Believe and You Shall Fly
Vincent Van Zalinge
It’s 1999, five years after the dawn of democracy and the end of Apartheid, and I’ve just been appointed to the Executive Committee of the City of Cape Town as the Head of Transformation. This makes me the youngest member and the only black woman on the Exco team.
A colleague suggests I talk to a guy in HR about optimising the structure of my salary package. I ring the guy, let’s call him Piet (not his real name), and we agree to meet the next week. When I get to his office the following week, he’s really friendly, only too glad to help a colleague in need. However, when he powers up his computer and sees the size of my salary package, something flickers across his face. Before I can ask what’s wrong, he quickly slaps on a smile, and we spend the next 30 minutes discussing options before arriving at the optimal package structure. I thank him and get up to leave but he calls my name just as I get to the door. Smiling, I look back, totally unprepared for what happens next.
His face suddenly red, eyes full of hate, he leans forward in his chair and sneers, “Enjoy that package whilst you can, because it’ll be the last time you’ll get that kind of money!”
I gasp, too surprised to give a witty retort. However, as I’m walking away from his office, I think about all the false assumptions underlying his comment.
The first assumption related to my competence. As an Afrikaans man who grew up in Apartheid South Africa, Piet had probably spent all his life only seeing women who look like me in menial jobs. As the lowest-paid factory worker or - like my grandmother – a maid. And perhaps he had told himself that this was because that was all we were good for, and it had nothing to do with the brutal repression of the Apartheid regime. Hence, the only way I could have ended up on the Exco was due to factors other than my capabilities.
The second assumption he had made related to my worth. Clearly, in his eyes, I didn’t deserve such a salary package, and certainly not one which, given the seniority of my rank, must have been greater than his. Therefore, his logical conclusion must have been that my earning such a sum had to be a once-off. Something I could never hope to repeat and soon – thankfully - I would be back where I belonged, at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.
Piet wasn’t the first naysayer I’d met in my life, and he wouldn’t be the last. After all, the most effective way to maintain a system of oppression is through a web of lies. To tell those doing the oppressing that they’re not doing anything bad, it’s just the natural order of things whilst simultaneously convincing the oppressed that resistance is futile, and they have no choice but to accept their lot.
And the sad thing is that, after a lifetime of being bombarded with messages from the mainstream media; books, movies, magazines and shops; governments and churches; as well as the people who choose to uphold these oppressive systems telling you that you’re not good enough, many people actually start to believe it, eroding their confidence and belief in their own boundless capabilities. There’s even a phrase for it – learnt helplessness.
Yet, what Piet didn’t know was that, despite being a domestic worker, widowed far too young and earning a pittance not worthy of being called a wage, my grandmother had managed to raise six children, all of whom went on to have professional careers.
In this endeavour, she was assisted by my mother, the third born, who took herself to school, working in the fields and shovelling shit (literally!) in exchange for a missionary education, before going on to sponsor her younger brothers and sister whilst she herself was still barely a child.
My mother then married and became a teacher, having seven children of her own whilst also attempting to obtain a Masters degree at Natal University, a degree she was blocked from pursuing due to apartheid laws. Fortunately, her brilliance was spotted by a visiting Cambridge professor. A brilliance that took her around the globe including the hallowed halls of Cambridge, Oxford, Yale and the international development stage.
These two women taught me two key things:
1. It’s not where you start but where you end up that matters; and
2. No matter how hard things get, never, ever give up.
So, needless to say, Piet’s predictions proved to be incorrect. Not only did I rise to the highest echelons in every organisation I subsequently joined, both in the private and public sectors but, 3 years later I had doubled my salary and ten years later, it had grown tenfold.
However, the memory of that meeting with Piet is one that I’ll never forget. Not out of grievance but gratitude. Like the lessons from my Gogo and mum, it serves as a constant reminder to never allow the poverty of other’s people’s vision to stunt my growth.
Take Outs
For naysayers: It costs nothing to be kind or to act as a positive force in the world simply by being open to and accepting new possibilities. So, before you tell somebody they can’t, take a moment to think about the assumptions and motivation behind your desire to do so. Do you have a crystal ball and know for a fact that the person will not succeed, or is there something deep within you that you haven’t acknowledged and dealt with yet?
For those of you who’ve encountered too many Piets in your life: Undoing years of negative social conditioning, starts with being willing to explore how, and the extent to which, it has impacted you. This means listening to your head and your body in order to surface your internalised trauma. Then you can embark on the long road to healing, so one day you can shake off those wicked words, break free of those chains, unfurl your wings and fly.
Have you had a naysayer in your life? How did it affect you and what did you do/are you doing to overcome it?
Have you been a naysayer? How did that turn out and, looking back, would you do the same thing now?
