Yesterday there was a discussion on campus. The point of discussion was to find out people’s views on freedom and what it means to the citizen of South Africa today. At first, I did not want to partake in this discussion. After all, it was a discussion for the students and I, the lecturer, will surely be out of place. However, as the discussion continued, a discussion that touches deep in my heart, I could not help but add my opinions.
Obviously, I entered the discussion illustrating the history that led to the ’94 elections. It felt like I was hitting a brick wall. The participants seemed blasé about the great feat it was for us to be a democratic state. It seemed that they were oblivious to what the freedom fighters were freeing us from. It was a weird experience because it was the first in my life that I was in a discussion with a fellow Blackman and yet the fellow Blackman seemed to be oblivious to the cost, the true cost, of the freedom we enjoy today.
Deeply disappointed, I texted some of my friends about this experience. One friend told me that I should not call it ignorance. That the problem runs deeper into the fabrics of society and in how we were raised as Black people. My other friend told me that for some, ignorance (or rather, not wanting to know for she said that calling it ignorance is ignorant in itself) is bliss. The Black experience is a heavy one and the moment one goes deeper the rabbit hole of the Black experience, the darker and more dangerous the hole gets.
It truly was the first time that I found myself in a situation where I was trying to explain the essence of being free in today’s world for the Blackman. What deepens the sadness as well was that it seemed as if I was the only one with facts. Facts that could be traced if they were challenged. Even the facilitator who you would assume should possess some intelligence about the conversation proved to have none. No one spoke from an intellectual understanding. Is this the brain drain that African scholars are crying about? That the generation of today pays it no mind to find out who they are?
A senior lecturer at UFS once told me that it is imperative that more Black youth enter the academic space. Because we are creating a new world for the Blackman but there is a shortage of minds to create philosophies and theories about the Black experience of the new world. This is profound because looking into the histories, it is the theories and philosophies of Steve Biko that gave rise to the student uprisings of ’76. Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X preached Black intelligence and it is their theories and philosophies that inspired the Afro Americans to rise up against the system. It is the minds of Molefi Asante and Dr. Henry Clarke that rewired the perspectives of African minds to view the world through African eyes. It is the minds of the elite ANC and other African parties that disarmed and defeated the National Party to enable the wheels of democracy to begin rotating. Yes, other methods were used to get the ear of the world to the plight of the Black man. However, those protests, demonstrations, riots, and so forth were led by intellectually elite African men and women. An elite that seems to be void in the world today.
Or is it perhaps that at the end of the discussion, alone at my place, I got emotional? Because I am one of those South Africans that cry when listening to songs of the past? Like Jonas Gwangwa’s Freedom for Some; Mbongemi Ngema’s Rolihlahla. Again, it was the first time I encountered a Blackman who seemed not to appreciate the gravity of the freedom we enjoy today. But it goes back to what Morpheus said in The Matrix. He said that some minds are so entrenched in the system, so far gone that they are not ready (nor willing) to be freed from the system. In fact, they are prepared to die for the system. Yesterday was a reminder that indeed, there are still those that are trapped. Blindly loyal to the system that continues to enslave them. I guess; aluta continua.
Yorumlar