I took these photographs of the late Fatima Meer at last year’s Words on Water festival in Durban, at the Durban University of Technology. She’s pictured here with Ramachandra Guha and Shobhaa De of India.
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I took these photographs of the late Fatima Meer at last year’s Words on Water festival in Durban, at the Durban University of Technology. She’s pictured here with Ramachandra Guha and Shobhaa De of India.
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My latest column in The Daily Maverick:
No amount of trying will turn a “no” into a “yes”, not when you’re selling something I don’t want or already have. And buying from you in desperation isn’t a licence to continue stalking me. I’m looking at you, Cell C and Virgin Mobile.
It’s plain abusive behaviour to call the same customer again and again, that’s what it is. I accept that companies should try their luck and sell their products using all the means at their disposal, and mobile phones give them access to a huge market.
But that does not amount to a license to harass.
E-mail marketing already comes standard with an opt-out button, so why is this opt-out facility not made compulsory for call centres as well? Surely each time they call you, they have to tick your response against your name. In this way they would know when to give up, before they overstep the bounds of decency and start engaging in what amounts to harassment. Otherwise what use is their database if they can’t even track your interest (or lack of it) in their product?
But no, these mercenary call centre agents strike when you least expect it. They call first thing in the morning and, nowadays, even at night. Once you’ve picked up the call, they won’t let you interrupt till they’ve gone through their well-rehearsed script.
You would imagine that saying yes would buy you some peace, but that just prompts them to call again – with a new offer. A friend of mine once received a barrage of calls from the Cell C call centre sales team. She was phoned on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the same week, at exactly 19h30 each time. Tired and worn out from the relentless sales calls, she eventually crumbled and said yes on Friday. She received her new phone on the Monday. But the very next day she received a fresh call from the Cell C call centre offering her yet another special. She told the agent that she had just taken out a contract and had only done so in the hope that they would stop harassing her. Without missing a beat, the agent asked her if she would like an upgrade! For some strange reason it seems that call centre agents have been instructed to pester their prospects for as long as they are in possession of a working cellphone number.
Even as I sat down to write this piece about their unacceptable behaviour, my mobile rang and lo and behold, it was the umpteenth call from Virgin Mobile. And once again I had to go through the same ritual of telling the agent that I am not interested in any special offers from Virgin Mobile. I have lost count of the number of times that I have had to tell these agents that I do not need another phone. I mean, it should really be up to me how many mobile phones I have. The fact that Virgin is running a “special” is no reason for them to harass me, again. Especially when a simple flip through their database would tell them that I have already said no thanks on more than 30 occasions.
My latest Daily Maverick column
Blacks do tip. That’s only half the story. That’s what I know; what I’ve seen with my own eyes. But I digress. Blacks don’t tip. That’s what we are told by those who care to let us know such things. That’s the other half of the story.
If the “Blacks don’t tip” myth were true, this would make blacks the most ungrateful restaurant guests. Because to tip is not only to help pay a waiter’s salary, but to show appreciation for a service that, when it’s well delivered, turns a meal into a moment of culture. After all, one legend has it that the tradition of the tip comes from the habit gentlemen had of tipping their hat as a gesture of good will.
Given the amount of ubuntu that’s stuffed into their hearts from the day they are born, it is impossible to imagine South African blacks suddenly holding back on their legendary generosity just because they are in a restaurant. Why would they? This is what makes the origins of this myth such a mystery. It is true that when segregated dining came to an end in the early ’90s, relations between black diners and waiters were sometimes frosty as they sized each other up. But the reality of a rapidly growing black customer base soon displaced any mutual suspicions and the restaurant business has never been the same since.
What is remarkable about the “Blacks don’t tip” claim is that it has been around for so long, yet it is uttered when you least expect it. And each time I hear it, it cuts like a knife, slicing cruelly through one’s sense of what’s right. I have known some blacks to go beyond the customary 10% and up to a 20% tip as their way of demonstrating that they – we – do tip. Of course, this is a ridiculous way of dealing with what is a largely ridiculous claim, but then human beings are known to throw logic down the tube when it comes to stereotypes.
I have sat in on heated debates on this very topic and seen just how poisonous it is, quickly souring even the sweetest afternoon among friends. Like all urban legends, it inspires those taking part in the debate to take starkly opposite positions.
Often sandwiched in between is a less animated group trying to give reasons why they shouldn’t tip in the first place. Passionate as the arguers may be, I am always aware of just how painfully futile the whole thing is.
Let me pose a question to those who buy the stereotype. If blacks indeed do not tip, why are they received with such obvious warmth in the restaurants they continue to visit in such large numbers? There is no doubt there would be consequences for breaking one of the most sacrosanct customs of eating out. Would they not be shunted to the very worst tables at restaurants – the tables no one wants – and would the waiters not serve them with a coldness that would spoil their dining experience? This is where you see the cracks start to appear in this half-baked story.
So it seems fairly obvious that the notion that “Blacks don’t tip” is based on nothing but pure baloney, but like so much that is social baloney, it tends to stick to the innocent and the guilty alike. I have sometimes wondered, when the waiters give my table a wide berth, whether they think I belong in the circle of those that don’t tip. But I’ve learnt not to allow such stereotypes to hold me back in my own life, and so I always put it down to the fact that some waiters actually do not like their jobs.
Of course, these are the waiters who serve you with a long face, and every one of their gestures tells you just how much hard work it is to serve you. To me these are the waiters who do not deserve any tip at all because they inspire no goodwill.
Even when you lift your hand in a desperate attempt to attract their attention, they will find a way to somehow not see you, until one of their colleagues rushes to your table. But come the time to settle the bill, they suddenly remember that they are serving your table and reappear as if by magic.
Fortunately, restaurants are also full of fine waiters, men and women who truly love their jobs. It often seems it is as much for them as for the food that we return to our favourite spots. These are the waiters who walk towards your table with a smile that can melt a frozen heart. In that instant all is forgotten as you turn your attention to the fine art of dining.
My latest column for The Daily Maverick:
I may have my doubts about the effectiveness of hangover cures, but I have always admired those who create and market these concoctions.
Each time I hear one of their campaigns, I realise that these are people who have studied the hangover and know it is no child’s play. So they zero in on how nasty the hangover is and they promise the sufferer who turns to their product instant relief.
You have to give it to them for marshalling all their knowledge to position their product as the solution to all babalaas blues. Still, there are as many advocates of these cures as there are detractors. But the merchants know that for as long as there are those who drink and party hard, they will be in business.??It is, of course, no surprise at all that none of the magic hangover cures highlights the importance of moderation as the best way to prevent the terrible hangover. No one can expect them to promote the kind of behaviour that would reduce demand for their much-vaunted cures.
Not only do they come up with the most colourfully named products for their hangover cures, but if you listen closely to their campaigns, you get the sense that they are having the last laugh. I think you need to have your tongue lodged firmly in your cheek to make some of the claims made on behalf of hangover cures. But marketers know that nothing sells as well as what the target market wants to hear.
In the land of hangover cures they make outlandish claims on behalf of their products. Short of reviving one from the dead, there is nothing their concoction cannot do – or so they claim. From their messages it is quite clear that the dreaded babalaas is one of the most unwelcome side effects of the hard-partying season. It is why the hangover cure becomes so irresistible to those under the spell of a once-off or, in certain sad cases, permanent hangover.
The promises of relief are always highly welcome. It is this, more than anything else, that the purveyors of hangover cures understand. For those who cannot stay away from drink need to know that instant salvation is at hand.??You would have thought that the hard times would reduce the hard partying, but quite the opposite seems to have happened. Even during these austere times when the word recession has become commonplace, South Africans have not lost their ability to party hard. As we enter the holiday season and all accept that this is a time of unrestrained revelry, the merchants of hangover cures reappear.
A recent column for the Daily Maverick:
You get the impression that South Africans don’t know what to do about race. It keeps popping up in the most unlikely places, and at the most inconvenient of times, and rarely does it bring good tidings.
For a very brief time, they tried to pretend that race didn’t exist or that like Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s “rainbow nation”, it was an illusion. The fashion of the day was to speak of a “non-racial” society. But the old habits were too powerful even for Tutu’s rainbow, and before its colours had begun to fade, race had once again emerged as a powerful social force, one that could bring joy or tears, unite or divide.
On the eve of the 2010 Fifa World Cup, TNS Research Surveys has thrown the cat among the pigeons with the release of a survey that singles out the racial identity of its participants. It seems odd that a survey for so important an event as the literally “once-in-a-lifetime” Fifa World Cup in South Africa should use so crude an instrument as race to measure who is excited or not about the soccer competition.
I had to chuckle when I read the summary of the survey, for here before me was what I thought was a reincarnation of apartheid South Africa with its fanatical obsession with race. Let me quote from the statement: “The survey revealed that 45% of whites are excited about the World Cup, compared with 86% of blacks, 69% of coloureds and 77% of Asians,” said TNS Research Surveys director Neil Higgs. (To be fair to Higgs and his company, it is the differences in the responses of the race groups that they highlight, and they do deal with other factors such as employment and safety etc., but within a racial rubric.)
You would have thought that those who want race swept under the carpet would have railed against Higgs and his company, and accused him of playing the race card, but not a word of protest. So here we are, more than 15 years since we became a democracy and first tried to banish race to the dustbin of our history. But it is still with us; ever more powerful, always lurking on the periphery of our consciousness and peppering our conversations when we think no one can hear us. Is it time that we accepted race as a fact of life, stopped our mad pretence that it doesn’t exist and acknowledged its power.
The General Secretary of the SACP and the minister for higher education
My latest column for The Daily Maverick:
In our digital age, with small all the rage when it comes to accessories, it’s fascinating to see that lawyers and pilots still insist on lugging around oversized bags. If its information that they are hauling along in these monsters, then they are surely the last holdouts against the global wave of miniarization and digitization that has seen ever more information compressed into ever smaller footprints. But the truth is probably more mundane: the mystique these large briefcases lend their owners.
There was a time when the size of an accessory alone told you its worth, and those with the cash used to show off by having the biggest toys. These days, very often, the smallest is the most powerful; if Schiller was still around he would be smiling to see his dictum (small is beautiful) finally come true. But as it always the case in our world, there is an exception to every rule, and it is obvious that lawyers and pilots do not want to downsize.
Recently I was at the High Court in Johannesburg and I was surprised to see just how big some of the bags are that the lawyers and advocates haul around with them. One advocate had two assistants, each pulling a trolley full of files. It made for quite the spectacle.
Tracey Farren, Zukiswa Wanner, Ben Williams, Alex Smith, Byron Loker & Sophy Kohler, Lauren Beukes
My latest column for The Daily Maverick:
When did it become a status symbol to spend more time and money hunting down a complimentary ticket than it would cost to just buy the thing?
The strange thing about freeloaders is that they aren’t hard up; those addicted to freebies are usually middle-class professionals. I have come to realise that for many of them it is not about the money, but rather a matter of personal pride to get something for free. Then they can boast about how well-connected they are to receive these freebies. And I don’t mean that they accept the odd gift here and there, with which there is nothing wrong. These are people who have positioned themselves at the front of the queue for anything they can get.
BOOK SA’s annual gathering in Cape Town was a wonderful occasion. At one stage of the evening, we gathered most of the microsite holders who attended for a group photograph. BOOK SA editor took the shot above and I snapped the one below. I hope you enjoy them.
www.flickr.com
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