Urban Edge (boldly going) Evelyn Holtzhausen

Urban Edge Monday, July 06

Speeches may inspire people but they don’t get things done

There is a Buddhist writer named Ram Das, who in the flower-powered 60 and 70s wrote a best selling book, titled Be Here Now.
It was one of those books that seemed to be everywhere but was mostly in student digs on bookshelves made from sagging lengths of timber stretched precariously between wobbly piles of face bricks.
Also on those makeshift shelves were, more often than not, titles such as Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Hobbit, Herman Hess’s, Siddhartha, and probably a volume of poetry by Leonard Cohen, with pages yellowed by leftover sticks of burned incense.
Somewhere, on the floor probably, would be a copy of the Whole Earth Catalogue, which was like the internet in print.
It gave longhaired hippies food to fuel their impossible dreams of living an idyllic life in a wattle and daub shelter, growing vegetables, milking goats they knew by name and generally being at one with nature not to forget the universe. Live for today, be here now, tomorrow will never come.
This came to mind this week while reading Business Report columnist Nontyatambo Petros, who called on President Zuma eradicate poverty as he said he would in his State of the Nation Address.She cited hawkers as an example of a group of people who ought to be encouraged rather than harassed. If they were not vending she wrote, hawkers would be consigned to an abyss of joblessness, poverty and misery. (and probably resort to crime to survive.) She ended the column quoting Zuma. “For as long as there are South Africans who die from preventable disease; For as long as there are workers who struggle to feed their families and who battle to find work; For as long as there are communities without clean water, decent shelter or proper sanitation; For as long as there are rural dwellers unable to make a decent living from the land on which they live; For as long as there are women who are subjected to discrimination, exploitation or abuse; For as long as there are children who do not have the means nor the opportunity to receive a decent education; We shall not rest, and we dare not falter, in our drive to eradicate poverty. “
I am sure President Zuma meant every word of it. But nothing tangible will happen. The hawkers will continue to hawk and the harassers will continue to harass, the poor will continue to be poor and rural dwellers will not be able to make a decent living on the land on which they live.
Within hours of his speech, I bet, people were already faltering, and faltering all over the place in celebration of their political victory. But that’s beside the point.
There were equally uplifting moments in US president, Barak Obama’s inauguration speech. “Yes we can,” he said and “Yes we can,” replied the throng But they can’t really, can they? Nor will they ever.
Which gets me back to Ram Das. There is a great divide between what people on public platforms say and what actually happens. Speeches exist only at the time that they are spoken; they do not to get the work done. They are here and now things; speakers speak, we feel good, then we all go home and nothing really gets done. That’s the way it is. President Zuma will not eradicate poverty. Poor people who find a way to make a living will eradicate the poverty in which they live and no one else will. That’s the way it has been, that’s the way it is and that’s they way it will always be. At best all speeches can do is inspire. Even Churchill, one of the greatest speechmakers of all time, never fought anyone on any beach. The British soldiers inspired by his speech did.
By-the-way, I have never read that Zen motorcycle book. The pretentious title irritated me then and it still irritates now. I haven’t read the Hobbit either. But I was inspired by Siddhartha, and left melancholy reading Cohen, and I was there then but I am here now.

evelyn@hwb.co.za