Page 123 - A People Called Afrika

Restoring The Honor Code

managerial roles. How so? They fully own their land or lands
in the village, on which they are farming, and own the house
constructed on it. They rent a house in a low income area in
the city where they work and are able to send money to the vil-
lage to manage their property or save as they actually manage
their cost of living better than those who think they have more.

Many of their colleagues in management have mortgages of
USD 200,000 or more, car loans of USD 15,000 or more,
school fees loans (because their children deserve only the best)
of USD 5,000 or more. They spend about USD 1,000 on en-
tertainment and by the time they have serviced their loans and
paid their utility bills, they are left with such little money to live
on that a slight crisis could actually topple the entire house of
cards they have built. They are not prudent with their finances
in the way one would expect, but are actually borderline poor.
One wrong move in the office could send them packing and ev-
erything they have worked for will simply come tumbling down.

That’s life on the edge, not stability. It means that many of these
people are not actually even free to express themselves or be
genuine in their relationships in the workplace or even socially
since they want to keep the stream of cash flowing or, as they
like to say, you never know who your next employer will be.
As a result, façades are created to mask their true selves and
they end up living as slaves in a system they barely have time
to understand, let alone assess the true nature or condition of.

These are the citizens who the indebted governments then
come to tax as heavily as they can and – truth be told – as a
result, most societies in Afrika are so loaded with stress, debt
and falsehoods that they are literal powder kegs just waiting

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