Stuck in the mud... dead in the water...

In the last few days I have begun to accept more and more that South Africa is a nation divided... where race used to be the greatest cleavage, class and socio-economic status has comfortably replaced it.. much to the chagrin of those who coined the term way back when we have "redefined" apartheid... So much so that if you are a poor, black African living in one of the biggest shanty towns in the world, best believe your death is meaningless. The "investigation" into your death will be conducted by a novice desk officer and nothing will come of it.. On the other {manicured} hand, if you are a touring foreigner, visiting Africa to experience the glamourisation of poverty, rest assured yours will be the "death of the year"...or at least the week...



Yet... EVERYDAY... every single darn day.. at least one murder is committed in this country... at LEAST... most of the perpetrators never make it to the dock and may kill again... the few who do find themselves in court will mostly be acquitted - usually on a technicality, sometimes because despite clear witness testimony "there just wasn't enough evidence" to convict - and often because prosecuting these poor murderers is "a waste of state resources"... after all the NPA has the murderer of big fat fish like Brett Kebble to deal with! Even in death some animals are more equal than others... *oink*



While my heart and thoughts go out to the family and friends of the deceased honeymooner, I can't help but think of her as an unwilling martyr, one whose death has in some way got people talking about the rampant violent crime within these borders in which we find ourselves... The media... the vultures that they are, have found a carcass upon which to feast once more.. {The pun, while regrettable is purely intentional}...and we - the public - can {re}start to think about crime in South Africa...



After months of living in a relative state of psychological safety after the South African Police Service (SAPS)'s head honcho released data showing that there was a marked decline in the incidence of violent crime, we were once again reminded that we are in danger... So, please go back to locking your doors {your car, your flat, your office, even the trap door from which words spew every day... lock EVERY door} because WE ARE NOT SAFE.. Were we ever? Seriously. Were we?



It took the hijacking and killing of a Brit for us to be woken up from our self-induced slumber or complacency to realise that crime is real.. it was real BEFORE the honeymooners ventured into Gugulethu and it will continue to be real for minutes, hours, days, months, years to come if we do not commit ourselves to addressing the root cause of our societal malaise.



As bad a series as it is, I can't help but think of "Ghost Whisperer"! With all the restless souls purportedly floating somewhere close to the Ozone layer hoping their killer will be brought to justice, it would explain the growing cancer eating our society up... I'll bet my love-handles PW Botha is smiling his wry crocodile smile right now, rubbing his wrinkled hands somewhere in the doldrums of an imagined hell, thinking "I DID leave a legacy!"...


In the words of my friend Kwezi {duly tagged to avoid plagiarism charges}: "Township blacks you can kill other township blacks fine, but kill a tourist and that will be bad for income and we will set up a tourist desk, and give tourists an escort every time they are going into a dangerous area. fuck that shit."



So? Does anyone else see the elephant in the room? We painted it in rainbow colours in 1994, but we were too fixated with the idea of finally being "democratic" that we neglected to chase the damn mammal out! Trouble with elephants is they need to be constantly fed... I vote we get rid of the damn thing... the stench of its dung is not good for the house in which we live... though it will linger for a few more years, at least it will eventually go... right?

Do you know the one you love?

So... I've told myself that by the time I'm 30 I want to have visited at least half of the African countries... because I cannot continue to claim that I love this continent if I do not know it intimately... If I have not laughed with the Dinka at dusk, danced with the Masai at dawn or eaten amongst the pyramids like those from the House of Ptolemy .. I have told myself that until then, Africa will be the love I speak about, the love I hope to know, the one with whom I shall spend the rest of my life... but not that I truly love... not yet...



Yes, I am committed to my continent...It is here that I was born and it is here that I shall take my last breath... until then.. until the day I return to the bowels of the African earth, I will fight for it and help to make it strong... and when Africa has risen from its ashes and stands up high, I will creep into the shadows and watch my love shine... not because I do not want to be seen with it, but because I want the rest of the world to fall in love with it the way I have.. to see it's beautiful face and dare not lift a gun to tear it to shreds... to see it's evergreen glow and want to nurture it all the days of their life... What is love, but a selfish emotion if it is not shared? But, let me not contradict myself, I cannot claim to love Africa yet... I do not know it...



So, I ask you... do YOU know the one you "love"? Do you know their mind? their body? their soul? their essence? If you don't... how dare you claim to love them? How very dare you?

Oh when the defeated wail...

S/he (the gender is irrelevant really) said as s/he lay curled in a foetal position watching the assailant drift away: "I now know what it feels like to have the wind punched out of you... I imagined that after the pain there would be relief... but there isn't... there is an empty numbness... an unanswered question... a scream caught in the lungs and failing to get out.. I now know what it feels like to have the wind punched straight out of you...


I ask myself whether this feeling would be there if just seconds before the punch I had not been in debilitating mental ecstasy.. a state of self induced euphoria.. I was daydreaming.. my guard was down. Any other day that punch would not have made its way to my diaphragm, it would have died an early death in the grasp of my agile hand. Today it didn't. It couldn't. It - like the rest of me - was caught off guard.. I was happy or so I thought... I know now what I didn't know before I was awoken from my blissful slumber.. Happiness is but an illusion.. when the veil is lifted by the punch of reality, there is no sorrow... there is just an empty numbness... an unanswered question.. "Why me?" "


These are not my words... I wrote them, but it is not me speaking... they are the words of a defeated subconscious.. Whose? I do not know.. Whoever s/he may be s/he should be your exact opposite... so as you read this - again - think in reverse.. For whoever this may be failed to take heed of one of the most fundamental lessons.. that as you soar, remember that at some stage you must land. Do not let the illusion of your own "greatness" cloud your vision of reality. With clear vision and awareness that the higher you are the more painful your fall, you will find that "failure" is nothing more but a lesson of which you must take due cognisance if you are to move up. move forward. grow. excel.

Those rose-tinted glasses: Shall I watch my Zimbabwe whither?

I love my country... I'm sure my previous rant about my Zim pride shows that enough. However, I find myself feeling terribly helpless when news from home reaches me or when I am deeply disturbed by images of poverty and strife. And yet, here I am self-professed humanitarian and human rights activists deciding that I'd rather another year here in South Africa than face the vagaries of home. I wish there was something I could do, but all my parents have taught me is the "flight" before "fight".... How you ask?
When ESAP hit my beautiful country... our family moved to Switzerland, we stayed there until - it only makes sense to me now - the drought years seemed over.. And then in 2000, there was a Constitutional Referndum and white commercial farmers were dispossessed of their land... my family moved to France. I am not using my own parents cowardice as a veil from which to hide behind, but I am suggesting that they have inculcated in me a chicken run mentality. For can I really love Zimbabwe if subconsciously I am planning to emigrate back to my adoptive country of Switzerland upon completion of my post-graduate studies? Or am I one of those arm-chair commentators who pretend to grieve but would rather someone else sort out the problem? Am I not part of THAT generation of people that the world claims will make a change? Or have I been made to run away from that too?

I feel like a feral child where Zimbabwe is concerned, I look at it through rose tinted glasses and as it whithers I somehow see it grow. I constantly tell people what a beautiful country it is and yet I fail to understand how such a country can be filled with such complacent borderline despondent people.. Almost as if all the masochists were born to live in Zimbabwe. For how can all the action we do be signing online petitions that clearly go nowhere?

I have a nephew, poor sod was born in 2001 and thus doesn't really know the vibrant Zimbabwe of yesteryear.... who upon his first visit to what I consider the dirtiest, ugliest city in South Africa (Johannesburg), called me and said: "Aunty OT, their lights don't go off all the time here!"... It was then, that I realised I couldn't just run away from my country without some sort of a fight. I can't just sit back and watch the next generation be engulfed in the rot that is the economic and political situation of my homeland. Zimbabwe remains a beautiful country, slowly being made to decay by people whose only concern is themself.

I still feel helpless, but I shan't be for much longer... my tunnel has light at its end and I have started to run towards it, for crawling will get me there too late and bruise my knees and my ego... I am running, running back to the Zimbabwe my parents made me return to for those brief two years in 1998.