Cultural Dissonance: The Good, the Bad, and the Hustle.

A curious incident happened yesterday that got me thinking about dissonance. Not cognitive dissonance, but cultural dissonance. The ability to understand one action in two very different ways, because of cultural dissonance. Difference that exists within a common language.

Next year I shall be moving from South Africa to the UK. With my child leaving the nest, I thought it a useful strategy to earn some foreign currency to belatedly kick -start a pension. (The same strategy that I used to pay off my university student loan I realised this weekend), and to be with my better- half.

And so I have started registering on British job placements websites and strengthening my social networks, chatting to old friends and contacts and meeting new ones, seeking to pick up available tips about do’s and don’ts; life hacks for professional parachuting into a new country.

A second-generation Anglo- African, I feel pretty familiar and comfortable with most things English in addition to the mother tongue. We were raised with English nursery rhymes and Enid Blyton. I lived in England first as a toddler, and again after university, and I enjoy listening to Radio 4 on BBC Sounds when I am cooking. I can navigate the London Tube. I follow English politics, and I love the British welfare state, and of course I have spent a bit of time there in the last year visiting my significant other.

So in general, despite the ask for tips, I was pretty confident I was well acclimatised to the English Way, that I could pass for Native. However, this week I discovered, to my chagrin, that despite sharing a common language, there are significant cultural gaps. Lesson one is: - the Hustle.

As every good South African knows, particularly anyone who has spent time in Johannesburg, not a day goes by when we do not employ, or at least plan, a hustle. Hustling means getting things done when the system seems built to frustrate you, or when the people operating the system seem intent on sabotaging your endeavours to get things done. Anything to do with local council bills, for instance.  It means making money when jobs are few and pay is low. It means trying to survive in an environment that often feels quite hostile. It means succeeding in spite of circumstances.

It is about being street smart. To my understanding, a hustle is always within the bounds of honesty although, to be perfectly honest, a hustle is better acquainted with the spirit if not always strictly within the letter of the law. But to be clear, the ‘State Capture’ Zondo Commission of Inquiry work was not about hustles.

I digress. let us return to the cultural dissonance, or maybe, cultural misunderstandings.

Last week, having registered on a job seeking website, I reached out via the Contact Us email address. I contacted them. I still had (have) a few questions about assumptions around salaries, appropriate levels of entering into jobs in the UK with South African experience, etc. Like my conversations with people in South Africa about such things, I thought it would be easier to have a face-to-face chat with a human to talk over these issues, and so I asked if I could have a call with the head of the agency.

Let me just say that no-one in South Africa has refused a request, and certainly no one asked for payment. Maybe I was doing a hustle in asking them so directly for help, but its what we do. It’s how we work here, here in Joburgtown. So I made the same ask to this agency owner.

He emailed back saying that in fact he provides information and training sessions for a fee to people who want to improve their job search prospects.  Fair game, I thought, I respect that. However, given the exchange rate and my imminent unemployment I asked if he would offer me a discount. I thought I made out my case very well, but I guess I was doing a Joburg Hustle.

Imagine my shock when in response he ended our communication, saying that my ask had made him feel uncomfortable.

And I was sitting in a conference on Good Governance when I read his email. Boy, did I feel uncomfortable when reading his response. As I sat trying to understand what he was saying, I found myself instinctively shielding my laptop screen from the eyes of the anti- corruption activists seated all around me. Uncomfortable!

So, what I thought was a reasonable action - asking for a discount, a better price, a helping hand, he thought was inappropriate. Same action, very different understandings.

In silent rebuttal, I decided, still in the conference, to Google hustle. And therein we find further dissonance. In ‘North American parlance’, a hustler is someone who is ‘adept at aggressive selling or illegal dealing’ or a sex worker. And I learnt too that the Hustler skin magazine was introduced in 1974. The aggression aspect was a bit more hardcore than I had anticipated, and so I kept looking until I found the definition that I liked. That one said that to hustle is ‘to work hard, smart and with a sense of urgency’.

So, to hustle could either be deplored by the establishment, or have you hailed as being an exemplary capitalist wage slave.

But, in closing this little homily, I must share that despite, or in fact, because of, the very polite cessation of engagement with the English job placement agent, I have learned an invaluable lesson. Notwithstanding centuries of colonial hustling, aggressive and illegal dealings with the global South, there is no hustle to be done in received English establishment culture.

Duly noted.