There really isn't any hope if people keep relying on politicians to pull them out of the slums. There really is no hope if the poor think that they will suddenly be rich because someone like Malema or a political party like the ANC makes big promises and they think that is a reality. Especially when time and time again, all the politicians who made big promises NEVER deliver and the poor are worse off than ever before.
If you are poor, you will always be poor if you care about the fact that you are poor and worry about being rich, that is a fact. Instead of being poor, you could be clever, but that requires sacrifice – yes, more than some white guy who's daddy paid for his studies – but that should not be your concern, if you worry about how easy it is for someone else you will spend less time actually learning how to make yourself more learned. There are only two things that can change that and they have NOTHING to do with who you vote for. Here they are:
Your parents ignore politics and sacrifice their lives to send you to school, they do their best to make sure no matter how poor they are, no matter how much they suffer, no matter how much they sacrifice that you get a good education and are able to pull yourself out of poverty. Whether you are black or white you should honour that and not take it for granted, whether you come from a rich background and you don't need to pay your way through studies or whether your parents grind their knuckles from a poor background to ensure you get into an even mediocre place of learning you MUST pay attention to that and be very thankful for that, and be honourable by studying as hard as you can to match the sacrifices your parents made to put you there in the first place.
Regardless of your parents not being able to send you to school you eat Marmite and toast every day for ten years and work your ass off to get good grades and qualify for a bursary so you can get a degree. Even then, you will be up against the best of the best, and even some of the best don't get the chance to prove themselves. Some will land with their asses in butter and have a good life, seemingly without effort, some will struggle and always be fighting to pay the rent. That my friends, is called LIFE. The only one who can change that is you, and you need to be clever about what you decide to do.
Even when you have degrees behind your name, years of experience and are the top ten of knowledge in your field it does not mean you will be happy, or that you will be paid what you are worth. It does not mean that you will be famous, or suddenly “discovered”. Even if you have all the money you could dream of it does not mean you will find happiness, in fact you will have more stress and more problems.
The world does not care how many degrees you have, how many years of experience, how much knowledge you have or where you come from and what the colour of your skin is. That is a fact.
You can be poor and be remembered as one of the nicest and deepest people anyone has ever met, or you can be the richest, most isolated and misunderstood assholes on earth. You can also be the richest, most giving person on earth who is eternally unhappy because anything you want is easy to buy but what you really want doesn't have a value attached to it. You could be the poorest bastard under the sun and have exactly what that rich guy is looking for and can never have.
Politics? Big business? Money? All meaningless if you spend your life concentrating on those external things that you take so personally and further other peoples agendas by not thinking for yourself.
You want to be rich? You want to be famous? Ask anyone who is either and they will tell you they spent most of their lives living in the slums and finally had a “big break”. Those are people who believed in themselves, did whatever it took to get there and no, it was not as easy as some politicians would have you believe – that by nationalising the mines, or by voting ANC your life will change... it will NOT change thanks to them, it will only ever be thanks to you and the hard work and sacrifice you make to ensure your own future.
Perhaps this is a new concept to people who were oppressed by apartheid and are now free, and they are still in the state of mind that perhaps they are fighting against something, an imaginary enemy now – because they are so used to FIGHTING. Perhaps now, they do not know how to be free, perhaps they are disillusioned as to what being free means. Perhaps they think being free means life is easy and does not require work, or sacrifice any more.
Life always requires sacrifice, and hard work, it always requires a cause. Your cause might be for your family (and that is the most honourable), it might be for anything else but then it is unrealistic unless it affects your family. If it's unrealistic then it is external, and if it affects your family and you are fighting for them I will gladly fight by your side. However, I think much of what is happening today has little to do with family, very little to do with honour, and very little to do with taking personal accountability and a lot to do with passing the buck, taking it out on others, spending a lot of energy finding scape goats, blaming it on politics, or any other outlet – in SA it's pretty easy, there are so many ways to vent our personal frustrations.
Okay so if you've read this far I take my hat off to you.
What is my solution you ask?
Well sir, madam, it's really simple and here it is.
Live your life as best you can not by following others but by learning from them. Unless you are strapped to a chair and being tortured you're the only one to blame for where you are in life, nobody is to blame for who you are, where you are except for you. Not your parents, not your boss, not your friends, not the life you were born into. You are the only dumb ass who uses all that stuff as an excuse for being miserable, and only you are to blame for not having the balls to change it.
You might have a bunch of money, not a lot, but be okay, and have a few good friends, and some family who love you but still, you seek to make others lives a misery and still, you think you're better than them, or still, you think it's fun to hurt someone.
Fine, do it – that's the way others learn – not to be like you, like I have learned, and I have learned that no matter where I am in life, financially or emotionally there are more important things in life than being hateful or spiteful or childish, lumping people into generalisations without experiencing them personally and so on.
Good luck if you think you're the only one with problems! You're not, so kiss my ass and have a nice day.
May the wind always be at your back, if you understand what I've written.
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