Of Uncle Shaka's Muses & All Manner of Musings

Last week, in a little town called Ficksburg, known for little else but farming and a radio-talk-show-call-in regular, Eddie, members of the South African police Force brutally abused and shot at point blank an unarmed protester, Andries Tatane, who would later die from the wounds of the ordeal.

I was struck at the irony of how 2 decades into a hard-won democratic dispensation, the same methodology that proped up the previously repressive regime find expression.

I was struck at the similarity of the contexts that sparked the beginning of dramatic upheavals dubbed the “Jasmine Revolutions” in Arab lands mere months ago.

Protest across the country are increasingly frequent, wide-spread, intense and more violent. Could the end-game of such a trend be anything but bloodshed? What informs and allows such expression to take root seemingly so easily in our communities? And what informed in those entrusted with society’s protection the choice to batter a citizen instead?

What is happening here?

I was struck with the sad realisation that as in the wake of the Xenophobic attacks, SA society’s reaction isn’t necessarily swift and where it is, it is a confluence of words, and little empathy, or dare I say compassion. I note compassion to be empathy through action. There are too many things that are too important that a life lost; headlines, elections, rhetoric, the market.

Finally, I was struck by these words by famed Indian author Arundhati Roy: “
Any government’s condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, reasonable, closely argued, non-violent dissent. And yet, what’s happening is just the opposite. The world over, non-violent, resistance movements are being crushed and broken. If we do not respect and honour them, by default we privilege those who turn to violent means.”

How poignant a thought. To be shared from Washington DC, to Tripoli, to the Niger Delta, Beijing and now here, in Pretoria. In Ficksburg.

The insidious abuse of power and privilege, to enforce by whatever means the will of the powerful is more alarming than any number of spat of protests. Those protests are the embodiment of a greater malaise, not just some destructive lawlessness. How do we look beneath the anger? Are do we simply condemn the protests and discipline them for stepping over the line; a line defined by a ruling class.

In the name of the law and democracy, protesters the world over, but indeed also here at home, are being silenced. Ironically we have all forgotten that the key tenets of democracy are: rule of the majority by Consent of the minority. It is not just sheer numbers that make u right. Democracy is greater than might. Any might.

And even as the hardline response of the police may in this case have engendered some critiscm, the country hasn’t ground to a halt. In the eyes of many, whilst not OK, this isn’t an issue big enough to pause life over. Until the day it is our lives that are to be ended.

The Ficksburg killing may sadly not be the last. But it should mark the last time, we as a society allow anyone to die for expressing their God and law given right to protest. Or by Jove we are all damned.

So this struck me one day as I sat on my porcelain throne; In the 1000s China was producing 125,000 tons of iron; a technological feat the British Isles would only match in the 1700s. At the time the Chinese list of innovation was legendary: gunpowder, stirrups, printing, the wheelbarrow, the compass etc.

But in the 1300s the Ming Dynasty suddenly restricted trading with foreign nations. This led to halt in innovation & economic growth and allowed the rest of the world, the Western World in particular, to catch up and supercede Chinese technology.

And do? What is the lessons from this little tale? 1) no man/country is an island 2) ur race is never won; keep running!

But of course it also means that no country’s Destiny is written in stone, which should give Africans cause to take heart…

@shakasisulu * Thu Jan 13 2011 @ 08:57:46

So after much ado, I, like Adu, found my voice. again. it hit me like a bouncer: after 2 or so years of tweeting I’d amassed a wealth of twitter chronicles; tales and series of tweets that aren’t just generic chatter but define state of mind or place and time and owing to the inaccessibility of old tweets (who really wants to scroll through pages of old tweets? I bet even a super-groupie would sneer at such a task) I figured I’d delve into my own “treasure trove” of old remarks and bring them back to life in a coherent, indexable and thus (accessible) manner. A Journal be damned! lol. I got my twitter and tumblr to make sense of me, how ever old I may be. *insert sigh of relief

let’s go…

tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?

My fone…oh, wait… that is a living, blinking, ever-dying being

So, a couple of weeks ago I heard about John Mayer’s post on Tumblr. I must admity that i felt twice my 31 years of age when having to ask my younger compatriots at the time as to what this cup…oh sorry, tumblr was all about.

As far as i could recall, the tumbler was our security device. As a six year old, I watched my grandmother put silver tumblers on the handles of all the doors leading to the outside world just before we went to sleep. The ingenious idea, of course, meant that anyone trying to open the door, regardless of their deployment of stealth, would wake the house up as the tumbler went crashing on the hard-cement floor. You can tell by this last sentence that i’m a black Afrikan. It is the lot of black Afrikans the world over to come off age on hard, cold cement floors.

Anyhow, back to John Mayer; I’m crestfallen to discover that the groupie in me looms large. Here’s aman whose music i hardly even know and yet he’s influenced me to come poke around here, dip my toes in the waters of tumblr. With this single act, I’m now a social media polygamist of the highest order. Again, you can tell that I’m black Afrikan. Rather, South African.

I’m playing Biko while a Ramphele types this out online but I am putting this on my Black Berry as soon as possible. I’m not sure what this post will do. I’m not sure if this post will even survive the Mayans’ 2012 apocalypse. But i do know one thing, I thoroughly enjoy dictating this. You can tell, I’m a black South African ANC Youth League guy neh?

I have also enjoyed my hand occasionally brushing against the rather perky bosom of young Ramphele here. Further kudos to her for having been the bridge between Mayer’s inspiration and this dictation. On that note, we will conclude with this last thought that has just popped into my mind: Inspiration. I aspire to inspire before i expire; and thus I appreciate the embodiement of inspiration wherever i come across it. I hope this inspires you to also make some poor woman spend a half-hour (that she will never get back) languishing over your thoughts. I am discovering that i is a great turn-on for them indeed.

Thank you and good night.

Uncle Shaka