S.A Paralympics : Putting all the african’ts to shame.

There’s enough negative nonsense being bukkaked around these days to make any able bodied South African depressed. So it’s with great pleasure and sense of perspective I’ve watched our paralympians bring back 30 medals from the Olympics placing South Africa in 6th place overall these past few weeks.

It’s a firm “in your face” to all those South African'ts out there. The entire spirit of the paralympics is about rising up against adversity. It’s about getting up once you’ve taken a tumble and standing up tall with dignity when fate conspired against you. It’s about people who didn’t lie back and feel sorry for theselves in a perpetual sulk of victimhood. About people who took control of their lives with a little positive attitude and “can do” spirit. And at this time and place I can think of nothing our country needs more.

So next time you're feeling so sorry for yourself and tempted to moan and gripe about your situation, you need look no further than our para Olympian heroes to hopefully get your head out of your butt. If ever there's a metaphor for what can be achieved by a mix of South Africans , positive thinking and dropping the "destined to lose" mentality it's Oscar , Natalie and the folks from the S.A Paralympic team. Congrats.

I’m often reminded in moments like these of an old Rudyard Kipling poem that used to lie above my late grandfathers bed. You all know the poem as it's very famous. Perhaps today you will reflect upon in the context of being a South African but so much of it applies in so many ways.


[IF] (Rudyard Kipling)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!


Peace and love
Rooster

So to those of us who are still in this beautiful country, let's stop willing ourselves to lose by being negative. Let the silly neurotic expats runaways spread their out of touch racist rhetoric while we rise above it and keep making this country better and better everyday.