On Friday night, we went to a decadent wine and food pairing extravaganza. The wine was glorious, the food utterly beautiful and the company was divine, but what will stay with me about the evening, is the winemaker’s story. It was the most surprising pairing of the evening by far. It was clear from the beginning that despite Trevor’s vineyard being near Gansbaai, he was most certainly not from the area, or for that matter, from our continent. He looked like a Californian surfer and had the accent to match. He told his life story and how he ended up in South Africa. He had to choose a country where he could learn about winemaking in a season which would not coincide with his career as a professional biker. He took a chance and messaged an obscure, very Afrikaans farmer, asking about an opportunity to gain experience. A week later, he ended up in South Africa. An imposing Afrikaner, wearing shorts, velskoene and speaking little English, collected him from the airport. Instead of turning off the highway to go to Stellenbosch or Franshoek, the “Boer” kept driving with him for hours to a strange vineyard near Cape Agulhas. Poor Trevor was expecting rolling vineyards stretched out over mountains, seeped in history and culture. Instead, he arrived on the flat coastal plains where he was taken by surprise by the windswept, untamed nature and vast open spaces (not unlike the teeth of his new fellow workers). Worst of all, he was expected to work between 16 and 18 hours a day, and being paid in ZARs. Every single day he decided that he would go back to the States and leave this crazy land of hooligans……but every day he stayed, working harder than the day before. The reason he stayed? After every shift of brutal toiling, all the workers and the farmer would gather around a fire and share a meal. He said, never in his life, has he ever felt more at home, more like he belonged and more loved than those nights. And so he stayed… and stayed and stayed, and now, has his own winery near Gansbaai, (which he can just about pronounce correctly), an Afrikaans wife and his own workers who gather around a fire after a hard day’s work.
I am sure this was his first encounter with what we don’t even notice anymore: this wonderful connection that runs deep in this country we share. It goes beyond language, custom, creed, tribe, culture and religious affiliations. Coming from America, the flagship of capitalism, this new concept where the focus is less on individual wealth and self-interest and is rather on community and shared resources, must have been foreign to Trevor. Here, at grassroots levels, we celebrate human dignity and inclusion rather than efficiency and profit maximisation. I don’t even think we know we do this, it is just who we are (and between you and me, I think most people are – yes maybe even Musk?)
Trevor changed the course of his life based on one act of sharing meals after a hard day’s work. That same spirit of belonging is something I see in my own life too. I can think of dozens of acts rooted in this collective wisdom that shapes my life and those around me. Dumisani came to me last week in secret, to tell me she is worried about one of our cleaners, Alice. She saw something on Alice’s back while she was changing into her uniform, and just knows that she is sick. Dumisani pursed her lips, frowned and said in an ominous and dramatic voice, “She is very ill, you must help her.” And sure enough, she is ill. She had very scary-looking Kaposi’s sarcomas, which look terrifying, but are easily treatable. So, Dumisani looked out for Alice, I listened to Dumisani, and together we made a plan, got treatment and suddenly, Alice knows she has a team of people around her who love her. Plus, she is going to now get better and will be able to put yet another of her children through varsity. Thank God Dumisani did not mind her own business.
I find moments of this communal harmony in the strangest places, not just at work or in healthcare, but unexpected places too. Last week I was at the CCMA (yes, eye roll – again). The CCMA is in a nasty part of Joburg CBD, in a building where I don’t trust the lifts and the irony of a Ghandi statue is not completely lost on me. There, on the fourth floor where one waits like a lamb to the slaughter to be called for your case, ubuntu abounds. Everyone in that room is involved in a battle they would not choose, and so, we laugh and share stories, hold babies and lament over the unfairness of employers or employees. Even in the trenches of HR-hate, we find a way to be human, to connect in a rather weird type of fellowship.
I see this inclusion and collaborative problem-solving everywhere: the boss that pays for us to look after her gardener at the Recovery Lodge because she knows he has no one to look after him in Malawi, the carer who stays long after her shift because she knows a patient is scared, the manager who patiently teaches a cleaner how to work on a computer, the doctor who helps a staff member’s child with maths homework. There is so much beauty in our people, such generosity of spirit, and gentle grace in the way they all try and work together because they deeply believe that “I am, because, we are.”
There are great acts of benevolence in Africa too. Just think of Jannie Mouton offering R7.2 billion to buy Curro and change it into a non-profit. I want to weep thinking of how this will change the landscape of education, allowing children from low-income families access to decent education. Other rich oakes also give generously: think of Patrice Motsepe, Strive Masiyiwa, Aliko Dangote, the Ackermans and Tony Elumelu. Yet, it is the small acts of kindness that weave us together – the real sense of connectedness in everyday brilliance of ordinary people, small kindnesses, unnoticed tenderness, and the certainty that someone will always catch you when you fall.
In future when I think back on our wine tasting, I won’t remember the wine or the meal, but the blessing of Trevor’s story reminding me why I belong here. If our humanity even shines brightly in dreary waiting rooms at the CCMA, how much more easily will it breakthrough in places already carved for kindness and grace, like at Zazen and the lodges. I am reminded that our strength has never been in individual success. It has always been in the way we choose one another, again and again, in big ways and small. That, to me, is the truest wealth of this country.