People used to have to work for a living. It used to be necessary for a man, before he could marry, to prove to his intended father-in-law that he could support a family. One explanation of the origin of lobola is that the mukwasha had to give his tezvara several badzas, to prove he could earn enough to buy the tools he would use to support a wife and, in due course, children. That made sense in a rational world, but unfortunately, our world has become less rational.
Now, a hardworking peasant farmer or many urban workers, however hard they work, have difficulty in earning enough to survive. If you are looking for someone who can afford a few badzas and the more sophisticated tools most trades need today, you won’t find him among the sweaty men with mud, engine oil or paint under their fingernails.
Look instead for the man who left his jacket draped over the back of a chair in some airconditioned office to show that he will be back in time to collect his nice fat salary, but meanwhile he attends to some unspecified urgent business elsewhere.
It’s not the work he does that earns the money. It’s the certificate on the wall behind his desk. This became quite obvious when trainee doctors, who had just passed all their exams and were being sent to work in hospitals to prove they could do what they had learned before being accepted by their profession, went on strike demanding houses and cars – before they even started real work. How many factory workers can ever afford to buy their house or a new car? They don’t expect those things to be issued when they start work. They might hope that if they work hard and sweat a lot for thirty years they might become owners of such luxuries, but of course they don’t have a degree.
Someone should tell our certificated, graduate class, that nor so long ago many doctors in Europe rode around on a bicycle to visit their patients and adjusted their fees to the patient’s ability to pay, so that nobody was refused just because they couldn’t pay. Like a good n’anga, the good western doctor did not expect to grow rich, and certainly not to grow rich quick, but the people he helped would see he had all he needed to work in reasonable comfort. Now we even have rich n’angas and are the always the best healers?
Now it looks as if a nursing diploma or a teacher’s certificate puts you into a special class without any need to prove you can do the job. A degree entitles you to claim less qualified assistants who will do all the heavy work for you. A PhD entitles you to leave your jacket over the back of your office chair all day while other people do all the work and you do something else. Should we be surprised if, when we have accepted all this, a man with five degrees gets the highest post in the land and expects to hold it for life – and possibly beyond?
We used to study in order to be able to do responsible, skilled jobs. Many skilled manual jobs required years of training as an apprentice. Neither university study nor apprenticeship gave you a claim to a generous reward for completing the course. The work you did, using the skills and knowledge you had obtained, if it was good enough and considered important enough to society, would earn you more than your less skilled brother or sister. If the people you serve are happy with that, no-one could object, but don’t ask us all to pay you more and bow and scrape to you just because you have some fancy certificate on your wall.
The world doesn’t owe you (or me) a living. We have to work for it.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis