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Friends & Friction: Open your wings and escape these cages

The quality of soil plays a big role in the growth of the seed. If it is poor, the crop will fail.

Politics and economic policy are the soil that nourish the land, and the young people of the nation are the crop that must be nurtured.

The politics of our country right now represents that bad soil, and so our young people are the late bloomers before a severe drought.

A peach tree will never bear a pear, and our politicians, both the living and the coming, are now contaminated to the core, and have been condemned to the fate of worms.

Vain, visionless and with tongues that only spit insults, they lack the vocabulary to mobilise the nation for the common good.

So, if you do not ask yourself whether your child should escape the clutches of our country’s idiotic politicians, then you are an irresponsible parent.

South African politicians were Donald Trump before Trump was even aware that he was Trump, which is why our country still suffers from acute racism and xenophobia.

We did not build a wall; we introduced the “unabridged certificate” and other fascist administrative burdens to keep “them” away.

South Kensington, London.

I have a meet-and-greet appointment with a former South African who left the country when he was only 21 years old.

Many black young people had just left the country in large numbers, going into exile.

PW Botha had just become prime minister. My companion found the student politics at the University of Cape Town appallingly conservative.

Together with his friend, they tried to start their own left wing political party, hoping that the “silent majority” of the white students would support them. They were horribly wrong.

After receiving his engineering degree, he left the country and moved to Australia where he started a wine company. Short on cash and long on dreams, he found an investor.

“I was a deal-taker, and not a deal-maker,” he told me. “They called me a guava, which stands for ‘growing up and very ambitious’.

“I had debt and so I was working for the bank, the taxman and I was doing far more work than my business partner.”

He felt abused.

He came back to South Africa for a holiday and went to see his father’s friend, Uncle Harold.

“Steve,” Uncle Harold said, “Stop working for the bank and the taxman. Go and work for yourself.”

He returned to Australia and sold his shares in the business, paid the bank, settled his tax bill and moved to California to learn more about agriculture.

Armed with greater knowledge, he went back to Australia and started a business of helping those who wanted to start their own wine farms. He now had the expertise of running a business and some cash.

His Lotto ticket did not come with the earthworm hidden in Australian soil, but when he met a young woman who wanted to start her own make-up business.

He backed her and invited some of his South African friends to come on board as shareholders.

South Kensington, London.

Steve has just sold his company to a major cosmetics firm for hundreds of millions of US dollars. A call comes through.

It is his business partner, the “girl” he had helped 15 years ago. She is confirming that all the conditions that had to be met for the deal to be effective, have now been honoured.

“Great,” he says.

In 48 hours they will both be rich beyond their wildest dreams. Steve is coming home to South Africa this Christmas.

Open your wings, and escape these cages of ignorance.

Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive, an advertising agency

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