OUT TO LUNCH
I was watching TV coverage of the Japanese typhoon aftermath on Sunday morning and was so struck by the orderliness and efficiency of the Japanese people trying to retrieve what was left of their possessions that I decided to post a comment on Twitter which ran thus:
After the typhoon devastation in Japan what do their citizens do? They quietly and efficiently get on with the clean up. In SA they would be burning buildings and looting shops and waiting for the government to do something.
It clearly resonated with Twitter users because by the end of the day it had been retweeted over 170 times and I had received over 80 responses. Some predictably accused me of subliminal racism and others pointed out that the Japanese hadn’t had to live under the yoke of apartheid which obviously made them better equipped to cope with life’s little upsets. The legacy of apartheid really is the gift that keeps on giving. Most agreed with me however and the general sentiment was that we might learn a lot from how the Japanese handle adversity.
Except that we won’t because we are no longer free to speak of such things. As Helen Zille found out many months ago, even suggesting that other cultures (in her case, Singapore) could teach us valuable lessons will be met by howls of protest from the “woke community” with hysterical cries that our comments are “problematic” and should be withdrawn because they are offensive.
Suggesting that there is a culture of entitlement in this country got my friend Chris Hart sacked from his position at Standard Bank a few years ago. Despite the fact that Nelson Mandela had made a similar observation many years before, Standard Bank caved into the baying mob and Chris not only lost his job but had his CV scrutinized by the gutter press who tried to suggest he was unqualified for his position and was a charlatan.