Now, as some may or may not know, I am unashamedly and hopelessly in love with the Eastern Cape, for reasons that I could not state if I were ever to be asked.
For those that wish, here is a little schooling: the Eastern Cape is the largest province in South Africa. Home to an apparent array of tourist attractions, it boasts of nature reserves and coastal areas and views that find two of its biggest cities, East London and Port Elizabeth drawing in a significant number of tourist income into the province. However, this also happens to be one of the poorest provinces in the country.
Okay, this is not a lesson on the economical benefits or lack thereof or the geographical facts of the E.C, this perhaps is an ode to a land that I admire without reason. Of a land that has birthed some of the greatest leaders to ever bless the South African political and business arenas. This is a dedication piece, to a place that fathered sons that revolted against oppression, a land that has seen little, if any benefit for the wars fought by its children.
I see it as no coincidence that the founding fathers of the ANC, the current governing party all hailed from the grounds of the Eastern Cape. Steven Biko is the founder of the Black Conscious Movement who died in the hands of the apartheid police, who tortured and abused him to his death.
They say that every revolutionary act is an act of love, and what Biko sacrificed in the name of his peoples emancipation is high and beyond love even in its most abstract definition.
Biko's acts were not only of extreme humanness but epitomized what a true revolutionary is and stands for. A man who gave up everything else for the freedom of his people. I applaud him eternally.
Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo, more of the Eastern Cape natives who, for whatever reason, spent their entire lives fighting to ensure social stability and racial equality in the greater South Africa.
For the devotion of its sons to the fight for democracy, this is what the adaptive land of my ancestors has been reimbursed with, for the blood of Biko, the strikes of Mandela, the time of Sisulu and the sweat of Tambo, their father land has become subject to some of the highest and most shocking statistics in regard to poverty, literacy levels and hiv aids prevalence.
As if the ruling parties abundance to this land of my ancestors has not been heart striking enough, nature has also decided to forsake it through current floods in the province. A place that is accountable for the many roses that have led South Africa to its ranks today stands in danger of drowning the future concrete roses that are held responsible for protecting and taking the socio-economic and political interests of this land further.
I love rain, in the coast is where I find solace, between angry waves and tides is where my peace of mind is tucked away. And in all honesty I have been at joy with the pouring of showers from the skies in the past few days, oblivious to the fact that these same rains that I find my bliss in, are the same rains that have drowned my brothers and sisters all across this land.
I have nothing, no one binding me to these soils of iMpuma-Koloni yet my love and appreciation of this land and its people flows so deep in the valleys of my veins that it unsettles me still. I have inherited this place, for its history so rich, its people so culturally wealthy and its heritage so safely kept, I have become a part of a people that take pride in their struggles, a land that has issued world class heroes yet remains so humble, so modest and so unphased by this new South Africa that has everyone else fastened at its brims.
Until next post,
Africa Rising, Peace & Revolution...
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