Take me back to 1976...

---“I want the war to be over, the hate to be over. I want to come home to kindness. Freedom is just the beginning, think bigger…the prison door opens; the prisoner walks free, what then?”--- Whoopi Goldberg

Technically it is still exam time but I have given in, the cherry has popped and I can’t resist the urge to steal some time out to this tranquil space of peaceful rants and mental riots.



The Youth of 1976 toiled in struggle....



I just watched the critically acclaimed South African movie Sarafina which was set in the apartheid regime. Forget the fact that I watched this movie over ten times in my teenage years and focus on the fact that today it made me cry. I’m sitting typing this with tears welled in my eyes, my spirit replete with pride and my heart with anger, I’m sitting here but my thoughts are back in ’76. Right now I have escaped my own self and I am Steve Biko sitting in the back of that police van enduring strike after fist after kick, right now I am no longer a 22 year old rolling in privileges, no sir, today I am Nelson Mandela as I sit at Robben Island, eyes feeding on the doors of my prison cell hoping to witness the chains come free, symbolizing the same for my people. Just for today, I am Lillian Ngoyi back in 1956, I am fed up of being denied my basic human rights and I am about to lead 20 000 women in a protest march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria. Nomhlanje I am Hector Pieterson cradled in the arms of my fellow blaque brother as he and my sister flee from the torment that will end up killing me. Just for today, for now, for this moment, I am struggle, I am pain, I am hurt and I am fed up.

Just for today; I am worried, I am scared, I am anxious about our future. Today I worry for the black mans peace, kaloku I wish back the rebel-hood of our ancestors, I am scared of how the story unfolds and I fear that we will remain trapped. I look around and I see shackles, I ask around and I still sense fear, I speak out loud, I scream, shout but I get hushed.

Now the prison cell has flung open and suddenly there was ‘peace’, our prisoners are set free and we are somewhere caught up in singing their praises and salutations so much that we forget that there is still a final lap to this so called freedom. Biko’s spirit went back home, his bones were rested and somehow we forgot. Mandela was released, he returned to us and so we felt the need to over glorify him, we named everything after him, streets, bridges, bays, universities, we gave his face to money. It all seems to have eluded the spheres of our minds and we sing a brand new song, the lyrics to Nkonyana Kandaba have slowly slipped away, a fedile mathata a Afrika because it is no longer tomorrow, it is today and freedom has come, right? No. Wrong.

These are the days where the only chant we know is “each man is on his own” and because of this, freedom will never come. So long as we waste the gift of our liberation on sparking new conflicts against one another. When in the dawn of democracy, the ANC is going at DA, the LCD taking jabs at the DC and when communists, liberalists and manipulate-ists are constantly on each others necks about one thing or another then my people will remain in abyss of poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, hiv/aids and ridiculously wide economic margins.

Take me back to those times because I do not want to be here, at a time where we are supposed to unite as Afrikans and rake away the forces that still keep us captive we would rather fight amongst ourselves, I want nothing to do with this era where a brown envelope is all it takes to buy our freedom, take me out of here and back to a time when fists were thrown in the air as a tool of empowerment not on one another in a club where a skhothane isn’t wearing shoes that are expensive enough to reserve him an ounce of respect from the useless ballots of his peers.

Bring back the days when enough was enough, where the people were afraid to speak but even more afraid to stay silent, I will gladly take a day that was filled with purpose, with drive and with a passion to save Afrika, a passion entrenched so far into the spirits of those we owe our freedom to that no amount of tjambok strikes or gun bullets would have stopped them. Re-introduce to us, the days of our fore fathers, where their peaceful nature was their own demise, I want nothing to do with this misery and strife between our own, what happened to the days when united we stood and divided we fell? I fail to comprehend the structures of this system that claims to be free yet is still so plagued with multiple social ills.

I cannot stand to be a part of a generation that will go down in the books of Afrikan history as the inventors of skhothane lifestyles, extreme corruption and the fatal death of ubuntu.

       

Beloved, come with me to the days when we were one and together we could accomplish anything, even the full emancipation of Africa.

 



So that the Youth of 2012 could do this.



Until next post,

Africa Rising, Peace & Revolution...