Book review

Tsotsi
a novel by Athol Fugard.

I’ve read the book “Tsotsi” by the author Athol Fugard. This book is about a young, black gang leader called Tsotsi. Tsotsi was considered a style for the thugs that horrified the city of Johannesburg at the beginning of the 1940. He got his name because he didn’t know anything about him, not his name, age, whom his parents were, nothing, so he and his friends just called him Tsotsi because of his style.The book follows primarily Tsotsi through his life where he kills and robs people to make his life easier, this is the only thing he can do, and the only thing he knows about. One day he follows a woman with a shoebox in her hands. He scares her, revealing himself out of the shadows and she troughs the shoebox at him. He is expecting that it is money in the box but when he opens it he sees that it’s a small new-born baby inside it and then his life gets a turning point and he is starting to remember old stuff about him.

The thing that caught my attention about this book is a character named Morris Tshabalala.
He got injured in a mineshaft-collapse and was now a crippled man that dragged himself his way through town using his arms like oars. Morris called himself “half a man” because he couldn’t use his legs and he troubled himself with his slowness, saying that even the slowest person is faster than him. Morris got remorseful about his life and you can feel it in the text that he doesn’t want to live, he just goes with the flow as the days and nights passes. He is not scared at all he thinks and he is struggling to get a job because the worst thing he knows is when other people throwing money at him out of pity. The thing that captured me is that this man struggles day in and day out to get a job so he can support himself and not be dependent on anyone. He’s a strong feature in the book and you can feel his pain throughout the text. He’s got a bit of a problem mentally, coursing and talking to himself but at least he tries everything to make his life better than what it is and on the other side he doesn’t care if he dies. Throughout the text involving him, a man is following his pattern. This man is Tsotsi. Morris is in a way dragging himself away from this man that he doesn’t recognise until he comes to a restaurant where he feels save. He always visits this restaurant night time before sleep so he can buy his supper. After his meal Morris buys a coffee and looks at his reflection in the drink and a thought says to him. “You were frightened”, Morris nods his head in agreement.“ You thought you had no fear. But tonight it was there, like a worm in your bowels. A small fear of death.” Page.93

This character captured me, even though he isn’t a main character of the book (at least not in the first 100 pages).  The strength he is showing, with his hands bleeding and soaring and he still struggles on. No one helps him with nothing, he doesn’t have anyone and still he goes on. Struggling with his mind, to take his own life or to live on and try everything he can. Until this evening when his life was near to be taken by Tsotsi, this was when he discovered what he wanted to do and that was to keep struggling on, dragging himself through the streets, to keep on living.

Story of stuff

This video "Story of stuff" shows us how the world’s assets slowly are running out and this is just to contribute to some of ours sick lifestyles. It’s known for a long time now that we humans are living beyond the world’s assets and this clip surely shows that we must do something before killing the world and when we do that, there’s no hope left for us.

It’s sad that they cut down so much forest and other necessities for humans living in that part of the world and killing their opportunities for further living in those places. That is all an effect to make our lives in Europe and North-America “easier” to live, it’s like we can’t live without our Iphones, newest computers, 3D TV’s and all the other extra ordinary technical stuff. In a sadly kind of way we take their life’s just to make ours easier, but we are not meaning for it to be so but our governments has put this kind of living so hard in our heads that we don’t know how to get rid of it.

For an example in Sweden when the crisis hit us 2008, the thing that caught my attention was that the government told us to shop to make the crisis reduce, not to hold our money for better times, but to shop to get more money into the market. Just an example of what Bush did 9/11 to what she refers to in her video.

The toxic waste they contribute to make all products that we buy is a thing that the governments all over the world can change I think, because there’s always substitutions for all kinds of stuff so it should be a substitution for the toxic to. They can’t expect going on and adding toxic to the products without someone interacting with them about that. They’re contributing to our sickness and something must be done about that.

The consumer’s isn’t in my opinion guilty for this problem, they act as they are learned and it’s essential to make us, the consumer’s, understand what our buying habit does to people at these unfortunate places and to our world.
We should think that maybe our new cellphone or computer contributed that someone lost their food source because their lake now is so polluted that all fish has died.

They’re pumping us with stuff that we later on “need” so much. Our old stuff doesn’t keep the measures anymore, it’s old, it’s ugly etc. But for whom is it old, and for whom is it ugly? The consumer who bought it maybe thinks that this is the most beautiful thing he/she bought, but the company’s keep pumping them with adds so they later on think opposite of what they thought when he/she bought it. That’s just coldhearted propaganda for us to consume more.

We should take care of our fellow human beings and the animals, because we all are so dependent on each other’s and if we continue with this major consumption we will not provide the opportunity for future generations, our grandchildren, to life a healthy life and good life.

They will maybe learn the things that we can’t learn today about our problems, but then maybe it will be too late.

Snooping bosses - Reflection

I think the article Snooping bosses was very interesting and at the same time scary.
I have always known that there is some type of surveillance systems at jobs and at your own homes but not that they've pushed it this far the road.

I think that the CEOs have a god opinion in closing web-sites and such stuffs that don't have to do with your own work but the matter of them keeping track of what you write about them is just intolerable.
Everyone can't always get along with their bosses and that's a fact, we are all human beings and we all have our own opinions about people we met and know about.

The thing with the CEOs installing a GPS system so they can found out where you are when you phoned in sick is both good and bad. It's good for them to see that you're an employee that they can trust on, but what if your CEO is a little bit of a stalker and looks up where you are all the time? I shouldn't approve of that.
The better solutions would be that the GPS system only works for that person who is sick, when the person in fact has called in and said that he's sick. Then I could approve of a system like that.

The adult-theme websites should of course be banned, I still can't get it that employees spend their time at work watching porn, that is just disgusting and if I was a CEO I would punish them with a wage reduction.

The best thing that the CEOs can do is to ban all sites that are not "work-sites". But the negative issue is that the employees have always had the privilege to visit almost all sites and a banning procedure can be hard on the employees and they will certainly be negative against that kind of procedure.
But I understand the CEOs because their job is to make their employees work hard and to make them be more effective.

The thing that I think is the most beautiful with these different systems is that the police authorities can keep track on different terrorist all across the world and get hold of them before something really bad happens.

But my opinion about the different CEO systems is that they have right in some issues that I mentioned above but everybody wants their own privacy and people don’t like being tracked on, I think.

The feeling that you can get is that you feel trapped, everything you do is looked upon and you don't feel free for a slight moment of your life.
I think that people all over the world have fought for their freedom, some countries for several hundreds of years ago and some countries fight for it right now. And these type of procedures that people uses makes you lose that freedom that you really need and want. 


Tomislav Kovacevic