Making a Plan: Our Greatest Strength or Our Biggest Weakness?
There are few phrases more South African than: “Don’t worry, we’ll make a plan.” Car won’t start? We’ll make a plan. Power’s off? Make a plan. Water’s off? Make another plan. Pothole swallowed the left front wheel? Someone knows a guy. It is one of the things I love most about South Africans. We are resourceful, adaptable and almost pathologically unwilling to be defeated by circumstances. Give us a problem and, before most countries have established a commission of inquiry, someone in Boksburg has built a solution out of two extension leads, a pool pump and something he found in the garage. It’s magnificent. But lately I’ve started wondering whether our remarkable ability to make a plan has also become part of the problem. Because if citizens continually find ways around dysfunction, what incentive is there to fix the dysfunction in the first place? The Country of Plan B South Africans don't really have backup plans anymore. We have backup lifestyles . Electricity unreliable? So...