 'The problem with Rugby is that half the teams are us'.

Global Income Inequality

South Africa is one of the wealthier African countries. Depending on the methodology, somewhere in the Top 5 (behind Mauritius, Seychelles and Equatorial Guinea). It tops the global list of income inequality though, along with Namibia and the Comoros. That means that poverty lives right alongside places that feel very much like Melbourne, Vancouver or London. Unemployment levels are structurally at the levels of the Great Depression.

National Income Inequality

One of the easiest ways to irritate a South African is to refer to Africa as a country. When you say you are from SA and someone responds, 'I love Africa, I was recently in Kenya.' Cape Town is 4104 km from Nairobi.  That is about the same as London to Baghdad. London, Baghdad, you know... same, same.

Inequality doesn't vanish when you hop on a plane, whether your destination is Cape Town, Nairobi, Baghdad or London. Global Apartheid does make it easier to ignore Cape Town though. Out of sight, out of mind. As a Soutie, I don't have that luxury. I will always consider bits of the world that are very far apart home. The contrasts will always be vivid. As someone who grew up in Apartheid South Africa, I viscerally feel the importance of awareness.

The challenge becomes balancing treating people the same with the broad brush of 'Global Citizen', 'African', 'Londoner' or 'Capetonian', and being aware of local issues. I can walk down a street in Cape Town, London or Chicago feeling completely out of my depth because of local Apartheid. I can arrive in a city in a foreign country and feel at home.

How do we get the balance right between focusing on our own issues, and not losing touch with reality? Our comparisons tend to be relative, and aspirational. We compare up. Knowledge also tends to be local, so that is where our actions are most powerful. But we are interdependent, and if we pull our focus in too tightly, reality will bite. Hard. When we look 'down', it will be because we are all falling. 

We rise together or not at all.

Assimilation (Tim)

I want to start by taking issue with the tendency of dominant (i.e. white, western and mostly English) cultures to demand assimilation from other cultures, but not to reciprocate when the shoe is on the other foot. Recently, there has been a lot of hand wringing in Europe about the supposed unwillingness of Muslim immigrants to assimilate into the culture of European countries. Observe France’s battle with the burqa. And, the sentiment is much the same for many in the UK, as evidenced by the tabloid press. They make the superficially reasonable argument, ‘If you want to live in Britain, you should embrace British values.’ 

Tim embracing British Values

However, they seem to have forgotten that when our forefathers were living in foreign lands, they never assimilated at all. In the days of the British Raj, those Brits who lived in India merely transplanted their British culture to a new continent – tealeaves, cricket stumps and all.

You might think that such chauvinistic attitudes are all in the past, but as someone who has lived in an expat bubble for fifteen years, I can tell you that you’d be dead wrong. This is how it works. Fifteen years ago I moved to Taiwan to teach English. I answered an English job advert, my interview was conducted in English, my training was in English and if ever I had a practical problem, the bilingual staff at my school would translate on my behalf. If I didn’t feel like eating Chinese food, I had a range of western fast food to choose from, or if I was feeling picky, I could go to one of several expat-owned restaurants in the area. Since my school was staffed by other foreign English teachers, I could socialise exclusively with them if I felt so inclined. 

I’m happy to say that I didn’t totally isolate myself from Taiwanese culture, and neither did my friends. Most of us enjoyed a mix of Chinese and western food, and we got along great with our Taiwanese co-teachers. In fact, a lot of us dated or married Taiwanese people. In my case, I also chose to study Chinese, and after a couple of years, I could deal with most issues myself. Not a bubble at all, then? In fact, it was a very real bubble – a semi-permeable membrane, through which I allowed only comfortable and familiar elements to pass. I might have spoken reasonably fluent Chinese, but I couldn’t read the newspaper or watch local TV, and that didn’t bother me a bit. My life remained largely westernised and English speaking in substance, with the addition of selected Taiwanese elements. 

This isn’t some kind of Stalinist self-criticism session. In fact, I think it’s okay to live like this. I’m doing the same thing in Korea right now. We all want to stay mostly within our cultural comfort zone, and it’s fine to do so as long as we’re respectful and open-minded. In my years in Asia, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to criticise other cultures, but I’ve just as often been humbled by their brilliance. So, I’d say that wherever you are, you should stay open minded and curious about other cultures. Otherwise, you’re going to miss a great opportunity for learning.

What Do You Do?

I am a writer. I study life and learning and write a daily blog as I go. I try make as much time for people as I can, so I can learn what is important to the people who are important to me. I am also trying to expand my bubble by developing relationships with people who are not 'almost the same as me'. I am challenging the idea of who I am by learning things outside my comfort zone. I am a micro-ambitious student of very achievable, very average goals. I want to help build community.

Cornflakes and Goats

One of the problems with trying to help is we often hash it up. It is frightening reading how many of the atrocities of the past were thought of with liberal intentions. Colonialism for example was justified us a 'Civilising Project'. A superiority complex believing that other people needed help, approached without any respect or curiosity to learn from the civilisations being civilised. We don't want to just give money, so we hand out goats, or water pumps, or clothing we wouldn't wear ourselves. We give someone who hates the things free cornflakes for breakfast. We let them eat cake.

I don't think the answer is to not help. In the same way as I think you earn the right to give feedback, I think you earn the right to help. Both start with a relationship. Both start with time and effort to get to know someone. I am an opinionated person, but I am working hard to reign back in any unsolicited criticism. I am working hard to listen without trying to pull apart an argument, until I have seen how the argument has been put together. Till I have attempted to empathise with the emotional base for the facts. To give the benefit of doubt. I think 'charity' should be the same.

I don't agree with the idea that 'Charity starts at home' which means we should just look after local concerns. The walls between our bubbles are too tall. Our problems end up being relative to the people immediately surrounding us and we lose perspective. If we extend the idea of home to being Global Citizens. If we extend the idea of home to being relationships we have built, then I can get on board.

We should put away our cornflakes and goats, and build relationships. If not, and we are desperate to help, I think GiveDirectly has the right idea. At least that form of help empowers people to make their own decisions.

'The deep evidences base for unconditional cash transfers provides plenty of reasons to be intrigued by basic income. We know people who receive cash transfers don't blow it on drinks or stop working but rather increase their earnings, their assets, and their psychological well-being'

- GiveDirectly.org

Westville

Play School. Pre-Primary. Junior Primary. Senior Primary. High School. Westville. Deep soaked in Rugby, Cricket, sunshine, humidity, mosquitoes, hills and greenery. Methodist. Anglican. Baptist church. Back to Methodist. I didn't choose teams to support. They were who I was. Banana Boys, then Sharks and Springboks. I was all in. Trying everything. Every day. I've spent more time away from Westville than in it. I wasn't born there. But if you are looking for the bubble that birthed me, Westville is it. My starting point. I grew up during Apartheid. It ended 3 years before I left. I belted out Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika and raised our Rainbow flag with pride.

Big School. A Start.

Doing Well, Being Well

My bubble has an underlying guilt motivator. A cultural wiring of hard work and earning what you get in life. There will often be conversations about whether someone has 'done well' in life. The measures are usually external. Salary, responsibility, authority, conspicuous wealth, titles, degrees or any other signals that you have earned respect. That you aren't seen as a loafer. That you aren't a parasite on society. That you are adding value.

One of the aspects of privilege that I am aware of is that I can opt out of this. I don't consider everything I do as a reflection on other people. I don't consider what they do as a reflection on me. I don't identify with my narrow group. White, male, 25-54, english-speaking, university educated, Top 1% of the global wealth (when I was working, just outside that now that I am not), and a citizen of both South Africa and Britain. I don't come from any oppressed group other than being the youngest sibling. I am significantly taller than my oldest brother, so I am at an advantage in pushing back. When you are part of an oppressed group, I can see the appeal of identifying with that group and proving that they are equal to all. Part of my privilege is that I don't have to.

Tall and Short

My problem with 'doing well' as a measure of success is that it is relative. It also requires external signals that can be measured. As soon as you have to display progress, a lot of energy ends up being put into marketing. Energy gets put into influencing and getting recognition. This ends up attaching expectation to everything we do. I don't like that. I like the idea of being able to do things for their own sake. I like the idea of being able to dive into the internal stuff. The stuff that can't be measured. The stuff that can't be held on to.

I like the idea of being well.

Six becomes Five

If there are six degrees of separation between everyone on the planet, we can build a closer world step by step. Six becomes five. Five becomes four. I was sitting in a coffee shop on my first day in San Francisco chatting to a friend who had lived here, but was in Sydney now. He sent a message to a few friends. One was having a house party a few hours later. So that night I was surrounded by San Franciscans. I had chats about Drumpf, Black Face, Privilege, Cultural Appropriation, Bollywood, Tiny Houses, Simplicity and how we tend to hate people most intensely when we have a lot in common. I knew no one when I arrived.

Friends of Friends become Friends in San Francisco

Amawele's South African Kitchen

When I was in Seattle, I overheard some South Africans speaking and introduced myself. We chatted for a while. We were far from home and this was a trigger for conversation. If I was sitting in Cape Town, and said 'Oh, sorry I overheard you talking and you have a South African accent, I am also from South Africa', instead of conversation, I would get a quizzical look. In San Francisco, all the languages of South Africa, all the differences, all the problems melt away and people talk. 

Because people are busy, I think friendships start getting culled as we get older rather than built. Life slowly trims the leaves until we are left with a core. That isn't going to be a very productive way for us to challenge ourselves to open up our world view.

Introduce your friends. Don't stop making friends. Make friends with people who aren't like you. Walls don't tear themselves down. We tear them down consciously by caring enough to make the time.

Flavours of Home

I first went to Vancouver in 2008. I was there for three weeks for work, and didn't spend too much time checking it out. It was more like living somewhere. You get a night or two during the week and something on the weekend. It was long enough to fall in love with the place. It has a very 'Cape Town' feel which is where I went to university, but the mountains in the distance are snowcapped, and that distance is just half an hour away. Go north to snow. Go south to warmth. Stay in beauty. There is an amazing park where you can walk, run or cycle on the waters edge for miles without crossing a road. The people were friendly. The city was cosmopolitan with lots of different cultures mixing freely.

Stanley Park, Vancouver, 2008

I didn't start thinking about how to move there. The one thing that was missing was 'my people'. It was odd not being in the same mood as those I was connected to when I was in contact. Friday night vs. Saturday morning. Sunday night vs. Monday morning. It has gotten easier to stay in contact with people all over the world with social media. You don't have to be online at the same time to share bits of what is going on in your world. To send little audio or video clips on Whatsapp. To see the news they are reading on Twitter. The challenge is finding those moments when you are in the same mental space.

A friend described how much he enjoyed cloud watching with someone else. Where you can share the moment. A shape that will be gone forever, but a feeling once shared that would linger. It is more difficult to share those moments when you are scattered. Now, I am able to wander the world finding my people wherever they are. Kuiering.

I am visiting California for the first time now. This part of the world really is special. Los Angeles also has flavours of home. I come from Durban where the winters are awesome and the summers are stinky hot, with Mozzies that were trained in the art of war by the victorious Zulu impis of Isandlwana - bites are iklwa. I studied in Cape Town where the summers are awesome and the winters see the arrival of rain that is trained by those Mozzies. The rain doesn't fall down, it flies hard and fast around you finding a way to soak to the bone. I worked in Joburg which has awesome weather all year round, but no sea. The Cape Town and Durban beaches are some of the best I have ever seen. Los Angeles is like Joburg by the sea. A sprawling city where you need a car, with fantastic sunshine cooled slightly by the Pacific ocean breeze.

Joburg Skies in Santa Monica, Los Angeles

I am now in San Francisco and it is living up to the picture I had in my head. Homes and hills with lots of character. Weather that can't make up it's mind. People that will let you make up your own mind. A city that takes you as you are.

Dolores Park, San Francisco

I only left South Africa for the first time when I was 18. Most of my travelling has been around the southern tip of Africa, Europe and English-speaking countries. I have only just started to poke at my bubble. There are so many beautiful places in the world with different combinations of the flavours we know, and new flavours that will challenge us. Similar problems with different perspectives. Different emphasis. Different lessons.

I don't think if we let go of the idea of borders, there would be sudden massive flows of people away from where they live. There was no border between Cape Town and Durban and it took me 20 years to get there and fall in love with it. With borders, it took 28 for Vancouver. 36 for California.

Durban - Cape Town - Vancouver - Los Angeles

Without borders what would change quicker is how we see the world. How we listen. How we care. We are Global Citizens.

Uncomfortable Conversations

I grew up in a bubble. When I was 17 years old I was taken on a trip into Umlazi Township for the first time by the mayor of the South Central region of Durban, Theresa Mthembu. Almost half a million people live in Umlazi, but Durban is very hilly and I had no reason to go there. It wasn't in my field of vision. It didn't exist. I had met the mayor through my involvement with the Durban Youth Council. This is a group formed of a handful of representatives from as many Durban schools as possible. It was an opportunity to prick that bubble.

I am a firm believer that the world is getting better. Bubbles are cosy and it is tempting to look back at them longingly. You knew the rules. You knew how to behave and the cultural sameness created comfort. I have yet to be convinced by any arguments that life was better then. The school I went to was very good, but there isn't even a moments hesitation in thinking whether I would have preferred the set up now. Now the school is great.

The world is still bubbly. As I travel around I come across some places that are awesome, but bits remind me a little of parts of growing up where everyone looks the same, speaks the same and believes the same things. The truth, in my bubble, is they weren't the same. One example comes from the leaps and bounds taken in areas such as homophobia. When I was growing up I didn't know any gay people. Let me rephrase, I didn't think I knew any gay people. There are a number of guys who have come out since then. I am not sure that it was at all possible for them to come out during the bubble days. People weren't ready and that must have been awful.

Pricking bubbles is uncomfortable and requires really difficult conversations. Most people aren't that great at difficult conversations. I think part of that comes from a natural defence mechanism. We grew up in a world where there were good guys and bad guys. The Wicked Witch of the West was bad. The Good Witch of the North was, well, good. This was before we saw the other side of the story. We don't want to be the bad guy and in my experience as soon as a conversation becomes a question of morality or innate goodness things get messy. Think of arguments that start along the lines of 'How can you be a Christian and believe...' or 'How can you be a Patriot and believe...'. My bubble growing up was a Patriotic Christian one. There are many things that someone today could complete those sentences with talking with someone from the past. Neither the future person, nor the past person would have thought they were 'of the West'. Starting a conversation that way means you are challenging the persons identity. You aren't defending or attacking an idea. You are attacking an identity. You are attacking a family. You are attacking the bubble rather than pricking it.

I believe lots of those guys that have come out have received wonderful support now from friends and family. I know that the school I went to is no longer the lily white bubble it was. Some of the uncomfortable conversations of the past are now almost non-issues. Some remain. I think the more conversations we can have where we aren't labelling people as good guys or bad guys, the more likely it is we can nail some of the remaining bubbliness.