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TIMEOUS: As workers across the globe celebrated Workers’ Day on May 1, journalist Vicky Abraham launches the print version of her book Prayers for Employees: Demolishing Debt Slavery: 21-Day Prayers for Workers…
By WSAM Reporter
For its part, the book offers a spiritual arsenal for workers battling all manner of debilitating challenges at the workplace, and much more to fortify them while navigating the maze that is employee-boss relationships.
Published by Youth Opulence Media, it has been edited by veteran journalists, media entrepreneurs and layout designers, who played an integral role in the media industry during the apartheid era.
Adding weight to its illuminating pages are journalism professors, media trainers, editors formerly from the Wall Street Journal, activists from Mozambique, pastors, prophets and workers – most of whom can themselves attest to the pain and suffering dished out daily in corporate sphere.
In the introduction, Abraham explains how the idea was triggered by her first-hand experience – during two decades of her career – of emotional meltdowns among colleagues in the high-pressured media environment. Weaved into her experience is a tapestry of accounts – published and unpublished – she garnered while on the newsbeat to enrich the tome.
From the interviews, she skilfully culls out real-life stories which she shares with the readers with a sense of empathy, showing how workplace challenges can exact a heavy psychological and spiritual toll on targeted individuals if not redressed or unspotted, even adversely impacting on their self-esteem and productivity to the point of mental relapse.
In the first chapter, headlined ‘Thank God it’s Friday!’, she invokes the break-free mantra loosely translated ‘Woza Friday’ in kasi taal, often happily chanted Fridays by employees about let rip in the advent of the weekend break away from both autocratic bosses and the tyranny of work.
In interceding chapters, the author also invokes a real-life scenario in which an employee who felt reduced to a nonentity suddenly exploded with ghastly ramifications one fateful day.
During the incident, the teacher vented his pent-up anger and indignity through a hail of bull fired in the staffroom of a Soweto high school in the morning of July 29 1999, killing and injuring some of his colleagues.
Although she was not a journalist by then, she explains that she still remembers details of this particular incident with eerie clarity, as if she witnessed the horror first-hand.
“I must say, it feels like it happened yesterday. For an aspiring journalist, this was a bizarre incident that left me with many unanswered questions. My constant question was and has been: what triggered this bloodbath? Why throw away a lifetime career as a teacher?”
Being haven for group dynamics, the work environment can also be susceptible to office politics, gossip and slander – often with ghastly consequences for the faint-hearted. Abraham dedicates a whole section on this poignant topic, outlining the potential of slander and character assassination to drive its hapless victims to depression, if not sow disharmony among the staff.
For spiritual fortitude, the book is graced with a gantry of relevant prayers under various themes – all intimate conversations and deeply felt cries for God’s mercy and divine intervention. All life’s trials and tribulations allied to world of work like debt entrapment and enslavement are catered for in a variety of prayers for deliverance.
For those who believe in the power of prayer, the book is a useful companion for a bruised workplace soul and packs potent firepower the size of a weapon of mass destruction to be trained against all manner of shopfloor adversity.
* Prayers for Employees: Demolishing Debt Slavery: 21-Day Prayers for Workers retails at R180 and can be ordered via email vlegacyprojects@gmailcom or 073 918 1529 (Whatsapp)
A WOMAN’S UNREQUITED PERSONAL QUEST FOR SELF-DISCOVERY
YEARNING: The story is about the sad life of a depressed black woman born in the West Indies…
By Amanda Ngudle
This is not a light-hearted book. Although many writers have spiced up historical fiction with compelling and entertaining characters to lift up the gloomy mood, most books of this nature tend to endure.
This book teems with thoughtful and talkative characters – all of them philosophical storytellers. so philosophical you will get exhausted if the intention was to do escape reading. Mananzhe is a poet, and it shows in her attention to the description of all things significant and not. The story follows the sad life of a depressed black woman born in the West Indies and adopted by her initial white slave-master dad after the death of her biological father.
Although wealthy enough to buy a ship that she eventually takes to follow her journey to Africa, it seems no money can shine a ray of sunshine in the dark cloud that haunts Alisa.
She bleeds with the yearning to belong, something difficult to fake, and so for the first few pages you wish for her to find her peace eventually. Boon or bane, she meets a darling in the form of Dutchman Abram Van Zijl who does all in his power to give her everything she needs.
Sadly, even after the birth of their two daughters, her frequent visitor is relentless.
When the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of South Africa is imposed, it adds salt to a festering wound, and what follows is a tragic disaster that sends the remaining family members on an uncertain journey far away from here. And then they are killed, if I’m not mistaken. Yes, there are times when the writer’s pen dances you into oblivion.
*Scatterlings-Resoketswe Mananzhe is published by Jacana and retails R203
A WARTS-AND-ALL PEEK INTO CLOISTERED SUBURB’S POSH SCHOOL
SYSTEM: A tell-all novel that shines an unedifying spotlight on the dangerous realities behind the gates of an elite school…
By Amanda Ngudle
Without even reading the blurb, I could tell this was an author sure of her craft. She writes with such unhurried vibrancy and flair.
The story is about the challenges that Ella Burchall, a retired ballet dancer at 28, faces when she moves to the small town of Pineapple Beach, north of Durban.
After taking a strategic offer to train little girls in the dance of royalty, it’s as if she has written her own obituary as the hens and the puppet masters come out to play. This is a tell-all novel that shines a spotlight on the dangerous realities behind the pearly gates of the opulent Pines Academy. It’s the class system, racism, petty competition and all things unsavoury.
There’s a girl whose mom relaxes her hair straight to hide her lineage, another one is pushed to score A in every subject and have a sport a day, including ballet of course. Another is simply not liked because she is black and there is one paying for the plight of her parents.
All in all, the drama is peddled by one family who bankrolls the school and wants a final say in everything.
Thankfully, because Ella is fresh from a relationship with a narcissist, she has vowed never to be bulldozed, but she must still pay for her voice.
I enjoyed this novel. Fiona Snyckers has a new follower in me.
*The School Gates-Fiona Snyckers (Modjadji Books) retails at R250
