Director, Chaos Theory

Brent Lindeque never liked the online drinking game Neknominate, in which a participant films themselves drinking alcohol in one gulp, uploading the footage to the web, and then nominating two others to do the same.

So when he was neknominated, he gave a guy on the side of the road a sandwich and a Coke and nominated two of his friends to also perform random acts of kindness (aka “rak”).

He expected 20 people to watch his video.

Instead Lindeque’s “raknomination” accumulated 800 000 views on YouTube, and exploded overnight. He received videos from Dubai, Australia, the UK, Canada and the US, and his nomination was the catalyst for a dedicated feeding programme in Canada and similar programmes in the UK.

“The videos have been nothing short of inspirational and incredibly humbling,” he says. “One of the first local videos was a guy who had seen a busker begging for coins, playing the guitar, every day at a shopping mall in Rosebank. He was nominated to down a beer and instead, took a brand new guitar that had been lying in his bedroom and handed it over to the busker, then asked him to play a song as payment, nothing more.”

There’s also been a video from the cast of an international theatre show touring Korea, who donated all their old and surplus clothing to a homeless shelter in Seoul.

“They actually asked us not to post the video because they didn’t want any recognition for their deed – that the movement was started by a simple gesture of goodwill has changed millions of lives around the world and is still carrying on.”

But it doesn’t stop there. Lindeque is now working with some food companies to take the concept of micro-activism to a new level, “where anyone who can afford it, can pay it forward themselves, in their own space, in a manner that is meaningful to them.”

“My defining moment was not handing someone a Coke and chips,” he says. “It’s what I can do with the platform I have been fortunate enough to have been afforded and which will hopefully continue to make a difference, no matter how small, in other people’s lives.”
— Fatima Asmal

Twitter: @BrentLindeque