Pledge to restore severed relations

THROUGH I address South Africa with this challenge. Let’s pledge to rebuild severed ties and mend broken bridges in 2019.

You cannot ingest and digest food without thoroughly chewing and masticating it. If you habitually swallow it, be prepared for indigestion.

Our challenges are unique to our history. We need to engage in truth-seeking reconciliation or else we’re on a path to stagnation. We have to find each other in the light of that.

Relieved of the propagated doomsday, 1994 and beyond filled us with the opium of Mandela, who whispered to us to find each other. In that euphoria, we left it to the parliamentary babel to find the solutions we needed to find.

But first, in a country torn apart from domestic violence, we need to find and embrace God through scripture and teachings of His messengers.

You cannot know where and how to find God without sifting facts from fabrication, without studying and understanding the original scriptural testament.

We must set aside blinkered perceptions and prejudices to do that.

As a Muslim, I believe that this is what Moulana Jalalu’ddin Rumi and, before him, Imam Ahmed Ghazali all the way to the Master Muhammad (PBUH) got humankind, with a propensity to stray off-course, to do; to slowly and deliberately chew and masticate the truth of their message, to ingest and be nourished by the goodness.

That’s why God sent messengers to all parts of the world to warn us of the dangers and to prescribe remedies. As free agents, we’re free to accept or reject their offerings, their solutions. Many of you reading this have done so.

Yes, the challenges are awesome but achievable. Let’s pledge to make 2019 the year of rebuilding and rekindling relationships and ties.