Mediocrity Is Not The Standard

Dear Black People (and Coloured People).


We have, for many years, been depicted as mediocre and inferior to other peoples of the world.

The countless injustices committed against us on the basis that some foreign guy thinks we are inferior have come and many have not passed, and yet we stand strong. Came the much talked-about 1994 and its 'freedom' and the white man was easy for the first time in his history here in South Afrika.

Through all these many centuries of accepting mediocrity and even inferiority as a standard by which we are measured, many of us have come to believe that this is so. The white man took his racism and hid it after 1994 (although there are still those who are openly racist) and then came the power of the many.


This spelled a good period for the Black man. However, the embedded belief that we are inferior and that mediocrity is our standard, did not disappear along with the rule of the boer. This is evident all around us but I will make a few examples. I have been on a countless taxi rides in my adult life and I have observed how South Africans of the Black and Coloured race tolerate mediocrity and disrespect from our own people.

The taxi driver seems to have become the new boer in that people fear challenging him. We are openly insulted in the presence of children. We are bullied into closing the windows even though we know that TB is eating the very life of our communities. Even though we are paying commuters, we still allow being told that the loud, incoherent music, played in the taxi will not be turned down; even when trying to make a call on your phone.

The taxi driver seems to have become "the power that be" because our people fear them so much. A 15 passenger taxi, in Cape Town, loads up to 20 passengers and the people quietly complain but never dare to direct their talk to the driver. People are forced, literally, into taking a certain taxi, even when it's clearly full. This is what I mean by mediocrity; we all know that this is a dangerous thing and is below the standard of perfection which everybody strives for, but we allow it to happen anyway.

The taxi industry is just one example. Everybody who uses Metrorail trains is aware that they are the worst. They say all these promising things about improving their service but nothing happens. It is very seldom that a Metrorail train runs smoothly for the whole week; that is; you know you will be late at work at least once in every week (Central Line, Cape Town). I am not sure about other areas but I write here about those who travel in Cape Town (and I don't mean in the Southern Suburbs, because there, the contrary is the case).

We are now given strange toilets by our loving government but these too are not to the standard that everybody else enjoys. We are always encouraged to work to achieve the very best but with so much disrespect coming our way, things look cloudy.

We are expected to perfect the art of studying but we are not given the necessary resources and even when there are resources, people are not skilled. We are expected to go to the polls next year and it will be interesting who emerge as victors in the light of the mediocre education system, the mediocre service delivery, the mediocre government administration. Damn! It seems we are mediocre all round. But that is not, and should not be, the standard.

So, let the revolution begin. What we say shall soon be forgotten but what we do will live for a thousand thousand years.