My boss arrived in SA from the UK three years ago with her hubby and daughters in tow. LOVES it here and has bought property and applied for citizenship. Better than Europe she says.She’s a lovely person and I am close to her.
Unfortunately she suffers from colonial guilt, misplaced colonial guilt. During her first months here, she kept about a grand’s worth of R50 notes in her car’s console and happily dished this out at the robots with window’s all the way down asking the variety of mushmash at the robots to share their stories. This stopped a few months later when she finally were hijacked. Not to be defeated though, she would now engage with them at petrol garages, after all, its “safer” there with the security an’all. This stopped a few months down the line when she got her rerouted petrol card statement and realised that she was sponsoring quite a few motorists their monthly fuel, £50 000 worth for around three months. So interaction at the garage stopped. BUT! We will not be overcome!
She then employed a Malawian man as her house/groundskeeper, nice enough guy, does his job and knows how to use Google for those things he’s clueless about. However, over and above his salary, he sucks at least another R5k from her for fuel a month, he would request money for a garden implement and quote double the price which he will receive in cash. He is now “legally” in the country for which he required R30k, his family has also now joined him here and “Happiness” now cleans the house, the two kids are enrolled in good preschools for which “M’am” is paying. The guy probably cannot believe his good fortune.
A few weeks ago she “found” a homeless boy of around 11 and took him home, a bit like picking up a feral cat thinking you can domesticate it. At work we were horrified, she did not take kindly to my earnest warnings claiming that she is in a position to give him every opportunity in life… oh dear… He stuck around for about a week whilst she engaged with various government officials in order to adopt him. He robbed them blind during that week and disappeared the morning they were due to go on “holiday”.
I attempted to explain to her that her heartfelt good deeds does no greater good to any single situation, but she’s like a bull in a china shop. Its a case of “oh well, poor child, oh wait! there’s another one!”
Im sitting here musing my cynical opinion of her kindness, misplaced or not, she’s a kinder person than I would want to be. Im also wondering whether she would ever reach the point of view the average South African holds.