GRAND EVENTS & LITTLE ACHIEVEMENTS

(By Blu)

I sometimes think about the things I took for granted: little things that in the moment are insignificant: until they are denied.
And then the inconsequential little nothings of days gone by take on a magnified import that makes me realise that I actually wasn't present in the act of my own living.

So many years are wasted going through the motions: years that are marked by grand events and little achievements that account for mere days or sometimes even hours and no matter how hard I try, I cannot piece together what I did with the rest of the time. 

I remember how sometimes after I was paid for a big job I would withdraw a budget from the bank with which I would go out and party. The next morning after I awoke, I would check my wallet and work out where I had spent the money and for the most part I would be able to figure out almost exactly how much I had spent on what; but now I’ve discovered that I cannot do the same with time.

Huge chunks of the budget have disappeared. And not through a loss of memory, but simply because I didn’t think that what I was doing at the time was memorable enough to remember.

And another second fades away and is gone, without a backward glance and no goodbye; forever.

(From 'A Tale Of Extra Ordinary Madness')

PLEBEIAN POETRY

the metaphor was hidden

somewhere outside

beyond the border

a body slumps

into a grave

black sole

authority’s steel-tipped stiletto

proof of wrong

unconscious

not for long

the rhyme cursed the stars

drunk and damaged

too much pain

and always again just

reward for the sane

suicide of thought

dying to fit in

a lifelong subscription

advertised on a billboard

along the highway

the rhythm was having fun

supple and youthful

gambling unconcerned

cause in cacophony

a feast of energy

silent discord

made itself heard

in a drop of blood

the moment’s dew

seeping

the reason strutting

unashamedly trailing acolytes

motivation the leader

ill-conceived

proudly revealed

the emperor it seems

doesn’t need to be

clothed by impermanence

and trivialities

like plebeian poetry

NIGHT PORTRAIT

Oppression is King!

(By Donovan Ward)

Oppression: (Noun) - 1. The act of subjugating by cruelty. 2. The state of being kept down by unjust use of force or authority. 3. Arbitrary and cruel exercise of power. 4. The experience of repeated, widespread, systemic injustice.

Freedom: (Noun) - 1. The power to act, speak, or think without externally imposed restraints. 2. The capacity to exercise choice. 3. The right to enjoy all the privileges of citizenship.

“Oppression is the experience of repeated, widespread, systemic injustice. It need not be extreme and involve the legal system (as in slavery, apartheid, or the lack of right to vote) nor violent (as in tyrannical societies). Harvey has used the term "civilized oppression" to characterize the everyday processes of oppression in normal life.

Civilized oppression "is embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutions and rules, and the collective consequences of following those rules. It refers to the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a consequence of often unconscious assumptions and reactions of well-meaning people in ordinary interactions which are supported by the media and cultural stereotypes as well as by the structural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market mechanisms."” Morton Deutsch – 2005.

Thoughts on Oppression and Freedom

Ancient hunter-gatherer societies were for the most part egalitarian until about 12000 years ago. Families and clans became overpopulated tribes that could no longer be sustained from the land that had until then supported these cooperative communities. This necessitated the expansion of territory and the development of agriculture and animal husbandry.

With the accumulation of surplus food, new occupations such as traders, merchants, administrators, artisans, soldiers, and rulers emerged. Social hierarchies developed as some became more successful than others which in turn led to the reliance of the less successful communities on the more prosperous ones.

Inevitably this led to conflicts that ultimately resulted in the emergence and development of warfare.

These four little ailments that will be the death of mankind.

The new old four horsemen.

Over-population, land, agriculture and the mother fucker of them all: warfare!

Often the size of the gun doesn't hide the intent.

Base and uncouth: something I once referred to as ghetto logic when working with kids in prison. It’s the same shit on a global scale with full-blown sociopaths at the helm.

“You have what I want. If I take it I will have it and you will be okay with that or you’ll be dead! Either way, fuck you!”

In this world of the petrified, the most ruthless men are kings.

And even supposedly rational thinkers doubt the evidence, choosing to accept the cesspit called reality because
“That’s just how it is.”

And ...
“Things are the way they are.”

And...
"What can you do?”

That’s why I can be a proud human being, while not being proud of being human.

I was born in the nationalist South Africa of 1969 and I live in another nationalist South Africa in 2013. In what kind of South Africa will I die?

I am proudly Azanian but right now I am not proud of being South African. I am a proud African and yet I think Africa’s pride is being willingly bartered by everyone of us for a handful of plastic beads and baubles in the form of a religious-capitalist paradigm that serves to make us oppress ourselves and each other even as we are being oppressed.

And as for freedom, it does not exist while oppression is king.

AFRICA DAY – AGAIN

(By Banksy)

Fifty years ago on the 25^th of May 1963 the Organisation of African Unity was founded. To this day only five African countries have declared May 25 a public holiday. Only five African countries officially celebrate Africa Day!

Is that fucked up or am I just being sensitive again?

In South Africa, most of the population are unaware – loathe am I to say ignorant – that such a day even exists and if asked whether it should be declared a public holiday I am fairly certain of an ambivalent response.

Yet I do wonder…

Is it even necessary if we are unable to acknowledge the need?

And how would we decide if we haven’t thought about what the OAU set out to do?

“To promote unity and solidarity amongst the African states and to act as a collective voice for the African continent.”

Viewed in the context of what the OAU and currently the AU* has achieved – or not achieved – to fulfil this aim it would seem all too apparent why Africa Day is not a continental celebration. However, it can be argued that this very reason is why it is so important that all of Africa for once just realizes and celebrates what binds us even if it is just a geographical happenstance.

Because everything besides, what else does it mean to be African?

Is it our blackness?

Is it our continued suffering?

Is it our desperate desire to be acknowledged and accepted by our oppressors?

Is it our ability to speak their language or to adhere to and promote their designs?

Is it our capacity for love or hate?

My soul bleeds for Africa; for the African dream deferred; the African dawn delayed and forsaken.

As my brothers and sisters bow down to an Abrahamic god imposed through might of arms and force of will, I listen to the muted cries of the children mourning the death of their future.

Dying of hunger. Dying in squalor. Dying alone with a bloody bullet clenched in a weakened fist.

I search the face of the puppet leaders and liberators and I weep for what could have been; what should have been but is now no more. As they turn away from the people to smile and embrace what they have been told to be: obedient capitalist niggers.

Slaves in chains no longer because the will has been subdued. The desire to be free perverted. Enchained and enslaved by aspirations of heavenly absolution and the advertisers’ nightmare. Brightly packaged and presented with bells and whistles as the only success.

The mindless middle-class miasma.

So I hang my head in shame again at another prospect lost. An opportunity mislaid amid the trappings and distractions with which we are beset. I bow my head and shed a tear for every child, every mother and father who will die in Africa today.

* (The OAU was replaced with the establishment of the African Union on the 26^th May 2001.)

The Grain

This land was once my home.

All of this, fertile and rich, we were sustained. We knew the seasons and understood the elements, we read the stars. Our children knew their kin and shared in our stories. Without shame or judgement they grew; but now no more.

This is where I used to live. The walls, the boundary, the garden, the path; the door upon which visitors knock; the hall, the rooms and windows; the ceiling and rafters and roof; the jaded, faded memories of birth and death and life: was once mine but is no more.

These walls were once our sanctuary; a humble and homely habour from the tempests; keeping safe my family whom I loved most dear; a perfectly plain haven against the ravages of the relentless, blustering winds sweeping so much debris to these shores: our refuge no more.

This grain of sand is now my home. Just this single, tiny grain that contains all of me: my history, my reality, my dreams all contained within this single grain.

A single grain that is the mountains and the valleys, the oceans and rivers and the soil: a grain so mighty and yet so small in which the seed of my existence was planted and nourished and where I grew; but seemingly no more.

My afterbirth lies buried here in this grain with the murdered bones and the miserable torture and indignity and the tragic joy of my ancestors.

Now this single, tiny grain once again contains all of my living, all of what is me.

I am this land, the air; the mountains and the skies; the sunshine and the moon and the stars and the clouds.

The bricks, the mortar, the glass and the wood; each a moment carefully constructed. There a smile, or a tear or some laughter; a celebration, mourning, the sound of a baby crying, the final sigh of an elder dying.

This grain of sand is all that is left of my birthright.

Once a mighty mountain of resistance: now a lone wailing in the distance.

Shivering outside, exposed to the estranged elements, dying inside on the sandy wastes of cinderblock tenements.

This land is no longer my home. I have been evicted and abandoned, sacrificed as a corporate gift that includes my vote and my hopes and the dreams of my children who now live here with me in this grain of sand upon which you stand without acknowledging your oppressive weight.

My life and my living reduced to an obstruction: to your views and your plans; to your safety and security and your justice.

These walls which were once my home were bulldozed again, burying my plight along with my rights: just another District 6, Sophiatown, Cato Manor; in the name of a gentrified Woodstock, a Slum Act for Kennedy Road and State corruption in Lenasia.

Bankers and corporations buttering bread for an exclusive banquet to which we were never invited, but are expected to serve: where they discuss the economy and foreign investment between trips to the piss-house-parliament to make way for yet more gluttonous gorging where you and I are never mentioned except in passing.

I know that no one speaks about my cupboard that is bare and broken beneath the rubble that was once the walls that held up my roof over the head.

Crumbling constitutions and education is failing because already the children have learned how to mistrust and hate fate; learned that only money can change circumstance and financial success can be attained by criminal gain.

And the police force is skilled in bullying and harassment: righteous men in uniforms and suits who continue to rape and torture; prolonging the suffering of the parents who must live! so that they can repay all of their debt with interest.

State sanctioned suppression and condoned murder; the brutal companions of this insecure tenure.

And in the end I know that you will also want this tiny little grain that houses me and the misery that is all that remains of those once lofty ideals.

This single, tiny grain: the last vestige of resistance.

Woodstock, Schubert Park, Itireleng, Skurweplaas, Mooiplaas, Debonair Park, Thembelihle, Lawley, Ennerdale, Khayelitsha...

My home no more.

AbahlalibaseMjondolo!