Just Don’t Go!
South Africa (and Africa – witness both Zimbabwe and Kenya) is seeing an interesting new development where people who are fired or resign (only to claim they never did) just don't go.
They continue to come to work as normal, refuse to vacate their offices, deny the validity of the dismissal/resignation and continue in a dreamworld of denial.
I can speak from experience, because a partner of mine who was managing recklessly in our opinion, did the same when we dismissed her.
Her dismissal was legal, done by the book – and by a lawyer at our expense; but she simply refused to go, carried on working as usual and advised clients etc – whom we had not contacted – that rumours of her demise were premature – causing total confusion.
As a small business this left us with a dilemma – our only alternative was to follow a legal (costly) process to dispose of the person, so what do you do?
Oh, and the courts would not regard such a matter as urgent, so who knows how long the legal process will take? Something of the dilemma facing both ASA (Athletics South Africa) and Eskom, the South African Electrical Utility, as well as citizens of Zimbabwe and Kenya.
In the case of Athletics South Africa, their Olympic Committee recognition has been withdrawn, the athletes would like the administrators to go because thay are alledgedly corrupt, officials have alledgedly assaulted athletes in the past, they oversaw the Semenya debacle and have generally not acted in the best interests of the people whom they exist to serve – the athletes.
The public have had enough of the clowns in Sport (and Government) who continually embarrass South Africans with the sheer majesty of their incompetence; there seems however to be a minority of politicians in the ruling party who think that ASA (and Eskom) are doing a good job.
In the face of such universal opprobrium, one would think that the disgraced incompetents would be grateful to escape the limelight and go off into the sunset – usually with golden handshakes – but no, they continue as though nothing has happened!
I think there is something severly wrong with the moral fibre of a nation where behaviour like this plays out. It is clear in the public discourse that people don't care what results from their determination to get what they want: illegal threats of murder, public violence, third-world wars (by a government functionary no less); and then they proceed to back their words with action – as in the case of the taxi industry in South Africa and the many incredibly violent strikes we have, where people usually end up getting pushed off moving trains, or set alight, among other things.
How do people end up being so brutalised? Do we put it down to years of being indoctrinated with the revolutionary credo of "the end justifies the means"? That certainly seems to play itself out in South African schools, where as little – or less – teaching gets done in many if not most schools, than was done during the apartheid days. The days of "revolution before education" seems to have spawned an attitude among teachers that they are not required to teach, just to draw and spend their salaries, which they do with relish – during school hours.
Do we put it down to the effects of colonial rule? If so, how do countries that have been free of their colonial masters for two or more generations justify what they are doing?
Life in Africa is cheap, there is no doubt about that. In South Africa when a thousand or more people were dying a day of AIDS, the government didn't even acknowledge that it is a fatal disease. Contrast that with the United States whose psyche still hasn't recovered from the Twin Towers disaster – something that would not even be statistically relevant in any African country. While it is simply a fact of life that average Americans aren't willing to endanger their lives for what they believe, surely their reaction is the more expected, correct response?
I have to ask, " why is another day in Africa" exactly that?
