Oyena Gwebityala

To say that 2009 was the worst year of my life would be an understatement. The weird thing though is that having been through 2009, I don’t think that I will ever wish to have been spared that annus horribilis. Sitting here in my room right at this moment, reading my blog posts from last year on oyena.wordpress.com, I realise that where I am right now is all thanks to 2009. A number of things that have shaped me happened in 2009, these are:

1) I admitted to myself and others that I am not a believer

This was perhaps the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. If you knew me at Wits you would know that I was very devout in my religion. But at some point, I simply stopped believing. With my loss of belief came the loss of many very close friends and perhaps the closest friend of all at the time- Jesus. Life without Christ, friend is hard. Every day you have to wake up and pull yourself by your own bootstraps, where previously, you woke up and prayed for strength and got it. But I did it, and with that came courage and from the courage came the man who is planning to do great things in this country.

2) I got over money

Having money is great. It can buy nice stuff and it is handy to have around. But I realised last year that it was not as important as I thought it was. Coming out of varsity, I wanted to be a multi-millionaire, but then I realised that all money is useful for is buying trinkets. And I bought lots and fell into lots of debt, and in the end, i realised that the trinkets didn’t make me happy and never would. Making this realisation so early in my working life has allowed me to set my eyes squarely on the right goals. I know now that where I want to be is in a place where I help people, I want to lead and inspire and if I have to give up my trinkets to do that I will do so gladly.

3) I got depressed

At some point last year, I woke up and realised that my life still sucked. I wasn’t mr popular in high school. I was a fat, geek who annoyed his classmates. I woke one day last year and realised that despite my attempts to change, I was still that guy. I was weird and I didn’t fit into many of the square holes that people fit into nicely. I was a round peg in a square hole world. And that realisation plunged me into the deepest emotional abyss I had ever been in my life. And the reason it did was because throughout my sucky life in Mthatha, I had been telling myself that when I started working, I would be like other people, I would fit in and never be mocked for anything again. Realising that I was working and that nothing had changed made me really sad. However, a year later, i realise that I will probably fit into very few places, I embrace that and I own that fate. And that realisation has made me the man that I am now, a year later.

4) I got closer with Jodalex, Luke and the WDU crew

Throughout varsity, I had put these guys in my “debating friends” list, without opening up the idea of them being my friends. And at a time where I needed friends, Joe reached out and said “we can be friends” I will never forget the lunch we had at Capello’s in the CBD around June last year. At a time where I thought that I had lost all my good friends, I got new ones. I’ll never stop being thankful for that. And now, I see myself being friends with these guys for a long time from now.

5) I met the villagers (Ray, Khethelo, Walter, Kingsley, Martha, Palabadi and Precious)

I stayed in the same building with these guys. And the friendship that I had with them got me through some very tough stuff. I will never forget the meals we shared (mostly cooked by me, so you all owe me), and the crazy things we did. Amongst these people, Ray and Walter were my closest confidants, at a time when I needed it.  I will always appreciate them, and the villagers will always hold a special place in heart.

6) I lost weight

My weight has always been and remains a source of displeasure for me. Ever since I can remember, my self esteem was tied to how fat I thought I looked. Last year, I decided that I didn’t want to feel small anymore and I went and I lost lots of my body weight. The actual weight loss came as a result of doing some smart things like going to gym and some stupid things like eating almost no food on a daily basis. But I am over that now. I have struck what I believe to be a healthy balance. Yes I am not in my best shape, but I am working on that in a healthy way. I have somehow managed to untangle my body weight from my self esteem and astonishingly, I seem more driven to have a healthy body now, than I did when I thought that the only thing that would make me happy in life was to be muscular.

6) Lastly, I met Temba

No dear reader, Temba is just a very good friend from work and not what you are thinking. The reason that I feel the need to close this list with him is because I think that he has had quite an influence over me in the past year. You see, Temba is the kind of guy that I used to love to hate. The cool soccer captain type from school, who everyone wanted to befriend and carry kit bags for. I hated that kind of guy because they always judged me and in their eyes, and sadly my own, I came out inferior. And so when Temba walked into my place of work one day, my defenses went up, I expected him to judge me, to not give me the time of day and to mock me. To my surprise, not only did this man not put me in a box, he gave me the cardboard, waited on the side for me to build whatever box I so wished for myself and then came closer to help me perfect it. I had never done that before. I am afraid that in the begging it was scary and I started with presenting myself the way that I thought would solicit the least scorn from him. To my surprise, it was him that was urging me on to be myself and to get accepted on my grounds and no others. As I move on with life, I will never forget that lesson.

Dear reader you will have realised by now that I am no perfect being. I don’t wish to be. This post was dedicated to my annus horribilis and all the poeple that helped me get through it. To each of you, I owe my sanity and to you 2009, I owe my manhood.

Thank you

I was having one of those beer in hand-around the hubbly conversations that I like so much the other day. And my friend and I were talking about fitting in and this is something I have been thinking about quite a lot subsequently. How do people become cliques, political party comrades, religious organisations?

I thought the answer to this question was simple, but when I thought about it, I did not have a ready answer. My wise friend and I ended the night by agreeing that the wrong way of doing it would be to define ones self according to the group they belong to or wish to join. Rather the group shouldconform to one’s character before one joins it. But how many times do we all end up in groups that don’t conform to our personalities? Remember your friends in high school whom you would not be caught dead with now, remember the choir, the boy scouts (for whities)?

This then begs the question, are our allegiances meant to be transient? And I would say yes, there are people I know I will lose contact with after varsity… intentionally. I think to define one’s self as part of any group forever is tantamount to one saying that they don’t intend to change, surely when you get married for instance your debaucherous friends from varsity might have to go. Of course there are exceptions, best friends, ex-girl friends you might still like etc. But otherwise everyone else goes.

What I am struggling with now is: when does this stop? Cliché: A rolling stone gathers no moss. Do you know the divide by 2, subtract 50 and take the square root rule? Probably not, because I just made it up, but I think there is some truth to it. So if you take the number of facebook friends you have and perform the above mentioned mathematical actions, you are left with the number of real friends you have. I would hate to wake up at 50 and realise this was less than 10.

So as I move up and along and as I shed some friends and pick new ones, I will have my facebook friend list at the back of my mind. So should you

I am still reeling from a public debate I watched yesterday, not because it was particularly good (it might as well have been a one man show), but because of its content. The debate was about a new expropriation bill that was before parliament recently and has now joined the national health insurance bill on the shelf. The bill in its entirety is very disturbing.

Here are a few characteristics of the bill:

1) The minister (I’m assuming of land affairs) has the right to expropriate any property from its current owner if this is viewed to be in the public interest (the definition of public interest is vague and open to much abuse)

2) Property is not just limited to land; it includes intellectual property, shares in companies, banks and other businesses

3) The victim of the expropriation has no legal recourse at all; the only time an expropriation can be challenged in court is if it’s not procedurally correct. However the reason for the expropriation itself is not up for discussion.

4) Although there is compensation, this compensation need not necessarily be the market value of whatever property is being expropriated

I don’t know about everyone else but I find this bill very draconian. Taken to its most watered down version, the government could force a wealthy person in Sandton to move out of his 10 bedroom house (assuming he stays alone), because it would be in the public interest to house a family of ten living in a 2 bedroom house in Alex. Or if one invented a drug for say AIDS that was too expensive to buy, government could legally (under the bill) violate the intellectual property rights of that person to produce the drug anyway. Don’t even get me started on the banks, hospitals, private schools and fuel companies whose blood COSATU has been baying for.

In my opinion this policy gives far too much power to government officials who have already shown that they can use power to further their own aims, even against public good e.g travel-gate, arms deal etc. Government has become synonymous with corruption, giving them a window to this much power and this much resources could be a very dangerous thing to do.

As well this policy could retard the economic growth advances that we have been making in the country. Very few investors would want to build factories here if their property rights were not guaranteed. As well farmers would have even less off an incentive to make their farms very productive if their land could be taken that immediately and without proper compensation.

One of the guys in the debate asked me how I as a black man could be worried about intellectual property rights; and that is just the main problem with the bill and its proponents. In the haste to redistribute resources in this country those in power have forgotten that new wealth can be created as well. Government is happy about giving black people shares in existing companies, ignoring completely that a better way (though perhaps more difficult) would be to encourage entrepreneurship among the previously disadvantaged. So I might not need intellectual property rights now, but I will in the future, when I start inventing stuff. The only man who made sense in that debate pointed out quite correctly that “government is too concerned with rich people to have time for the poor”

In closing, the bill will come before parliament again next year; I would encourage all of us to contribute during the public hearings on the bill. If there was ever a reason to pick up a cause this is it. Our economic freedom is at stake.

I like to think I am an invincible guy, a guy you can’t scare easily. But alas I am not and I have come to realise that more these past few months than ever before. I am afraid now for two reasons.Firstly I am faced with decisions that will affect the rest of my life. How my life is 20,30 years from now will depend mainly on the  decisions I make in the next two months or so. And that has put the fear of God in me. What if I screw it up? What if I look back in 20 years time and realise that I hate my life and I am too old to change it? Secondly I am re-assessing my priorities, because quite frankly I doubt that I am happy with the way they are right now. A friend articulated in his blog something I had been thinking about for a very long time; which part of my life is actually mine? What choices had I made because they made me happy and which ones had I made because they made other people happy and thus made me fit in?

The second reason is the scariest thing I have ever had to contend with, because taken to its most elementary level,it means that I might have wasted my life. Moreover the second reason does not only require me to make good choices in the near future,it requires me to make changes, to cut things and add new ones and change is scary, but this kind of change leaves my stomach in knots with fear, and I hate fear,so I will plunge in. Over the next two to three months nothing will go unchecked, everything that can be changed will be considered and if it makes me happy then it stays otherwise I am cleaning out the closet. Religion, friends,the music I listen to, everything will get an assessment.

Scary but necessary. Everyone arbs around the world seeking true happiness, enlightenment and all that hippy jazz. I will be my own Guru. And I am glad I won the quiz (for another post) because now I don’t have to work over the end of year break, which means I have 3 months to consider this.

And as I end this post I would like to ask you reader; Which part of your life is yours?

Ponder that.

This is the first post I have written that is not about me, I’ll try doing this more. But I want to talk about behaviour that I have found very weird within our society. A few months ago the Wits SRC got some money from senate to distribute to deserving societies. What struck me and almost everyone else was that some unknown society called the MPSA got what was as far as I recall the largest amount in grants from that money. As it would turn out later, one of the SRC people involved in deciding on the grants was the president of this society or something along those lines.

And this leads me to the weird bit, how could this guy have thought that giving that large a sum of money to an unknown society would not raise some eyebrows?

It would seem that this is the kind of oversight that plagues the whole ANC (the Wits SRC is formed by the ANC). I have been reading the FM lately and there have been cases where people fight over and even kill for power. Not because they believe in leading society in the best way possible, but because they want to control tender processes and the top government jobs. Now my question to such people is how. How can you think that owning a company that wins all the tenders that you give out is acceptable or even justifiable? How can you think employing a person with barely a matric to directorship positions is ok?

It was upon pondering these questions that I found the answer. They just don’t care. No one is going to call them on it and their own moral grounding is a little bit higher than a baby’s.

And the worst part is we have been here before, we have seen what happens to countries that ignore merit and reward only loyalty, all the good people go and as one debater once said to another, the country (economy) goes down.

What can be done you might ask. Well for now nothing really. In any other country that purports to be democratic I would say we will outs them at the polls next year. But that won’t happen. The ANC will win next year’s elections, they don’t even need to campaign. And the will win the ones after that and the one’s following those. They will win every election until we have an opposition in this country that does not try to deny what this country is. We are a post oppression country, we have a very divided society and we need some form of redress. He who realises this wins. All we can do now is say, FOR SHAME.

I see many of my friends are thinking about the same thing that has been on my mind a lot lately i.e. what happens to the dreams we had in our youth, what happens to wanting to conquer the world and saving all the poor and marginalized? I won’t pretend to know what happens to everyone or even most people. What I know is what happened to me and perhaps that is a good start for any inductive proof process.

But before I go on about what happened I best begin with what I wanted to do when I was say 18 or 19. I wanted to be the best president the developed world will ever see, I wanted to go save souls in Nigeria and other nations where I felt needed to have souls saved (I am a christian you see).

Then something happened, I can’t tell you what it is now, but maybe some day. All I can say now is that it was tragic and it happened to a person I love with all my heart. And after that the developing world and the lost souls of Africa seemed to matter less and less until they did not matter anymore. All I want now is to make life better for myself and my loved one, to show this particular person that life is not the bytch that it’s been for the passed few years. And that means I need some security, a picket fence and a hedge oh and a bulldog just to seal the deal.

Don’t get me wrong, I will still travel the world on 7 seas (as the song goes), but I won’t give up my day job to be on the mission field or for the country. I have just realised (like Richard put it) that I am ordinary, I get hurt like everybody else and my loved ones get hurt as well. And the basic mammalian instinct has kicked in, my survival and that of my loved ones comes first.

It was a painful reality that I have had to face, and I won’t even try to fight it. Let me close this post by saying here here to a 20 year bond and car insurance!

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!! I have just realised that I have 3 months of full time varsity studies left. I started looking back at what I had done in varsity, had I achieved what I set out to do, had I done all the things I had planned to do. And the sad answer was yes and NO. Yes I have achieved all I set out to, but only academically, I get a degree in 3 months time and that’s all I will get from Wits.

No I have not done all the things I planned to do that one cold and long car ride from the Eastern Cape. And that is where my problem is. I am entirely to blame; I focused on other things that I thought made me happy and on the most part I chickened out. In my entire life I can remember one event that I fully regret, it had to do with debating (the story of my life) and I hate how regret feels, so I am not going to put myself out on it’s path again. In the next 3 months I am going to do all the things that I planned to do, and I have already started doing some. Here under is a list of the things I planned to do when I got to Johannesburg/Wits and it’s broken down into 2 parts; 1) Stuff I wanted to do on my way to Johannesburg and 2) Stuff I wanted to do from my first month at Wits:

1)     

–       Eat Sushi (still think it’s disgusting)

–       Get a piercing (Ouch! But ok)

–       Bleach my hair (No pictures)

–       Wear my pants below my ass for a week (My mom would skin me alive so no pictures- I’m very scared of that woman)

–       Walk around with untied shoelaces for a week (Again my mom)

–       Buy a whole chicken and try to eat it alone (Always thought it would defeat me)

–       Lose lots of wait and audition for an advert on TV (I’ve tried to lose for a week in the past 3 years and considering the point above I will have to try harder)

–       Cut a pair of jeans and wear it (Mom again)

–       Have a joint ( My dad would arrest me- so maybe not)

–  

–       Go to a mosque (Salam malequa – I think )

–       Date a person from a different race group (White, Indian or coloured?)

–       Go to a live concert (Don’t know why I have never done this)

2)

-         Sit on the library lawns (Check, might do it again)

-         Bunk a lecture for no valid reason (my window of opportunity has passed for that one, I need that degree)

-         Go to a party on campus (check, not doing it again before I graduate)

-         Score a 100% for a test/exam (Have come close - 98% but never quite)

-         Kiss someone and run (should have done this in grade one, now it might just be misconstrued as sexual harassment so I’ll pass)

-         Swim in the pool by the matrix (Too deep I can’t swim well)

_Fall madly inlove and get my heart broken (I don’t know if this can happen in 3 months)

That’s about all the things I can remember wanting to do at some point in the past 2 years. So now I’d like to ask all my friends to keep me accountable here. Ask me what I have done each week and maybe with your help I can beat my chicken syndrome.

The big O

I am a big believer in diversity. I always try to make friends from as diverse backgrounds as possible. From Alexandra township to Sandton city and every place in between;I have friends from there. I have white friends and Chinese friends and almost any other race that chooses to grace Wits with it’s presence. The last thing I want is to make friends with people like me, I get enough of me when I am alone thank you very much.

The reason I am going on about the type of friends I make is because I want all my friends to know that I made them because they are different to me not because they are similar. So just in case you were wondering, I don’t know who Billy Joel is and I have never heard the Bohemian Rhapsody, as much as you don’t know who Tandiswa Mazwai is and you’ve probably never heard Somagwaza, and no I have never eaten curvier and I think sushi is disgusting, in the same way that you have probably never eaten sour milk and mphokoqo and you think tripe (the insides of a sheep) are disgusting.

So what am I saying here? I am saying I like people who are different from that’s why I make friends with them, I don’t want my white friends to call me mfethu because guess what? I have enough black friends who will. And there is something to learn in our differences. I had never had of the concept of poached eggs until I heard some of my white friends talking about it (only white people would make poached eggs), and now one of my friends has promised to make some for me one day (I can’t wait). And if you want, I can teach you how to make pap, samp and magwinya (just don’t make them when I come over to your house, I want white, Indian or Russian food depending on your race) and we can learn something from one another. After all that’s why we make friends at least that should be why.

This is my first ever blog post ever! I hope it will be one of many (thanks Rich for hooking me up) in the next few years. As my life takes different directions (and there will be many times when this happens) I will keep everyone updated through this blog.

Before I get carried away, let me just tell you a bit more about myself. My name is (as you might have already guessed) Oyena Gwebityala. I come from the dusty city of Umtata in the Eastern Cape. I am currently reading for a bachelor of Economic Sciences degree at Wits. I enjoy debating and debating and debating.

I hope you will get to know more about me in the coming months and years

Cheers for now.