What gets lost when we treat conversations like transactions | Khaya Dlanga

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. In South Africa, a common greeting is Sani Bona, which roughly translates to, we see you. In this talk, author and social commentator Kaya Shanga shares why he believes the most powerful stories are the ones told simply to connect with another human. Through personal memories, conversations, and moments of deep listening, he shows how conversation, without strategy or agenda, helps us feel truly seen and be present with one another.

0:47so it is quite traditional in my country to walk into a room and to greet but it's not just to greet you're supposed to respond back to the greeting that i'm about to teach you i promise you it's very easy so there are two things that i'm going to ask of you today because i imagine part of some of you are maybe i'm pretty shy okay so what i will say is sunny boner and you will respond back by saying, Sago Boona. All right? Are we ready? Sani Boona. Thank you. That was very easy, right? Very easy. So in my culture, it is considered considerably rude to walk into a room without any gritting, as I mentioned to you before.

1:30What Sani Boona really means is, we see you. It's kind of crazy to think that I'm saying that we see you, right? But it's just one person. It's just me standing here. What it really means is that everything that I am, everything that I come with, sees all the stories that come with you. It also means that the ancestors come with me and they too see you. That's what Sago Bona truly, truly means. This is the second thing I'm going to ask you to do today. I promise you it's the last thing I'm going to ask you. And it's even easier than sakubona. All right? So I'm going to ask you to repeat after me.

2:11It is a tradition. You have to say this after you say sakubona. Are you ready? All right. All right.

2:26Your turn. Your turn. All right, that is a notoriously difficult tongue twister in my language of Isetosa. Isetosa, I'm pretty sure even that is pretty difficult to say, the language itself. So this is the language that I speak. And I'm pretty sure you're saying that, okay, great, Kaya, what are you here to tell us? What is the great new insight that you're going to reveal to us today, besides doing some break dancing with your tongue? To tell you the truth is that I'm literally just here to have conversation for the sake of conversation. I'm here to tell stories for the sake of telling stories.

3:08There's a great South African philosopher by the name of Steve Mikko. He wrote an amazing book called I Write What I Like. And in it, he says, Westerners are often quite surprised by our capacity as Africans for talking to one another. and not to talk because there is any particular conclusion you want to arrive at, but simply to have a conversation for its sake. And this is what I want to do today. So I'm going to tell you three stories for the sake of telling stories. And I really do hope that you have nothing to learn from these stories.

3:52The first story that I want to tell you is when I began my career in advertising many, many years ago, my cousin, who was also in advertising, had to shoot an advert with the great and legendary William Shatner back in South Africa. So William Shatner went and flew to South Africa, and I was an incredible fan of Boston Legal, his TV show.

4:19And I shared my love with my cousin, whose name is Polisa. I shared this love with him, and he fell in love with the show. And so somebody told William Shepard that there are these young guys who just love your show. And so he was so moved that he conspired to have a lunch with us the day before he left South Africa to go back to the United States. and we went to this incredible, expensive, exclusive hotel that I'd never been to in my entire life. And when we got to this hotel, he was waiting for us. And he was so kind and so generous. And he called the waiter and he said to the waiter, can I have three glasses of whiskey?

5:05The most expensive whiskey that you have. But before you get me those whiskeys, is if money was an object for you, I want to ask you a question. What kind of cigar would you choose for yourself? And the young man thought about it, and they said, did you say that money is an object? And the young man said, the barman said, okay, yeah, I know what to give you. And he gave us three cigars. And I'd never, I mean, I don't smoke cigars. I know nothing about cigars. But if you know anything about Boston Legal, you will know that.

5:43At the end of every single episode, William Shetner's character sits with his protege, and they have a glass of whiskey and smoke a cigar. And so we sat with William Shetner, and we did this. And when we are having amazing conversations with him, and the most incredible thing about William Shetner is that, and to this day, I've never met someone who listens like he does. It felt like his entire body was listening to us. His whole being, I'd never been seen like that in my entire life. He was so generous with his time. And I remember looking at my cousin and I was thinking, he's spending his time with us, but also spending his money with those expensive whiskey and these expensive cigars.

6:32He talked about his family. He talked about religion. And I didn't feel like I was talking to a superstar, but I felt like I was speaking to my long-lost grandfather. And then after two and a half hours of having amazing conversation with Mr. Shetner, somebody came up to us and said, Mr. Shetner, we have to take you to the airport now. And so he got up and he said, thank you so very much. I really do appreciate what you guys did for me. And then he pointed to the waiter and said to him, they are paying.

7:13but I felt so seen.

7:18It was priceless, that particular experience. And this is my second story that I'm going to tell you. So my second story that I'm about to tell you is that I grew up towards the tail end of apartheid South Africa. And what that meant was that I was in the first cohort of kids, of black kids who were allowed to go to previously white-only government schools. In fact, I was the only black child in my class when I went to this particular school. And I have this very vivid memory of me in junior school going to the library with my new white friends. And we get into the library and we had this profound obsession with these other boys of astronomy, as young boys tend to do.

8:02And we went to the library and spoke in harsh tones, and we were paging through and showing all what we know about the planetary systems. And this one boy says to me, when I saw a picture of this moon, he said, oh, when you look at the moon, you can see the face of a man on the moon. And I remember being quite flabbergasted and thinking, there is no man on the moon. What do you mean? And then he began to trace out these images of what you could see. And I saw a man on the moon for the first time. You see, the very difference between him and I is that I'd spent the first 10 years of my life in village South Africa.

8:39And now, when I say village, don't imagine the idealistic village in England. So, do you know what I saw when I was looking at images? When I looked at the moon, I could see a woman carrying a bucket on her head with a baby on her back. I'm sure you're confused. You're saying, what is this? This is what we grew up seeing. We saw a woman and not a man. A woman carrying a bucket on her head with a baby on her back. That's what I'd always known. And when we sat there together, when I was looking at these images, and I remember thinking, this is so different from what I thought. And both stories were so true.

9:21And no one thought that the one version was better than another or more meaningful than the other. We obviously went home and we shared these versions and showed off the new thing that we learned today. So to bridge the gap between two different cultures, it is important for us to embrace all stories. In a world that we find ourselves in, especially today, when we think that our version is a correct one, that the only version we need to follow is the one that we know, We do not build a world that is great for the bridges that we need to create for ourselves. And I think we understand what kind of world we find ourselves in today.

10:08And then I'm sure another question that you're wondering is like, Kaya, but okay, we'll hear you. Did you really mean it when you said that? You're telling stories for the sake of telling stories? Yes, I meant it. And I said that I don't want you to learn anything from these lessons, but I do have a question. And one of the questions that I have to ask is, when did we decide that every conversation must be transactional? When did we decide that every conversation must have some hidden KPI and not have a conversation for its sake to enjoy the company of another human? Because in reality, what we do know is that behind every casual conversation we have with anybody is the desire for connection.

10:55We want to connect with another human being. And the hardest thing about connection is making that first step to connect with another person. There is this battle against loneliness that we're fighting. And yet we think that technology is what's going to help us fight against this loneliness. But what has happened to us is that the more time we connect with our technology, the less we get to know our neighbors. We know more about technology in our hands than we do know about our neighbors. It is as if we have created a new commandment, which is know thy technology, but don't know thy neighbor.

11:38And so I want to tell a very personal story now. And I decided this as I was walking here, that I should share this particular story. For a few short years ago, my brother, who was the youngest in my family, took his own life. And the reason he took his life was because he had a profound connection with a device. and this device exploited his addictive personality. And his addictive personality was gambling, online sports betting. He was so ashamed that he did not connect us and talk to us about his problem that he eventually took his own life. And I'll never forget the day we went to his funeral and my mother that evening, talking to myself and my sisters.

12:35almost talking to herself, my mother said, in my language, which means I am going to die next year. And what I am happy to say that the following year, she did not die. She was a very healthy woman and very active. And the year after that, my mother did not die. But exactly, almost exactly a year ago, my mother passed away from a heartbreak because she could no longer connect with her son. And her words connected to a prophecy that made her own passing a reality. and so and what I do in return is that in order for me to be able to connect with my parents with my mother and with my brother is that I decided to write a book but it felt like I was exploiting them exploiting their death in order for me to connect with them but it did make me feel better despite what I felt and so I suppose what how I want to end this is AI is going to take over all sorts of tasks, and correctly so.

13:56It's going to take over tasks. It's going to take over all sorts of algorithms. But the one thing it cannot do is take our humanity. It cannot do that. While AI can tell old stories and can tell beautiful stories, It cannot tell a story that one heart can tell to another. And finally, I do want to close off with this. While human beings are made for connecting with one another, while sharing stories for the sake of sharing stories, while having conversation for the sake of conversation is not what makes us human, What really makes us human is the fact that we simply connect for the sake of connecting.

14:49Thank you.

14:55That was Kaya Shanga speaking at TED 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Lucy Little. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

15:38Thank you.