Rozanne McKenzie: If not Love, then Grace
Love. It’s such a universal word, yet sometimes, such a difficult topic. It is something we all give and receive differently. For radio presenter, MC and media skills trainer, Rozanne McKenzie, love is “a sharing of yourself with others without any kind of concern that they are going to love you back.”
This selfless kind of love is something you learn to feel and appreciate over time. It’s the kind of love she herself only felt for first time when her children were born. “I want to love them so hard that what they put out into the world in terms of their personalities and in terms of how they love other people, is something that I can look at every day and be proud of.”
Rozanne and Being More Human
Rozanne is convinced that lack of respect and tolerance for one another is one of the biggest challenges in South Africa. “I don’t need to like you, but I can actually be tolerant towards you and I can be respectful of you. I think there is a lack of respect for each other. It’s on the roads, it’s littering in the streets, it’s closing the door when you can see someone’s running towards the lift.” According to her, it’s in the little things we do that we will find (and inspire) humanity.
“I think in South Africa there is so much about each other that we still don’t know,” Jacaranda FM’s The Drive with Rob and Roz’s co-host says. In fact, she believes we’re also not making enough of an effort to find out more about each other. Her theory is that people never recovered from the Covid years when it comes to being tolerant towards each other.
“It feels like we are seeing more and more intolerance, and a lot less love these days,” she says. While Rozanne is not love-festing every day, she believes that small changes and considering where people are coming from and why they are behaving in certain ways, will already go a long way.
Referring to when lockdown got lifted, she says: “Initially – in the beginning when we were allowed back out and into each other’s spaces – we were so grateful for that human connection, but now we’re just done with it.”
The Seesaw of Self-Love
Similar to how loving others is a work in progress, self-love is a constant journey too. “I feel that I am at a point now that I wasn’t at five or six years ago,” Rozanne says. “A point where – on most days – I am quite okay with myself. How I feel; how I look. And then I will preach that to the whole world! ‘Love yourself!’ ‘Wear that bikini!’ But then, sometimes I would look at myself in the mirror and go: ‘Mmm, maybe you need to lay off the pasta.’ It’s a constant work in progress.”
Rozanne as an Introverted Extrovert
Rozanne has always been very open about her struggle with depression – often her downfall when it comes to self-love and self-acceptance. According to her, it’s a condition that smuggles with your head. “It starts to make you doubt your achievements, your self-worth,” she admits.
“I think getting to a place of self-love is a journey. I’m not there yet. I think I’m better some days than others. But the days that I am full of self-love and pride for how far I’ve come in life and with life are now even more special, because I’ve been down and now, I am okay. It’s like a seesaw.”
For Rozanne, her training is the serotonin she doesn’t have. “I do train a lot because I like how it makes me feel.” While she says people might perceive her as a big extrovert – which she is to a certain extent – she often reaches a point where she can’t hear people’s voices anymore. Then she needs quiet.
“I can’t even have the radio playing in my car or listen to music. I think what I’ve done to look after myself in that way is that when I’ve identified that I am overstimulated, I just take time for me – even when it’s ten minutes in my car where it’s quiet – before I go into the house and deal with Chris and the kids and all the things that they need or all the things that they want to tell me because they’ve had a brilliant day and I am the first person that they want to tell. But, sometimes my brain isn’t ready for that, so I’ve given myself grace. If I’m overstimulated, I take some time for myself and after that, I can deal with other things.”
Feeling Loved
“What makes me feel loved by people close to me is the ability to be myself. With all my flaws, all my insecurities and all the things that I might not like about myself,” Rozanne says. In fact, those flaws she sees in herself are often the reasons why those close to her love her.
“So, it starts to be a thing of you know what, maybe I am okay. Maybe I don’t have to be so hard on myself because I am not who I want to be. If someone who is very special to me thinks that I’m okay, then I am okay,” she concludes.
Celebrating Human Rights Day
Rozanne McKenzie comes from an era where everyone didn’t have basic human rights. “There were places we couldn’t live. There were people we couldn’t love. Even my grandparents were not fully accepted as full-blown citizens of this country.”
She says today, South Africans can celebrate the fact that everyone has the same rights. “Constitutionally, we should all have the same basic rights, because that is what the bill of human rights says. There are still a lot of inequalities in this country and until those are addressed, I don’t think we are going to get to a point where we are accepting of each other. But let’s at least tolerate each other. Let’s be mindful of what other people’s circumstances are and maybe not judge so quickly.”
She adds that we should celebrate moments that bring us together. “Like sport; like some South African going out into the world and doing really well. We’re all so collectively proud of that person and that’s the feeling I think we need to strive for.”
Rozanne is Hopeful About SA
While humanity and humility are always a work in progress, Rozanne is hopeful about South Africa. She remembers a recent interview with Reynardt Hugo, the host of the documentary series, Net Mens.
“The timing of it was actually quite spooky,” she says. “We had a scheduled interview with him for Wednesday, 4 December. The reason why we had the scheduled interview, was because that evening at 20:00, the Net Mens episode about Jan Bloukaas was going to go out on kykNET. In the early hours of that Wednesday morning, the news broke that Jean du Plessis (Jan Bloukaas) had lost his battle to brain cancer.”
They still did the interview with Reynardt and Rozanne says it was clear that regardless of how the disease was ravaging Jean, he just wanted to make that last album.
“The album came out on the Friday before he passed away. But it gave me so much hope,” Rozanne says. “…Even in that moment of going through so much, Jean still ended up doing what he loved with the people that he loved. Other South African artists around him who wanted to help his dream come true. It just made me realise that there is so much to be grateful for, because you don’t really think your health is that much of an issue until you have a health issue. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. That interview definitely showed me what is possible if you set your mind to it. Also, if you were put on this earth to do something, you will do that thing until the day you die.”
Rozanne McKenzie’s ways of staying in sync with not only her inner self, but also those around her, is what makes her such a standout, relatable media personality. She lives and loves life with humility and grace, encouraging those around her to do the same.
