Johannesburg - The homeless guy at a traffic intersection near my house came to my window, as he always does when the lights turn red, and greeted me. We are friends of some kind. We have been so for about a year now.
I opened my window, greeted back, and said to him, “I don't have anything for you today”.
He said, “That's okay, I know you’d give me if you had.”
As manipulative as everything he said after “okay” was, I don’t fault him.
My friend of some kind is living the most extreme version of survival.
Emotional blackmail is a pre-programmed human feature.
It is designed and entrenched in us as a survival mechanism.
Your kids do it to you all the time. They are probably best at it.
Followed by your toxic family members who always ask and ask but never pay back.
You become an extraction point to your entitled uncles and aunts, who brag about you to their children, or your parents to your siblings.
When you comply they put you on a pedestal. And dub you the highest level of hero in your immediate clan, a breadwinner.
Too many breadwinners have lost their minds - what are their lives if not a million rand or more life covers?
Better still, they shower you with praises in front of your brothers or sisters who are less well off than you are. Making them feel inferior. They have been unemployed since matric. That has been the pinnacle of success in townships for decades. If you have the capacity to fill your father’s fridge with groceries, the inferior have an obligation to pack it up with the same foods; like how you rub a dog's nose in its urine to punish it for its misdeeds.
Further blackmailing you with their pain and embarrassment. An emotional double-edged sword, a backhanded assault of sorts. You don’t see it from your make-believe vantage point because you love your mom. Love is blind.
Loyalty is eternal. Eternity becomes a trap if reciprocation is deemed an obligation.
If you ever wiggle loose off the trance, see that you are abused, and speak up, you become a villain.
How dare you go start your own life and leave that fridge empty?
These people have fed you your entire life, now you think you are better?
Do you see what you have become?
It was the American actor, singer, and author, Chris Colfer who said, “people are not born heroes or villains; they’re created by the people around them”.
The Department of International Relations and Co-operation (Dirco) is a hero to Cuba.
But a villain to South Africans.
Dirco is stuck between reciprocation and South Africa’s empty bellies.
They are practising philanthropy while blackholes have invaded our stomachs; while unemployment is cultivating cannabis and getting higher on its own supply.
The general view seems to be that SA’s proposed donation of R50m to Cuba is unjustified.
They could just say, “I don't have anything for you today”.