I wear my South Africaness with pride! I am forgiveness personified. The world hails me as those with an unprecedented capacity to forgive to biblical proportion. From the womb of the beautiful motherland I’ve produced a many martyrs,gallant sons and daughters of the soil who did not budge in the face of hatred of the worse kind. To this end, nobody’s struggle equals mine! What insanity…
I am, but only aware of a select few of those who the world hails as the liberators! That is, the world knows me more than I know myself. And I jealously guard and am beyond convinced that no other previously oppressed dare compete with me on this stage. Isn’t being oppressed a competition after all? Anyway, I am South African. Ask me anything, I know Mandela yet I don’t know him…
I forgot Nkrumah, I forgot Lumumba, I know Sankara now that everybody says Sankara, I only know Mugabe as a tyrant and Shaka and em just bloodthirsty savages, in fact any other heroes and heroines of the land bother me only to extents that a recrudescent revolution occurs in those backwards countries in Africa. “Why don’t these people look at us, look at how amicably we get along here, the white man recognizes us as equal human”. That’s what it is all about after all right? That recognition is life in my eyes. Who am I? South African!
I am South African! Get it? South of Africa! I am not in Africa, I am on the South of that backwards Africa. I vehemently dislocate myself from myself…Anybody who isn’t enclosed within these god forsaken borders is from “Africa”, this I occasionally, be it subconsciously or otherwise, say under heavy breath! I am far removed from myself, I think i am more white than I am black… “I think therefore I am”, don’t they say that?
I am the embodiment of the worse possible capitulation. In my head, as though I am not in control, the thought is to perennially prove to white that i am equal to them. It never occurs that I’ve to manifest this positive thought towards myself and worry less about the white man. I’d draw satisfaction if they can only admit this truth. If only they can allow me to be in their boring and robotic circles. Simultaneously, I’ve to fight off these “Africans” making it impossible for me to attain this goal. These whites are in my land and I’ve thus far made progress, or at least my useless knowledge of history offered by people who benefit from my oppression hold!
Who are you if you are not South African? What pride is there in being “SOUTH AFRICAN” if that means I hate my brothers?
This is Azania and by extension I am more related to those whose epidermis I’m similarly endowed with. Until we South African’s learn to unwear this mask crafted for our special purpose by those who want to rule over us, freedom is only a facade; we are lulled and will possibly forever never learn what it entails to be free!
afropomorphism 