Outpouring of grief false and hypocritical
DEATH is our constant companion. He never leaves our side. Sometimes he strikes suddenly; at other times he bides his time. But eventually he must strike. Young or old, rich or poor, he cares not who you are but marches you off to his dreary abode.
Yet we hardly give death a thought. Too busy with our lives we forget death may come knocking at our door. So it was with Winnie Mandela. While she lived the ANC didn’t care whether the mother of the nation existed or not. But now she’s dead she’s suddenly come alive. Lo and behold, how the ANC has woken up from its slumber and cries so loudly for its mother. Only now it realises how important Winnie was to the liberation movement. Speaker after speaker, speech after speech, hour after hour, they heaped praise on her, shedding copious tears before the cameras. Hollywood would not have done it better.
Funerals bore me to death. So much time is spent praising the dead. The poor soul lying cold and stiff in his coffin cannot hear anything; all the glorious words being said.
But still we go on crying, singing and eulogising the departed soul. From Shakespearian times they have not changed. Remember Mark Antony’s famous oration at Julius Caesar’s funeral, how cleverly he turned the crowd against the assassins, Brutus and Cassius?
“Friends, Romans and countrymen,
Lend me your ear.
I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”
Julius Malema thought he was Mark Antony and used Winnie’s death to rub salt into the wounds and turn the masses against the ANC.
It’s hard to fault the great bard but I cannot agree with him when he says: “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with the bones.”
Death is painful. But the outpouring of grief is a show of remorse, at times genuine, but also often false and hypocritical.
Not a bad word was spoken at Winnie’s funeral. It’s the way with all funerals. We care more for the dead than for the living. THYAGARAJ MARKANDAN
Silverglen