It might well be a case of mixing metaphors, for which Mrs Weston, my much-revered high school English teacher of many years past, would, without a shadow of a doubt, have my guts for garters. So, I am off to a less than auspicious start. But I take solace in the words of Jim George: “It’s not how you start that’s important, but how you finish!” So, here’s hoping for a strong finish.
If you do not recognise the headline, it is the partial lyric of the song Seasons in the Sun and, with poetic licence, the title of another, American Pie. “Seasons out of time”, from Terry Jacks’s Season in the Sun, is said to mean that the memories are now gone, while Don McLean explains: “Basically, in American Pie, things are heading in the wrong direction . . . [Life] is becoming less idyllic. I don’t know whether you consider that wrong or right, but it is a morality song in a sense.”
No matter how positive you are, the economic signs are there for all to see, and the picture is not a pretty one – it is anything but. This is of grave concern, but seems to be of only secondary concern to the powers that be, who seem to believe that South Africa can spend itself out of its present economic predicament. Instead of ‘spend’ you may well read ‘buy’, although I believe the former is more appropriate. Either way, what might be neglected, or even ignored, is the fact that South Africa simply does not have that luxury – for those were the days when South Africa still had seasons in the sun. More aptly, 25 years ago was the time when South Africa had its place in the sun.
The South African economy finds itself in a state of persistent deterioration, the extent and severity of which should be the real subject of debate and deliberation. When confronted with South Africa’s recent economic data, it takes very little for one’s mood to become very sombre. It makes one think of the dreaded ‘D’ word – death. It is a word that, at present, is at the centre of my very being, for my father-in-law is currently in its grip.
That made me think, and question, when time will be called on the South African economy. Well, it is not a single time. According to Coroner Talk – there are actually three different times of death: the physiologic time of death, when a person’s vital functions cease; the legal time of death, which is the time recorded on the death certificate; and the estimated time of death, which is the time the medical examiner estimates that death occurred.
There are not only three times of deaths, but also three types of death, according to David M Eagleman, author of Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives. The first is when the body ceases to function, the second, when the body is consigned to the grave and the third, the moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
If it all sounds a bit melodramatic, consider that South Africa’s population growth outstrips the growth of its economy, that its tax base is shrinking, that the number of those dependent on tax distribution is increasing, and that deindustrialisation is continuing, which is contributing to increasing unemployment. Further, State-owned enterprises are becoming an increasing financial drain on the economy, which justifies their speedy confinement to the ‘happy hunting ground’, an expression used by native Americans that means to go to the afterlife.
The time has come for fundamental change. No longer will simply doing the same things suffice. It is too late for that. For if it is not, then all that remains is: “So bye-bye, South African pie, this will be the day that you die.”