SLICE : Joining the 5am club

by | Apr 30, 2019 | Opinion

With winter slowly but surely creeping up on us in Johannesburg, I find myself rather reluctant to get out of bed and start my day. This has often led to my morning routine being crammed into just fifteen minutes of hastily getting dressed and running out the front door five minutes late. As a result, I would arrive at my morning commitments feeling grimy and unprepared.

This led me to question whether or not my slack morning attitude was foreshadowing the rest of my day.  The author Johnnie Dent Junior once said, “Early is a priceless timepiece owned by the successful.” This notion has been echoed by various other successful people, which is why I have decided to join the 5am club this winter. I have been a member of this very prestigious club for three weeks now and so far, I am loving it. In fact, while I am writing this, I am watching the sun rise and nibbling on a piece of chocolate.

What a great way to start the day!

When I first adjusted my sleep routine, I really struggled to fall asleep at night. The truth is that, in order to get up two hours earlier, I had to get used to going to bed much earlier than before. On a brighter note, it took just three days of perseverance (and a lack of sleep) before I was able to drift into a peaceful slumber as soon as my head hit the pillow at 8:30pm.

I have been sleeping like a baby every night since and usually wake up feeling energised and motivated in the morning.

I did a lot of research before undertaking this challenge and one of the questions that came up was why I should wake up two hours earlier than necessary. The truthful answer is that the first few hours of each day usually sets the tone for the rest of the day. Each individual has a choice between waking up just in time to get ready and leave, or take two hours each morning to choose how they wish to start the day. When opting for the first alternative, one is essentially giving external factors, such as traffic and bad hair days, the power to determine the tone of one’s entire day.  In my opinion, waking up earlier is the way to go!

My current morning routine consists of me waking up at 4:45am and then hitting the snooze button on my alarm until those last fifteen precious minutes are up. Once I’m awake I like to have a sip of water and catch up on any admin. This way I get to enjoy the warmth of my bed for just a little longer, while also being able to organise my day without the distraction of people immediately replying to my emails and messages. Once I have completed these tasks, I usually take a brisk 3km walk on the treadmill at home before heading to a yoga class or completing my gym workout for the day. This leaves me feeling accomplished before the day has even started. Once my exercise routine has been completed, I take some time to get dressed and prepare myself for whatever the day has in store for me.

Since adopting this morning routine, my life has felt more manageable and organised. I no longer feel like I am constantly being bombarded with tasks and demands because each morning I am able to deal with these under peaceful circumstances and with a fresh mind. This may not be the solution for everybody, but if you are up to the challenge, I would highly recommend at least giving it a try. Joining the 5am club has changed my life and I do not intend on terminating my membership anytime soon.

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SLICE: The business of monetising black outrage

by | Apr 24, 2019 | Opinion

Advertising has come a long way since jingles about cereal and housewives wrestling with Verimark vacuum cleaners. The standard, cookie-cutter formula of selling brands, perception or products with the ubiquity of white picket fences and nuclear families with pearly-toothed smiles gushing over washing powder just doesn’t quite cut it.

With limited airtime and competition over space, advertising doesn’t manipulate the unattainable anymore, it weaponises black rage to cause a stir.

Take the now infamous 2017 Dove advert: the Unilever giant distributed an advert of a black woman seemingly transformed as her cleaner, whiter self after using a Dove body-wash.

The racist undertones of the advert became a source of outrage and debate on social media. The recycled PR apology from the brand made its rounds and Dove still remains as prevalent as ever with the backlash barely making a dent in sales.

Another beauty brand, Nivea, was found guilty of the same pattern of symbolising whiteness as the aspiration through their Natural Fairness lotion advert in 2017.

In 2018, H&M made the only black child in their catalogue wear a ‘coolest monkey in the jungle’ sweater, alluding to the racist tropes of othering black people as wild animals.

Gucci’s recent 2019 advert featuring a white woman wearing a Jim Crow-type black jumper with exaggerated red lips seen in the blackface minstrel performances of the 1950s also utilised black outrage to stay relevant.

Each of these brands have released content perpetuating colourism, racism and a strong undercurrent of anti-blackness in a social climate that makes it difficult to believe the intention was anything but deliberate.

Brands feed on the black response to racist representations and with each validly outraged Tweet comes an increase in their chances of staying in the 24-hour news cycle without bearing the brunt of any real lasting ramifications.

Technology enables us to have conversations across borders instead of a one-dimensional, one-stream flow of information with zero participation at the end. Decades ago, adverts were simply funnelled down your throat with little to no input, critique or comment on how they were received other than if the product sold or not.

Decades ago, people of colour were subjected to racist misrepresentation in the media, depicted as voiceless, identity-less tropes without much say in how we wanted to see ourselves.

Now, we have platforms to shut down the careless narratives people who don’t look like us construct but that we need to realise that the freedom of expression has become a weapon in the arsenal of conglomerates.

Retweets, shares and likes are the currency of the digitised world. If your ideas aren’t going viral, they’re lost in a virtual sea of over-saturated content. Advertisers know this better than most.

The pattern in modern age advertising is to bet on riding the clout of trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons.

As the old adage goes, “bad publicity is still publicity” and advertising seems to manipulate valid outrage at being marginalised as a way to stay in the limelight.

The problem with exploiting black rage for profit is that, even after centuries of colonialism and oppression, our rage isn’t an infinite resource. Monetising black rage is essentially free advertising but what it costs to the psyche of black people is a lot more.

There are tangible consequences to this: black rage has been a tool for our survival in a world that expects silence or submission from the historically and perpetually oppressed. Exhausting black rage by having to constantly fight for your humanity every time H&M wants their name in headlines is causing distraction and fatigue from what we should be really focused on.

Black rage is critically important, it is valid and it is the very thing that ensured the liberation of this country and the emancipated black identity from the constraints and skewed narratives of white hegemony.

The burden shouldn’t be on the marginalised to have to expend our rage to make neoliberal corporations recognise our humanity apart from what we spend or don’t spend. Black people don’t have to expend emotional labour doing free sensitivity training for brands that should know better.

Maybe originality is dead (and there is absolutely nothing about original about racism), but it’s time for a new stage of advertising where humanity is worth a bit more than a click-through rate. 

FEATURED IMAGE: Busang Senne, student journalist at Wits Vuvuzela. Photo: File. 

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SLICE: Leaving with lessons learned

by | Mar 16, 2019 | Opinion

I HAVE always been one to get into trouble before I learned a lesson. Nothing ever quite stuck if it wasn’t my own lived experience. In learning to grow up, however, I have realised that things must be done differently.

I flunked my first year of varsity because I didn’t like what I was doing. This pushed me to do better the following year and to make sure I put into my studies all the work and effort I hadn’t done the year before. It was difficult having to prove to myself that I wouldn’t fall into my own traps in the same space, and this year has been somewhat similar to my second try at first-year varsity.

I am lucky to still be able, as a Wits Vuvuzela student-turned-intern, to practice the skills I learned in the same newsroom. My training wheels are falling off and being handed to the baby journalists who are still to find their feet in a newsroom. Having had a rocky ride of a year in 2018, I have used my mistakes to not only learn and ensure I don’t fall into bad old ways, but to reassure aspiring journalists that, somehow, you make it out alive.

I am not suggesting in any way that I have it all figured out, but after treading water at the deep end for what felt like the longest year, I can definitely say I have learned a few lessons that will make my transition to the working world a little easier.

University can be a great space to learn about yourself through fun and failure, but remember that you are there preparing for life in the working world. So let every lesson you learn be used not only to do better yourself, but to teach youself professionalism and a sound work ethic.

I found it difficult to adjust to the realness of the Wits Vuvuzela newsroom last year. I went in expecting to learn through reading, but I was in for a surprise. I did not take well to my expectations not being met, and this reflected in my work ethic and lack of motivation, even when I had plenty of potential.

Knowing better has pushed me to do better, but I couldn’t have done that without my team. Being a student is based on independence, as far as your own progress goes. While employment results in one being financially independent for the most part, being on the job, on the other hand, requires you to be dependent on your colleagues and to answer to someone, as you become their responsibility.

I am not much of a talker: This is ironic, seeing that 99.9% of journalism requires you to engage people – but I have learned that team work makes the dream work, and an important part of that is communication. I went through my undergraduate degree with minimal to no group work. One of my greatest lessons has been learning that a work space cannot function without team work.

Graduating to the world of work does not mean that learning has come to an end. My training wheels have come in handy here. Watching the new class of student journalists learn the principles and ethics of journalism has made me interested in growing my own knowledge of the industry and engaging it from a different angle – more so, now that I pay tax (don’t grow up, it’s a trap).
Continuing to learn for yourself is an important part of growth.

And don’t ignore the importance of the big fish, time! Time is always to be valued, whether it is yours or that of other people.Time and communication are basically co-dependent. They are teammates; they make the dream work. I urge you to master these things before the heat on you is turned up. Getting into trouble to learn a lesson is not cute folks, and there is no time for that in the working world: errors can be costly.

I may not be ready to dive into the big world of work but I have stayed afloat in the deep ends of the swimming pools that I have been thrown into; so I think it’s safe to say that it might be time for me to swim in oceans (lifeguards, stand by).

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