Friday, September 17, 2010

But We Are Not

A very smart, in fact brilliant, graduate student of mine I left behind at village hell university once said that it was necessary to appreciate just how damaged black people are to understand why they treat each other with such vicious disdain.

Her point traveled through my struggle consciousness only stopping briefly here and there to recall Sojourner Truth, DuBois, even Garvey, Fanon, Sobukwe, my father, and that soldier of black emancipation, Steven Bantu Biko.

She spoke the truth.

The truth we like to hide just in case YT and his agent Tom (or a figment thereof) may want to pick through our supposed freedoms and lay bare the self-hating inferiority hidden just beneath the post-colonial veneer of borrowed accents, fake hair, and flashy rides.

A veneer that can't hide the festering wound of unreconciled doubt that Don Materra says threatens to become worse even with the passing of time.

In our post-race/non-racial South Africa we have become our own worst enemy.

With knives drawn we slice and dice though our vaunted African humanism, or that thing poser black branding calls Ubuntu sometimes for no other reason but to smear guilt over YT.

Whatever sells I guess.

Ubuntu is nothing more than a load of mythical bullsh*t, a Disney like fantasy to pass time in-between fighting each other like there is only one or two slices of bread left in the whole country.

We are self-hating and self-loathing muthaz who will cut off an old lady to race through a red light or stick a burning torch into a fellow being just to be in control.

But we are not.

Onward!

Ps. Many folks were hurt in the configuration of this lamenting post, me included.

2 comments:

Nolwazi said...

Oh but we so are.

Village hell angst. Village demons fatigue.

Ridwan said...

I am sorry for the bite that burns you my sista.

You know that disease well.

Escape?

Onward!
Ridwan