Happily shackled to the rainbow

Since 2009 when he blazed on to the political and media scene in 2009, a year after his election, Julius Malema has left tongues wagging with his extreme and outlandish behavior, so when he sang “Dubul’ Ibhunu” I was less than surprised far less surprised as I was to see how easily South Africans relinquish the freedom they fought so hard for in an effort to continue building the monument under the proverbial rug.

After 1994, it has never really been cool to know the difference between black and white or so much as notice or acknowledge the existence of race in South Africa. Instead a pretty rainbow has been painted over our gloomy and prejudice past marred with racism, shame and hatred. Our differences and apprehension disguised in a curious brotherhood and perpetual awe of the colorful and musical, the adventurous and outgoing, you people.

So of course dear uneducated Julius Malema should get a slap on the wrist for dragging up the ghastly past and causing all those uncomfortable trips in the elevator and sideways glance in the class rooms, grocery stores, petrol stations, corridors, clubs... and upsetting everyone.

The change of instant change of perception is incredible and ridiculous! In 2010 the ANC, and his regal loudness, Julius Malema campaigned for the bounding of public expression and attempted to muzzle the press. Naturally there was a public uproar, accusing the government of infringing on freedom of expression and being counter democratic.

Then how is it that limiting public expression to exclude “offensive language” in any way democratic?

Granted, there is no place for racism and criminality (including murder or the intention to murder) but the singing of a song cannot rationally be considered criminal, in a country songs about sexual violence and hatred , murder and sexism are imported from all over the world to do more harm to the young than Julius Malema could ever dream . Why should we silence our own hatred and idiotic “threats” only to import a worse kind and put it on high rotation?

We cannot shut people up because we do not like what they are saying and call ourselves democratic. If we are to have the freedom of expression then let us express our intelligence and stupidity , our love and our hatred , our confusion and our understanding our difference and where we come from because after all it is what we have won , it is what so many have sacrificed and died for .

My very own 9/11/11 terror

I woke up on Sunday morning, switched on the T.V and knew I had died and gone to America. As if every bad thing I've ever done was counting against me and this was it. Funny, I thought, not much going on on the fire and brimstone front t but the torture is real.

 I wasn’t in hell or America , thank goodness, just witness to yet another day of SABC re-runs on one of those not so current , current event programmes. Close enough.

It was a real tragedy, 9/11, a real show of injustice and the vulnerability of the ordinary man in the mindless games of the malicious and powerful. It reminded us all of the frailty of life, how it can change in a matter of seconds, it showed the world how valuable every single life is and how the death of even one man can change the entire course of history.

… So I’m not talking about the attack on the twin towers in America, however tragic the even was (and is) it is irrelevant, to South African’s at least. With such a rich and inspirational history of tragedy and terror the attack on the twin towers seems a little like the bone in the water in comparison to our own 9/11 story.

On August 18^th 1977 Steve Bantu Biko was arrested and detained under suspicion of terrorism for his activism against the system of apartheid in South Africa. On September 11^th (9/11) he was beaten for his pride and cut down for what he stood for by the all-powerful and non-accountable police.  Steve Biko became the 41^st person to die in police custody on the 12^th of September 1977.

The more recent Death of Andries Tatane at the hands of South Africa’s finest men in blue and the string of similar stories of police brutality and law enforcer’s indifference to the marginalisation of the majority surely point to the daily relevance of South Africa’s own history, our present and our very own war against terror.

Too often South African’s undermine their own relevance in favour of mirages of victory and belonging. Don’t drop your bone, no matter how small and dry, for the one in the water. It isn’t real and you most certainly can never have it.