Sunday, January 30, 2011

Onward!

Credit

2 comments:

Nolwazi said...

Hawu mfethu, are you really just not going to NOT SAY anything about the "Mandela-routine check-up-punctured lung-will he or won't he die- madness" going on in your beloved country? Please Ridwan, I know you can explain this better than most; and you can sum it up in one shocking sentence.

All I have to say is that South Africans are not divided along racial lines, after all. What separates us is sanity, or lack thereof. Some are sane, some are insane. If you said a prayer begging God (a very busy man by the way) to keep a 92.5 year old man alive LONGER because if he dies, heaven help us all, South Africa will break into a million little pieces, then you're nuts!

However, if you went about your business because oh well let's see now, you're: a) unemployed, trying to make ends meet; b) employed and trying to make ends ends; c) and praying for other not-so-important crises such as the implosion of the Arab African states, poverty, open toilets, relentless floods, well then there might still be hope for you yet.

I mean the year just started! What is this? What will the country be like by the time June comes around?

My aunt-in-law (yes, the ukweshwama one) has a theory. It goes like soz: Mandela died straight after the World Cup opening ceremony. That's all he'd really been living for. He's been frozen all this time and all this drama is exactly that- drama, just an act. She says it's not like it would have been the first time hiding a (former) president's death would have been done, and since we're such close friends with the Chinese, they've been teaching us all kinds of tricks.

I agree.

Ridwan said...

Hi there Nolwazi!

The blog has missed you hey.

On Mandela, I am somewhere in-between too busy to know and too amused to care.

My amusement in part stems from the fact that I listen to talk shows since I am without a TV.

OK, so 702 is now calling Madiba "the father of the nation".

That would only be true if he in fact led a revolution. The truth is he engineered alongside the Nats a troubled succession.

He fathered nothing, nada, and definitely niks ... well Zinzi and ...

I want to respect Mandela nonetheless but at the same time contextualize his contribution.

In terms of political presence in South Africa he has been 'dead' a long time ago. What we have now is a bunch of folks who trot his symbolism (constructed and reconstructed) out to manufacture any and all kinds of political agendas.

Think of that white aunty Zille who heads the Democratic Alliance. Two days ago she claimed the DA is the only party that can deliver Mandela's vision.

Huh?

Does the DA have an agenda outside of reacting to the ANC and now trying to co-opt even there living symbol?

I can't say that all the stuff about being un-African and asking what was going on with Mandela did not add further humour and humus to my last few days.

I was however more struck by the drivel in the weekend City Press where garden variety ass-holes of the under-thirty type were giving school on what is black and what is African.

I found out there that I am neither.

Then yesterday I saw Kunene eating Shushi off a white model's body and I thought - if that is the new black and African I am OK hey.

Onward! and sorry for missing you earlier.

Peace,
Ridwan