An Employment Narrative

Looking for work is frustrating. The constant quest of long-term underemployment and unemployment is soul-crushing. All too often, we feel compelled to bear this burden in solitude. I say, no longer. Many have followed the same rotten path that I now tread, and it should not be a shameful one. The time has come for me to come forward with my stories.

Let us begin with a brief summary.

• I left a good government job in the fall of 2011 to pursue a dream: exploring another country with my wife while she completed a fellowship. In the dream, our sojourn to South Africa would be life-affirming and empowering. I would build unique, emerging-market experience while we lived the good ex-pat life. Reality was far less simple.

• In August 2012, I wrote a piece about my professional struggles in South Africa for The Billfold, entitled "Things I've Learned While Looking for Work in South Africa." I discussed the perils of South Africa's broken immigration system and the Catch-22 in which I sat: I needed a job to get a work visa, and I needed a work visa to get a job. The piece was published under a pseudonym due to concerns that my frank words might harm my then-pending visa application. I need not have worried.

• I left South Africa in March 2013 in a cloud of frustration. The South African system had failed me. My employer -- and the used-car salesman of an "immigration practitioner" with whom they had set me up -- had let me down. I was done with the bullshine, so I returned to Washington, D.C., to find the next step.

• I promptly spent the next five months on a D.C. roller-coaster of informational interviews, job applications, rejection, and the eternal so-what-do-you-do. I am not out of the woods yet, but I am on the edge. And from this vantage point I can see the forest through the trees.

Over the coming weeks I will post a few brief essays about my 2013 job search and what it has taught me. Be warned that I am no guru; I am merely an introspective and curious soul. My frankness in a public setting is designed with a simple message: you are not alone. I am not alone. I look forward to sharing my experience with you.

Nostalgia for the Bad Old Days: The National Party and Beyond

Ivo Vegter wrote a compelling opinion piece for today's Daily Maverick that deflates "The Myth of the Competent Apartheid Government." In the midst of the post-freedom struggles of the African National Congress (ANC) with crony capitalism and corruption, some (mostly white) South Africans have started looking back with nostalgia to the bad old National Party (NP) days as not quite so bad. Mr. Vegter points out that the NP was even worse (and more than just a bit racist):

The ANC of today is no more corrupt than the old NP. It is not less competent, no matter how different it might appear to whites who only noticed their own preferential treatment under apartheid, but now live as equals with their fellow South Africans. It is not more inefficient, either. The only difference is that the ANC’s problem is 10 times larger: it promised to provide a better life for all, not just some.

The NP economic dream only felt dreamy for the 10% who benefited. Protectionism and other unwise state meddling in the market created a giant patronage machine for the whites -- and hurt economic growth. The economy, Mr. Vegter asserts, suffered greatly compared to what a free (and educated and efficiently run) South Africa could have yielded. Heavy-handed economic planning resulted in a loss -- and a loss is precisely what post-apartheid South Africa is headed for under the ANC, warns Mr. Vegter. (His brief solutions ring a bit hollow and libertarian, but you might be hollow and libertarian yourself after thinking too much about the NP and ANC governments.)

In South Africa, whites are not the only ones nostalgic for the apartheid era. A recent study by Leslie Bank and Clifford Mabhena, "Bring Back Kaiser Matanzima: Communal Land, Traditional Leaders, and the Politics of Nostalgia" (2011), examined the nostalgia exhibited by many rural blacks in the Transkei for the rule of Kaiser Matanzima. Bank and Mabhena cite Kaiser Matanzima as "the ultimate apartheid sell-out and despot," but recognize the powerful sense of security created by his patronage system; the greater ability of men to find work as migrant laborers; and other socio-cultural factors. The people of the Transkei get more (budget constraint-wise) under the ANC when you look at schools, roads, clinics, and government grants. Nevertheless, many still think that life was better under Kaiser Matanzima because the ANC is linked with an erosion of community life and agriculture. Bank and Mabhena conclude that "the politics of nostalgia is essentially a response to social exclusion and the difficulties people face in connecting with the state and to each other."

Nostalgia for the bad old days is hardly unique to South Africa. It seems to pop up wherever there are big serious governmental changes that result in big serious economic and/or social upheaval. Look at Serbia after Milosevic, Russia under Yeltsin, or interwar Germany. The list will only grow as the Arab Spring turns to economic winter: Egypt after Mubarak; Libya after Gaddafi; and Tunisia after Ben Ali. Once the mooring of authoritarianism (or patronage) rots away, the state no longer provides certainty. The people (or privileged groups) lose their sense of security. When faced with the present pain of tough economic times or bad new governments, the people seem to forget about the pain of yesteryear.

If people forget why the bad old days were so bad, however, they risk ending up with a future that is even worse: look at what happened to post-1933 Germany and Russia under Putin. (Serbia is doing relatively okay so far.) South Africa should take care to avoid distorting the past, or all of the socio-political baggage will stand in the way of the right path forward.

Good Writing: Growing up Black in Mississippi

Kiese Laymon's essay, "How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance," is a compelling, heartbreaking slice of life about growing up as a black male in Mississippi. The essay is not about gun control, but instead lays out deliberately and infuriatingly through autobiography how racism, violence, and guns mingle in the Southern American / African-American psyche to create a culture in which violent death is too common.