Maybe the ugly duckling, was really a duck, beautiful in her own way.

This is an awkward case of 'the ugly duckling who after reuniting with her swan family, decided she is better off as her former duck self'.

We owe who we are, to every word and action, said and performed to and around us. A sum total of all that we 'consume'. It took me 15 or so years, never being able to keep a friend, and a trail of broken hearts to realise and admit, that I am an escapist. With a bag of intellectual tricks and a seemingly immortal monster under my bed. I have never been able to face anything, and put it to rest, in my life. I run away from anything that even closely resembles the uncomfortable.
It all started when my parents sent me to primary school. Everything has roots, so this is my attempted diagnosis of the origins of my 'thing'. I did not come from the kind of family that new to prepare a little dark-skinned girl for the harsh realities of life. I got teased my socks off (meaning, very much). Until I began doing it to myself. I know everything there is to know about "internalising stigma". I mean, imagine this: I was sitting in computer  class, next to a guy called Dimakatso. He said, "you are the ugliest girl in this class" whilst he laughed. I just smiled at him, like an idiot. Then he said, "no seriously, look at it, who do YOU think is the ugliest girl in this class?" I looked at him, sadder than I have ever been, but with the biggest smile on my face, and I said "me". Something inside of me died that day. I meant nothing to anybody, is what I felt like. Heavy on the shoulders of a 10 years old is that reality. I spent the rest of my primary school life trying not to draw any attention to myself, trying to be as invisible as possible. I remember grade 6D Miss Du Toit's class; sitting with my head on my hands so no one will feel tempted to talk to me, because I knew what they would say if they did. That is the synecdoche of what my primary school life became. Lord, it was heavy.
When high school came, I fell on the lap of India Arie, she raised me (introduced to her by my aunt). I began to understand some things about beauty that allowed me for the first time, to imagine myself as anything either than ugly, as another kind of beautiful. I saw that the world wants so much more than a combination of light skin and facial symmetry.
A giant leap for mankind I must say. It was in matric, in history class that I discovered slam poetry. Also where I made the connection between the oppression of a black 'self' and these misplaced modern standards of beauty.
When first year came, I was on those poetry sessions like I breathed them. I began to write and was exposed to a world of understanding I had never imagined.
The best writers, are readers. I picked up a book or two every now and then and thus my eyes opened wider, as did my mind. It is this self-culture of reading and writing that bore me into the world of intellectualism. Scarcely does a reader miss the path that moves her/him from opinionated to knowledgeable to wise. I met many a brave soul, trodding the land of 'questioning the status quo', and found temporary peace in how I looked, because I figured, I am not ugly, society has messed up eyes.
That became my attitude, for a while. At the same time I bloomed into the stereotype that many young South African, black, female poets fall into, as they are growing. The fist-in-the-air; all-star-wearing; afro-comb; long-skirted; eff-the-standard type.
This was me for about 3 years, always being called rasta, by people with very narrow perception. Having people inbox me on facebook not because they cared to be in my life, but because they wanted to understand if I have renounced their christ and become a weed-smoking heathen. It is actually funny, I have been asked many things on the street, from 'is your husband rasta', to 'are you a traditional healer, can I use your services'. It is amazing what different things a long skirt and a head-wrap mean to different people.
It was around this time that I met the African Hebrew Israelites. A community that has strong-headed sisters dawning long skirts, natural hair, and strong believers in the balance of life. I had won the conscious-black-sister lottery, is what I felt like.
I felt vindicated, and validated. This community took me back to a time where my 'type', was beautiful. My 'type' of dark and all natural, was the standard, without question. I did whatever it took to be them.
They made me feel that they had won my battles for me, I could stop fighting to stay aligned to the ideas that kept my insecurities at bay. I saw myself in them, or, the self I had created from the pieces of "look at her" that the world threw at me.
It felt like the ugly duckling. In the moment she saw other swans, and realised, 'I make an ugly duck, but I am not a duck'. I am a swan, with my lovely white wings, I am a very beautiful swan. A moment where everything black and white fills with colour. A coming of age! (so to speak).
Until something kicked me awake again, that this was yet another well orchestrated escape from something I never dealt with.
Upon the realisation of my swan-hood, I want to return to the duck experiences that raised me.
This is the blog-post that tells the world, that I am letting it all go, to see how far I will get, if I walk straight in the direction of my monster. Back to my childhood bed, to lift the sheets, and face the skeletons I never buried. Where I tried to turn stones into bread, because I was not accepted at the table. Look at myself again, not as beautiful in certain context, but as beautiful, period!
If ever I am wrong, I will be the first to come back and admit, how strongly convicted I can become, by something so stupid.

One day I will write a book

I do not advocate feminism. I don’t think that sisters who find that the tenets of mainstream feminism resonate with them know what they are looking for. They know something is wrong with the relationship between man and woman in society (and that I see too), but they do not know what the solution looks like hence they do not know what they are looking for.

We live in a society today that entrenches sexism in both overt and covert ways. Women are constantly negotiating their place in society. I will be honest with myself for a minute and say that both Africans and those who promulgate non-African ideas have this issue in common. It has become a protruding issue on the tongue of the media, and in institutional literature around the world in this season. There are power relation struggles at play here. However we need to understand something; has this always been the construct of society? Or has a time where men and women related better, ever existed? Many (feminists) would say, considering that it is such a prominent feature in captured history, it has always been this way. However I think not. The problem is finding a balance, and I refuse to believe that societies have lived in a state of imbalance, awaiting the messiahs/saviours of modern feminism to deliver us from this evil. If ever there was a time where they kept a proper balance of the ‘ecology of people’, when and how did they lose it? What steps would need to be taken to get it back? And what would the implications of that be to our society?

I should firstly reiterate that I am not in the pursuit of feminist ideals or any such thing. I know that true emancipation (for lack of a better term) should never take such a one dimensional approach, because the mind of ‘gender oppression’ (like racism and all these other negative ‘isms’) is firstly a mind that both men and women should be trained out of, and secondly it falls into a bio-network of distortions that occurred in what I call the social-deconstruction rather than the popular term social construct.

What I mean by social-deconstruction is simply an opposite concept to that of a social construct. Social constructs are those things that have become shared societal paradigms or rather ways of seeing things (understanding and thinking) and doing things, which are not a result of our nature as human beings. They are a result of what we decide about each other. Now these things are necessary within a ‘social contract’. When we desire to live in a harmonious society, there are things we construct, that keep us within certain bounds for the sake of the sustenance of our society. Now social-deconstruction is a reaction or the result of the breaking down of the decided order of things either, over time, or very seldom, through defining moments.

Let me use what I believe is a distortion of gender ‘power relations’ in a black community, as an example to further explain what I mean by this.

However so you have a good grasp of the example, I want to expound on something first. If society has decided, or constructed that man will be the head of the household, and woman and child will create the rest of the body that is the family (as was the construct of many black societies). It was not a plan by narcissistic men sitting somewhere in a room, taping their fingers, trying to figure out how they can make a woman’s life hell. There was a sound (sensible), practical reason for this. This is why historicising this social construct is important. Historicise means to put it in its historical context. We honestly can never fully know this historical context in its accuracy. However from what we have read and heard, we can extract the idea. The idea was that, from what they have observed to be natural, men usually grew bigger than women. Of course there were big women and small men but they were a minority. Therefore when it came to tasks that required lifting of heavy objects, working extensive periods of time, and veering off or intimidating anything (or anyone) that had the potential to harm people, they (men) seemed the most endowed to do that. They thus gravitated towards these tasks. There was no group of people who sat down and said “you, that’s your place! And you that’s your place, in the kitchen!” well, I’m not sure about European society (who knows what they sit and plan in their chambers), remember I am speaking strictly of an African context here.

The most important thing to the society being the security and thus the continuation of the society, and men being the ones seen as most capable to perform this mighty task, starting from within the families, were imbued with this ‘headship’. They were assented to make important decisions (in a way all linked to the sustenance of the family) in the absence of the woman, which they seldom ever did, most of the time they consulted their women. When this gradually became a norm, women were not dumbfound, silenced, non-thinking agents who were taken blindly by the wave of this construct.

Women too (or at least most of them) have things they sort of naturally gravitate towards.  

Now if you think I’m part of the “women are just more emotional than men” bunch, you are right. However I am in undeviating opposition to people who say that our being “emotional beings” makes us weak or irrational. These three terms need to be redeemed from their interchangeable use. There is a link between emotions and irrationality, but I am beginning to think that that link is prevalent mostly in men (mainly because usually when you hear someone preaching the ‘irrationality of emotions’ they are a man). Women are intelligent beings, able to have both (emotions and rationality) coexist in their minds in peaceful separation, and at times refer to both in making well balanced decisions. The point is that, because of this, everything that women do (unless they are coerced) tends to reflect how they are feeling. Please understand that this is not a bad thing at all, if we learn the proper balance. For example, if a woman is unhappy, even the plate of food they put in front of you will be ‘unhappy’, and if they are feeling good, the plate will reflect this too.

This is why they gravitated towards those things that allowed them to pertinently express themselves. Like taking care of their man by, cooking for him, washing his clothes, and other such like tasks. Now what society did is that over time, it took these tasks, and used them to define women, and eventually to enslave them. Now here I will say, for all those women who refuse to be defined by the kitchen, I understand that the kitchen has become a place of bondage rather than a place where women can freely and constructively express themselves. When I say kitchen I mean it in the literal sense, and the metaphorical sense of, anything that is today known as the ‘roles of womanhood’ or what defines a woman. 

In the attempt to order society, these tasks were imposed on women. Even those who felt they could or did not naturally gravitate towards them. Because the problem really is not that women are in the (proverbial) kitchen and men are in the (proverbial) garage, it is that when women have the desire and capability to be in the garage, why can’t they be. This is the issue that feminists want straightened out.  

However this does not explain the power-relation dynamics that we see at play. Now for that I must get into that example I was initially trying to give.

Let us say, the situation was that society acknowledged the headship of men, and it could only work properly if the man was around. Able to see the needs of the household, and make decisions based on that. So men were on their homesteads, only leaving the home to go somewhere in the village. They provided for their families through the vegetation they harvested in their fields. So upon the arrival of the settler, many African families lost their land, many losing the fields they used to provide food for their families. The European took everything away and the only access we had to a comfortable life was through menial labour (working for them). Men had to leave home, and go find work, which they had never done before, leaving the women in the position of head. This at some point was the reality of black families everywhere (not all, but many).

Now when the man comes back home, will the gender relations not be distorted? Especially if they never understood that what defines them (as men) is not these tasks per se, but whether they ‘perform them efficiently’ (for lack of better wording). They began to try and impose their ‘manhood’ (a manhood that was emasculated by colonialism). They were trying to restore that sense of importance they once felt in the structures of the home, and society. However they were, and still are, going about it wrong. This was adopted by the generations that were brought up in that complex.

Young boys becoming men too early and having picked up only that man are the head, never that there comes great responsibility and accountability [to society] along with that; also never learning where the woman as the nurturer of the family fits in, started to lose sight of her importance.

Example complete, now I want to talk about the woman’s role in this. Do not get me wrong, my essay is not on gender violence, which is another topic on its own. I am simply talking about the dynamics that could have led to the degeneration of the intended idea [of gender relations] into an ugly beast.

Parallel with the disintegration of the relationship between man and woman, a new age was being birthed. The era of strange technology, and what has come to be known as ‘modernisation’. This era came with inventions and innovations that replaced the woman in her role as nurturer. Now Edgar’s and Ackerman’s make clothes for her husband and children, Pick n Pay and Shoprite grows them food, KFC and the microwave cooks them food and the television and computer teach her kids. She has no place left to express herself.

What is her role anymore when she does not know how to do anything for her husband; sex is not the most important aspect of marriage. It is important but not the most important. In other words, society today is constructed such that there is no need for her in the family. This also counts for the husband though, but we are not talking about him here.

The Nature of the beast - concerning leadership

This was a response to an essay question I was given. Please do not be dismayed by the frequent references to "Van Wyk", he really does not saying anything we did not already know, but I needed him as a reference in the essay :D

"We are aware that the white man is sitting at our table. We know that he has no right to be there; we want to remove him from our table, strip the table of all the trappings put on it by him, decorate it in true African terms, settle down and then ask him to join us on our terms if he wishes." Steve Biko

We need to consider that "the architecture of post-colonial Africa is still unfolding" (Van Wyk 2007: 4), and there is a desperate need in this regard, for a new narrative to be spread. A narrative that says, that a government as understood and practised by Africans, is supposed to be more dependent on the people than the people are dependent on it.

Late last year, on my campus (Rhodes University) we had SRC elections, and we only had enough voters to reach quorum. Our quorum is 33 per cent of the student population. Amongst the people I talked to, many told me they do not vote because they do not see the relevance of the SRC.

There is an element of truth to this statement even at a country level. Our leadership needs to become relevant to the people. Democracy has been failing us because it has only allowed us to choose our own dictators. The system is neither structured by us nor for us, it is an illusion of fair governance rooted in a colonial strategy of ‘giving local leadership reign in so far as they comply to the stipulations of some Western power’.

It also brings in a whole economic aspect because the primary reason for the current structure of government; is because of the dictatorship of some world capitalism structures. I will explain this by using an example of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the IMF mandated Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) of the 1980’s. This included privatisation, removal of import controls and food subsidies, enforced cost-recovery in health and education, and ruthless downsizing of the public sector (Davis 2004: 18). According to Davis "In addition to the direct SAP-enforced reduction in public spending and ownership" there was an emphasis on the reduction of state control (Davis 2004: 19). So in a fragile political environment, the leadership of about 30 African countries (Davis 2004: 18) implement these SAP’s. This affected the efficiency and/or efficacy of these governments to provide for the needs of the people. Never mind the fact that very idea of ‘decentralisation’ is foreign to the idea of "national representative government" (Davis 2004: 19).

This was capitalism’s foot hold in Africa, and with it came many socio-economic issues and inequalities.

Capitalism in its nature, never provides permanent solutions for those who need them, it only recreates itself. This amongst many other reasons is why we find ourselves gyrating round the same socio-political/economic issues time and time again without a permanent solution to them. In order for African leadership to be effective in dealing with the needs of the people, the current economic systems of our continent (which are predominantly capitalist) need to be looked into.

In the post-colonialism redevelopment strategies implemented in South Africa, there have been many attempts to make the system work for us. However we should maybe begin to consider another system. A system that learns from the methods that worked, both in Ancient Africa (egalitarian) and in other parts of history (the Paris commune for example) instead of the (current) methods that continually abuse the very people that empower them. Van Wyk puts this more clearly when he says: "Africans had little time to prepare for independence and at independence the incoming elite inherited alien structures," (Van Wyk 1999: 7) structures that are perhaps not best for the African context.

Leaders should be put in place insofar as there is a need for leadership, not just for the sake of having people above others. Amongst many other reasons why leadership in South Africa has been irrelevant to many people, is because it has become about one council filling the position of the previous one, perpetuating the same system. Considering the drop in the number of votes for the incumbent government, the masses are not happy with this system. This started from the days of independence, when Western rule was replaced by local rule. However sadly, all that changed was the face of governance (from the colonisers, to the local people) not the structure.

Works Cited:
Biko, S. (1978), I Write What I Like. Pan Macmillan. Davis, M. (2004), "Planet of Slums"
. New Left Review, No. 26. Pp. 5-34. Van Wyk, Jo-Ansie. (2007), "Political Leaders in Africa: Presidents, Patrons or Profiteers?"
Occasional Paper Series. The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) 2(1). Pp. 1-38.

the education of the african child

Nearing the end of last year I got the opportunity to speak at a TEDx event at Rhodes University. Look, and laugh, and agree, and disagree, and comment :)

In the black of my mind

The 'western mind-set' is deeply rooted in how we are raised and what we are taught, and influences our ideas, thoughts and lifestyles. It is destructive in the least, and ungodly at most, contrary to the the original intent of god. It emphasises the importance of knowing above that of doing. In the words of Brian Knowles "it is often more important to believe and espouse 'the right thing' than to live the right way". It has become about JUST knowing what is right. "in many christian circles, what one believes or espouses is treated as more important than how one lives" (Knowles, p. 1).

There is need for people to unlearn this way of thinking and to relearn to adhere to both "external compliance with the law [of god] and inner devotion" because in the moment of subjugating one to the other, religion is born.

 

I have had a rebellious streak, and have been anti-westernisation ever since I could make sense of it (which is not so long ago). I have always had the sense that there is something unnatural about it. Human beings, no matter how atheist they may claim to be, have been created with an innate ability to experience God. The western mind attempts to organise everything into systematic structures, therefore "the Godhead must be tightly defined and structured" (Knowles, p. 4). The external world (earth) is a manifestation of thought, a manifestation of what is within. There are so many beautifully complex things in creation that we cannot begin to explain, yet we want to have a power point understanding of the Creator. 

 

One the basic thoughts that this western mind is based on, is the idea of the 'spiritual' or the 'supernatural' being external to human beings. That we can engage in it as we please, and walk away from it as we please. Man was created in the image of God, in the realm of God. The fall brought about a spiritual separation between God and man but did not change his form, no where in the bible does it say, "because they sinned, they will no longer be as God had created them". The Hellenisation of the world did wonders in restructuring how man understands the relation between God and himself. From this came an understanding of God being (in the sky) far away from man.

 

People can understand themselves by looking at what defines them. Our history defines us, and we do not know our history. We have been separated from our truth, our knowledge, our light, and therefore subjected to being content with false KNOWLEDGE because we do not know how to DO.

 

I choose not to partake in the fruit of western ideals.

The truth has a tendency to come out.

The past few weeks, have brought with them knowledge that has challenged 'truths' I have held on to my whole life. Matter of fact the foundation of truth that my life is based on, has been shaken so vigorously, it woke me up and opened my eyes in the process. I am not exaggerating at all. I met some of the most interesting minds in my life. The kind of minds I wish I could one day inhabit, and live amongst the most profound thought I have ever encountered.

If you know the story of Daniel (in the bible) you will know that he was amongst the most intelligent men in all of Babylon. Well even that should say a lot about these brothers :) when a man is so knowledgeable and intelligent and dripping with so much wisdom, that the only people who are worthy to be compared to him are ancient prophets. I think that being the children of the God who created the mind, we should all be that way. But laziness has become such a norm amongst us, we no longer seek wisdom and pursue it. Which is quite dangerous because when we are but consumers, it is easy for those who feed us information to lie to us. John Mayer says (in his song 'waiting on the world to change') "cause when they own the information, they can bend it all they want".

The bible has been taught as a text that is so far from us as black people, and has made it easy for us to distance ourselves from it. Thus distancing ourselves from the knowledge of God. The way in which holiness and holy people are depicted (as white and civilised as opposed to us, the native inhabitants of the dark continent) was to make that level of closeness to God as unattainable to black people as possible. And it has worked. When God gave the Israelites the laws read to them by Moses, he was not giving them a religion. He knew that after years of slavery they needed to be rehabilitated (in the words of Ahk Shmael), back into a people he once shared a divine relationship with. Starting with them, and spreading the knowledge of God throughout the rest of the world. Now this law, became the CULTURE of the people. In all of the cultures of the world found throughout history, there has never been any other people, but the black people, who practise a culture so similar to that of the biblical Hebrews. Considering that the introduction of the bible did not come to Africa till recently, where had we inherited this culture from? What does that make us if not the descendants of the chosen nation of Ysrael? Well my people, think upon these things :) I will keep on blogging about my experiences of this truth, but for now I will leave you with a poem I wrote from all the thoughts I have gathered as I take my first steps in this "back to God movement" :

"And they can’t hold us down any longer. Our minds are beginning to wonder. The imaginations of our children are too strong for their chains. The chains of a massive deception. Of such an immaculate conception. For it has been written; Ysrael shall be restored. And if black people knew that they are the glory of God then they would be more inclined to respect themselves. So many layers to be uncovered, of narratives that were never ours, being sold to us as truth. That we traded even the last light we had, to buy it. Because we needed security, and none of our people knew who we were. So we had to trust the stranger, when he said he knew us. And our truth being the key to all our riches, we exchanged it for shackles. And with it he robbed us of all our value. We were left to bear the burden of a people destined for slavery.

But what he did not consider, is that, something else we bear, is the mark of God. And God will always know us. Though through time there have been ideas that erect themselves above the truth of our creator. He will never leave us, he never has. And through the reawakening of a knowledge of him, a new Adam, will live in the days of the new heaven. And we shall be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. And everything we do shall prosper. Custodians of the new earth we need the mind of God, to sustain what the mind of God had started. And when this understanding sets us free, any of the chains they cast upon us shall not hold. Now our history, is not just a matter for the memory, it is ingrained in the lifeblood of all creation."

Cadbury PS ad. beautiful thing right here :)