A few things stand out in my life that I appreciate. Firstly
I appreciate my family; I appreciate the opportunities I’ve been blessed with
and I appreciate the country I live in. YES! I am proudly South African. With
all our problems I am still proud to be a South African. Of course I’m not
proud of our problems but we working on it.
Our sportsmen and sportswomen are the very reason why I gloat
so much and why say I’m proudly South African. They are not given much to work with but
at each and every event they do their best and they surprise the world by
bringing back the gold. I’m proud of heroes and heroines like Oscar Pretorius, Caster
Semenye, and Chad leclos just to name a few, even our rugby team wins when
needed. It’s not much but my country and these heroes and heroines make me
proud to be a South African.
There is one thing though that I don’t like that we do as
South Africans. We focus (sometimes) our attention on athletes that have left the
country and live in a different country and have taken up a different
citizenship, we praise their abilities when we mention them on the radio and
then we say he/she was born in South Africa with the most disgusting joy, man
can fathom. I hate that we have to feel obliged to talk about them when they excel
as if they are doing us a favour when they do well in their chosen field of
play, even when they are playing against us and they do well, our loss is no
longer disconcerting because we lost to a team that has players who were born
in South Africa.
I say forget them as they have forgotten us, let’s focus our
attention and our praises on the athletes that are making us proud, and
encourage those who are trying to make us proud (including Bafana Bafana) to
keep trying until they win.
I don’t think I’m asking for much. All I’m asking for is a
little appreciation for what we have.
