Tributum Newsletter #39

Hello

This month’s newsletter has been a difficult one to bed down. Some readers commented on last month’s newsletter being less positive than they have become used to. Unfortunately, not a lot of positive things happened in May to change that outlook. As always there is a lot to reflect on.

For all that is wrong with this country at least when my daughter goes to school in the morning, I am quite confident that she will make it out alive when the bell rings at the end of the day…Let us keep the families of the 200 school children already killed in shootings in the USA from 1 January this year in our thoughts, while at the same time being grateful it is not ours.

While trawling YouTube, I came across a clip from the TV series The Newsroom titled “America is not the greatest country in the world anymore”. Take 5 minutes and watch it.  I’ve done so quite a few times already (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIpKfw17-yY).  For me it’s not about tearing down the US, or even the US at all. For me it speaks about society in general and challenging what we believe, and the ideas that we are sold. It is about recognising when something is wrong, identifying what it is and then having the courage to say and do something about it.   

From the clip: “The first step to solving a problem, is recognising there is one”. I am not any media outlet’s number one fan, but I do believe that in South Africa the independent media is not the (main) problem. Although many of our Ministers, and most recently our Minister of Transport, appear to think so. Maybe because the truth hurts. But comparing them to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi spin doctor, when they ask difficult questions is not the answer. Maybe Ministers should realise that there are problems, and maybe its them…

But we all have our part to play. We all have changes and improvements we can make. Some are quick fixes, and some will take time. But can we at least be honest enough with ourselves to recognise when something is wrong?  In this photoshopped, tweet, post, twerk, like and subscribe world maybe we should each decide what our unforgiving minute will be. And every evening we should look in the mirror and ask whether we filled that unforgiving minute with its full sixty seconds’ worth of distance run. If we all aspired to do that then may, just maybe, ours will be the world and all that is in it.

Until next time, keep running, keep breathing.  

References in second last paragraph paraphrased from the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling.