Extract: Poppy and James’s wedding was throat-closingly romantic: at sunset, on the banks of a river, then, later, twinkling lights in a barn filled with hay bales and naked wooden tables covered with artisinal bread and cheese, and jugs of cheap wine, and flowers plucked from the veld. We were newly grown up and at that point in our young lives where we were contemplating big things — buying houses and washing machines and finding well-paying jobs and changing cars to fit baby seats. And marriage.
Poppy and James’s wedding was throat-closingly romantic: at sunset, on the banks of a river, then, later, twinkling lights in a barn filled with hay bales and naked wooden tables covered with artisinal bread and cheese, and jugs of cheap wine, and flowers plucked from the veld.
We were newly grown up and at that point in our young lives where we were contemplating big things — buying houses and washing machines and finding well-paying jobs and changing cars to fit baby seats.
And marriage.
Poppy and James (not their real names) were among the first of us to enter into the sacrament of holy matrimony. Against the backdrop of rustic charm, they looked into each other’s eyes and made promises to love and honour and cherish each other forever. They agreed to support each other in sickness and in health. They said they would be there through good times and bad.
We, their friends, had envied the steadfastness of their relationship that began when we were undergrads — teenagers to whom the world seemed new and fresh and unspoiled. Their love seemed unshakable, unbreakable.
The Shakespeare sonnet I read to them that night, under the stars, seemed utterly appropriate:
Love is not love, Which alters when it alteration finds;
Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken
They met these stringent requirements. I watched, with heart-stopping envy as they went on to produce perfect children and raise them in a perfect house and take perfect holidays and have perfect jobs.
When Poppy told us, her girlfriends, that James had had an affair, we were as devastated as she was. He’d betrayed us all.
We were older, 35 years older. This — our sunset years — was not the time, Poppy said, to be considering finding someone new to grow old(er) with. And so she and James were in the painful process of finding a way back to love. How, she asked with a break in her voice, do you come back from betrayal and cheating and broken trust. It’s like dealing with death she said.
Broken promises
It’s a question for us all, we South Africans who are saddled with a sense of unease and sadness from broken promises made to us by those we thought we could trust.
I remember the joy and overwhelming love I had when Nelson Mandela was freed, when he was sworn in. How happily I made my cross for the ANC, the party of our liberation. I trusted that they would catapult us into the 21st century with the grace of a gazelle crossing the plains.
I was wrong. And I am heartbroken as a result.
If history has taught us one thing, it is that we South Africans are not monolithic. The opposite rings true: we are tractable and complaisant, and mostly compliant.
We’ve put up with the kind of venality that should, by now, have driven us bonkers. We’ve stood by, helpless and bewildered, watching our (elected) leaders being bribeable, selfish, dishonest, indecent and generally useless. We have witnessed such extreme dereliction of civic duty, such a lack of civic mindedness, that we should all be frothing at the mouth with rage.
This election, is all about trust. We have a president who pleads with you to trust him, and this despite his party. Why? Because he knows that his party — the ANC — is not worthy of your trust
— UDM leader Bantu Holomisa
Just think of all those people in our country who have been promised the delivery of basic services, who — a quarter of a century after the introduction of our democracy — are still waiting. We have listened, and watched open mouthed, to testimony of graft and greed at the Zondo state-capture inquiry. Personal enrichment has taken precedence over human decency.
I would say that all these disappointments have stripped us of the belief system that encourages trust. We don’t trust … our government; the legal system; our over-extended healthcare institutions; in the safety and security measures in place that fail to protect us from criminals intent on robbing/killing/terrifying us.
Trust. It’s a big word. (See below the various meanings and usages of the word taken from Google Dictionary.)
Search party
And so how do we go about finding a political party to put our trust in? I am currently investigating alternative voting choices in our country. This week, it is the turn of the UDM.
UDM leader, Bantu Holomisa, said in his launch speech: “This election, is all about trust. We have a president who pleads with you to trust him, and this despite his party. Why? Because he knows that his party — the ANC — is not worthy of your trust.”
That resonates with me!
Holomisa went on to outline the damage that that lack of trust has done to “our economy, our safety, our education, our health systems … How can [the ANC] be trusted when it stood meekly by as Jacob Zuma and his cronies looted the state and stole your hard-earned taxes and deprived you of economic opportunity.”
Yup. My view too.
It was a good launch speech. But does it inspire trust?
Behavioral scientists have devoted hundreds of study hours to finding what makes us happy (and what doesn’t). How happy we are predicts how physically and mentally healthy we are, and how long we will live.
If, as they have discovered, happiness does not just happen to us but we have the power to control whether we are happy or not through decisions we make, then we had best make a thoroughly informed decision about who we vote for in the coming election.
I am looking for a party I can trust. Still looking. If you have any ideas, I’d be grateful.
Trusted definitions
noun: trust /trʌst/
1. firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.
“relations have to be built on trust”
“a man in a position of trust”
“a relationship built on mutual trust and respect”
synonyms: confidence, belief, faith, freedom from suspicion/doubt, sureness, certainty, certitude, assurance, conviction, credence, reliance
antonyms: distrust, mistrust, scepticism
verb: trust
Third-person present: trusts; past tense: trusted; past participle: trusted; gerund or present participle: trusting
1. believe in the reliability, truth, or ability of.
“I should never have trusted her”
synonyms: have faith in, put/place one’s trust in, have (every) confidence in, believe in, pin one’s hopes/faith on
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