Time to act together in earnest
We are perpetually caught up in the nightmare that will not go away, for the foreseeable future, whatever the utterances of those who are responsible for causing it in the first place
“AT THE Rendezvous of victory, there is a place for all of us” (the late Steve Bantu Biko).
This was clearly an aspirational statement, not a statement of fact, otherwise we will say we were lied to.
A rendezvous is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “a prearranged or regular meeting place.”
Steve Biko and all the student leaders of our time, like Barney Pityana, Harry Nengwenkulu, Henry Isaacs, Onkgopotse Tiro, Thenjiwe Mtintso, Edna Van Harte, Saths Cooper, Thoko Mpumlwana, Mamphela Ramphele, Strini Moodley, Mapetla Mohapi, Bennie Khoapa and many other Black Consciousness leaders had this bright future in their minds, which made us, as their followers, in the early ’70, when raising the clenched black fist in the air, believe that freedom was around the corner.
It would take another 20 years before our dreams were realised, that we arrived at the rendezvous of victory, in 1994. What do you do when a dream turns into a nightmare, you end up waking up, and are relieved that this was happening in a dream, not in real life.
But when it happens in real life, it is a completely different story. My wife and I fell in love at ages 17 and 18 respectively, where we met at Mnandi Beach, here in Cape Town, and got married seven years later, by mercy and grace, 48 years later this year, we are still madly in love.
For entertainment in those days, we loved movies and used to go either to Kismet Cinema in Athlone or The Luxurama, in Wynberg. We once went to watch a movie called: Neither the Sea nor the Sand about exorcism, which we knew nothing about.
The advert showed a young couple, happy, in love, playing happily and romantically, as young people in love do, on a pristine beach, which resonated with us, as love birds too.
However, the movie turned into a nightmare, with a ghost wreaking havoc. My wife would put her head down, and ask me what was going on, on the screen, and I too ended up looking away. Some coloured youngsters who were sitting behind us, nudged me saying in Afrikaans: “Nee’ broer, jy het mos betaal vir die’ ding, kyk, di’s jou geld …”
I was not impressed. We had the option of standing and walking out of the movie, but we endured the torment to the end, perhaps hoping it was going to change, again into something of the romance we came to see.
It never did. But what happens, when your rendezvous, in real life, like what we are experiencing now in South Africa turns into a nightmare whose end is not in sight?
Even before the dawn of our democracy, it was easy for us to believe our leaders when they pointed us to a future state of affairs, that was in contrast, to what we were experiencing, it resonated with our aspirations, but the reality was otherwise: oppression, racial discrimination, social degradation, humiliation and economic exploitation, segregated residential areas, trains, buses, beaches, shops, post offices, hotels, everything made you feel you were not human.
It all contrasted with what was in our hearts – the longing and yearning for freedom.
Come our freedom, our hopes were still high, that our nightmare, was going to turn into a place of victory for all of us, each sitting under his or her own fig tree, as it were.
But alas! The last 28 years have proven all of us wrong. We are in the very belly of the beast, even the biblical Jonah had a better hope than we have.
We are perpetually caught up in the nightmare that will not go away, for the foreseeable future, whatever the utterances of those who are responsible for causing it in the first place.
Some were at the helm when it all unfolded, they aided and abetted it, and others watched it happen, when they could have stopped it in its tracks, they did not do anything, now here we sit, stranded, not knowing where help is going to come from, like people trapped in the middle of a wild desert, with wind storms blowing violently against them, incessantly.
What do we do when our rendezvous has turned into a nightmare? This is not imaginary, it is real. Everything is falling apart, our rail system has collapsed on our watch, our road infrastructure is in tatters, our aviation is no longer something we can be proud of like before, our cities, towns and hamlets are overflowing with people, where no infrastructure exists to carry them, both those coming from their own rural areas and those fleeing from their countries, in search of better opportunities for livelihoods.
Crime has ballooned and it is out of control, corruption has pervaded every facet of society, security guards are no longer reliable, the police are accomplices and partners in the commission of crimes, in fact fuelling it by supplying criminals with weapons to commit further crimes, levels of crime are unprecedented instilling a deep sense of insecurity in everybody all around the place.
Eskom and electricity blackouts have become the new normal, projected to be so into the foreseeable future.
Now sewer is flowing into the seas in places like Durban and Cape Town, known to attract large numbers of visitors, local and from abroad, to such an extent that some beaches are closed because of high levels of contamination. In homes there is unprecedented levels of alcohol abuse, such that nineyear-olds are introduced into the use of alcohol by reckless parents and grandparents. Their future is compromised.
We have nowhere to turn, as the very people who betrayed our trust are doing everything possible to woo, especially the poor, unsuspecting members of the public, whose votes they desperately need to continue in power.
Between now and election time, they will be criss-crossing the country, spending huge sums of money on food parcels for the poor to endear themselves for their votes, making promises they know as they are making them, they will not fulfil.
It would seem that on our own strength, we might not be able to extricate ourselves from the humongous quagmire we find ourselves trapped in. We certainly need the hand of Providence to help us out of it.
On the occasion of handing back land that was taken away from the Khoi and the San, reflecting on the burden of restitution of their human dignity, former president Thabo Mbeki, still a deputy president then, on March 21, 1999, had this to say:
“We shall mend the broken strings of the distant past so that our dreams can take root for the stories of the San and the Khoi have told us that this dream is too big for one person to hold. It must be dreamed collectively, by all the people.
“It is by acting together, by dreaming together – by mending the broken strings that tore us apart in the past – that we shall, all of us, produce a better life for you who have been the worst victims of oppression…”
If ever there was a time, when as a nation, we were called to act together, it is now, when all of us are subjected to indignities that know no colour, class, social standing and all the usual barriers that divide people.
The nightmare will only go away and for us to see a new day, only when we act and work together in earnest, to rid ourselves of the strings of corruption that have ravaged our lives. The hour is calling upon us to come up with a new dispensation that will take the country to a new trajectory and never be captured again by any forces of darkness in the future.
The task before us is to rebuild our society, rebuild our communities, our neighbourhoods and our families, ourselves as individuals with values that guide us from day to day.