Off the top of my head

The Awkward Hello Dance

Many many years ago I was privileged enough to travel abroad. Upon my arrival a 4 day initiation workshop ensued. Shortly before I and a group nearly 50 other equally petrified young ladies were sent on our way, the head councillor at the workshop warned/tipped us about the happy awkward dance which many, if not all of us, were about to get involved in, left footed or not. She was referring here to that moment when you meet a stranger who by default of the moment or reasons of your meeting, will have a substantial impact on your life. Where you are caught between whether to hug or offer a handshake.
They say that this moment, which can last for a few seconds or what seems like eternity depending on how long it takes you to decide on what to do, could be the defining moment of whatever reason it was that required such an ‘awkward’ meet in the first place. But I digress, here’s what I really am trying to get to…

When the realisation of that moments’ inevitability began to scream at me I decided that which ever gesture I offered needed to seem to have been natural if not affected by events beyond my control. So I imagined that if at that moment I seemed to trip (in a very controlled and not so obvious way) over my feet, and if precise laws of momentum work in my favour; which ever way my body and limbs are to be projected forward, I could ‘fool’ the receiver of the gesture that follows into believing it was meant to be exactly that. And there, I will avoid The awkward hello dance.

Life sometimes throws one these awkward hello dance moments disguised in various shapes and forms. Be it meeting your significant others’ parent or greeting your boss at your first day of work or even picking up that special someone for the first date and even when you drop them off or worse still, even on that moment where you have to say goodbye to someone or something you loved – (cos even then you never quite know how to say goodbye in the most meaningful way possible) but whatever the moment, it must be handled with care and one should make it count. The similarity in all such situations is that a decision has to be taken, this is a constant that cannot be avoided.

One could choose to trip and let fate decide on which gesture your resulting movements depict, an idea which warrants some praise for originality if not creativity and skill but it could also be interpreted as a copout, indecision and not taking charge. But whatever you do, decide you must!
My point is, decisions must be taken everyday – whatever they are, whatever the occasion or ‘moment’, decisions must be made. Even if you make/announce the decision only later, it must be taken today!

Today we are all required to TAKE a decision and we are only allowed the ‘luxury’ of MAKING the decision tomorrow. That’s just how life works.

What decision did you take today?

Shut him up!!!!

Call me frustrated and ticked off!!!

It is a well known and acceptable fact that the best way to help a junkie…pardon my political incorrectness - an addict- is to stop enabling him/her. Addiction is an illness that spares no one nor chooses sides. We are all susceptible to it, some of us are just luckier than others to get away with more socially acceptable addictions.

It comes in many ways, the most notorious kind obviously being substance abuse and I repeat; anyone can become an addict because everything can turn into an addiction. Be it an indescribable passion for cars (especially when you keep buying even when you can’t afford them), a love for beautiful people and the “service” they provide (enter Tiger Woods), the more acceptable (though exclusive of the more full bodied mammal) love for chocolate and all things sweet or fat, or think back to when you were a child (though some of you don’t particularly have to think that far back), remember how you just loved attention? Yes my friends even that can be an addiction. An addiction which continues to plague you today and is to me the most logical explanation to actions of the man in question: Juju Malema.

As said before, enabling the addict is the one sure way to feed their addiction, allowing them to continue to subject the rest of us who’ve chosen more socially acceptable addictions to their destructive, at times hurtful and even disgusting behaviour. Julius is an attention seeker, he thrives off of reports about his antics and re-works and refines them time and time again. How else would you explain why each month we’re sure to read, see or hear about him saying or singing something even more offensive, ludicrous and dimmer than the last time?

The man craves and thrives on attention and continuing to give him airtime or print space is merely feeding his addiction, we – those who print, broadcasts and even read about his latest antics – are enablers. He is getting exactly what he wants as he figures out his next move. I am not the first to suggest what I am about to (Sarah Britten from the Mail&Guardian titled her column: this is the last time I write about Julius). The woman has seen the light.

Look at the headlines: Julius out of control, or Juju – kill the boer – Malema, the list goes on and on, and all of them are saying the same thing: The man is an nutcase and needs to cut his *ish* out. Bloggers, columnists, reporters and the like, all write about the same thing – the man is an idiot and should be ‘called to order’. So why are you still writing about him? Why are you still giving him a voice by writing and reporting what he says if it repulses you so much? Why are you feeding this little boys’ cry for attention?

You want him to shut up? You want the addict to quit and get his affairs in order – then stop giving him what he wants. He is playing everyone for a fool. You don’t like him or what he says yet you continue to give him a voice through writing and reporting about him.
Stop! Sometimes to beat your arch nemesis you need to play them at their own game.

So, pitch up at his rallies just to document his utterances for future references (and you will eventually see the pattern, each month and sometimes weekly, the man will say, sing or do something worse than what he did last). But don’t report on these, let him think you will because you came to the press conference, or meeting or continue to give him the attention he is so desperately addicted to. And then instead of the front page that’s become the official Malema page of late, leave it blank but for a note stating: THIS IS WHERE JUJU WOULD BE…IF WE STILL GAVE A $***!

Do this every week or for as long as it takes to get the message through his thick skull: South Africa does not need the likes of him, he needs US! To put it in his words, “we must mobilise” the mass media, boycott this man and watch as his life spirals out of control and his tender bloated potbelly shrinks. The man will not know what to do with himself. Shut him up by playing his game, “mobilise comrades” and stop wasting paper and airtime on this lunatic.

Maybe then we will report on real issues affecting real South Africans; poverty, crime, lack of housing, corruption, or unity, justice, social development, human interest stories about actual working class off spring who work hard to make something of their lives and the lives of those without means to do so. Let’s go back to reporting about us, about what matters, filling up the space previously looted by this man by putting issues affecting South Africa in constant view of politicians’ minds. Maybe then, they will do something about it once they realise their cover is no more.

Today I read he insulted a journalist, called him a bastard and ordered him out of the press conference. This was a clear mobilisation moment media comrades, to stand together united as one and walk out. Let the headlines read, Journalists walk out on Julius instead of yet again giving him the lime light. Shut him up! Shut him up!