Random Inertia and Sarcasm

Tomorrow is Wednesday and marks three weeks since I left India. Today Princess Caroline of Monaco visited President Mandela and the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) covered the meeting extensively.

The SABC is the propoganda mouthpiece of the government. Just like in the days when whites dominated all spaces.

I thought about domination yesterday when I was in Bloemfontein. Indians were not allowed to be in Bloemfontein for more than 24 hours when whites folks ruled.

The law did not apply to me because I was then, and now, registered as a coloured. Neither did the law apply to my mother. She was, and still is, registered as a Cape Malay. My dad is the Indian the white folks wanted to keep from contaminating Bloemfontein.

And ain't it strange that white folks eat, then and now, what they think is curry in Bloemfontein. My dad, on the other hand, does not like curry. Is this an example of irony?

Did I mention that Bloemfontein literally translates into flower-fountain; or that Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) was formed in Bloemfontein in 1912; and that J.R. Tolkien, of "Lord of the Rings" fame, was born in Bloemfontein?

Ummm ... OK, just 'humus' me like I did.

Yesterday a SABC report said that Bloemfontein is the best place to live and raise children in post-apartheid South Africa.

Why, you may ask?

Well it seems that there is little crime in Bloemfontein. Apartheid kept it too pure to be dysfunctional like say ... Kimberley.

Kimberley is where my dad was robbed at a Nedbank ATM on a Wednesday afternoon while people looked on.

As I left Bloemfontein for the 2 hour drive back to Kimberley I saw a truck transporting a Nedbank ATM. It was headed toward Kimberley.

Did you know that Nedbank was the first South African bank to offer computerized banking? They did so during the apartheid era (1964) and only white folks were allowed to be tellers. I must tell my dad when he wakes up tomorrow morning.

Oh yes, my good friend Kimberly wrote to me from the US today ... she sent me this very apt picture and quote:













I like Kimberly, a lot. Everytime I write to her I spell her name Kimberley ... which is wrong. She is Kimberly ... the principled woman who never supported Bush even when everyone hissed 'cause the Dixie Chicks talked stuff about his whack ass. Now the Grammy's love the Dixie Chicks. "But ain't that America ... the land of the" dupliciteeee.

Remember though when Bush was elected by a 51% margin the second time (ummmm he stole the first election) a good number of folks apologized to the rest of the world like this woman below:













I lost all my faith in the US with that second election. And then the Clintons supported the war in Iraq. Not like Barack Hussein Obama who does not support the war now. Though he supported the Patriot Act then, and again, with his vote to renew it.

After the second election I could relate to the woman in this picture:

















While I drove my Citi Golf in Bloemfontein the SABC had a call-in show about reconciliation. Well then this white man called in and prefaced himself by saying that he was definately "not a racist" but that he lived "in fear of Blacks."

I wondered again why so many whites fear Blacks. Geez, you would think that we stole 'em from Europe, put 'em on ships, enslaved 'em, raped and murdered 'em for 6 centuries. And to crown it all, we barred 'em from a town called Bloemfontein.

Whites should not live in fear anymore. We South African Blacks love 'em.

They should however fear those other Africans who make our country so violent and corrupt. So white people should join us while we embark on xenophobic raids like we did today against those unsavory Somalis. We are against other Africans. They don't belong in South Africa.

In fact, from now on, the term should be hyphenated to other-Africans ... "other" with a small 'o' cause we still claim the big 'O' "Other" when we want to beat whites into further post-colonial guilt.

Did I mention that President Mandela is married to the widow of the first president of free Mozambique, Samora Machel? She is different though and a credit to other-Africans. Kinda like Obama is a credit to Blacks in America, being that he is articulate and all ... just like Joe Biden said.

Our education minister, Naledi Pandor, is talking on the SABC as I write. She is hatching a plan to bring white expats (those who left because of us) back to South Africa. Ain't it an empowerment gem that our Black nationalist government recognizes that we need white expats to save us from ourselves (and of course those other-Africans).

Begging them to come back means that we are not above kissing their asses. Dammit, we forgive the "baas" and the "missies" and won't even bring up the time when they put a collective cap in our Black asses. And the other times when they did it again, and again.

In fact, we should take a leaf out of the old country's Bloemfontein exclusion policies and allow other-Africans into South Africa for no more than 24 hours.

Did I mention that other-Africans are mostly the ones who commit all the crime in South Africa? In fact, not only do they look different than us, they smell different, and we superior Blacks are sure they are terrorists too!

Oh, and don't forget thay they steal our jobs and drain our economy. Like those Mexicans do in America.

So we should take a leaf from Bush and put those other-Africans behind electric fences when we don't use them for cheap labor. We should also detain those whom we think are terrorists and put them on an Island without charges. Like Bush does on Gitmo, or like the apartheid government did on Robben Island.

Did I mention that I got home to Kimberley from Bloemfontein on just under a quarter tank of gas? I think it helped that I listened to Marley's "Redemption Song" in-between the news reports from the SABC.

Tomorrow is only Wednesday, not cupid's day. I was born on a Wednesday just after midnight. Ummmm ... Lauren if you send me candy or flowers tomorrow it will be because tomorrow is Wednesday.

A Wednesday that looks a lot like those apartheid Wednesdays we thought we left behind in 1994.

Ummmm yeah ... it's like that still.