THINK AGAIN Think again, when you look at my masala-hued skin and decree, “He no African”, and of your myth about my easy road to freedom when you see my swagger, my loose-limbed jiet, raucous in the New Year’s klopse karnival of the city where I was loved into being. Think again when you write my story, my essence, as a line in a chapter of the book of apartheid. When you hear the lilt of my patois and see me praise-dancing, and as I answer to Mariam, Fransiena or Shawn you sneer or sympathise, “They have no culture”. Think of this, when ensconced in your Weskus fisherman’s huisie, in your fire-logged warmth of a week-end retreat ‘neath the Langeberg or gazing from the Cape-Quartered heights of Loader Street: That I am of the first stewards of this southern distance. I am of those who sung and praised on the slopes of the Hoerikamma, blessed in the light of the new moon. I am of those who raised the spear against the Viceroy de Almeida and his marauding marines, my body a shield for my children - flesh of my flesh and of my colonial-martyred bones. And when you see me marooned on the water-logged Cape Flats, in Manenburg and in Langa, Heideveld and Nyanga, garrisoned by poverty and the lies of history - then listen in the dark of dawn for the voice that calls you to yourself. It sings of the greatness of God and of the truth that all land and all people, is not to be owned; that the goodness of the earth is to be shared as a sign and token of God’s love. Maybe then, if you fall to your knees in gratitude for a truth learnt about your acquisition of my enslaved flesh and labour indentured to your prosperity, you may learn something of the African you are: And may your thoughts guide you home to a new beginning.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 12:06:56 +0000
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