Junk Status, Earthquakes, Floods and fake news.
If you're not living in South Africa, we would not blame you for thinking that the preceding sentence is in fact, a write up for a blockbuster movie.
Sadly, there is no muscled-up, hero with seriously on-fleek shades to rescue us all from the fire and brimstone that is the South African landscape (quite literally if you're from the Cape too!).
We are the heroes. We are the characters in this movie plot and it's up to us, to do the very best damn job we can of surviving.
South Africans have been through so much already. Change is a part of our daily language. We ebb, we flow, we make the best of whatever is required from us at any point in time. We grow, we learn and we do better.
We've knocked apartheid on its ass. We've toy-toyed and we've even burned a few political bridges. All the while enjoying heated debates on public platforms and calling each other names. We've listened intently to conspiracy theories about the Gupta's and some random Public Relations agency in the UK. We've swallowed the bitter pill of fluctuating currency and been heartbroken by the loss of leaders like Uncle Kathy.
It's a lot to stomach and maybe we're all suffering from a bit of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
But, have you met us? We don't just lie down without a fight.
Even though we resemble the cast of a dysfunctional sitcom family, your average South African is just doing the best they can to get by. We may hold strong opinions about certain aspects of what goes on in our country but at the end of the day, when we go home to our loved ones, we're all just people who want the best for our country and for ourselves. We're all worried about our children and our aged and how the economic situation is going to affect them. We're all concerned for the safety of our woman and girls. We're all stressed out about keeping our jobs and earning enough to get by.
And so, we do what South Africans do best. We fight, we yell, we talk, we march, we protest and we worry and in and amongst all that chaos – somewhere, someone cracks a well-placed joke and we are all in stitches. And we hold our loved-one's a little longer when we hug them goodbye and tell them to "travel safe" and we breathe out...
Tomorrow is another day with another problem. But for today, we are South Africans. We are survivors. We make plans and we hustle.
No matter what gets thrown our way we just keep on keeping on. Maybe we should be tested by some laboratory for alien DNA because legit – I think South Africans are some of the most resilient people I've ever met.
We still go to work, we still earn money, we still hang out with friends.
We still live.
Junk status or not, we will survive this too. Whatever may come – we've done it before and we'll do it again.
It's up to us to decide whether we are going to be heroes or antagonists but by default, I think all South Africans are heroes purely based on what we've gone through and how we continue to live despite everything we must deal with daily.
Live strong, South Africa. We've got this.