Month: March 2016

A Priest in Doubt

I have whispered prayers to you

And you have chosen not to do

As I have asked

 

I have called for you on my knees

Done all I was told to keep you pleased

Still you remain masked

 

I have forgone sex and normality

All to keep your company

And so remain alone

 

I have confessed my heart empty,

Looked for you everywhere you could be

And still see no throne

 

I have preached of your great light,

Knowing only the dark of night

In my very soul

 

I have been laughed at in your stead,

Defending you for we are wed

And paid the toll

 

I have sought you every place

But the one I fear to face,

Knowing you’ll be there

 

For if I look within to see

Then all I ask will fall to me

And be more than I can bear

 

We Should be Grateful

I am truly grateful to be living in South Africa. I realize that many of my white brothers and sisters don’t understand how lucky we are to be here.  They don’t realize that we were lucky enough to get out of apartheid with our lives, let alone our lifestyles.

If the black people had not been so wise and farsighted, we would have been driven into the sea or murdered on mass when apartheid ended. The atrocities and injustices suffered by black people by white hands are near endless and date back many centuries. Nonetheless, when apartheid ended our black countrymen let us continue to live among them, in their land, in peace and prosperity; a prosperity which they themselves were denied through apartheid and which the legacy of apartheid and colonialism continue to make very difficult for them to obtain.

I cannot begin to voice how grateful I am to the black people I live among. They are much more intelligent than they are given credit for.  They deserve heck of a lot more respect than they get. Whenever I see a white person being rude or arrogant to a black person for some petty reason, I feel like shaking them. “Wake up!” I want to shout in their faces, “Do you know where you are? Do you understand what they did for us after all we did to them?”

Sure South Africa is a land plagued with problems; a land whose history was too often written in blood. Nonetheless, it is a land to be proud of with a people who I am proud to call my countrymen.

It is important face to what is wrong with South Africa and its past that still haunts us. It is also important to build on what went right and to give credit where it is due. I for one am grateful that whatever South Africa’s problems are, I will face them with a people who have proven themselves to be more honorable and civilized than any western nations that I can think of.

Are there black people who are part of the problem? Of course there are but so what. There are plenty of white people who are part of the problem, too. Even these people, black or white, are human beings in need of guidance more than anything else. Until we start looking at each other as part of solution instead of part of the problem we will never be the kind of nation that South Africa once promised to be; the kind of nation that could be an example to the world. Meanwhile, I will continue to be grateful to be a South African and to live among a great people.

Written With Fire

 

It has long been my desire

To forsake the pen and write with fire

 

Let my words glow red on the page

And burn the hand that touches them

Let them blast like fireballs into the eyes and ears they encounter

Let them brand the brain and long remain, smoldering

Let them throb like coals in the souls of their audience

And in their turn let them do more than burn

Let them cauterise the wound left open

 

Let them entrance as flames that dance

And bring light by their burning

Let them ignite whatever they might

As sparks flung into kindling

If nothing else

Let them keep me warm

 

 

It has long been my desire

To forsake the pen and write with fire

 

Let my words glow red on the page

And burn the hand that touches them

Let them blast like fireballs into the eyes and ears they encounter

Let them brand the brain and long remain, smoldering

Let them throb like coals in the souls of their audience

And in their turn let them do more than burn

Let them cauterise the wound left open

 

Let them entrance as flames that dance

And bring light by their burning

Let them ignite whatever they might

As sparks flung into kindling

If nothing else

Let them keep me warm

When Love Went Viral

A few weeks ago, I posted a picture of myself wearing a shirt that read, “Bless Black People”. The message was in direct response to a message doing the rounds on Facebook. The message, which was also on a t-shirt read, ‘Fuck White People,” and was worn by a black university student. I don’t know how many shares that post got but my “Bless Black People,” post got shared over 4400, times reaching thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people. I got a lot of support for my message along with some hate.

2016 pic 046Either way while the post was trending I received over 300 friend request (before I had only had about 180 Facebook friends) from people not only all over South Africa and Africa but all over the world, including people from China, Italy and USA and South America. At least half of my new Facebook friends are black. I even got one friend request from someone in the Middle East, I think. I say I think the Middle East because all of the writing on his page and posts are in Arabic. He seems like a cool guy though. Anyway, the point is that I am now chatting to a lot of people whose races and cultures are different from my own.
Isn’t that the problem with the world, and South Africa in particular? That people of different races, cultures and views don’t interact with each other in any meaningful way? I have learnt a lot from my new Facebook friends. Although I’ve got a long way to go, I feel like I understand my fellow South Africans better. We have spoken about the blight of racism and our dreams for this wonderful country that we live in. Of course, there have been differences of opinion. We have disagreed but always we have listened to what the other person was saying. Racism thrives when people of different races fail to communicate with each other. When I posted my t-shirt post, I hoped it would show people that not all whites are racist and that there is a better way to deal with each other. At the very least I hoped my it would get people of different races talking to each other. I am glad that it has done that albeit in a small way. It is a good beginning.
Speaking of beginnings, this is my first blog entry. In the past, I have posted a lot of my poems and other writings on this website but from now on I will also blog, gulp, once a week. I intend to blog a lot about racism and how to erase it. I also, however, want my blog to address other social issues that effect South Africa and world. Always, though, I want my message to be one that brings people together.

The Greatest Living Poet

She is walking on the pavement when the idea comes to her
She has no paper so she holds the idea, fending off other thoughts,
Trying not to hear the songs coming from passing cars or houses on route
A police car pulls up onto the pavement in front of her
The officers jump out and draw their guns
The poet gasps
The offices approach the building on her right with caution
She wants to watch
Instead she walks around the police car and keeps walking
She tries not to think of it
Her mind struggles to hold the idea that she thinks could be a great
On her way home she passes a friends house
From inside she can hear music
And her friend and other friends chatting
She longs to join them but keeps walking
At last she gets home and writes the poem in a frenzy
On a piece of scrap paper pulled from the bin
Afterwards she looks at the words in awe
She marvels at the spirit that possessed her
She knows that she has just touched creation
And brought forth something that will last forever
Out of something that was never there

Notes on An Apology

I see that my poem An Apology has upset certain people so here are my notes on the poem.

It is extremely presumptuous, I know, to apologise for Apartheid. Especially since I was only fifteen years old when it ended and played no active role in enforcing it. I apologised simply because I believe South Africa is a nation in need of healing. That, although some will deny it, the old wounds of Apartheid are still festering.

“Come on,” many of my countrymen will say, “Apartheid ended over twenty years ago. Its victims should move on.”

Whether twenty-two years of freedom is enough to get over more than 46 years of oppression is a question for another day. It is also irrelevant. Why? It is irrelevant simply because there IS lingering resentment over Apartheid. That much is obvious from the fact that so many people still point to Apartheid as the cause of our current problems. Whether justified or not, millions of South Africans still blame apartheid for the poverty they are experiencing.

Are all white people personally responsible for apartheid? No. Most of the white South Africans who enforced apartheid are probably in old age homes or the grave by now. Nonetheless, anybody who knows even a little bit about psychology understands that perception is almost always a substitute for reality. Sadly the perception among many but not all black South Africans is that white people are still oppressing them. At the very least they see us, driving around in our fancy cars and living in our massive houses, as having a monopoly on the wealth and resources of the country.

The question I asked myself before writing my poem is: Do the victims of Apartheid and thier children deserve an apology? I believe they do. I also believe that most white South Africans recognise how evil Apartheid was and will agree with me. South Africa is a nation in need of healing. More than ever South Africans of all races need to work together because it is the only way forward for us as a nation. If we fail to work together our beloved country will slide into the abyss of poverty, corruption, violence and possibly genocide that has swallowed so many African Nations. If we are honest with ourselves, we can already see signs of where we are going. Only when we are able to face each other and admit where we, or the people we are seen to represent, have gone wrong can we possibly move on and truly become what the great Nelson Mandela called the Rainbow Nation. If we are able to do that, South Africa will be not only become a free and prosperous nation but an example to other African Nations and to the world.