zimbabwe state of mind

Zimbabwe State of Mind - Nightlife

Last night we went out to experience Harare's night life, get drunk and act irresponsible. We wanted to start a fight, hahahaha, that's what I mean by irresponsible peanut brain. What were you thinking? Rotten mind. We thought we can mess up and blame it on alcohol, on Zambezi and Lion. So, after dinner, which is deliberately white rice and masonja we go to this loudest club on N.Nkrumah Avenue. This pozzie does not have soundproof so you can get serenaded as far as N.Mandela Avenue.

We pop in a find luscious sweating semi-naked senhoritas on stage doing their thing. We get our Zim beers and sit down among the throng to enjoy the show. That's pretty jiggly. This here are yellow bones with jelly-like butts juggled like doughnuts. You'd swear you've seen this booty sway from some porn video somewhere. This episode gets some sloshed bloke peeping like a Tom; trying to get sight of some private hair. The performers are both firm and jiggly and the half-drunk crowd loves it; especially when the dyke like character goes all patriarchal.

After one show we move to another vibey club a kilometre away called Portugal Club. Here's it's unadulterated, no-holds barred, it's even got a strip pole. It's the type of place you want to come to with your friends after polishing two bottles of tequila and Malawian tipped spliffs. Girls in skimpy skirts and tight-fitting pants drink and smoke. They play pool and they think they are the shit until I pop in tokens and kick their ass over and over again. I teach them pool - half sloshed nogal. Here I drink Zambezi beer, dance to old songs and mingle to prying eyes (I'll tell you about this prying someday).

It's humid and sweaty in the club. The mood could be Carribean short of coconut oil and sugar cane, chased down with another bottle of Tequila. Me and my friend we are technically sloshed as we find our way out of the club and responsibility ask if it's time to leave. We are very responsible fathers and uncles of people who need role models so regardless of the nice jiggily types swaying their things and showing love to us. What is love? We catch a cab and rush to our hotel to catch some sleep. Til next time. Maybe then responsibility won't truimph. Maybe then reason might not prevail. But today, stru, it did.

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zimbabwe state of mind

Zimbabwe State of Mind - Part Four

People in Zimbabwe believe that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the 2008 election and that SADC cooked a democratic insurace to stop the country from sliding into chaos and violence after it became obvious that some state organs had a problem with change. And unfortunately that insurance is expiring on June 29 this year and whatever happens after that is left to speculation.  The centre will still hold but it's what will hold it together that worries many. It's my point of departure in my coversation with Zimbabwe Elections Support Network General Secretary Reverend Dr Solmon Zwana as we meet to discuss the coming elections in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe Elections Support Network's Rev Dr Solom Zwana

Dr Zwana is a sober character who speaks with authority and has an imposing presence while not being intimidating. He says the elections risk being rigged based on the voter registration hurdles that are being put infront of potential voters - especially the youth. As indicated earlier they need proof of residence and that document is not free and fair even though it's part of an election that should be free and fair.

He is adamant that the current requirements for qualifications are likely to result in many young people not qualifiying to vote and then tipping the scale in favour of the status quo since the most tired people are the youth. He puts blame on the Registry-General who tends to pretend that it's science to figure out how many people are eligible to vote in a country of 12 million citizens. My thinking is that if you put a birth register, a 2008 voter's roll and a death register you end up with living potential voters.

However Dr Zwana says while the youth have a potential to be game-changers it is not only the opposition that is mentoring them for roles in political activism as ZANU-PF is also breeding its own young people for tasks it might have for them in the future. In 2008 most of the pre-election violence was carried out by young people and Zwana is conscious if they did it once they can do it again. I ask about the militia and he assures me there is a core and subcontracts to violence. He says there are fears they might be activated for the upcoming elections and the War Veterans, which he describe as the reserve army of ZANU-PF might be mandated to unleash terror to tip the scales.

Zwana is an elder who is sensitive to national feelings of sovereignity and that is the reason why SADC can not be seen to be dictating to the Zimbabwean political parties on how they should conductt their own elections. They can only observe. He says SADC has played its role up to now but must find a non-intrusive way to make sure that its insurance delivers democracy to Zimbabwe instead of maintaining the status quo.

I meet Dr Zwana an hour later at a media conference with other civil society organisations. He is the guy delivering the statement condemning the voter registration process and calling on a more inclusive pre-election process which will add value to the democratisation process which he agrees goes beyond voter registration and the actual casting of the ballot.

The media conference is well-attended by largely the progressive media and questions are posed and answered in a convincing manner. The common thread is that they are all patriots concerned with what democracy means; and what it currently means to Zimbabwe and what it should be.

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zimbabwe state of mind

Zimbabwe State of Mind - Day Three


MacDonald Lewanika and Tawanda Chimhiri are your typical Zimbabwean born-frees. Both of them came into life on the year that the country saw its liberation and ZANU-PF came to power. However so many years since the chimurenga currency was misappropriated I find both of them concerned with the level of democracy education amongst the youth of their country. I'm thinking maybe it's because these two guys are still youth themselves. However I let them know that I am truly impressed by Zimbabweans, not because I am in their country but even my South African Disapora Zims have been told about this by me. Zimbabwe will never be a colony again; I can assure you since it has the smartest people this side of the equator. South Africans are passive, have a sense of entitlement, are led by a president who never went to school and are today doing their best to discount the value of education byy allowing a herdboy to become our number one citizen.

Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition's McDonald Lewanika

I pose it to McDonald that does he think his generation is smarter than that of Mugabe, Muzorewa, Nkomo, Banana etc? He says he does not think such comparison is fair since each generation is facing its own challenges and the world has moved since 1980. True, the world has gotten younger. He gives me a lecture about his country's liberation struggle. He says that not only were the fighters the only heroes of the struggle but people like his mother who cooked for the fighters contributed to that liberation. Napoleon Bonaparte once said that an army marches on its stomach. He protests that patronage should be dispensed based on with whom were you in a sandbagged trench. It irks him that the old generation which has abused the chimurenga credit card want young people like him to shut up because they are mere beneficiaries of the struggle and never tossed a grenade at a Rhodesian soldier.

McDonald is an articulate 33-years old Executive Director of Crisis in Zimbabwe - an organisation with a chapter in South Africa. I ask him what crisis is here in Zimbabwe and he thinks loud before addressing his response to me. He says the crisis is 'too many deficits and too many deficiencies'. There is  trust, honesty, responsibility etc deficits that need to be addressed. He believes they are not really going to be addressed by the same crop that has failed to do so in three decades. I'm looking at him and thinking 'this guy has never heard of the Damascus experience'. My source sounds very optimistic of the future regardless of allegations of attempts by the ruling elite to rig the elections by putting more hurdles infront of the generation that is most likely to outvote them.

One only needs to be ignorant not to remember how after the election that resulted in ZANU-PF losing the city council of Harare its response was Operation Murambadzvina (excuse my misspelling) which was reminiscent of the Boers' forced removals of Black families to uproot their ambitions and pave way for white occupancy of land. The next election was met with militias called the Green Berets who reportedly terrorised communities into voting for  a certain political entity. Now you see, the ruling elite here has always found a way of subcontracting violence.

Irrespective of all these challenges McDonald says there are only two things that are certain; death and change. Since death has made millions of sorties, especially on this country's voters' roll it is time for change to come to Zimbabwe. A sentiment echoed by another born-free director of Zimbabwe Election Resource Centre, Tawanda, whose task is to knock into the heads of society an understanding of elections as not only an event that takes place at the ballot but a pre-during and post process that should be a journey.

Zimbabwe Election Resource Centre's Tawanda Chimhiri

Tawanda is visibly youthful and believes even without a culture of succession the youth will have an understanding of what's at stake during this year's elections.

He makes a beautiful observation about why civil society often falls short of its desired target when it comes to conducting successful voter education and democracy education. He believes that such a task should be undertaken between elections when NGOs won't be competing for public attention with politicians.

Like McDonald he says contrary to popular belief that once power shift from the status quo into a new paradigm it will be couriered to Britain faster than Mugabe can fly to Waterkloof Air Force Base (will they let him land? hahahaha), the youth of Zimbabwe will never allow their country to be a colony again. He says their patriotism should not be judged by how many times they can sing liberation songs or march to the tune of the old guard but the fact that they stayed behind and never fled even when their country was experiencing an economic meltdown is proof enough. Three million left, these guys stayed behind.

Agreeing that the chimurenga is a thread that joins all Zimbabweans, Tawanda says it will be valued beyond the lifetime of the War Veterans - real and imagined. While shying away from talking about political parties as he says his organisation works with all political formations and civil society he believes that the violence which characterised the 2008 elections might not be experienced this year because "ZANU-PF has learned that losing an election is one thing, but losing legitimacy is another". He believes the balloting part of the elections might not be rigged so as to remove the justification for sanctions to continue but the voter registration process up to so far leaves a lot to be desired.

However, with two activists one often gets to this point of understanding the underlying factors of this country's problems. But I must admit I am still a little bit in a maze. What I observe is that Zim's problems might be socio-political but the impact is economic. This is a police state as I will blog some disturbing details when I am finally free on South African soil. It's so alien to me being warned that I can't pull out my camera and snap. Come on I'm a snapper. I take pictures of things that interest me and recently what interests me are cops washing the tyres of their bicycles. What interests me is the proximity of so many government buildings to each other which at the end means I can't snap pictures for the whole block of buildings. Imagine not being allowed to take a picture anywhere in Newtown.

That's a reality I want to tell you about. But now I got to tell you about my meeting with Reverend Dr Solmon Zwana
 

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zimbabwe state of mind

Zimbabwe State of Mind - DAY TWO

On Day Two I learn that there a lot of wrongs going on in Zimbabwe apart from the obvious I observed a day before. See, the current democratic order was sewn thread and needle by former South African President Thabo Mbeki and its SADC insurance is underwritten by President Jacob Zuma. So, for things to go right in Zimbabwe, South Africa must have that vested interest. And it should not be in this country's diamonds or any other minerals but political stability and democratization project. However for democracy to grow you need a vibrant media that will play the role of watchdog over power.

Zimbabwe Democracy Institute Director Pedzisai Ruhanya chatting to us in Harare

This is a lesson we get from Pedzisai Ruhanya, Director of Zimbabwe Democracy Institute, who is himself a doctoral candidate in Media Studies. He believes the media in Zimbabwe dropped the ball; or to put it mildly never at any time in the country's history tried to hold the executive to account. He cannot recall a time when the media, both Rhodesian and Zimbabwean has ever felt the responsibility to be accountable to the people. He is adamant that 'the people' need to be the sole beneficiaries of the media's agenda setting role and it must serve 'them' at all times. Okay, fine, but what happens when 'the people' topple despots and get into power, should the media now divorce its custodians in search of an adversorial agenda? Should it always be itching for a fight?

Our friend Ruhanya says the biggest problem which faces humans is the development of an appetite for eternal power which individuals develop once they taste it. He says it is for that reason that the media will never exhaust or overplay its adversorial role because there will always likely be a hijacking of 'the people's' revolution. Sadly, he says that's what happened in Zimbabwe. And that's why this country which used to be the bread basket of Africa finds itself trading in US dollars.

In the 1970s struggle for liberation (chimurenga) Zanu-PF and its then leader Gabriel Robert Mugabe were inarguably the legitimate leaders of 'the people' and 'the people' were given an impression that 'they' were getting into power. Not the ruling elite. He diagnoses the problem as being that when the ZANU-PF oligarth tasted power it didn't dismantle the flawed ox-wagon inwhich Smith and his cronies used to rule the 'sub-human' natives from its comfort. What ZANU-PF comrades did is they jumped in and started looking down at the people who halted its (the ox-wagon's) movement.

That's when the public broadcaster became a state broadcaster and stories of human truimph were replaced with stories of the frontline soldiers of chimurenga. Ruhanya's analysis is something I observed early in the morning when I watched Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation's television channel. For the life of me I couldn't believe that journalists call partisan news sources 'comrade' and even title it at such. 90% of what ZBC does is not news but Public Relations for the ruling party - something the SABC is sliding towards. Here it's so brazen it's like Guptagate every hour of the day. Just on Sunday here at the capital there was a huge rally hosted by MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai at the end of their policy conference and none of that makes it into the news. But at least the untimely death of SABC broadcaster Vuyo Mbuli made it into the news and it humoured me when I noticed they didn't say 'Comrade Vuyo'.

My source tells me that the ground is not fertile for real blood-letting revolution or something as tame as the Arab Uprising. He says Mugabe is past his sell-by date to the point that even if he was to take advantage of the new constitution and decide to run an 89-years old man will be 99 by the time he is done with his second term. Mugabe is just not interested, he believes; judging from how the old man has recently toned down on violent rhetoric. Ruhanya says the old man is tired and has lost his appetite for power but the problem lies with the securocrats who might have something to answer about Gukurahundu (the systemic massacre of approximately 20 000 Ndebele activists in the 1980s). I try to prognose; Mugabe can disappear into political oblivion, live the last days of his life in Sandton or Singapore; the same way his friend the former Ethiopian dictator who killed thousands of political adversaries is doing right now; dying a slow lonley death in a Harare safehouse.

But the old man, though willing cannot take the leap. There are capable people who can take over from him and lead the party politburo in preparation for their elevation to State House; characters such as Joyce Mujuru, the first deputy president who can succesfully contest the presidency by default if the Mugabe does not pull a Makoni on her. Ruhanya believes there's respect across the nation for Mujuru, the same way there was for her deceased husband General George Mujuru.

He believes there is enough political capital outside Zanu-PF to unseat the old man and his tired party on the part of opposition parties corner. Names such as Professor Welshman Ncube of MDC-N pop up.

However, as a director of a think tank and media scholar Ruhanya is worried that the airwaves are not open enough for civil society to play its role of informing the nation about what's at stake in the upcoming elections; this are elections some say will  be held in June but which our source says the most optimistic date will be September or October. Pro-government newspapers put the blame for the later date on Tsvangirai, while Mugabe has not yet put his signature on the new constitution, a precursor to the promulgation of a balloting process.

Zimbabwe is currently going through a voter registration process that is disputed as opposition parties believe it's at this stage that ZANU-PF plans to rig the process and disenfranchise as many young voters as possible who have the potential to tip the scale in the favour of opposition parties. Opposition parties believe the need for proof of residence as a condition for voter reginstration is meant to give tribal chiefs the power to refuse those who are not pro-ZANU-PF such papers and dienfranchise them.

But one needs a political perspective of the situation in Zimbabwe. Something we can only get from a man who was born in 1980 and who has known only one presiden this whole life, McDonald Lewanika.

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zimbabwe state of mind

Zimbabwe State of Mind - Day One

This past weekend I finally sojourned to that pariah of democracy on the northern border of South Africa - Zimbabwe. This is the land of my uncle, the land of my ancestors, one of few countries in the world with a common national narrative that is not rooted in a myth. South Africa has its own apartheid narrative which quite recently has not been properly articulated for all of us but a few politically connected individuals belonging to that one party that is currently misappropriating that capital for the benefit of a few. When it's all said and done people will look at South Africa's apartheid card as a joker in the pack. And I wonder whose objective such will serve.

Me and Frans Sello waga Machate at OR Tambo Airport en route to Harare

So, on Sunday (May 19) I took a long flight to Harare; not to talk to the ZANU-PF or MDC bulls but to tour and see things for myself. I wanted to go back to South Africa and tell people who claim to be experts based on newspaper clippings how wrong they were. I came to Zimbabwe to finally put to rest the rhetoric I have been exposed to in my own mother country. I wanted to see if things are so bad that three million Zimbabweans will resist an attempt to take them back to the point that they will risk magumaguma's brutality on their way through an uncertain frontier. I came because a few weeks ago we had a heated conversation on my sister Dipuo Mahlatsi's Facebook wall about what needs to be done to fix the mess that has become Zimbabwe post 2000. This country that I am visiting moved from being the bread-basket to having an inflation of 23 million. That was the time that I collected millions of Zim Dollars as souvenirs.

So, when I arrive in Zim on the afternoon of May 19 I am puzzled by how things seem different here instead of when viewed from South Africa. The scotched earth is visible from the air when you approach Harare. What you realise immediately after landing is that things are not rosy. Me and my friends crack jokes about notices at the airport being in both English and Chinese. We are mildly amused that you don't get any notice in Shona or Ndebele but Chinese. What country is this? Taiwan?

That aside; another realisation is the feeling of arriving at a police state. The air is thick with mystery. When we were flying down I noticed an air force base on the right of the plane's wing with two camouflage helicopters stationed there. As we drive out of the airpot I notice another military base on my right with helmeted soldiers. Imagine that I am probably still five kilometres out of Harare but I am already feeling scared to snap a piece of motherland.

In all honesty, Harare is like Braamfontein with potholes and no working streetlights. Life looks normal until you see soldiers and police strolling around Kwame Nkrumah Avenue. Interesting, you see them but you don't see their weapons. A guy we meet on the street who I suspect is not really a conincidence meeting, with whom we end up having an hour long chat says it has never been a culture of police to carry guns and pepper sprays. He's a government loyalist and you know; I'm a journalist and I like to entertain both sides of the story so I indulge him and gain useful insight. He however warns us that if someone snatched a cellphone that unlucky bugger might face nine years in jail. Scary; I'm thinking at the notorious Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison outside Harare.

Day one ends with good dinner and clever conversations about the status quo in Zim. It ends with a reflection of how things are expensive here. The economy has taken so much beating that Zimbabwe no longer has its own currency. The printing presses has stopped. Everything is tagged in dollars and they accept both US Dollars and ZAR Rands. Nothing of value costs cents in Zim. The cheapest commodity costs US$1, which is an equivalent of R10. This means there is nothing that costs less than R10 in Zim. Everything starts at R10. Those R5 airtime that you love to buy and those R2 popocorns are never seen in Zim. So that's how bad the situation is given the NGOs allegation of 85% uneployment. How many people have R10 on any given day? Here you must have that to start buying stuff. Otherwise you can't buy. So few people afford bread.

At the Road Port (Bus Stop or Park Station) just across from the taxi rank there were tens of money traders. People are exchaning foreign currency on the street and are holding on to their bundles of US Dollars without fear of being robbed. That's how bad things have become in the house of my uncle. That's my uncles house and I plan to tour the whole house before telling him where to get off. Probably hours before I depart.


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dark angel

Dark Angel - A Gem in the Middle of the Bundu

Rural areas provide a fresh canvas inwhich beautiful paintings can be etched without the adulteration that comes with the bright lights of the city. This is the environment that feeds into fashion designer and singer Zanele Ndlovu (25)’s muse.

Zanele has lived in various places but finds inspiration from the sprawling hills and chirping birds of Timbavati in Mpumalanga. “I developed my love for designing at a very young age. That was before I even knew what it was. I was young when I started off designing clothes for my friends’ dolls.” she remembers.

Showing that an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree Zanele adds, “My mom is the reason I realised my talent, thus I learned all I know from her. She was designing and making dresses years before I was born”. Shadowing her mother had its perks. “I grew up learning and mastering my art through her mentoring, which has groomed me to this point.”

After completing her matric, though talented she struggled with finding her feet. “In 2011 I enrolled at Vaal University of Technology to upgrade my skill, however my ambition to pursue fashion academically didn’t last since I had to drop out due to the difficulties I had to face in a place far from home” Zanele reveals.“Today I find inspiration from simple things to do what I love the most. I am inspired by seeing the end product of what I envisaged, which is what keeps me going. Being a creator is the most fulfilling occupation I could indulge in, since for that moment I am a god – a creator and can marvel at the beauty of my work.” Zanele is a girly-girl with two sisters and a brother who all have ‘real’ jobs. What complicates her aspirations is that she’s also a talented singer with a free spirit. When she lived in Pretoria with friends she used to design clothes and handbags while also redesigning outfits they already had. In her daily life she is surrounded by an equally talented nucleus of friends who are either poets, musicians, writers or fashion enthusiasts. “During my year at VUT I met Buhle, a dear friend who is a developing designer I hold thumbs for in the SA fashion industry. She is currently doing her second year. I was impressed with her drive to obtain her degree whatever the cost, her neat work and the perfection she puts in each garment she makes” Zanele who also makes home accessories such as cushions, curtains and bed spreads relates.

For somebody who found academia too restricting Zanele’s thumbsuck designs do not give away the secret. She admits that her style is largely informed by the fashion she sees every day, which influences her to recreate and redefine existing fashion to her own taste.

Her fashion definition is creating beauty and allowing consumers of her work to feel and find their own identity in them. “My style can be defined in many terms even though I don’t want to put it in a box. It has been defined as traditional African, Afro- chic, Afro-centric. The aesthetic of such creations is my maintenance of a unique identity and definition of my style. Yet again I am able to expand my abilities to suit different occasions and different styles.”

This bohemian guitarist has had her fair share of press but it’s difficult when one is in Mpumalanga which has no Fashion Week focus. “We have not yet reached a stage whereby we can boast seasonal collections staged in the big cities, either simultaneously or successively. For us to reach that stage whereby we can have a Summer, Winter, Spring and Autumn Collections staged in both Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Bloemfontein and Nelspruit talent should be identified even in our rural areas, not only in Gauteng. This can help in the growth of our fashion industry with more players participating”

Zanele’s label is called Dark Angel Designs and while the name has a gothic ring to it her designs are colourful and gay. “I hope that in the next few years my fashion label will be embraced by a bigger market than I currently have. I would love to have my own fashion house where I’m able to dream up designs , create them and have them available to fashion consumers”, she concludes.

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blogging south africa

Blogging SA - The Politiks

Six years ago a blog named Khanya started the ball rolling with the question, ‘Where are the Black bloggers?’ The post upset a lot of closeted racists when it claimed, “when people from outside South Africa want information on South Africa, many turn to the Internet and what they find there are mostly white perceptions, and that is not a balanced South African view”.

If Khanya thought sarcastic comments such as ‘If whites want to blog, they’ll have to go overseas in order to blog from there, because the government will make sure local blog sites like iblog.co.za have a strict quota on the number of blacks!’ were annoying, they were a taste to a bigoted tirade that followed.

Weeks later journalist Lerato Mogoatlhe attended a South African Blog Awards event and commented in her Sunday weekly column about how unrepresentative the nominees and audience were. When Kasiekulture! expanded on Mogoatlhe’s observation a whole army of white bloggers accused Blacks of sulking and being tokens. The blogosphere nearly melted.

Pambazuka News weighed in with a half-diagnosis, “With most Black people still living in townships and a further 20% living in shacks it is not surprising that blogging and technology in general is not being taken up. Let’s face it, if you have just spent two hours struggling to get home the last thing you want to do is go and find an internet café and start blogging.”

Even then there were pockets of Black bloggers such as Nelspruit-based Khensani Mathetha whose blog Oh Really Now! was well-written and entertaining. “A friend suggested that I  read a post about relationships on his blog and I liked the idea of being able to write anything and everything I thought without holding back or worrying how it would be received by whoever that will read it”. Mathetha’s blog was more of a log book on life and living in Mpumalanga’s capital.

Oh Really Now! gave blogger love to artist/journalist Tshwarelo Mogakane whose YoDemo blog tackled controversial religious topics. Mogakane says, “Being a lover of words it was hard thinking a lot and not being able to share. Before blogging, you only had highly monopolised newspaper columns. So when the blogosphere appeared I was one of the first to be raptured”

Since those early days of a bigoted blogosphere and pioneering Black voices there has been more blogs spotted in aggregators Amatomu and MyScoop. It often raises questions how the few available SA aggregators rate local blogs.

South African Blog Awards’ 2012 overall winner Yomzansi, which also won Best Lifestyle and Music blog does not feature on MyScoop’s top 100 South African blogs. Yomzansi is published by Thabo and Thabiso Modiselle, a young and dynamic team of tech-savvy social media experts. However the blog that won Science and Technology category The Techie Guy is ranked higher than a three times national champion.

The scale balances on Memeburn’s ‘22 Black Bloggers you should be reading’. Here popular bloggers such as Khaya Dlanga, Ndumiso Ngcobo, Zinhle Mncube, Nonkululeko Godana etc are mentioned.

Arts blogs fanatic and artist Matete Motsoaledi believes that ‘Bloggers are mostly specialists in that they gravitate towards a certain subject and thus save me time weeding through adverts, announcements etc. that other publications have.” Bonapono blog’s Motsoaledi, an aspiring photographer used to run The Kriel Chapter blog.

Given Hollywood’s influence on processed information whereby most aspiring bloggers choose fashion, gossip and celebrity scene as trending topics maybe the question should be; ‘are Blacks blogging their reality or re-packaging Dion Chang and Perez Hilton’s posts?’.

Socialite Lelo Boyana carved a niche blogging for TVSA content that insinuated a Hilton influence. She told the blog Jucy Africa, “For you to be successful in blogging, you need to love people, you need to be a sociable type, love partying, coz that's where the gossip comes out.”

Dlanga recently posted ‘I am unAfrican’ which could have been a tongue-in-cheek spoof of President Jacob Zuma’s festive canine bashing. He claimed it was inspired by Thabo Mbeki’s speech while posting a picture of a youthful Nelson Mandela playing with a dog. While mainstream Black bloggers post largely about socio-politics, thoughts and market trends; which one can argue are South Africa’s ever hot topics, Mathetha feels most blogs have become pretentious and impersonal and are now dictated by market-generated content.

 Motsoaledi believes even with a proliferation of ‘micro-waved’ fashion and gossip blogs quality bloggers will prevail, “We do have a unique voice. Although our stories are universal, we tell them differently because we have a different perspective and influence from other people elsewhere. If only we could allow our more opportunity to let our voices dominate. We have plenty to share.”                                 

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adam nkuba

Right Of Reply - The Other Side

by Nkuba Adams

IN HIS thesis ‘’Erosion of black Tradition’’ my brother Mashilo Masemola lamented the contemporary syndrome of copycatting  Eurocentric  tendencies substituting sacred African tradition practices in African societies, Masemola crisply asserted that culture does evolve but tradition must be preserved. Masemola refused to aim his arsenal at cultural imperialism by the other but focused on “black people themselves ‘’.

At the core of this wholesale dereliction of traditional ceremonies and customs is the negotiation and celebration of marriage.Traditional rituals carries within them underlying values which guard against moral turpitude and casual insensitivities inherent in the imperfect nature of human beings. I shall now comparatively expose the pitfalls of “white wedding“(read modern matrimonial order) and its flawed values system as against the traditional ideology of marriage.

According traditional articles of life, marriage is a process of growth which involve two family groups as opposed to two individuals, this process calls for the performance of customs rituals which are absolute requirements of this process .The delivery not payment of lobola defined by the south African parliament as :“lobola” means the property in cash or in kind, whether known as lobolo, Bogadi, bohali. Xuma, lumalo, thaka. Ikhazi, magadi, emabheka or by any other name, which a prospective husband or the head of his family undertakes to give to the head of the prospective wife’s family in consideration of a customary marriage; is of great importance  other salient features include the procreation of children.

Fast forward to contemporary beliefs marriage is legal transaction aimed at creating an independent legal unit of husband and wife since the bearing of children is optional a counter principle to the Tswana proverb “tseo ke go tsala bana” (to marry is to bear kids).The main aim of a marriage in terms of indigenous customs is perpetuation of the clan, together with related families. The modern framework as advocated by shrinks Dr Eve, Shirley Glass, Esther Perel to mention just a few is organized around the idea of the centrality of love, whatever the love is intended to mean.

The contradictions within the contemporary matrimonial value system are revealed by its subscription to American individualism which supports the careless gratification of selfish pursuits versus the selflessness of a loving heart.

Women rights and traditional activism

A common salvo of critics is that tradition is the custodian of the patriarchal agenda of male supremacy and gender oppression as an adherent of traditional systems, my response is obvious: we view life as a process and men and women are of equal human worth and are partner in progress, we further refuse to define life as a power game of sexes  in which each is  trying to score more rights from the Law.

Divorce and dissolution of marriage

The modern /white wedding vow recitation does not acknowledge divorce as possible fate of a marriage but reality speaks otherwise. The sacred purpose served by the traditional marriage is immune to death itself, yes there I said it .Traditional marriage is not dissolved upon death of  either of the parties. Divorce as a concept that seeks to define a life experience is foreign to Africantraditional value concepts definitions

In support of Mashilo Masemola as he waves the STOP sign at this prevalent commercialization of rituals like the delivery of marriage goods /lobola. It is my opinion that our economic and commercial activism cannot and must not follow the conventional model of rugged capitalism at the expense of traditions giving value to life, lest we lose this values and exist on natural instinct like animals .ours must be a parallel capitalism which refuse to maintain wealth at all cost, to a point of creating poverty and exploitation.

Thanks to MASHILO MASEMOLA for the inspiration.

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mashilo masemola

Erosion of Black Tradition

WORDS BY: MASHILO MASEMOLA

[The thesis you are about to read is largely influenced by objective and to a larger extent my subjective observation of what is generally referred to as Black tradition – or the Black way of doing things]

In an endeavour to eliminate any form of misinterpretation from the subject, perhaps it is fitting that one draws a distinction between tradition and culture. Tradition is a way of life which remains intact and largely constant from one generation to generation, whereas culture is something which is often informed by contemporary influence. For example the Irish have the river dance as a traditional dance of the Irish folk, it has remained constant over the years; on the other side there’s the contemporary culture of spending weekends in sports pubs indulging their palates on good Irish beer.

Now that I have made an attempt to distinguish between tradition and culture, let me dwell onto the subject of erosion of Black tradition. When I say erosion of Black tradition I’m not talking about an outside influence that has eroded our culture, in the sense that American pop culture has influenced global pop culture; I am talking about the erosion of Black tradition from within – that is by Black people themselves.

The most blatantly eroded part of Black tradition lies in what we ironically today refer to as an integral part of our tradition – wedding celebrations. It is well-documented that black people started embracing the “white wedding” concept at the turn of the 20^th century but I shall avoid the temptation of basing my argument on such obvious trivia. However I shall focus on the lobola/magadi aspect of our marriage ritual as that remains a practise that goes back to the days of boys meeting girls by the river and fermenting their love until it matures to a point where the girl’s parents had to give consent and blessings to their daughter to be married to a boy from a far-flung village.

As it was a practise during those days a deputation from the groom-to-be would be sent to the bride-to-be’s homestead to state the boy’s intensions to make a wife of the girl he met by the river. Upon arrival, the deputation would be bearing gifts and all sorts of other goodies to offer as tokens of appreciation. It must be categorically stated that lobola/magadi was never a negotiated settlement such as was the outcome at CODESA. Maidens were never commodified as it is currently the case where the bride’s delegation of uncles would argue how good their niece is well-educated and place an astronomical amount of monetary value as compensation for the Western education she has acquired.

The contemporary nature of the lobola/magadi process has the potential of setting a young upstart on a back-paddle, instead of putting down a deposit for a house or setting a Trust Fund with an endeavour to make sure that future generations avoid hardship. In extreme cases a poor bloke is set back some R100 000  – excessive price to pay for love is you ask me.

This erosion of Black tradition has to be stopped on its tracks otherwise we risk being a people contemporarily blowing with the wind and perpetually on a back-paddle both economically, traditionally, culturally and in other spheres. Renewal of Black tradition should be an integral part of the African Rennaisance project as advocated by former president Thabo Mbeki and anyone who values African knowledge systems as a source which we draw our being and a guideline which shapes our collective future as a people.

In closing let me quote one of the eminent sons of Pan- African Nationalism, Marcus Garvey who said “a people without a true knowledge of their history is like a tree without roots.”

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