How Ama-You-Know-Who See Us?

“Seldom Seen” was the name of a character played by Harry Belafonte, in the movie Kansas City. As a very frequent YouTube consumer, I ‘seldom see’ non-SA African podcasters who amuse me. Most I watch are dry as dust, and that is not surprising, given that good times aren’t rolling.

Maybe, because we South Africans are so busy dissing OTB’s (Over The Borders), we don’t take time out to wonder what they say about us. So, you can imagine, in heavy times (like our most recent “marches”), my joy, at this Youtube clip. The guy has me in stitches.

This clip, however, is not much fun. The OTB’s, understandably shocked at their losses, are big on skills, saying that locals have no interest in learning skills. This feels uncomfortably true, but it does not solve for me the real question:

how did foreigners enter as mechanics?

We have an oversupply of panel beaters, for a start. So, no stretch of imagination tells home affairs that these people were doing something South Africans can’t. Every township, in every dorp, country wide, has busy shops with these skills.

SA does not always figure how easy it is to break somthing down compared to building it up. I sympathise with the suffering of these OTB mechanics, but … do we really need mechanics? I mean, this is a short step away from kokota chop shops. A local sarcastic black mechanic told me:

The main difference between mechanics from SA and those from the rest of Africa is that ours do not routinely launder money as a side hustle.

True or not, if anyone is to blame it is some immigration clerk. S/he is guilty of economic sabotage only slightly less acceptable than apartheid impimpi informers. The Nationalist government gloated at times that one in seven people informed on one another, and they relied on that. Before we get too comfortable believing we are good people, just dwell on that statistic. Is is sadly too easy to believe that foreigners just pay a bribe to enter. Without wanting to stir up hate, my question is, why don’t we hammer impimpi home afairs clerks instead of hard working foreigners? I think we all know the answer, really. We do what is easiest. It is, to quote my bandleader Chris Roering:

Our minimalistic approach to “effort”.

However, I truly get it. There is no need for statistics. It has got to the point that SA people feel and see we have too many foreigners around. It makes no difference whether they are doing better than us or not. Things are not great. Coming to SA to make a living is easier than staying in their home countries, or they would not do it. As the funny guy in the first video clip says, they don’t look northwards & go and drown in the Med, they look south. Kolo Omotoso’s book Season of Migration to the South comes to mind: that was a very readable discussion on the value of building a (black) SA middle class – not what we are talking about.

Until recently, we did not involve ourself in other countries affairs, but we have started, not least with Israel and the ICJ, we have ruffled the US to the point of losing an ambassador. Let’s rather stop some of that, and look after ourselves. Never mind how much anti-SA sentiment there is against us, I have never found an OTB who thinks SA is really bad news. It is simple arithmetic. They just, coolly and fairly, pose the question:

How many non SA blacks are here, versus SA blacks in the rest of Africa?

From the news, about ten thousand have returned home. Out of 3.2 million that is around 1 in 300, or 0.33%. Effectively nothing. Put another way, March on March was big fish in a small social media bowl, but … failed.

Our OTB visitors themselves are failures. Instead of improving their own countries, they get on a southbound bus. I normally sympathise with enterprising people wanting to make a better life for themselves, but not in this context. If they don’t want the Orange Agent to continue calling theirs “shithole countries”, it is time they did something to change that.

Still, I do feel sorry for those OTB mechanics and garage owners. In a few years, they will be fixing ever-aging petrol cars. There is not a lot to fix in an EV, unless you know coding. There will be many (I love Afrikaans long words) werktuikundigewerkeloses.

Sorry guys. It’s not South Africa, it’s just – the world. Your secret to happiness is to find the country with the largest aging petrol fleets, while you skill up to EV repairs.. What is nice for you is, that is most likely somewhere in Africa. Just, not Mzansi. And that’s life.

Tip: According to Gemini AI, talking about Top Gear in Uganda:

“Remarkably, several of the cars used by the presenters have been spotted in Uganda over the years. The Subaru and the BMW were reportedly kept and driven around the country long after the cameras stopped rolling.”

And, there you go.