Kumbatia San

If I could attempt anything knowing I wouldn’t fail,
I’d want to push my business to success overnight — not for vanity or some ticket into heaven, but so I could help communities in my country.

I was raised by a mother who always encouraged us to give back, and went to a high school that made charity work part of our lives. The last time I did community work was during COVID, volunteering at a soup kitchen — and even then, it didn’t feel like enough.

Sometimes I wonder if becoming a chef was a mistake — not because I don’t love what I do, but because the pay rarely matches the hours. I wish I could do more.

It’s evident that our governments worldwide aren’t holding up their end of the bargain as public servants. I’m disgusted by the corruption in South Africa — ANC and DA alike. Neither is innocent, yet both point fingers.

If government officials can steal money meant for hospitals to fund their luxury lifestyles while citizens die from a lack of basic care, how are we supposed to trust the system? Something as simple as a hospital bed could save lives, but greed has stolen that too.

And really — what do we even pay tax for?
What would happen if we all just stopped? It’s not like they’re holding up their end of the bargain.

When you can afford private healthcare and a gated community while barely scraping through the month, it’s easy to focus on yourself — yet even then, you still have more than the average person.

We as a society are not nearly angry enough. I wish for a revolution that would force governments to live the reality they’ve ignored — to use the same public hospitals, schools, and streets as the people they’ve failed.

I have zero interest in politics, but I do feel guilty for the privilege I’ve had. I don’t know hunger. I don’t know the weight of waiting in a hospital queue or walking kilometres for water. I never had to skip school because we couldn’t afford sanitary pads. I don’t know what it’s like to live through loadshedding — the power cuts everyone talks about — because our home has generators and solar. I don’t even know how to use a taxi — the only public transport I’ve ever taken is an aircraft, and even then, it’s business class… so does that even count?

If I could attempt anything knowing I wouldn’t fail, I’d start a revolution of accountability — or at least grow my business enough to give 10% of my earnings every month directly to communities in need. Not through charities or churches — I don’t trust them — but through real, direct investment in our people.

And I don’t want the handouts of European or Western governments, with their ridiculous loans that our leaders keep accepting, plunging us deeper into debt we’ll never recover from. The system is broken not only at the top but everywhere — from employers and large corporations that exploit workers and pay less than minimum wage, to companies hiring foreign labour to enforce modern-day slavery under the excuse that “someone else will do it for less.”

It’s all a circle of greed — government, business, and society feeding off the same suffering.

I don’t want charity.
I want change.