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Weekend PostSATURDAY : JUNE 3, 2017 13OPINION
Communication, not ‘black tax’, is the real problem in marriage
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Help yourchildren tostand ontheir own
Reunion with race which defines true comradeship
C O N TA CT USSMS number: 32391
AS the global economy continues to spasm,more and more children are having to staywith their parents for longer after finishingeducation. In the US, more than half ofadults aged 18 to 24 live with their parents.
As this is Child Protection Week, we mightwant to ask: “How do parents know if theyare really helping their children, or couldthey be enabling their dependency and un-willingness to grow up?”
Dr Jeffrey Bernstein, an adult-child andfamily therapist, offers the following “re dflags” for parents to assess if they are en-abling their adult children.
1. Your adult child does not take on life’schallenges, but you do. You are shoulderingtheir debt, taking on a second job, or takingon additional responsibilities while your ad-ult child is endlessly non-productive.
2. Your adult child “b o rro w s ” money fromyou because he or she can’t maintain solidor consistent employment and then neverrepays the debt.
3. Being disrespected is the norm. Be-cause your adult children have “p ro b l e m s ”,that doesn’t free them from showing you re-spect. Oftenthey arewheedlinglypleasant to getsomething andthen turn like apuff adder andstrike out whennot gettingtheir way.
Bernstein ad-vises not to beadversarial asyou encourageyour child to become more independent.The goal is to be supportive and under-standing with a collaborative mind-set.
Be calm, firm, and non-controlling in youra p p ro a c h .
Here are some proactive ways to encour-age independence:
1. Agree on a time limit on how long chil-dren can remain at home.
2. Encourage working children to con-tribute part of their pay for room and board.If unemployed, have them help out aroundthe house with gardening, or other chores.
3. Don’t indiscriminately give money. Pro-viding spending money should be contin-gent on children’s efforts toward indepen-dence and not because you are trying tocompensate for not feeling good enoughabout your parenting.
4. Develop a response that you can offerin the event that you are caught off guardwith a sudden request for help. You don’thave to answer immediately. For example,when you get an urgent call saying, “I needm o n e y, ” respond by saying, “I’ll have tothink it over and get back to you tomorrow.”This will allow you time to consider.
5. Remember that you always have theright to say “I changed my mind” about aprevious promise.
6. Set limits on how much time you spendhelping your child resolve crises. Encour-age the child to problem-solve by asking,“What are your ideas?”
7. You are not in a popularity contest. Beprepared for your child to reject you. He orshe will most likely come around later. TheTough Love movement says, “I love youenough to let you hate me for a while”.
Quite appropriately Child ProtectionWeek affirms that children need protection.But so do families and parents.
ý Woods is a therapist and conflict mediator
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I USED to love theComrades. Not theones lately deployedto the higher eche-lons of government.The race, I mean.The greatest ultra-distance marathonon the planet.
Growing up inPietermaritzburg, itwas an annual fix-ture in our lives. Ifyou didn’t run it, you helped out at awater point, or popped yourdeckchair on the side of the road,stoked up the skottel and waited forthe tired masses to shuffle past youfor hours and hours.
The traditions were keenly antic-ipated: Chariots of Fire tr umpetingout on a crisp winter morning againstthe backdrop of the magnificent City
Hall; the starter’sgun setting them off;the winner acceptingthe mayor’s scroll atthe finish line; thetimekeeper, pistolraised, ready to sig-nal the end of therace, his (I only re-member men) backto the stragglers rac-ing to beat the clock.
All drawn out overa day filled with drama. Exhausting,but exhilarating.
The most memorable moments,though, were those of a comradelysort. Watching Bruce Fordyce notchup another win, taming the monsterthat is Polly Shortts in the process,was always a thrill.
But the real lump-in-the-throat ac-tion came at the end of the race,
when broken bodies brought to apainful halt were scooped up by fel-low comrades, no less drained bytheir own efforts, and draggedacross the line to secure that all-im-portant medal finish.
It happened every year without failand will, no doubt, happen again to-morrow when the field sets off for the92nd edition of the run. For the firsttime in a long while, I’ll be there, hop-ing to reacquaint myself with themagic I felt as a child.
The years in between have takenme far and wide and so my interest inthe marathon has waned. Happily, I’llbe posted to a watering station inCamperdown. Back in my early teensit was here I camped out overnight asa volunteer with football chums,waiting for the 4am trucks to drop offthe water and Coke and food thatwould be devoured by hungry and
thirsty souls later in the day.It should be a sweet reunion, if I
can safely marshal myself and my bi-cycle up and over the hilly routefrom Durban, joining, as I am, a localtriathlon club on a pre-dawn ride.
It’s certainly an unconventionalway to reconnect with the famousold race and those comrades of yore.
Following the week we’ve had,blitzed by marathon revelationsfrom the Gupta e-mail leaks, I’m notsure the same can be said for ourcomrades in government.
Once brothers- and sisters-in-arms, times have changed forthem too. It’s no longer clear whostands for what, and which is friendor foe.
Who knows if the person to yourleft or right, who may have carriedyou over a line in the past, kept yougoing when your spirit was spent, is
still the same comrade who heldyour life in his or her hands.
There is another great race on, butit is not a noble pursuit. It cares notfor the multitudes but for a privi-leged few, whose goal is not glory butill-gotten gain.
In this race the tactics are under-handed, the participants doped upby the colour of money. Never mindthe consequences. Who cares any-way about titles and reputations?
Pride has been left in the lockerroom in this race to the bottom. Anddon’t bank on any comrades-in-wait-ing once you get there. It’s not thatkind of race.
Comrade, noun: your friends, es-pecially friends that you share a dif-ficult or dangerous situation with.
That’s the dictionary definition I’mgoing with tomorrow. There is an-other, but its meaning is hollow.
T h at ’s the SpiritPETER WOODS
Established 1950PostWe e ke n dWe e ke n d
Mbalula madethe right move
WIGGETT’S WORLD
THE removal of Kgo-motso Phahlane asacting police chief isa welcome move
which ought to be the be-ginning of the much-neededintervention in the leader-ship of our police service.
On Thursday, Police Min-ister Fikile Mbalula an-nounced that Phahlane hadbeen asked to step down asacting police commissionerand further provide reasonswhy he should not be sus-pended from the service.
This follows a litany of al-legations against him, inclu-ding money laundering‚ de-feating the ends of justiceand racketeering.
All these form part of aninvestigation by the policewatchdog body, the Inde-pendent Police Investiga-tive Directorate (Ipid).
This investigation hasbeen the subject of an uglyand potentially dangeroustit-for-tat war betweenPhahlane and Ipid chiefRobert Mc Bride – whichhas played out publicly andin parliament last month.
The allegations againstPhahlane are yet to be test-ed in court. Therefore, be-
fore the law he is innocentuntil proven otherwise.
However, even the percep-tion of guilt in the public eyerendered Phahlane undesir-able and potentially unfit tobe South Africa’s numberone crimebuster.
While Mbalula’s decisionis commendable, we believemuch more needs to bedone to untangle the intri-cate web of deceit and to up-root rogue elements withinlaw enforcement.
Much of the deeply seatedrot is of course a result of thecompeting political inter-ests in the ANC and thecountr y.
This alone makes the jobat hand far more complex.
Yet it is also precisely whyit must be done.
Our constitution guaran-tees us the right to safety.
This is arguably the mostcrucial mandate of any gov-e rn m e n t .
We can no longer afford apolice service characterisedby corruption and chaos atthe top, especially not whenordinary South Africans con-tinue to suffer daily at thehands of criminals who haveno regard for human life.
Looking Back
E d i to r ’s ViewsBRETT HORNER
WE were booked to speak at a wed-ding two weeks ago.
The bride called Phindi a day be-fore the wedding to add the finalpiece of information to what theywould want us to talk about.
She had accidentally found outthat he had been sending money tohis parents and had never divulgedthat to her.
He was paying “black tax”. Hewasn’t planning on telling her any-way. In his world, this is what allworking young men do. They grad-uate, work and take care of parents,siblings and generally whoever hasa stake in their upbringing.
So he didn’t see it as a big dealand was adamant he would not stopdoing so after the wedding.
They ended up with a huge dis-agreement over the issue, with him
adamant that thiswas not up for dis-cussion. And sheknew this was goingto be one of the highhurdles to jump intheir marriage.
She believes thata married man hashis wife and kids ashis primary respon-s i b i l i t y.
She is five monthspregnant, they were moving to anew house together after the wed-ding and she was already thinkingof the coming responsibilities.
In our book Love Isn’t For Cowardswe make the point in one of thechapters that conflict about fi-nances in marriage is rarely onlyabout finances. It's usually about
power, secrets,weaknesses, addic-tion, control and allsorts of other is-sues.
And, in our sixyears of marriagecounselling, we areyet to come across agenuine conflictabout money that isin fact about money.This case is no dif-
f e re n t .So-called “black tax” is more
about class struggles than race. Theneed to look after family is notunique to black people.
South Africa is an anomaly amongdeveloping countries. Our countryis both a developed country withgood infrastructure and a country
with huge social and economicproblems. Hence the need for finan-cial support for our extended fam-ilies is generally justifiable.
Also consider our African culture.In Western culture you are wellwithin your cultural norms to putyour immediate family as your mainfocus for financial care.
Everyone else generally doesn’texist. But in African culture, bothyour parents and siblings, just likeyour spouse and children, are in therealm of immediate family.
Is it right or wrong?Well, the answer becomes very
subjective. And is largely based onthe values you espouse.
However, as we’ve already said,the vast majority of what appears tobe financial conflicts, generallya re n ’t about the finances at all.
You may find that it’s not that heplans to disregard his immediatefamily, but that he may be frustrat-ed with the financial situation of hisparents. And as a “man”, he is ex-pected not to turn a blind eye.
However, she still feels power-less, and out of the loop.
Imagine for a moment that this isa business environment – peopleworking hard on a common goal.And then one of them is secretlysending money to someone.Wo u l d n ’t that be called stealing?
Money in this case is not theproblem. In fact, even his secrecy ornot divulging that he is sendingmoney to his parents, is not themain issue. These are just symp-toms. The problem is lack of com-munication. That he closes herdown every time she tries to bring
this issue up is a major frustration.And by insisting to want to talkabout it, she is on the right track.
If you happen to identify withthese newly weds’ story – either di-rectly or through someone youknow – you can take comfort that atleast he is not spending the moneyin brothels and pubs.
But if there is a problem with hisparents and siblings, whether med-ical or financial, as his spouse, youneed to know about it. This is sothat you, as a couple, can decide onwhat to do.
It could be a similar problem tothat of the above couple or yourpartner could be stashing moneyaway for reasons you’d rather notthink about. Whatever it is, theproblem is that you found out, andlike the bride in this story, you may
not have found out from him.We suggest you insist on sitting
down and talking.Not the angry you, but the hurt
and betrayed you. He is stealingfrom your family funds, after all. Ifhe doesn’t want to talk to you, heneeds to clarify if he still wants to bewith you.
If he does, then his way of doingthings needs to stop now and is nev-er to be repeated again. If he doesnot want to be with you, well, mon-ey transfers is a small price to payfor that knowledge.
If he responds with the phrasethat it's “his” money, you should ei-ther seek help from a couples ther-apist or decide on what you want todo when you’re not counted as partof the decision-making.
Survival against the oddsSaturday Insight
RAYMOND SUTTNER
IN Weekend Post of June 22007 the headline “Educationtakes brunt of national strikeaction” took centre stage. Thestory read: Thousands ofteachers, nurses and otherpublic servants stayed awayfrom work yesterday at thestart of a national strike aimedat forcing government’s handin salary negotiations.
The strike saw a 56%absentee rate across theEastern Cape, withabsenteeism highest in theeducation sector, which spikedat 80% in schools.
Hundreds of out-patientsalso had to be turned away atstate hospitals.
In Nelson Mandela Bay,
hundreds of agitatedprotesters bulldozed throughbarricades at City Hall aftermarching from Nangoza JebeHall (Centenary Hall) in NewBrighton.
Mo&PhindiRELATIONSHIP STRATEGISTS
IT WAS what everypolitical activistdreaded, and it hap-pened to me atabout 10pm on June17 1975. The police
had blocked the driveway ofmy home – and momentarilyI did not realise who theyw e re .
I took out a cosh to pro-tect myself, but after the po-lice surrounded me andidentified themselves, Ithrew it in the back of thec a r.
There were about 30 ofthem, and they immediatelyset to work searchingthrough my private belong-ings.
For some hours, I hadbeen posting illegal politicalpamphlets in Durban andPietermaritzburg. I was thor-oughly exhausted.
The preceding monthshad been very stressful. Ihad been preparing a specialedition of 10 000 copies ofthe underground pamphletVukani!/Awake!, including atranslation of the FreedomCharter into Zulu.
Each copy of the newspa-per had to be painstakinglyproduced then inserted intoan envelope. And each ofthese had to be stamped andsecretly posted.
My routine had been to
give my lectures at Natal Uni-versity, Durban, (as it wasthen called) and then drivehome to sit at the typewriter,operate my duplicating ma-chine or prepare envelopesand put them in suitcases. Iwould get to sleep very lateand repeat the same routinethe next day.
Now, I was in police hands.This intrusion into my priva-cy was to become character-istic of my life as a politicalprisoner for the long yearsto follow. From the moment Iwas arrested, there wasnothing about me that thestate did not want to knowor have access to.
The police clearlysavoured their victory. Theyhad spent many nightstracking down the irritantwho had been issuing illegalpamphlets. Now they hadme.
South Africa had lawsagainst assault, but they pro-vided no protection forsomeone in my situation. Iknew I could be held for longperiods without scrutiny,without access to lawyers orother people from “outside”.
The events of that nightmarked a crucial turningpoint. From that moment on,I passed from being an inde-pendent person and fell un-der direct control of theSouth African apartheidstate. In the years that fol-lowed, which saw me in andout of jail and detention, I
would not be free ofpolice intrusions.
After theysearched my housefor some hours, thepolice took me to se-curity police head-quar ters.
Long before myown arrest, I hadread and heardabout various peo-ple being torturedby South African po-lice, particularly aft-er the banning of theANC in 1960.
When I became in-volved in illegal ac-tivities, I knew Ifaced the prospectof being assaulted,or even killed, in de-tention. In preparingfor my life as an un-derground activist, Ihad met severalpeople who hadbeen brutally tor-t u re d .
An array of legis-lation had been developedby the apartheid regime thatshielded the police frompublic scrutiny, and it be-came routine practice to tryto extract information andconfessions through variousforms of assault. Generally,courts accepted these con-fessions and refused to givecredence to allegations oftor ture.
In the period before myown deployment, I tried to
prepare myself as much aspossible for coping with soli-tary confinement and phys-ical torture. All of this was ofsome assistance when Ifound myself in the hands ofthe South African securitypolice.
What concerned me backthen, apart from getting by,was avoiding the betrayal ofmy comrades and the liber-ation movement. To be suc-cessful, I had to have somecapacity to determine
events – even in asituation that was sosingularly weightedagainst me. Al-though I was a lonecaptive, havingsome idea of what toexpect – and know-ing something of myfate – gave me afighting chance.
On the otherhand, there wasnothing in my ownlife experience toprepare me for theordeal of falling intothe hands of a groupof sadists.
In 1975 I was ayoung, very idealis-tic revolutionary,and I was preparedto die for my beliefs.
Writing this now,42 years after my ar-rest, I don’t seem assingle-minded as Iwas back then. I nowtend to see myself ashaving been rather
naive. All the same, it re-mains true that single-mind-edness was the weapon thatgot me through.
ý Raymond Suttner spent11 years in prison or house ar-rest. This is an edited extractfrom Inside Apartheid’sPrison, first published in 2001and re-published with a newintroduction on “life outsidethe ANC” by Jacana Mediathis month.
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