I have met the brain drain, and he’s ghastly. He doesn’t challenge his world-view by reading newspapers (or reading anything, for that matter), so I could name him with impunity, but his real name doesn’t quite convey the flaccid provincialism that infects one’s first impression of him.
He could be Shane or Chad or Brad or Steve, but for now let him remain Josh, perky and noxious.
The first thing one notices is that there is almost no brain to drain. Josh is a bundle of toned muscles, of suppressed aggression, of nursed hurts and resentment. He is an automaton dedicated to small-time hedonism and big-time conformity. His parents are terribly proud.
The second things one notices is that Josh derides everybody but his girlfriend (a toothy blonde with an eating disorder and nervous eyes that constantly look past him) and the teachers at the high school he attended, of which he is an ardent Old Boy.
Having never met an Afrikaner in his life, he loathes them. Everything Afrikaans — indeed, everything rural — is described as “Boere”, a callous adjective that his peeling monkey-mouth and crude lizard-tongue pronounce “birre”. The Boland is birre, the Northern Cape is birre, the Free State, Limpopo, Pretoria, Durban, the Seychelles, Holland, all are birre.
If he wasn’t such a coward and so inarticulate, he would also express his utter disdain for blacks. Real blacks, that is, the ones who exist in the nightmare of pangas and necklaces and Aids and rape and stinky armpits and kwaito music on the other side of the highway.
He’s not a racist. He really liked Kenny Ngwenya, who played wing for the First Team. Kenny was a good guy. It’s just a pity that they don’t all understand democracy and the value of a hard day’s work.
But not all drainees are like Josh. Some are lovely, fascinating people, whose predilection for actuarial science hides glittering souls pulsating with adventure and joy. And it is these, one assumes, that the Homecoming Revolution campaign is trying to lure back. Only a white Jozi ad exec, top lip caked with a plaster-like compound of cocaine and vodka, could be that cynical.
Of course, why they should be showing their television ads to us, and not to the birre of Camden, is a mystery. Clearly they’ve got their demographic sussed — a dorky white boy literally pissing on the idea of repatriation — but do we really want him back? And what is he coming home to? His spiritual home at the mall?
But let’s not throw the bigot out with the bathwater. A Homecoming Revolution might be quashed by drainees’ apathy, but the odd Homecoming Skirmish might not be such a rotten idea. At very least let’s consider a Homecoming Distribution of Incendiary Literature. Especially where roving sportsmen are concerned.
And it shouldn’t take much. As we speak there are dozens of once-contracted footballers standing at rainy French truck stops holding out cardboard signs (“Former international midfielder. Will play for money”), and possibly scores of emaciated white boys with big feet floating listlessly in the shallow end of American municipal swimming pools waiting to be fetched by Texans with sweaty palms who have promised to put them in touch with former Olympic coaches – in return for $100 and a massage.
Who knows what heights Bafana Bafana might reach should its prodigal Bafanae return home? 3-0 against Malawi? 1-0 against Zambia? Hell, we’re talking a goalless draw against Nigeria if we play our cards right.
There are also a few cricketers lounging about disconsolately in English pubs, explaining to waitresses the wretched political situation in South Africa that discriminates against whites and forces them to play sport for a living in Europe; but frankly most of them make Josh look like Beyers Naude; and besides, if they can’t bowl a cricket ball at 150kph, we’re just not that interested.
Come home! Come home to the land alive with possibility! Come home and help us reach the next level, a land alive with probability. Or at least just send euros.