Paving the way for an early-morning, public transport lynching

Well, to put it mildly, I’m royally pissed off and the only way I’m going to put my scattered thoughts in order is to write them down. For, no matter how much I jump up and down and bitch until I’m purple in the face, it isn’t going to change the situation one whit and I’m in a fine mood for ripping off heads at this point.

You may ask why I’m so angry that I’m rendered speechless? Well, it all boils down to the fact that Joe Public, in his apathy and laziness, allows idiots to disturb the peace. Actually, I’m just pissed because someone disrupted my early morning writing session on the train. And I’m pissed because I realise that I’m one out of one hundred that actually prefers to use my brain to think and hold my own opinions, instead of digesting the semi-masticated pap vomited forth by proselytisers.

I don’t really have a problem with religion. If it blows your hair back, by all means, go and worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, for all I care. I’m a writer and, in case you haven’t noticed that, I practice writing. I also happen to make use of public transport. I prefer to write for two hours every day instead of sitting in traffic for pretty much the same amount of time grinding my teeth. Also, I save a lot of money and help the environment by not using my car to help continue clogging up Cape Town’s already overburdened highways.

I sit quietly in my corner and mind my own business. I proof read. I write. I read. I am happy and I don’t disturb anyone on purpose, unless they just don’t like the way I dress. People talk among each other quietly next to me. They read their tabloids. They read their bibles. They sleep and I’m pretty sure that some even pray.

Then, the preacher man steps up. He opens his mouth and starts peddling his world-view loudly. He tells me that his way is the only way and that I’m a sinner and that I’m going to burn in hell. Who is he to tell me what I will and won’t do? I tell him that he is not allowed to preach on the trains, according to by-laws passed by our service provider. Of course the complication is that there are no security guards present to enforce these bylaws and none of my fellow passengers are going to stand next to me and support me. After all, I’m in the minority. As a free thinker and libertine, I am a sinner, am I not? I’m going to hell. Who am I to run myself up against a “man of God”? I don’t even believe in a god the way that he does and so many of the others in the train so clearly do. And, to make matters worse, if I kick against this man in public, I’m going to have myself lynched because I’m guaranteed that at least 70% of the people on the train are actually Christian and start giving me dangerous glares as I vent my spleen. I really don’t feel like appreciating an early morning lynching before I start my day in the office. Plus, none of the Muslims are going to back up a skinny-arse white chick wearing a purple velvet dress while sporting occultnik silver jewellery now, are they?

Of course I don’t help my cause when I tell the man loudly exactly how he can refrain from flapping his jaw. And, I certainly don’t redeem myself by resorting to name-calling, for the same labels are quite happily thrown back at me by good, indignant Christian folk – so much for brotherly love.

I find myself proof reading the same page about a dozen times, hoping that I don’t let any mistakes through. The preening fool who walks up and down the carriage continues to waffle on loudly about Original Sin, God’s Grace and the Gift of Salvation. I don’t even believe that there is such a thing as sin, thereby annulling my need for salvation. He reckons he’s doing God’s will but I reckon he just digs having people hear his voice and praising him for being such a nice, good bloke.

Sure, I don’t know what’s going to happen one day when I die but hey, I guess we all find out eventually. I just don’t have any desire to buy into afterlife insurance. I have no wish to pay the premium of giving up my freedom to someone else’s interpretations of a scripture that has been cobbled together over two thousand years by an assortment of half-mad prophets and charismatic pathological egotists.

I don’t have any guilt and I resent the fact that people naturally assume that I should or that I’m a bad person because I oppose their views. Yeah, so if I’m not with you I’m against you? So what? I used to be blinded by faith and back then I was not a happy person. However, I’m far better off pursuing my own path and you have no right to tell me that I’m wrong when we don’t even see reality in the same way. I’m no better or worse than you. Why don’t you just show some respect and let me practice my path quietly in a corner and save your preaching for people who are not a captive audience?

In the meanwhile I realise that it’s probably better just to shut the hell up. I’m not going to get the buffoon to close his trap any more than I’m going to garner support from Joe Public who “just wants to be nice”. Why must I cause myself stomach ulcers? But hell! I wish the dude wouldn’t shout so much in a confined space. My ears are ringing!

African-ness and concepts of Ubuntu

A lot has been said and written about the changes that have taken place here in South Africa over the past decade or so. We have successfully begun the process of integrating vastly different cultures into one, relatively peaceful multicultural nation. We are, by no means perfect but, in the grander scheme of things, our situation could have been far worse.

I may be white and I may be an Afrikaner but, first and foremost, I consider myself as an African. I was born in Africa. For the past 300 years, my ancestors have been born in Africa. I do not belong in the Netherlands. I do not identify with the French, nor do I speak their language. I am a white South African. Get over it. I’m not lily-livered and do not wish to run away and live in Australia or the UK. This is my country and I love this land. I am fascinated by all of South Africa’s people, no matter what language they speak or whether they are Hindu, Muslim, Christian or practice traditional African spirituality.

There are some people who say that I must go back to Europe. I ask, where must I go? I don’t identify with Dutch or French culture. My identity is the result of years of exposure to African sun, soil and history. If I go anywhere else, I will always be an expatriate South African in my heart and will never quite fit in.

When I look at Africa, I see a continent that has suffered much at the hands of empire-minded cultures. Our continent has had its people ripped away and transplanted as slaves in other parts. Our continent is at war with itself. Older African values are struggling to meet and assimilate the newer memes presented by Western European ideas and technology. It is not surprising that there is conflict. But, what is growing out of this conflict is a richer and more complete fusion of the two. The West, for all its science and philosophy is no better than traditional concepts of African Ubuntu. It is just different. We should only compare apples to apples.

For those of you who don’t know the meaning of Ubuntu, it is, basically, the concept that one must accept wholeheartedly that “I am because you are”. Ubuntu understands the importance of our complex relationships of interdependence. Ubuntu is not about blind money-grubbing power-hungry capitalism. Ubuntu is about people standing together as a nation. It is realising that everything you do effects the people around you.

However, with all the rosy cheer of Ubuntu, don’t, for one minute, forget that the basic core of humanity is to be greedy and to be acquisitive. Might is right and the winner takes all (and writes the history books). Africa today, is more than it would have been had colonisation not happened. I’m not saying it was a nice thing that people were disempowered, enslaved and lost their land. The reality is that it happened. Through mutual miscommunications, the settlers came in, guns blazing and Bibles in hand, and saw empty lands and “primitive” locals. The settlers had initiative and firepower. They took the land. We can’t go back in time. We can’t slap the Dutch and the English on their wrists and tell them they were naughty. In their minds, they were perfectly justified in claiming land from “unsophisticated savages who wear nothing more than loincloths and dwell in straw huts” (to quote a lady I had an argument with the other day).

However, what does get my gall up is when people display typical bigoted racist attitudes that tend to make broad sweeping generalisations about cultural differences that vary from their own. Black, white or coloured, it makes no difference. It doesn’t matter whose ancestor was bashing baby brains out against wagon wheels, we’re all in this cultural stew pot together. I can no more return to Europe than I can tell my Xhosa neighbour to go back to central Africa to where her tribe originated about 800 years ago. Persons of Malay slave origin will certainly not fit into their original culture and what about people of a mixed San and European heritage? We are all South African. In our combined miscommunications we’ve all displayed deplorable acts of violence towards other cultures.

We must stop looking back at the differences. We must look forward to the similarities we share. We must, by no means, forget the past but it must not prevent us from standing together as one “rainbow” nation. South Africa is more than the sum of its parts. We are more BECAUSE of our past. And we will become greater for transcending the iniquities and finding ways in which we can use our cultural diversity to express our African heritage in broader profusion.