Matshiqi's dream just that

In a powerful and emotional article, Aubrey Matshiqi tells us what he is against: the whites, whose more modern and efficient culture conquered most of Africa. And he is particularly concerned about SA.

The land was not stolen, its peoples were conquered — just as the minor Zulu tribe in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, led by the brilliant but bloody strategist Chaka, conquered its neighbours, slaughtered their men and took possession of their wives, land and cattle, so establishing what became the Zulu empire.

The more interesting thing for Matshiqi to tell us is: what he is for? Apparently, a society based on communalism, the lands currently settled by the Zulus to be under the control of a medieval-

style monarch such as King Zwelithini (the heir of Chaka), the rest of the country under other such traditional leaders.

How does he envisage that this society will develop in our modern age of universal capitalism and individual land ownership, that this scenario is possible? What credible alternative does he have to offer?

Sadly, one must conclude that Matshiqi appears to be no more than a romantic, dreaming of the virtues of a long-lost past of people in skins, mud huts, large cattle herds and armed with stabbing spears, led by kings and their sangoma influencers.

Robert Stone Linden