What should be done with Mohau Pheko?

I am a South African living in Japan. As such, I am a member of a very small minority. For many people, I am the only South African they have ever met... and perhaps the last. I am an ambassador for my country. I try to portray an accurate picture of South Africa by acknowledging our weak points and rejoicing in the miraculous revolution that has occurred in South Africa during my lifetime.

The Rise

A few weeks ago, I was so proud of South Africa's ambassador to Japan, Ms Mohau Pheko. She responded eloquently and unapologetically to a pro-apartheid comment made by Ayako Sono, an adviser to Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe. (You can read the JapanTimes.co.jp article titled South African ambassador slams Sankei op-ed by Sono praising apartheid).

In her bold and unambiguous letter Ms Pheko wrote, 

"Apartheid is a crime against humanity. It can never be justified in the 21st century to deliberately discriminate against other human beings anywhere in the world on the basis of skin color or any other classification."

(I've included images of her letter below, which the South African embassy shared on Facebook.)

Letter from Ms Pheko: Page 1

Letter from Ms Pheko: Page 2

The Fall

But my pride has turned to such bitter disappointment...

A few weeks later, I read an article on the FinancialTimes.co.za, titled "International Relations: Degrees of Diplomacy", in which the author accuses our ambassador of claiming to have a PhD; which she doesn't have.

One shouldn't trust everything you find on the internet at face-value, so I decided to google the information to verify that these allegations are true. After a quick search I found a copy of Mohau Pheko's Curriculum Vitae in which, clear as day, it's says

• 1994: MSc - Development Economics - NYU of Continuing and Professional Studies [Completed 30 credits out of 36]
• 2000: PhD - International Relations - LaSalle University, Louisiana

Recently, a podcast "Mohau Pheko regrets claiming she has a PhD" published by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) reports that Ms Pheko has subsequently admitted that she didn't complete her PhD.

Battles Won

I'm not writing this little article because I'm on a witch-hunt. I'm writing this article because we have cancer within the organs of our society. In fact, we have more than one.

Of course, racism is, and continues to be, a significant cancer in our country; but we have turned the corner in that fight. I believe we have won that war. Although the path to recovery is steep and winding, at very least we are walking in the right direction.

We should celebrate our recent victory and dedicate ourselves to remembering our bitter journey, as a reminder to the world that apartheid is evil; but we must continue to be vigilant, because there are other kinds of cancers that can destroy us. And I fear that a new cancer is rising...

The Rising Cancer

The "rising cancer" I'm talking about, is an apathy towards the corruption taking place in our country.

A quick Google search defines fraud as:

Wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain. 

And fraud, to the best of my knowledge, is still a crime, isn't it?

And yet when the Democratic Alliance, a political party in South Africa, calls for the suspension of the our ambassador, on grounds of fraud, our presidency seems to respond with apathy. In fact, it seems that we can deduce that parts of the government knew about this since 2010. An article from FinancialTimes.co.za says that Ms Pheko had to resubmit her application for the position of ambassador to Canada because her academic qualifications were flagged as suspicious. According to the article, these suspicions was reported to "officials in Pretoria".

So assuming that this information is correct, let's simplify and summarize the situation as follows:

1. A criminal act of fraud was committed by Ms Pheko.
2. The government came to know about this fraudulent act.
3. The government didn't prosecute Ms Pheko.
4. The government became an accomplice in the propagation of this deception, by not insisting that she drop the title.

What can we do?

And here is the biggest problem: Many South African's seem to think that this response by government is acceptable. I observe that this is true because there seems to be so little reaction from the public to news like this.

Not so long ago, the people of South Africa demanded an end to apartheid. The people danced. The people sang. The people stood united. They demanded... and yes, people suffered. But I wonder... Where is your dancing now South Africa? Where is your singing? Or can you only sing songs for which you already know the lyrics?

Closing Comments

Well, Ms Pheko. It's a giant pity isn't it? Because I think you can do the job. I can't help but wonder who convinced you that you weren't good enough without that piece of paper?

I must however disagree with one part of your earlier comment though. You said, 

"It can never be justified in the 21st century to deliberately discriminate against other human beings anywhere in the world on the basis of skin color or any other classification".

I've edited your statement above to show what I agree with.

The goal of our generation is not to rid the world of discrimination; but rather unfair discrimination. It's common sense that the blind should not drive. In the same way, an unqualified doctor shouldn't operate. And those without integrity shouldn't be in positions of leadership.

The truly tragic thing is... As a citizen of South Africa, I never needed my leaders to have PhD degrees...

But the one thing I do demand of our leaders... is integrity.

The Relevance of Mandela's Message

With Mandela's passing, many people are thinking about the profound impact of his life and message. This is my interpretation:

During apartheid, "black" and "white" were useful labels, only because they helped describe the apartheid problem.

Now, I discipline my mind to recognize that these labels are as arbitrary, for classifying people, as shoe size. There is no "poor black problem", only a "poverty problem". There is no "white capitalist system", only a "capitalist system". There shouldn't be "black economic empowerment", only "economic empowerment".

By using these old labels we lie to ourselves, we tell ourselves that white people are different to black people. This teaches us to be prejudiced, which IS racism, and is exactly what our heroes fought against.

Of course, it is incredibly difficult to maintain this mental discipline when the average white person in South Africa is SO much wealthier than the average black person. But, unless we train ourselves to see, not a white person, not a black person, but just a person, we continue to recreate the racism we think we've defeated.

How to Change the World

So some of you may be wondering why oh why is Eric being so quiet lately? Is he like Alanis Morisette, that only creates amazing art when times are tough?

Well... no. Not exactly. I've got a new secret project. Ok... it's not so secret. Ok fine! Geez... If you're gonna press me about it: I'm working on changing the world. Well, I'm working on a website that I hope will change the world... but I'll be happy if it helps a few people.

You see, I don't really know where to put this post, because it's partially related to my blog about going to Japan (Blue Cranes Among Cherry Blossoms), and partially related to my blog about wanting to be a positive force in the universe (A New Ideal).

I feel like my life is converged to a point. I want to change the world, and the only way I can effectively shape the world is by changing the behaviour of others, since I myself am not capable of changing the whole world single handedly, one benevolent action at a time. So now in order to change behaviour, one needs to shape people's understanding of the world, because knowledge shapes behaviour. A change in knowledge is facilitated by a change in thinking, and a change in thinking is the active goal of education. Education is manifest through teaching, and I am going to Japan to teach. So that's one line of the convergence I was talking about earlier. 

The other line of convergence is that although I'm skilled at English, and therefore qualified to teach it (kinda), I'm a professional software developer... so what if I use my software development skills to enhance the effectiveness of teaching. Wouldn't that be cool? Wouldn't that be the ultimate charity as well? I mean, if my best money generating asset is my software development skills, then surely from a economic points of view, to give of my software development skill is the most valuable contribution to society I can make.

So that's the plan. I'm going to try to create something positive, that helps people to think better, and by helping them improve their thinking, each person can be better at evaluating independently how best to change the world.

"What do You Want to do?"

It's such a simple question, but a surprisingly difficult question to answer. I suspect that some people spend their whole lives without being able to answer this question. I myself struggle to answer it with confidence, and am considering making some significant changes to help me find the answer.

It would probably help if I clarified what I mean by "what I want to do". You see, most people would answer that if they had the choice they would like to read, play video games, watch movies or series, watch sport or spend time with friends and family. But this isn't really the question I'm trying to answer.

A good way of re-framing the question to get to the answer I'm looking for is, if you won the lottery and could retire tomorrow, what would you want to do with you life? I suspect that few people would answer that they want to watch television, or read, or watch sport etc.

You see reading and watching television are forms of escapism. It's the modern equivalent of attending the gladatorial games; it's engaging, relatively relaxing, something to talk about and it helps to pass the time, but would you feel proud of a life spent watching the games?

In modern life, I think that this kind of recreation acts an escape valve in a lot of peoples lives. Besides, you have this do deal with:

• 24 hour day
• -10 mins Get the kids out of bed
• -15 mins pack a healthy lunch for work
• -20 mins Get the kids out of the house
• -15 mins Drop the kids off at school in time (stress!)
• -20 mins Try avoid the traffic and get to work on time (stress!)
• -9 hours  Put in a hard day's work
• manage and maintain intra-office relationships (stress!)
• -20 mins Navigate the unavoidable traffic (stress!)
• -15 mins Picking the kids up after school
• -40 mins Go shopping or go to gym
• -20 mins Groom
• -30 mins Make a nutritious supper
• -1 hour  Help the kids with homework
• -30 mins Meditate, or nurture the spiritual side of self (if you're an atheist, score! You just gained 30 minutes a day above your spiritual counterparts)
• -8 hours  Get a full 8-9 hours sleep
• < 2 hours Concious resting time (if you manage to avoid going to the loo and avoid any human interaction outside of work hours)

So when trying to fit all of this in, it's not surprising that when you do have a few minutes to yourself you want to do something that requires little to no effort, but that is satisfying and provides a brief few moments away from the vigour and relentlessness of modern life.

But then after spending your whole day doing what is required of you, have you really done anything that you really wanted to do?

In order for me to be okay with this existence, the only way I can see myself savouring each day of my life, is to find a job that I love. In other words, a job that I enjoy so much that I would do it, even if I didn't have to work; to live as if I had won the lottery and could now fill my days with anything I choose.

This does not mean that I plan professionally to become a beautiful sunbeam, but rather that I hope to find something to fill my days that I would do even if I won the lottery. I suspect that being a motivated, reasonably intelligent, and somewhat dashing person, it will be possible to convert my passion into an adequate living without being a burden on others... if only I could figure out that that special something might be.

I'm in the (ironically) privileged position at the moment of being unemployed, but with employment virtually guaranteed on the horizon, yet only in 2 months time. Given that I have exams to write during this time, and that I have to pack my life into 27kgs, this time will not be completely restful; however it's a better opportunity than most get to figure out what I want to do.

Introspection

I have a few suspicions about what I enjoy:

• I don't hate programming, which has been my profession up until recently, although I think I overstayed my passion in my previous job which has significantly tarnished my interest in software development. 
• I enjoy learning, although I don't particularly enjoy preparing for exams.  Although I don't have much of a track record with it, I suspect I may enjoy setting up educational material, which will put me in a good position to learn without having the pressure of having to put up with exams. I'll be on the other end of the exam if I choose to walk this dark path >D.
• I have always enjoyed learning new languages. This is something I have "done for fun" sporadically over the last 20 years that I find quite energising, motivating, and not entirely difficult; although there is only one language that I can claim any degree of mastery (and that's Afrikaans, although even then, it's probably only the first level of mastery). This hobby and pastime is something I've enjoyed for over 10 years, and as such I think it would be fair to say that I want to learn languages. I also believe that this can in fact be a livelihood, although I have no idea how much it pays to be a translator/interpreter.
• I enjoy wasting my time writing, when I have the time to do it. Plus it's cheaper than therapy ;).

Reflection

If you're living your life to retire, then I'm going to put it out there and say, you probably don't know what you want to do. Just be careful... when you reach retirement, you may be surprised to be left with a void that you have no idea how to fill. Even worse would be to believe that all that is left is the void. 

It's like having to choose a career when you've never worked; the only way to know if you enjoy something is to try it, and the sooner you start looking, the earlier you're likely to find it.

So... what do you want to do?

Positivity by Abstinence

It's been a while since I've posted in this forum, mostly because of some major changes going on in my life at the moment, and partially because I'm satisfying my blogging-itch by writing on a new blog (Blue Cranes Among Cherry Blossoms) which is related to some of these changes.

Anyway, the point of this blog is to sow the seeds of positive ideological change, and today I feel I have something constructive to share:

I think that sometimes the idea of charity can seem very daunting to people whose lives are spent trying to make ends meet. How can they give, when they can neither afford to spare money, nor time.

I'll give you a clue, how does a business increase it's profit margins? The answer is simple and 2 dimensional: Firstly the company can increase it's prices; in doing this, the profits will automatically be higher (although then you run some risks that are not really related to my illustration). Secondly the company can decrease it's costs.

So what I'm getting at is that our day-to-day experience is affected by others in two similarly obvious ways:

A positive change can be something as complicated as the contribution of a person who has dedicated their lives to teaching the underprivileged in the hope of helping them achieve their dreams, or it could be as simple as a sincere smile from a stranger, laughing at your own silliness, or talking and really listening to someone.

A negative change, on the other hand, can be sometime as overt as witnessing or being a participant in violence, but there are many other more subtle ways of spewing venom into society. Tell me whether any of these sound like something you've seen or done:

• Demonstrating anger at a shop attendant who is unable to satisfy  a customer, not out of negligence or incompetence, but because they do not have the authority to satisfy the customer's need.
• Hooting at someone for being a bad driver. While the hooter is great when attention needs to be drawn quickly, it was never intended as a sonic weapon of mass destruction. Hearing someone making a point that their fellow driver did something wrong at 5am by letting out a long drawn out honk, is really not fun when you're living and trying to sleep in the city. Similarly hanging on your hooter until someone moves at an impasse does little to make them move faster, yet it irritates the everyone around them, leaving everyone feeling worse off.
• Being apathetic, knowing that your actions could improve someone else's lot with no real cost to yourself, but not doing it out of apathy, laziness or as a demonstration of power.
• Shouting, swearing or cursing someone when they've made a mistake (because I think we need to be honest and admit that most times when people makes a mistake, it's not because they are trying to be a malevolent force in the universe.)
• Gossiping. At the risk of being called dogmatic, all gossiping is bad. Really. Gossiping is so destructive, and people don't even realise it. Today in my life, someone divulged that someone they named was sexually active and criticized them for trying to be a responsible person by seeing a medical professional. This dishonours the person while tainting the audience's perception of that person. So here there are two immediate negative effects with zero positive effects, and the audience is probably not going to mention it to the person being gossiped about because it would shame the gossiper and the gossipee, thereby robbing the gossipee of any opportunity to defend himself.
• For guys, whistling, or even simply looking at a woman in a way that causes her to feel unsafe.

None of these things are really acceptable, as in all cases the harmony of society is diminished, with little to no positive effect.

So my message for today is so simple. If you want to change the world for the better, then the easiest, easiest way to do it is to try to decrease the negative impact you have on society.

It's like decreasing your carbon footprint. Few people are actively trying to reverse the accumulation of carbon dioxide by planting trees to break down the molecule, but many people are trying to decrease the negative impact they're having on the ozone by producing less carbon.

Sometimes to be more positive, all you have to do is be less negative.

This week in the car, I allowed someone to cut in front of me. Yes, they were in the wrong lane, but there's a good change they didn't know it at the time. My patience allowed them to correct their mistake without having to manage the manoeuvre while also trying to outwit my attempts to block access to my lane. This meant that they could change into the correct lane safely. In addition to this, if I had gotten upset and gesticulated threateningly, then both of us would have been in worse emotional states.

I also felt a sense of pride at having been so mature, and felt a lot better than I would have had I allowed myself to let out my inner Hulk.

Try it today. And maybe tomorrow. And maybe the day after that. And maybe...

The Critical Mass of Collaboration

Today I listened to a TED talk by Luis von Ahn the creators of CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA, the text confirmation software used by some websites to confirm that you're actually a real person accessing the page. To the average person, this looks like some wonky, squiggly text with some random curves drawn through it; and you're supposed to fill in what the text says.

An example of a reCAPTCHA image.

The talk was well worth listening to in its own right because it reveals how, when filling out these "human detector" puzzles you're also, without even knowing it, helping to digitize books... And millions of books are being digitized each year through the use of this technology. So as I said; this TED talk is well worth checking out.

One of the comments that I found particularly interesting is his suggestion that one of the historic boundaries to human collaboration has been the inability of people (before the proliferation of the internet) to be able to coordinate an effort involving more than one hundred thousand people.

What Luis reminded me is that measuring the world's population in billions, is a very modern phenomenon. In fact, according to Wikipedia, around 200 hundred years ago, the human population was breaching it's first billion. 

Let's consider Europe for a moment, which is often considered as the focal point of development over the last few thousand years. In Europe at the moment, the population is around 740 Million. This is compared to an estimated 20 million people around 1000 years ago. This is a massive increase by 37 times.

Now let us consider some remarkable and enduring things people have built around the world:

• The Parthenon built in 15 years when the population of the entire city of Athens was estimated to be around 150,000.
• The  Taj_Mahal built in 22 years by about 22,000 people.
• The  Colosseum built in about 10 years by an estimated 30,000 people.
• The  Pyramids of Egypt built 3000 years ago with an estimated 20,000 - 100,000 people.
• (If you can think of more examples, please feel free to comment or message me.)

The point here is that it doesn't take that many people (let's use 100,000 people) to make a big difference. Imagine if 100,000 people volunteered to build a school, how long would that take to build? What would be the effect of 100,000 people volunteering to teach 1 hour a week? What would be the effect of 100,000 people volunteered to make a hospital a beautiful place to be? How long would it take to create a computer system to manage these efforts, if 22,000 software developers volunteered to build it? 

Requiring 22,000 people to build the Taj Mahal is quite a feat; however requiring 22,000 among the 3.5 million people living in Cape Town is only 1 in 159 people. Requiring 100,000 among six billion is only 1 in 60,000. 

The Challenge: Do not let your feeling of anonymity, among the many millions of people with whom you share your city, dilute your own expectation of the effect you can have on society. Be the 1 in 159 people that volunteers, and change the world for the better.

I invite you, if you agree with the sentiment of this article, to kindly +1 this page.

Today I Saw 3 Incidences of Littering and a Brawl

I have approximately a 2.5km walk from my place of work to the place I live, on the other side of the Cape Town CBD.

Today I saw 3 separate people littering.

The first, very close to my office, was an individual among a number of labourers on the back of a bakkie (a small pick-up truck) that threw a almost empty roll of electrical tape into the road. Being the kind of person that has accepted as my responsibility a subset of the problems of society, I picked up the roll of tape and disposed of it in the bin.

On my way to the bin, I passed a guy that threw a piece of paper, quite nonchalantly, into the street. Now, I was still pissed because of the previous guy, so removing my headphones, I rebuked the guy publicly, asking who he expects to pick up the paper he just threw, etc. I feel that this is necessary as (i) it reminds the person that this kind of behavior is noticed and perceived negatively by at least some people, (ii) it hopefully challenges the person to question whether what they did is right, (iii) and I hope it causes the person a tiny bit of public shame that I hope will cause him to feel some guilt at his transgression. My behavior may also have reinforced the perception that whites still live under the misconception that their black neighbors are in some way subservient to their white overlords... obviously this is not my intention, but some people may have viewed it that way.

The 3rd person was just some woman threw a cigarette butt into the road. At this point, I had run out of social currency and simply ignored the person.

Before arriving home I also saw a brawl between what looked like a security guard and a male-female couple. They all looked to be in their twenties and none of them were "street people". I could not tell who was in the right and who was in the wrong, all I know is that it was two against one, with the "authority figure" being in the numeric minority. The fight was quick, violent but without significant repercussions. Being the kind of person that I am, and listening to an Audiobook on morality, I wanted to help; but could not identify who was the perpetrator and who the victim. Instead I watched hoping that the violence would not escalate. Others around me also watched and some even looked ready to join the brawl (as I was), although whose allegiance they would choose was beyond my guessing. The fight was over with the couple leaving the area, and the security guard did not take pursuit.

So, what can we "learn" from all...

Is Cape Town a bad place? No, I don't believe so. In fact I still believe that Cape Town is probably the best place to be in South Africa.

Am I disappointed in these people? Yes, of course. I want people to get along, and to accept their roles of responsible citizens in society.

Are these people bad people. No, I very much doubt it. Careless? yes. Lacking foresight? Yes. Lacking an understanding in how government resources are allocated? Yes.

But more than anything it reminds me that we, as a world society, are not yet at a point at which we can put down tools and say that we have done enough good in this world.

I would love to see the emergence of a society (not based on religion so as to be inclusive to all), that sets an example of how to live their lives as responsible citizens of society. A society that teaches, not about morality necessarily, but about economics (and a million other disciplines) so that people can be brought to understand that the money spent cleaning the curb could have been spent feeding a child, or building a school, or creating a place of psychological healing.

But if a society like this is built, who will join it?