As I read media reports of the president of the ANCYL going to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe to "study" and "learn" about nationalization from the failed state of Zimbabwe? [Zimbabwe, the classic case study of how to run a once thriving nation into the ground]. I’m thinking what a quick learning boy. After all birds of the same feather naturally flock together. He can export and import more politics of factionalism and hatred.
Also I hear the nazists leader of the AWB is dead, from the hand he refused to feed.
With all this I’m reminded of the biblical tail titled ‘the prodigal son’, where a son demands his inheritance from his father and go squander it with harlots and drunkards only to realise later on his left with nothing and forced to feed with swines.
That’s the feeling I get when I look to the new generations of the likes of Julius Malema, who never really fought for the fruits of liberation they’ve inherited. Like the prodigal son they’re spending its capital on hooliganism they call the revolution.
Most people are baffled as how is it possible that such an obvious buffoon can get away with so much and with seeming impunity. Well, I’m not really surprised, even pygmies, when standing on the shoulders of giants can destroy the vision of the nation, or at least block its view. What is needed is for those who can see through the internal light to nuture and share with others until the whole nation can see.
For those of us who grew up in the township during the early eighties are now again getting a sense of dejavu, of having been here before. We remember how the criminals hijacked the liberation struggle then for their ends, until our communities, through organisations like United Democratic Front and Black Conscious Movement, stood up to reclaim back their communities.
Then too the criminals and opportunists spoke the language of populists and liberation, but people eventually saw through them. The same is happening now. Nothing will change until we all become the change we want to see.
The best way to counteract the bad effects of populism, lawlessness and the eventual breakdown of the constitutionalist balance is not to be part of it. To be an example. Changing things is a myth where the rot has settled, the transparent bias in that case is always towards greater and deeper decay.
It is getting clear now that the best of what has been thought and said in the world is being lost to the vulgar, unfeeling, greedy, virtueless world of commerce, consumerism and politics. Of course in Malema’s suedo revolutionary language it called making history. They confuse history with dust raising.
History is never plotted, and its ramifications are complex. It might appear as though unfolding chaotically in a given political but when you dig deeper you see a strata of order in both its public and personal dimensions.
The chaos of history has its own galvanizing potential. Though seemingly prone to the vain it tends to be resistant to triumphal vulgarism and political chauvinism in the end. Perhaps it is of our advantage that the likes of Malema never realise this until it is too late for them. Their type can only learn against the rock and when they are no longer in the pedestal they fluked with shenanigans.
Helen has come in now. I must move away from this sterile topic and hard desk to try and recapture what is, at this stage, best about our lives. [We’re going to lunch at Noerdhoek, driving through the enchanting Chapman’s Peak. Isn’t it wonderful that we are still able to delve into the world's ordinary enchantment even under conditions of emotional intensity?
When I sat at this desk I was trying to catch the creative vein, rediscover my love for storytelling but was led astray by the flattening narrative of our time and a spike of emotional intensity as watch my country descend slowly into … (ah come on, these are no times to be despondent but to confront the strictures of our era with courage. I know enough about the history of this country to know this kind of things happens all the time, and no matter how long we dangle on the abyss we always find our way back].
I’ll have that glass of Sauvignon Blanc now, La Motte to be specific; after all I’m by now complete bourgeoisie.
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