Elon Musk and I Were Suckers for the Same Government Narrative

Elon Musk is a similar age to me, so we grew up under the same government, he lived about 70 km’s north of me. Of course I didn’t know him, now everyone knows of him, I do too. I still don’t know him as a person, I am way down the pecking order from him. I recently read an article about him, and I am hoping this will shed a little more light on how government narratives can be powerful, and mind-altering, when they control the media, and censor all discourse.

Let’s start with my Grandad.

“They’ll steal the milk out of your coffee, I tell you! I wouldn’t trust them further than I could throw them.” My Grandad was not a fan of anything to do with the ethic black majority of South Africa.

Growing up, our government and the media alliance indoctrinated us by creating fear and division amongst the people. Black vs white was the strategy, and they were successful for many years.

Throughout my primary school and high school years, it was ‘us’ and ‘them.’ We were superior and more advanced and they were ‘500 years behind us’.

They censored everything, so the ‘truth’ was what the government and the media projected as ‘truth’. The few outside media reports that highlighted the plight of the black people, that made it to us, from someone’s dad who had travelled overseas, was all just ‘propaganda.’

Sanctions came, but the government did deals with other countries also not liked by the powers in the west, and with the natural resources of our country and the technology available from these partners, South Africa could survive.

They conscripted us into the military, where young men who think little of consequence were further indoctrinated about ‘die swart gevaar.’ I will use the Dictionary of South African English definition. “A perceived threat posed by black people to whites; black people collectively; black danger.”

They implanted the ‘black danger or swart gevaar’ into our minds and military training, to accept their lies.

The government conscripted us for military service and we were involved in a war with Russian backed Cubans and local Angolan people in Angola and Namibia in a bush war, so this all fed into the narrative, that the black danger is real, and they are all communists.

After two years of military service having lost friends and seen friends maimed for the rest of their lives, young, healthy men, I was under no illusions that black people were evil.

A grandfather who was a Nazi sympathiser at the time (he changed later in life) was adding fuel to the inferno of hate within me.

My lived experience, however was conflicting with the narrative they had fed me, my whole life. I found black people, were just like white people. They wanted to raise their children with a good education and find a good job, or start a business, and have a choice of recreational activities. They also wanted to love and provide for their families.

Sure, they had different cultural beliefs and norms, but these were not insurmountable, and I actually enjoyed learning their language and about their customs.

Something that puzzled me was one day while walking down the street with my grandfather, I found out that he was fluent in Xhosa which was Nelson Mandela’s mother tongue.

We saw an elderly black gentleman on the other side of the road as we were out walking that day, and my grandfather asked him something in Xhosa, there was some back and forth between the two and the black man felt around in his pockets and pulled out some scrunched up notes of currency and coins and separated them and offered some to my grandfather.

They conversed a little longer and then the black man put all of his pocket contents back into his pocket.

I asked my grandfather about the interaction.

“What did he say? Grandad?”

“I told him I was hungry and hadn’t eaten and he offered me half of all that he had to live on.”

I could see that this interaction puzzled my grandad. How could such an ‘evil type’ of person have so much goodness in him?

“Grandad, why do you know their language and speak to them, yet you tell me they are bad people?”

“Know your enemy, that’s why I know how to speak their language, I want to know what they are saying.”

‘But would your enemy offer you half of everything he owned in the world?’ That is what I was thinking.

I found out years later why my grandad knew their language. My grandad had grown up with some black children on the farm, that his step dad owned. One day while playing soccer with the black kids, they broke a window, and all the farm workers blamed my grandad, because him getting a hiding was far less than what would happen to them. He was young and so never forgot that incident. Our attitudes are shaped by our experiences as they say, and being so young he was impressionable.

Suddenly it made sense to me, the animosity, and the understanding of the black culture and language, coupled with years of government and media brainwashing, had made him a Nazi sympathiser.

My experiences with black people were totally the opposite of those of my grandad. I found them to be full of joy and personality, with a brilliant sense of humour.

I played soccer, a sport loved by black people in South Africa, and I got to know more black people. The day that the narrative I had been lead to believe crumbled completely was when we entered a black township to do market research on the ‘black consumer’ in my first job after university.

This, to me was like a death sentence, because of the background of propaganda, that permeated everything I had learn’t growing up.

I had been into a black township, 5 years previously, with military gear and several fully loaded magazines and an assault rifle. Now I would enter this ‘dangerous pit of vipers’ without military garb.

I was fine interacting with black people in the white neighbourhoods, but actually entering their townships and neighbourhoods was a different prospect all together.

I had to go there for work, and so I did. The rhythm of life pleasantly surprised me, the soul and vibe of the place was brimming with optimism, as an upwardly mobile class of people were busy shaking of the shackles of apartheid.

It was infectious, there was an intangible joy and freedom, movement and rhythmic music beats and bodies swaying in the afternoon light, on a warm Friday afternoon.

The music of the townships belting out the Afro pop beats of ‘Sipho Hotstix Mabuse,’ and jiving people with large smiles greeted us wherever we went.

We ate and drank and danced at various tin shanty taverns and eateries, and tucked into African cuisine, including meats and pap and ‘spicy chakalaka.’

It was in that late afternoon and early evening experience that it hit me like a freight train. The narrative, the linguistic programming, the brainwashing and the media and government lies. The censorship and deception that divided us, suddenly the veil had dropped, and I could see clearly how they had manipulated us.

I remember the day that freedom arrived with the release of Nelson Mandela, and the great unifier and leader that he was. He united us, as a country through his actions and a simple descriptive statement, we became ‘the rainbow nation.’

The narrative of the world I grew up in and the world I experienced were completely different. I have been forever skeptical of governments and the media, knowing deep down that what they portray and what is real are often not the same.

Remain vigilant people, remain skeptical, question everything and keep learning, gain insight and gain wisdom. Thank you for reading, let me know your thoughts?

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