Moved to Wordpress

Hello people

Just a quick heads up to let you know that Ngwanamosadi has moved over to Wordpress as a result of requests made by a number of (3) readers because it's easier to comment and do other bloggy stuff on there. The addy stays the same, just substitute "blogspot" with "Wordpress" i.e. Ngwanamosadi.wordpress.com. Here's the link for the latest post:

Don't Tell Me That You Miss Me: http://wp.me/p2boBJ-1O

I hope all the issues users had on here are resolved by the move:) I really appreciate the continued support guys!

Thanks

Ngwanamosadi

The Supply

I found out recently that someone I'm very close to is using drugs. So I wrote this about addiction:


It starts with one.
Man it makes you feel good, sky high
Like you're flying, on top of the world
It sends pulsations through your body
Like you wouldn't believe the sensation tickles your mind
Sends shivers down your spine, takes over you
From your finger tips to the tips of your feet
For a divine moment your soul and spirit meet
The world is yours to conquer
You are almighty.
That's what the supply does.
I know, I get it.
After all if you regret it
You can just take a little more and that'll help you forget it
It's win-win you can't loose
So why should you be forced to choose?
Why can't people just let you feel good
Let the rush take you over
Make your problems and those of the world inconsequential for a while.
Let your body be at ease so you can sleep for a while.
Silence your thoughts so you can think, let you breathe for a while...
The thing with being high though
Is you can't see the tears your family cries
It takes your pride
And leaves it amplified
Has you thinking, "nah, I got this"
When in reality what's true
Is the fact that it's the supply that's got you.
By then, it's too often too late
When you're so caught up in its grip
No matter what you do it won't let you slip
From its vices.
The funny thing is it used you in all your guises
Lying to your people trying to hide it
To get you here today.
The supply is smart like that
It gets you to outsmart yourself
Makes you the pawn in your own game of chess
A game where you always come off second best
Looking like a second rate you.
It's true, what they say you know.
There's always someone who knows but doesn't know it
They're the ones who feel the loss the most when you're gone.



If you or anyone you know has any sort of addiction, call the SADAG helpline toll-free on 0800 121 314. SMS's can also be sent to 32312.

Last Minute V-Day Shopping

For you people who didn't do any Valentines Day planning: here's a quick how to guide to get you through the day. Enjoy:


So it's Valentines Day...and you've forgotten all about it. In other words you've made no reservations and you haven't even bought so much as a happy birthday card (because by now all the Valenyines Day cards are sold out). Do not fear, Ngwanamosadi has got your back. Follow this easy guide on how to fake Valentines Day and you should be fine.

If you're single, this does not apply to you, so rather than wallow in your misery, take a moment to chuckle at the people reading this ACTUALLY hoping to get some advice. Should it be the case that you do have a significant other (makwapenis, booty calls and side chicks included), you need to pay attention.

1. Come down with a serious, life threatening illness or get drafted into the military to be sent off on tour at 16:50 (only applies to Americans).
2. If your woman has some sense and can see through this rouse, rifle through her wardrobe to get all her measurements - dress size, bra size, waistline, shoe size, EVERYTHING! (Note: I give this advice because any man who has a rough idea of what his woman's measurements are would've had V-Day on lock three weeks ago).
3. Moving along, I have three words for you: shoes and lingerie. According to studies conducted with a pool of two women, you can never go wrong with these.
4. No matter how much she loves it, don't buy her chocolate. She will get fat and you'll be left miserable and that's not what we want - this magical day should be win-win.
5. Trying to book a restaurant at this point is futile - unless you plan on taking her to Wimpy or Mc Donald's. Let me know how that works out for you...
6. As I was tryin to point out in point 5 above, you will need to eat. Since all the real restaurants have been fully booked out since the 18th of January, I recommend you bring in some help. If you have a friend who is a whizz in the kitchen and is single (i.e. laughing their ass off at you right now) ask them to come whip something up for you. Otherwise, place a take away order at a fancy restaurant and claim it as your own:)
7. Set the mood: light candles, spread roses on the floor, if possible get a table and chair set up in your garden for a moonlit dinner.

Great! Now you're all ready to go, give your lady some flowers and let her know throughout the day and night how much she means to you, and remember: yes, the thought is what counts, but a little money strategically spent never hurt. Have a good one guys and be safe!

Why Get Married?

Last week sometime 3 Talk apparently brought in a panel of people to discuss the topic "Why get married". I missed the show but my friend Emma posed the question to me and asked that I write this piece. Enjoy:


Marriage, to most implies a committed, monogamous relationship. Yes, Jacob Zuma will dispute that because in many cultures one may take multiple partners. Polygamy aside, marriage is seen by a fair majority of society as a coming together of two souls as one...biblically anyway. To the modernists who constitue a fairly sizable amount of people will argue that if two people really love each other, a wedding won't enhance that, they can just live together and make each other happy. To the pessimists (for want of a better word), marriage is just a sham to legally chain two individuals together in what eventually devolves into a loveless, sexless, unhappy, monotonous boredom.

So then, why get married? I posed the question on Facebook and Twitter and was inundated with 5 responses. One of my tweeps said that getting married is like investing in the person your with. Some Facebook friends said things like "because she wants to", "because it's tradition and vat en sit (living in sin) is frowned upon" and "weddings are fun, so if both are keen, why not?" All fair points with some truth to them in my opinion.

I'll be honest, I've always wanted to get married, have kids and do everything in my power to make my wife happy and my kids proud. It's always been a dream of mine because I was raised in a home like that, and it made me happy. It brought stability to my life. However, while I'm being honest, as I've grown and as I've learnt what it really means to love someone completely and what it means to be there for someone, I've also come to see getting married in a more black and white sense.

To be honest, be it the fairytale destination wedding you've had in your head since you were 5 years old with volcanoes erupting and waves crashing in the distance to signify your love, or a visit to the local municipal court to "sign the papers", getting married all boils down to a legal contract. A contract which determines what will happen in the event that one of you wants to buy a sofa from Russels on account. A contract which can protect some of your assets if one of you goes into bankruptcy. A contract which says who gets what property and how many kids should things not work out. This contract can also provide you with certain other financial benefits, lower insurance premiums and loan interest rates. For the economists and rationalists, getting married just puts everything on paper, organizing, simplifying love. It takes all the emotion out of things and rationalizes it. Logically, it makes sense to get married.

I'm almost certain that at this juncture half of you think I'm nothing more than a cold, calculating individual. Fair enough, but while I hold all of those views of getting married, I don't hold the same view of marriage, and let's all face it, any one can say "I do", which is what getting married is. The marriage on the other hand, the tumultuous ups and downs, the fights, the bitterness, the second guessing, all of that is what actually matters in my view. When, not if, your MARRIAGE gets tough and you start to weigh the joy you get out of the relationship against the misery it brings you, will your desire to walk away to 'greener pastures' outweigh your desire to stay? After every fight will you want to run away? If leaving is what you'll want to do, then I have two simple words I'd advise you use on your wedding day: "I don't."

However, if you'll always want to stay, if you'll always want to work things out, if you'll always be prepared to put your pride aside to deal with the real issues I ask you now, why not get married?

State Of The Notion

No, that is not a spelling error in my title. After reading this you'll know why:) Enjoy:



And so it was, Msholozi, our president, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma sauntered down the aisle of the erm...parliament building in Cape Town to give his state of the nation address to the sounds of the Swati praise poet reciting Jay-Z’s praises. Once stood at the podium and after a short applause right on cue from the rent-a-crowd employees, Zuma began his speech. He started off with a rather lengthy shout out to all the dignitaries in attendance. Then he went on to FINALLY acknowledge struggle heroes who weren’t part of the ANC. A nice touch.

President Zuma then went on to mention how government has “made progress” in certain key areas such as education and health since last year’s SONA. He also acknowledged the fact that unemployment and poverty remained high and then went on to say some words in Zulu which neither myself nor Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel could understand (made very clear by the strain on his face).

On the topic of unemployment, Msholozi also pointed out that since the 70’s apartheid created structural unemployment, the lowest that the South African unemployment rate has been is 20%. To this end, he mentioned that under his regime in the past year or two the unemployment rate has fallen from a staggering 25% to an, uhm...more acceptable 23.9%...

It was pretty much at this point that I stopped my note taking, because based on the things he started saying I could envisage the rest of his speech. I wasn’t far off. The president went on about the things his government planned to achieve, citing the 20-year National Development Plan. The government wants to improve service delivery in housing, they want to improve the health system, they want to build universities in Mpumalanga and the North West, etc. He also dropped a couple of numbers starting with the big “B” saying that funds had been approved/allocated to making these things happen. All the things people want to hear. All those sweet, wonderful pipe dreams and notions we’ve been fed for years.

So, as far as delivering the state of the notion address, Zuma did just that. All he did was talk about the notion of a better South Africa where everyone lives a better life, together in harmony – because “together, we can do more”. No “how”, no “when”, no “where”, and no “who” – only the “what”. His speech answered none of these basic questions of goal setting. This, Mr President, is not how one sets SMART goals, and as we all know, if your goals are not SMART, you are only setting yourself up for failure.

I don’t expect our president to go into too much detail when it comes to his plans. He doesn’t need to tell me which government official in the Bushbuckridge Municipality will have R18 500 per month set out to him to pay the cleaners in his school district. What I DO expect is for him to make it very clear in his speech WHO will be held accountable for ensuring that the promised universities in Mpumalanga and the North West get built. Is it the minister of higher education, or maybe his deputy? Perhaps even the MEC’s of those provinces – who the hell knows? I don’t!

I wish he’d give the nation a 2-year plan. Yes, the 20-year plan is all good and well, but you and I both know that if he gets re-elected to the presidency, he won’t achieve 95% of the notions he’s pointed out and HE won’t be around to be held accountable for those failures. I wish he would lead from the front with practical steps to achieving the rhetoric in so many an ANC leaders’ public statements in the past two decades to clearly outline HOW we will make these things a reality. As a country South Africa is all too brilliant at dreaming big dreams for our future, what we need to realise is that in between right now and tomorrow we need to put in the effort and work to bring our dreams to bear.

In my view, the president needs to make some bold moves. I mean the most “controversial” part of this SONA was the statement about how the willing buyer willing seller policy is not working as effectively as needs to be for land redistribution to be at the required pace. I wish he would’ve stepped out on a ledge with other policies. I wish he’d said to the nation that he has plans to make it law that government ministers HAVE to use government hospitals and their children have to attend government schools. If you think about it, these suggestions aren’t really that far out there, I mean, the president of the country doesn’t reside in Europe. Why then should the minister of health peruse private hospitals? Why should the minister of basic education send her kids to private schools? It makes no sense at all and if nothing else, it would raise awareness amongst political ranks as to the REAL state of our nation. After all, you can’t see problems you don’t have, and if you can’t see something, how on earth can you ever expect to fix it?

I, personally, am tired of dreams and what if’s. I have had enough of imagining what life in Mandela’s new South Africa COULD be like. Zuma was right about one thing though, the government can’t do it alone – and they shouldn’t have to. I just count myself fortunate that I am in a position to do something about it for myself. I hope that when the rest of South Africa gets a chance to do something about our future at the next election they do. If there’s one lesson our government has taught us, no-one is going to place the perfect life in your lap, on some level or another you have to make it happen.

Let's Go 50/50

This piece has been in the works (my mind) for a few months now. I'll be honest enough to say that it has been one of the toughest pieces I've written to date. Gender equality isn't as cut and dried a topic as I thought - I hope I did it justice and I hope it gets people thinking just a wee bit. Enjoy!




For many, many years a lot of very brave women fought for equal gender rights. They wanted to be able to vote, like men, they wanted to be able to be the breadwinners for their families, like men, and they wanted to be treated like first class citizens, like men. Now let me be completely honest here and state that I believe in women's rights through and through. I was raised by a number (and I'm not exaggerating when I say a number) of very strong, independent women who showed me that anything a man can do, a woman could do just as well.

The women who played a part in raising me did such a great job of showing me that women are just as capable as men that when I see a woman in an office or holding a position of power, it doesn't even occur to me to think about the fact that a woman is doing the job. Never in my life can I recall losing out on something and think "but she's a girl/woman, how the hell did that happen?"

For my upbringing and the strong women that I've come across in my life I am eternally grateful because I hold no ignorant prejudice against anyone just because they're not like me. It has, however, taught me to believe that (natural psychical strength aside) men and women should be seen as equals in ALL spheres of life - and I mean ALL spheres of life.

In my view gender equality is an all or nothing concept. It means removing the words "it's because I'm a woman" from your vocabulary all together. So, if your boss says something harsh to you about your work performance, take that as a challenge. Improve the standard of your work and prove him wrong. If someone at the office or even in public makes a pass at you and it makes you feel uncomfortable, man up (for lack of a better phrase) and deal with the situation. People treat you only as you allow them to treat you. You, the individual, facilitate your treatment in life.

Needless to say, I actually take offense when Taurets-like feminists cry sexism at seemingly random times. I'll take the example of an ad campaign by the Mavericks, erm...gentlemans club last year, who launched a "racy" billboard campaign for a new fragrance called "Alibis" (google the pics). There was such a huge uproar about how Mavericks being a stri...I mean, gentlemans club and them launching these billboards was so degrading to women that the billboards had to be taken down. Seriously??! Now, I didn't do much (any) real research before writing this but I'd be surprised to find any public outcries over any racy Chanel, DKNY, Gucci or Dior ad campaigns post 1993.

I say if youre going to take offense to something, be consistent about what it is exactly that offends you. Don't bemoan the fact that men aren't chivalrous anymore and then refuse to take a seat on a bus when a guy offers to stand up for you - I've seen this many a time by the way. I find myself much inclined to agree with the statement that chivalry is dead and women killed it. I wish ALL women would take gender equality as seriously as they expect us men to take it. Then, maybe just maybe, ALL men would start taking gender equality as seriously as they should.

Spare The Rod, Spoil The Child

So, some old lady whose children are probably all grown up already has apparently started a group lobbying for the criminalization of corporal punishment in the home. This piece is basically a summary of why this WON'T work in a country like South Africa. Enjoy:


Sooo, they took away corporal punishment from South African schools sometime in the 90's (95/96 I think it was). Look at where that's left us, children with rights. The little buggers threaten to report their teachers when they are punished. This in turn means that school kids have lost respect for their teachers. I mean really, if I refuse to go on a time out as a pupil what's the teacher really going to do? Put me on another time out? Really? REALLY?! Come now.

Kids go to school and have teachers to help TEACH them. We've all seen the tagline "You can't teach a hungry child". Let me tell you this for a fact, you CAN'T teach a child who won't listen. Now, you and I both know that regardless of your age/life experience there are only two reasons in life that would make you listen to someone - first, you fear them and second, on some level or other, you respect them and think that they can add value to your life. As a child, you can't really tell the difference between these two listening motivations because your life experience doesn't allow you to really comprehend the latter.

I won't get into our schooling system too much, but I think we can all agree it's pretty shite - something a few hidings here and there could've prevented. Now people out there are saying the power to discipline should also be taken away from parents. I use the term "discipline" loosely here, because in my view discipline, to someone under the age of 13, on some level or other should involve a few of the best (depending on the offense of course). According to the people lobbying for corporal punishment to be made illegal, other means of discipline should be used. I take it they mean grounding, taking away of cellphones/playstations/gameboys and sitting in the naughty corner or being sent to your room.

Let me cut straight to the chase here. We live in South Africa, an alarming number of kids don't have rooms to be sent to. Sitting in the "naughty corner" means you're still in earshot of the radio. I won't even talk about the luxuries because you can't take away something someone doesn't have. That's the reality of the situation.

Now, let me break down the practical aspect of this. As I mentioned above, before the age of about thirteen (pure thumb suck number) you do not really have a firm grasp of the concept of right and wrong. Someone telling you that what you are doing is wrong might make you think twice about doing it, but if you have no basis for trusting that person (refer to 2nd paragraph) you have no real feeling to attached to that action. This simply means that when you consider doing something naughty again, you'll be indifferent as to whether or not to go through with it, and then your outcome or the potential pleasure derived therefrom becomes your primary motivator. So I put the question to you, as a 5 year old kid about to steal your baby sisters ice-cream having been told that it's wrong, what would you do? Now, if your mother had lovingly placed you over her lap and given you a reason not to sit down for a few hours your decision making process would probably steer you on a slightly different path. This for the simple reason that the pain you associate with stealing far outweighs the potential pleasure of the ice cream cone.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning violence here. I believe corporal punishment should be used in conjunction with all the other discipline methodologies. At the very least the parent should sit the child down before the hiding and explain to them why what they did was wrong and why they are being punished.

That being said, if you grew up in a household where groundings and not hidings were the norm and you're thinking to yourself "I turned out just fine" then I am thankful FOR your parents (because the good Lord blessed them with a child who listened). All I can say is should I one day be lucky enough to have a child and that child misbehaves and threatens to (or actually) calls the police/child services when I punish them, I WILL put that child up for adoption - and I seriously doubt I'd be the only one. I wonder then if all the anti-corporal punishment lobbyists will put as much time and effort into fixing up our adoption homes and orphanages...