The price of distraction: South Africa’s allergy to the truth

The unfortunate truth about South Africans is our ever constant allergy to the truth.

The way we are so adamant that our truth needs to be painted with fairy dust, it has to be aesthetically and verbally pleasing.

Thus leaving us in contrast to the reality of our everyday life.

We are shocked at the real version of existence because we are still living our best lives in Neverland.

In South Africa, with an appalling and terrifying crime rate, a land of hopelessness and joblessness, we stay believing that this concrete jungle can afford to stay in absolute oblivion.

Criminals are a craze, theft is applauded, we are distracted by anything vaguely a fad.

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Things that will not matter three years from now take up so much space in our thoughts and conversation pieces.

Yet the most important things that can help to rebuild the land of our dreams are of no consequence.

We identify dancing crazes as a more debatable topic than, for example, the rand manipulation.

So much wrong, yet ignored because we are meant to be happy people who are devoid of the current state of this nation.

Now, people fight back and without fail, have so many ways and means to explain away the ignorance of our people.

“Covid devastated the mental peace of our people, we are looking to be happy having experienced the harshness of the isolation period,” is the hogwash people throw our way as they explain it away, believing that this excuse is vendible and we are lapping it up.

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All the while, nations have survived Covid and after it, went on to rebuilding, not just the folly of the day, but continued to rebuild their countries, economies and industries.

People have moved past the pandemic and are not using it as an excuse to be distracted.

In comes South Africans and their need to laugh and dance, even in the serious situations.

When police shot dead alleged extortion kingpin Yanga “Bara” Nyalara near Butterworth in the Eastern Cape, there was hype around the incident.

But there were some people who mourned him because during Covid he would buy the community food.

His notoriety excused by maize meal and rands.

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Why are people so gullible and their focus so distracted?

We cannot continue this way.

We must rein ourselves in as a country.

But before we engage the country, we must start with our families.

As the home rots, the rot escapes the house and seeps into the community at large.

Our moral compass is off; this is something we must remedy.

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