For months I have been working on opening a shop with my Afrikaans business partner and two Jewish colleagues.
My associates’ parents are heavily involved in the ventures of their daughters who are in their late 30s. One of their fathers is handling the insurance of our business, and one of their mothers occasionally brings us food and buys us the small things we need but don’t have time to think about — a dustbin, a dish rack or a toilet scrub. Their family members are in and out of the premises to find out how they can help.
Their parents’ support is not only motivating, it is also an advantage that my associates and many other white kids have grown up with, which may have made their school marks better and spurred them on at extramural activities, which led to clearer career choices and ultimately made their lives easier.
I am 25 and have always been independent in choosing my career path. I chose what I wanted to study at university and my parents knew about it only when they read the acceptance letter. In my adult life my parents’ involvement has always been on a need-to-know basis or, rather, on a need-to-know-that-I’m-okay basis. For them, as long as I have a job they don’t need to get involved.
Although my mother will come from East London for my shop launch, she does not know the details of what I do and how I do it. That is the way it has always been.
We are both to blame — I have not always involved her and she has not always inquired. During the past few months I have resented this tradition, to which many of my black peers can relate — we wish our parents were less hands-off when it comes to our careers.
Most of our parents believe that once they have educated their children academically, that is sufficient provision for a lifetime. But I think this is a contributing factor for the reason so many of the educated, well-dressed black kids you see all over Jo’burg don’t have real jobs or careers they are happy in. There is an intergenerational gap that needs to be filled by communication.
I appreciate that our black mothers came from difficult backgrounds where the basic things we have (soap, sugar and electricity) were luxuries. When my mother passed the highest standard of education for a black woman in the 1960s, she had to make the underwhelming choice of becoming a teacher, a nurse, a social worker or a clerk. Because of her background she suppressed her dreams and aspirations and limited her scope to providing the basic things she did not have.
Many of our parents cannot imagine the world of choice and opportunity their children are exposed to. On the other hand, the younger generation needs to remind itself that these choices exist because of the sacrifices made by the older one. We must make sure that they have pride of place in our world.