No More Fake-Nice Communication

When growing up we used to move quite a bit or a lot depending on your view, from Moteti to Hammanskraal, Hammanskraal to Mamelodi, from Mamelodi to Soshanguve where in Grade 12 I started to live independent while renting in Block FF, and from Soshanguve to Diepsloot when I started my internship, so I have a bit of an idea of how black communities operate and observed quite a few similarities, but it’s the differences that I want to highlight between Diepsloot and Soshanguve.

I got an opportunity to experience a lot of different values each community had to offer, for instead Diepsloot — a place mostly about business and trade, people are always offering goods and services so you easily become business mind oriented when you are roaming the streets, the bad thing about it in my point of view is that the community members’ communication amongst each other becomes conditional, there are strings attached when someone talks to you, is either is for sales or to make you subscribe to their services and politics never cease to end.

Diepsloot is a very crowded place with businesses ranging from some large grocery and hardware stores, shacks offering hair styles and Internet cafes, and roadside traders selling anything you can think of, and I mean anything — Do you want computer parts? What about car parts? Or maybe you just looking for jeans, shirts, shoes, and caps, whatever it is that you want Diepsloot is probably offering it at a much lesser price than the market value. It’s all there in the streets of Diepsloot and in order to get you to buy there’s fake-nice and fake-love communication going on.

Soshanguve on the other hand, which is where I did my secondary and high school education, is opposite in the sense that people there barely have ulterior motives, If you’re being an asshole, they will tell you you’re being an asshole. If someone really likes you and are having a great time, they tell you that. It doesn’t matter if this person is your friend, a stranger, or someone you met five minutes ago on the street. This is what always impressed me with Soshanguve, and to give a bit of credit Diepsloot also has that but it’s rare to come across outside of family and close friends.

Fake-nice and fake-love communication must fall. In this country, where students brought fees must fall, and with the success of Zuma must fall campaign recently, I’m sure we can pull this one off. We can’t afford the superficial lifestyles this fake-nice and fake-love is creating for us, you don’t have to be nice to me or go all out to make me subscribe to your services or buy your products. Just be you, share a genuine experience of what you’ve gone through and what you’re trying to accomplish, and when you are mad, curse if you must, just express yourself and let go of the superficial stuff that leads you to no place at all but merely surrounds you with more superficial people who continue the trend of manipulations and lies.

Down with schemers and up with the dreamers.

I’m just tired, that’s all there is to it, and maybe you are too but can’t see it yet, the fake-nice and fake-love communication in our communities that slowly but surely kills the value we have for ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities.

At the end we are our stories, some shared and some lived alone. What’s the point if is all fake and superficial?