Here Comes the Snake in the Grass, by Eric Miyeni

Here Comes the Snake in the Grass, by Eric Miyeni. Random House Struik Umuzi. Cape Town, South Africa 2014. ISBN 9781415207055 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0705-5

Here Comes the Snake in the Grass is a selection of Eric Miyeni’s columns and occasional writings covering a variety of South African topics, from the value of radio, the true cost of crime, the need for excellence in South Africa and the difficulty of finding love in the modern world.

Eric Miyeni  

Did Mandela work for nothing?

A man who should have been given the death penalty was given a life sentence. That man could have died in jail, but he did not. Instead, he lived to help negotiate a virtually bloodless handover of power from his jailers to his people. That done, he managed to stop his people from seeking revenge and led them to the reconciliatory path that they have followed to this day and thus created what is now known as South Africa's political miracle. I love this Mandela-driven part of our history as a country. In politics, we chose to make peace with the past, leave it back there where it belongs and, together, looked to the future and asked, united as one people, what we would like to see there, what country we would like to build, explaining that this was the best way to forge this unlikely marriage between the oppressor and the oppressed. It was not an easy marriage to bring to life because we came from such different worlds. But in the end we agreed on a common view on how to handle religion. We came to an understanding about how to view sex and sexual orientation. We were in sync about our political systems and the politics we wanted our country to subscribe to. And so you can argue that we tackled the hardest issues and came to the conclusion that we could go down the aisle for better or for worse until death us did part. Sadly, though, like many couples who marry, we never discussed financial issues. This is a serious oversight, because over 50 per cent of all marriages that end in divorce do so because of financial incompatibility. For a country like ours, where the marriage covenant is between the super-rich and the hungry and homeless, a disagreement that leads to the possibility of divorce could be deadly. This is not difficult to understand, given that there is very little use for freedom if you have no money to enjoy it with. What is the point of having the freedom to live anywhere you want to when you can't even afford the cost of materials to build a shack? By extension, the constitution holds no value for those among us who have nothing to protect. If my life is riddled with disease, without education, and marked by starvation and joblessness, what value does the 'right to life hold for me? And il my life has no value to me, what value can your life have in my eyes? If I don't value life, who around me is safe? And if we are not safe, how can we call ourselves free? This brings me to the sad conclusion that South Africa's Mandela-driven political miracle might be a house of cards, a flimsy structure, built on quicksand; a disaster, really, waiting to happen, because too many among us have no means with which to enjoy what it has to offer. And so I have had to ask myself: Why is it that words like 'empowerment' have become swearwords? Why have phrases like 'economic freedom' become so thoroughly feared? And since when has the desire for wealth become a dirty desire? I was being interviewed on Radio 702 once. [...]

This is an excerpt from the book: Here Comes the Snake in the Grass, by Eric Miyeni.

Title: Here Comes the Snake in the Grass
Author: Eric Miyeni
Genre: Current affairs
Publisher: Random House Struik
Imprint: Umuzi
Cape Town, South Africa 2014
ISBN 9781415207055 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0705-5
Softcover, 15 x 22 cm, 168 pages