Greetings to you all from a superbly sticky Accra. To think
it has already been 2 weeks.
So let me lay the platform for this blog. A good few weeks
ago I watched 2 movies 12 years a slave and Long walk to freedom, soon after
that it was announced that Dr Mamphele Ramphele had joined the DA as their
presidential candidate. As we all now know, that marriage like most marriages
nowadays (yep I had to stick that in there) hardly lasted. There was a lot of
mixed reaction to the marriage and even more to the to the divorce.
So why did I mention those 2 movies? I guess 12 Years a
Slave really just a reminder of colonization and slavery, but that Mandela
movie reminded me of what South Africa was and why it is now, how it is. I will
say it loud and I will say it clear. Ye who says 20 years is enough and we must
get over it and move on must just sit down right now! I don’t hear anyone
telling Jewish people to get over the holocaust do I? Imagine if some brute
slapped you and spat on your wife/husband, you would be spitting mad and baying
for blood, now imagine someone who has been driven off your land, relative
murdered made to endure what feels like a lifetime as a sub-human.
South Africa is potentially a time bomb waiting to just
fizzle a little and it has every right to be. We all understand and know pretty
well the ills of times gone by, what many of us timeously fail to grasp is the
depth and breath of it and its far
reaching consequences. Yes we must build this nation and move forward but I
believe we live in a fool’s paradise if we think it will happen just like that.
The DA as a party is not without its faults, but it has proven it can govern.
Say what you will, but I spend a fair amount of time in the Western Cape and
things work. I will even site a quick example. So I am in Accra for a little
while and I needed to convert my SA driver’s licence to a Ghanaian one. This
was quite a process that involved getting hold of the SA vehicle licencing
department to confirm the validity of my licence. I called the Joburg office
and got the phone dropped on me 3 times, run around twice, after 30minutes or
so of getting nowhere, I had a brainwave, call the CT office. I googled, called,
phone was answered after 3 rings, got through to this very helpful lady, asked
me for my email address, she sent me a list of things I needed to submit, I
sent it later that evening, the next morning by 8am I had my confirmation.
Super impressive.
Now let me say this out right too. I like the ANC, the party
is pretty fantastic organization, started by what seems like very highly
principled and selfless individuals, who were banned from their own land, made
to feel and treated like less than human, their parents before them too. Many
were killed or sent to prison because they just wanted the right to live in and
on the land from whence they came. Where was their crime? Yet their punishment
so severe! The current crop that they have at the helm, in my humble opinion,
is littered with some questionable characters. Which is sad, but alas they will
continue to rule this land for some time to come. Be that as it may, as I sit
here in my super comfortable bed, watching Al Jazeera news, whilst I type on my
Apple laptop, I will without reservation say I owe a lot of the freedoms and
privilege in my life to that party and its selfless members.
Yes we all know SA’s history, but we gloss over it as if it
was a trivial little speed bump that we need to get over and move on from, but
then if it was trivial why do we find ourselves in a situation where we have a government
who some believe to be grossly incompetent and self serving, yet come the
national elections, very few of us believe that they will be voted out of power?
It was not trivial. There are some amongst us who fail to
understand this, I am not psychology/sociology major, but after watching both
those movies I was reminded of something. The facts are simple. This lovely
country of ours suffered a deep and gaping wound and it was through some grace
that we weren’t plunged into civil war, that in itself is something worthy of
praise and gratitude. The country is immensely divided along racial lines. This
sense of togetherness we sometimes feel when we win rugby games or when the
great man (rest his soul) passes on, is all a big farce and as fake as the
Louis Vuiitton bag purchased at the Oriental Plaza. How dare I say that you
might ask, well where is that togetherness now? A few weeks after we laid him
to rest, the status quo was reverted to…We are back to us and them. Such was
the effectiveness of the evil system called Apartheid, and shoot it was evil!
I look at myself for example, I am undecided as to who to
vote for during this upcoming election. Agang featured strongly because their
leader was my former Vice Chancellor a pretty accomplished woman and the fact
that she is a woman comforts me even more because she will more than likely
want to help her people and not be sidetracked by things like a big house in
the middle of nowhere to show the world how big her **** is (one would hope).
So her merger with the DA should have been a good thing for me, because I was
the type of voter they were trying to convince to come on board, but it had the
exact opposite effect on me. It just made me think oh well there goes another
party into the questionable pile.
Being a born a black foreigner, raised in South Africa, I
have a chip on both shoulders, I feel very balanced but there is just something
about the DA that just doesn’t sit right with me. My cousin relayed a
conversation he had with a black South African colleague about this topic. He
said, until the day, that I am not made to feel inferior to a white person, I
will never be able to vote for the DA. And therein lies the simple truth. As a
person of colour one has to always work that much harder to prove themselves
worthy, be it in the office, on the sport field or even walking on the street,
you are a criminal until proven otherwise. Now this is no self pity party, it’s
just the reality of the situation that is South Africa. The DA has proven that
they can deliver, they may not be getting it all right, but they are more than
they aren’t. The province they run has created the most jobs for the last 2
years running I think. In a perfectly ‘normal’ world, they should easily govern
this beautiful land of ours, but the reality of the situation is that the
majority of this land who are the ones who are being hurt the most by the
current status quo, are the ones who have long memories of times gone by. They
remember and they remember very well come the time to make their X. This here
is no ‘normal’ world.
What we have to understand is one plus one isn’t necessarily
always equal to two. I do believe this will change but not anytime soon.
I watched a clip the other day. It was all an act where a
black guy comes to a barber shop and his white girlfriend comes to wait for him
and there is a black hairdresser lady giving the white lass a hard time cos she
is white and with a black man (these 3 characters are all actors, but the
patrons of the salon aren’t). The reaction of the people in the salon is
exactly what we need right now in this here country of ours.
We need to get off our high horses and realize that we need
each other to move forward in a constructive manner. One half judging the other
won’t solve any of our woes. Being at polar opposite ends of the spectrum will
assist us none. We need to rise as a collective. When a black person walks past
your car, he is not necessarily going to rob you. White people aren’t nice to
you because they have an agenda. We need to rise above this but it requires
both sides coming together and working together and trusting each other. But
the sad thing is from what I see it’s not the will. The minority do not trust
the majority and after what the majority suffered at the hands of the minority
it is very understandable, but its 20 years on and no real ills have begotten
the minority right? They continue to live as they used to. Crime is on the
rise, oh well we pay ship our cash into offshore accounts, pay ADT, get beams
in the garden, build higher walls, because we can, but what of the crime that
besets Vuyani in Diepkloof, aint got no money for high walls, ADT. But yet we
are more than happy to pay lip service to BEE etc. because it must be done so
we will just pay what we need to pay so we can tick the box. Instead of seeing
it as a real opportunity to make a real and telling difference.
We need to sincerely tear down these self-imposed/constructed
Walls of Jericho we build around ourselves. Make a sincere effort with all
around us. Your helper, your gardener, petrol attendant, beggar on the street…
aren’t beneath you, they may be less fortunate in some ways than we are (more
fortunate in others), but they aren’t less human. They aren’t fools or idiots,
they perhaps just didn’t have the same opportunities you had.
One thing to always remember is hate begets hate…right? Sing
with me now...what the world needs now, is love sweet love J
have a fabulous week all.
