Racism or Victism??

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery none but ourselves can free our minds…” Robert Nesta Marley

I uploaded these words as my status update yesterday and how apt it is today.

Sheesh guys, I have been so struggling with something positive to write man. All around is just negativity, yo, its only when you leave SA and don’t watch the news and come back when you really realize how much negativity surrounds us. There is a great initiative happening in SA this week called the National Book Week which is trying to get more people reading, but do I hear about it emmm nope whats there to write about instead…Lets see Tornados and Hurricanes…ummm naah, Mogoeng Mogoeng circus, Juju’s, in my mind farcical hearing and is stoopid followers throwing stones and bottles in the city centre….ehhh so tired, and my current bugbear, which is NATO and the UN, passing a resolution to bomb/invade a country that isn’t even party to any of their causes nor a member, finance its rebels etc and then they say eish boss this one its not me man, all we did was just protect civilians, who are in a country that doesn’t subscribe to your rules…epic fail… then today I wake up and hear about Darren Scott, waxing lyrical with the k word and everyone is on his case about being a racist. There is also the story about the designer who made some random comments about a Jewish person and an Asian…which somehow only got dubbed an anti-Semitic slur, but that’s a story for another time…

Racism - Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on such a belief

Now before I go on lemme just say I don’t know Mr Scott, so he may well be a racist, but based on what I have read thus far and the circumstances surrounding the incident is he a racist?

A man gives another money to help him out. Would a racist want to help out a brudda in need? Ya maybe, cos there were a few banks who could have been run by people who subscribed to the apartheid legacy that used to lend money to bleks…Man doesn’t want to pay me back…repeatedly…I’ll get angry, blaady angry. Short of raising my fists I’d find words that are extremely excruciating to his being. So if I called this bra, a forkin K-word dude, would I be racist? Lets move from race, say 2 fat people were having an argument and the one called the other a fat f**k, would the reaction be different if a thin person, having the same disagreement with a fat person, called a fat person a fat f**k. For example right if a woman and her man are having a fracas he did something terrible to her and she cant beat him up so she decides to call him a short di*k Muthaforker, would that make her a pen isist?

You see in all those instances mentioned, ones ability to be rational is gravely compromised by red mist and as a result your mindset is in fight mode, and in fight mode there is only one winner, so you will say whatever you can to hurt the mofo not so. So you become rude and insulting, but does that make you a racist or a fatist or whatever? I am really not convinced that those words in isolation make a person a racist. To be honest, in my absolutely humble experience, the only time a word has some true deep meaning is if it brings to the fore a deep complex or something that you are not all together comfortable with about yourself not so? For example, if someone called me a fat, bald useless dooooos, right I am a tad podgy at the moment and my forehead is reclaiming some skin at the moment, so now if it bothered me, id be offended not so, if I wanted to blame someone else for my lot in life I’d take it to be offensive, but if I have accepted my fate and either decided to move from where I am to a place of more happiness, I will use those words to harness my pursuit of better things not so?

I think I have said it before, but we as a nation are very sensitive and I guess rightly so coming from the past we have, but are we so sensitive to a point that it clouds our judgment and reason and every disagreement or something done that is not to our liking is dubbed racism. Darren’s words aren’t the issue here I believe, there is a deep set -ism in all of us who live in this country. Class, race, nation, sex we hate each other. We mask it a lot, but man we just have some mad blind hate in this house!

Bottom line is we have to change. And skirting around the issues won’t correct it. A brother walks into a mall with a fine light skinned lass, don’t look at em cos it looks like the set from Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney’s song Ebony and Ivory, clap cos she is lucky to have landed a fine brother damnit!! ☺

Jokes aside, I consider myself a rather level-headed individual. People from the old school have to understand that its really by God’s grace that this country hasn’t ended up like Zim…yet, BEE, EE, AA, Quota etc. are necessary, one need only just step out and look at the lie of the land and see, worse so if you go to Cape Town. Now I’m not advocating that things should be otherwise….all I’m saying is that things could have been much worse. People cry foul, corruption, this, that and the next, my dear friends, what we are seeing now is but a smidgen of what happened in the past. I was watching Carte Blanche a few weeks back and they were exposing some multi billion rand fraud advocated by the reserve bank of the olds regime, to help fatten the coffers of some bank and in return its shareholders which were Caucasian. The only difference between the corruption of then and now is that now, its reported on freely, tell me which is a better world to live in.

To tell me that BEE, quotas and AA, EE etc should end after 20 yrs, I step back look at the floor, then the sky, then look at you and shake my head. Let me give u paint you a picture, not a Picasso or a Van Gogh, but a Pic-true. Lets use a black’ born-free, kid born in 1994, so currently 17 years old, they should have the freedom of the nation right, ehhh no! Why? You see lets look at the current lie of the land as a gauge right. Father most probably has bantu education as does mother, they probably only recently got running water and a proper roof over their heads, if at all. What they know is what pops and moms taught them, or black and white, both have the old school mentality which they passed on to their kids. A persons formative years are first 8 or so years not so, yes your personality morphs as you grow, but the basis is formed early on. So what do I know….old school ish. Right! Now I am 17, next year its either tertiary education or work. No money for school eish, no job, eish…see where I am getting at. Use the converse a white born-free, moms and pops have tin, kid goes to Saints, Saint Marys, Kes, you name it, lifes still rosy, not so? Finish school, go to varsity easi, finish varsity, moms and pops say, youngster, no job here go to Australia or England, because you can… see what I am saying…

Right, these kids turn 26, get married or pops a little one, what will they teach their kid, mainly what they learnt as a youngster but a whole lot more toned down because we are learning to get along, trust me, it will take at least 3 generations for us to be truly a rainbow nation.

Now for my Africans…The reason why we as Africans are progressing at such a slow pace is largely, not entirely, because we are the architects of our own demise. It takes me a trip to Ghana every so often to be reminded of this. Don’t get me wrong, love the land of my birth, we are definitely progressing, but man there are some things that still baffle me…I digress…We, as Africans, are all too quick to play the role of the victim. Slavery/apartheid came, slavery/apartheid left, it left a massive legacy but so what do we do? Wallow in self-pity? Blame all our ills on the past or take stock realize what an opportunity, no matter how hard lies ahead and make it work for us, using whatever resources we have available to us. Yes I know it’s a theoretical way to approach things, but theory most times can be translated into practice, otherwise why would we have to study books in order to work in this world neh ☺

I know the world has been set up for us as Africans to rely on the west, because they have money! Yes they do, but lets see, as a continent we have all the resources, if I look at England or the states what do they have, yes money, oil, some resources and people but they need us about as much as we need them as a continent not so. I look at this majestic continent of ours, I see trees of green, red roses too…sing it Louis, Silver and gold have I All (none) said he… what don’t we have, yet we dispose of it for a mere pittance. So we can buy it back at a hugely inflated price. (This is proper generalization because as a continent we have had some leaders with some foresight) We live for today, its all about making many quick bucks today and not about tomorrows people how long will they last…(sorry too much singing). I wanna be the only guy on these dusty streets to have a Ferrari California and a big mansion, and helicopter, so the world will know I have landed, how am I going to get it, instead of using the 100million grant to build houses for the poor in my land, I will use 20mil and spend the 80mil on myself. I am dissing my peops, I know, but its because seeing this stuff really does break me.

Lets think about it, are there any derogatory words for caucasians, what hon key, really now?!! There aren’t why, because they were never the victims nor will they ever play that role, but my bruddas, we hear the word co olie, ni**er, ka**ir, gooook, you name it and its like we have been shot and our corpse spat on. Till the day we forget about being a victim and rise up and build and be the boss of something that’s worth boasting about till the day that as a nation our people don’t have to live in tin huts, till the day that a country with much rain isn’t a net importer of basic foodstuffs like rice, till that day peoples, we’ll never be right with ourselves. And when anyone says anything that is adverse to us we will latch on it and squeal like pigs to the slaughter.

I take Jewish people for example, the suffered the holocaust, but them bruddas run this world now. Ok fair enough with utmost respect, the victim card is played to an extent there as well, and I am in no way lessening the atrocities that they had to face as a result of their faith, but what slavery and colonization did to Africans was just as detrimental to the African race, yet the difference is in a relatively short period of time their adversities have been turned into monumentus triumphs. Show me a Jewish person who isn’t economically sound. Why is that, yes they had the assistance of a lot of the world, but they together as a people stood up, stood together, worked hard and achieved what they have and keep achieving.

I am a Ghanaian born, African man living in South Africa, but hell no I am not victim! Emancipate yourself from mental slavery…

I missed a few birthdays in the last 2 months so let me just do for this month thus far and ask for forgiveness to those that I didn’t announce…
Birthdays
3rd Rob Wed, Stu, JC
5th Riba, Smangi
9th TBKaranja, Decs
10th Basquait, Sefa

Maximum respect always, because thats where it starts...

Be the change you want to see...simple

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