There was a time when people used to adopt resolutions for a new year. This tradition signified the faith of older generations in their future.
We have used the end of a year to signify the end of a chapter in our own lives. And the hope has been for a new year to bring improvements in life.
Faith in the future must not be dismissed as a delusion. It is the essential substance that holds human societies together, the idea that tomorrow will be better. An individual who has no hope in the future tends to self-destruct.
In the recent past, many things have happened in SA to dampen our faith in the future. We have watched thieves capture a political party and use it to destroy our country. For nine years, SA squirmed under the grip of a kleptocracy whose audacity and shamelessness had never been witnessed in centuries.
The destruction caused by the kleptocracy will haunt our grandchildren many years after nature has converted all of us into ancestors.
When the kleptocracy was eventually interrupted, we were abused again. Treated as people of low intelligence, we were forced to swallow a tasteless concoction with a specious label – “new dawn”.
Today, even the dumbest among us knows that the “new dawn” was a hollow tin wielded by a useless fellow South African who convenes family meetings to deliver the latest empty promise after another hopefully forgotten promise.
For almost three decades now, the month of February has been used by some man wearing a new tie, standing behind a parliamentary podium, to promise new jobs to millions of gullible people.
There was a time when the promisors were bold enough to say that they would halve poverty by 2014, or that they would create 500,000 jobs in the next financial year.
When those dignified liars realised that the gullibility of their voters was beginning to wane, they quickly tweaked their propaganda, coining an even hazier phrase – “new job opportunities”.
It is true that the individual promisors have been different, but they are united by the colours and the emblem imprinted on the T-shirts they all wore.
A man must not be judged based on the short episodes of his life. The verdict must be decided on the totality of his entire life. It is true that some among the men who promised us things had an element of sincerity, but the total outcome they all produced is an unmitigated disaster.
The greatest sin committed by those men is to destroy the collective image of black people. Today, other races point at black South Africans as the final confirmation that dark-skinned people cannot govern themselves properly.
By the deeds of our promisors, all the old racist theories have been revived. To be black today is to have the difficult task of explaining that you are different.
How different are you when it is your black government that has destroyed Eskom? How different are you when it is your black government that has looted and bankrupted the state? How different are you when it is black people who have been voting thieves into government?
Such are the questions that haunt those of us who are black. During our hour of euphoria, a well-known, pipe-smoking philosopher-king once said to say, “Today it feels good to be an African.”
Forced to confront the idiocy of his own exuberance, the same philosopher-king would later warn us never to “turn triumphant because the sun shines”.
Given the hopelessness in which we find ourselves today, which has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, it is understandable that most people seem to have lost faith in the future.
If that is how you feel about your own life, think about the people who survived World War 2, for example, or those who survived the 1918 Spanish flu. They thought they were living through the end of the world.
The Persians have bequeathed a timeless adage to humankind: “This too shall pass.” Life is like an ocean; its flows and ebbs are ceaseless. Highs and lows don’t constitute an end; they define the very nature of life itself.
By giving up, you are telling those around you that you are not truly human. Human beings fall and rise again. By resolving to make 2022 a better year, you thereby confirm the resilience of the human spirit.
Maybe the best resolution we can all make is never to allow other people to determine our own destiny. Take matters into your own hands.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.