How did Steve Biko do it? How did he create a philosophy that translated into a movement? I realised that I haven’t written anything over the past few months. And really, there is no clear reason why I haven’t. To some extent, I have been questioning the existence of this blog and whether I should continue writing. Wondering whether is there someone who actually cares.
Then three young men texted me one day. These guys, one day, will be industrial leaders of their times. They are exceptional young men who I admire for their intellect and drive. It is scary that they see me as a mentor. Being a mentor or regarded as a mentor is something that frightens me because I wonder, what attribute do they see in me for them to elevate me so. However, that’s a story for another day. So, they texted me at different times. The first guy texted me and suggested that I should start a mentorship program. A program designed at elevating young men and women with my philosophies. Again, I must admit that this guy reminds of me when I was young. The difference is that he has superior focus. A focus that makes him better than me at that age. The other guy tells me the same thing but he focuses more on the fact that the book I wrote, I am, somewhat gave him courage and clarity towards his vision. Such a statement from a guy who is also extremely focused and intellectually above above-average left me speechless. The last guy told me that he finds inspiration in my writing. And the fact that he sees me doing it, gives him the courage to write as well. He shared with me one of his writings. Extremely powerful and thought-provoking stuff he writes. Reminds me of a star athlete who told me the same thing. These young men I admire because their greatness is as clear as snow. It’s only a matter of time for them to see it themselves.
When I began writing this blog, I wanted to open a platform for discussion. A platform for discussion around being the modern African, South African. I was (and still am) motivated by the fact that the world has a lot of celebrities. And not so many philosophers. Dave Chappelle once said that he failed to understand why MTV would call Ja-Rule about the 9/11 crisis when it happened. Who is Ja-Rule in such matters? Just because they have attained success in the entertainment industry, this does not equate them to the same prestige as someone who has earned their Ph.D. in a respective field (finance in this case). This blog is not for everyone. This I know and this I understand. It is for those who aim to be the next generation of thinkers and philosophers. It is also for those that want to bring change in their respective fields.
There is an interview of President Barack Obama calling out, what he calls, woke politics. The one that we see mostly on social media. The kind of politics that just criticizes and judges. The kind of politics that does not offer a policy change or a suggestion to a policy change. Most of us, the youth, fall trap into this kind of politics. And the truth is, that’s not politics. That’s just a culture that justifies the world we live in. In the same interview, President Barack Obama also states that those who participate in this form of politics should wake up and understand that the world is not a friendly place. That the world is dark and harsh. The irony of being “woke.” This culture does not only translate in politics but into other fabrics of society as well.
It is annoying and frustrating because when you engage these people, most of them really do not have a unique voice. What they say is genetic and is popularised narratives taken from social media and from their favourite celebrities. I saw one of these woke activists post about the coronavirus from some medical textbook from the ‘80s. Obviously, this was a post to evoke a conspiracy and that “wake up” mentality. However, when one reads from credible sources and listens to verified doctors and experts, one can learn that COVID-19 is a variant of a coronavirus. Coronaviruses are a variant of influenza. Let’s not forget that the Spanish Flu was never healed. They never found a cure for it. It just grew weaker over the years. So if it were remerged in a millennium from now, in a new form, it was not because it was stored in some lab somewhere. Stored that one day a superpower will release it for world domination. It could be that it evolved to a new form and got its strength back to kill people – so to say.
This one guy was once preaching a conspiracy about how Zimbabwe is against America and that it is actually on the verge of going to war with America. According to him, Zim had partnered with Russia somehow to go to war with America. I asked this guy a simple question. I asked him why is it then that Zimbabwe, which hates America so much, is using the US dollar as a currency? He couldn’t answer me. Not that he couldn’t provide an answer, he simply remained quiet. Because he didn’t know. I don’t know whether he didn’t know about the fact that Zim is using the US dollar or whether he didn’t know why Zim is using the US dollar. But it reflected the dangers of this ill way of thinking. Just because it is information that is not in the mainstream media doesn’t necessarily mean that the information is true. Talib Kweli once said that just because people don’t understand you doesn’t mean you are deep. This is so true.
There is a great difference between someone who is truly woke and someone who is pretending to be. Modern day wokeness reminds us of the Goth culture of our teenhood. There were boys and girls who called themselves Goth back in the day. They wore black, embraced their depression, and smoked a drug or not. Isn’t that the same narrative that we see with those who call themselves woke today? The wokeness of my sister’s generation is definitely not the wokeness of today’s generation. Someone who is truly woke doesn’t try so hard to fit in. I know a girl who is woke. I mean, gather crystals and read the stars woke. And her wokeness is pure and reflects her true self. It is not a mirror image of the narrative written by those on social media.
This woke culture deviates and robs our generation of thinkers and philosophers. The fact that one can read and digest an anti-government or a leftist policy, and understand it, tells you of their advanced thinking capacity. However, the danger comes when that person cannot defend their viewpoint. This practice of defending your argument makes sense why it is important in the world of academia. You don’t just become a master’s student or a Ph.D. student by virtue of a theory you propose. You need to know your theory, be able to prove it to people, and defend it. The problem with social media activism is that it’s easy to share a post. Because that post was not researched properly, that post becomes toxic waste to the reader. The keyword is researched. I remember this one radio personality telling a caller that research doesn’t mean sitting on Google for 4 hours. Having gone through my first round of postgrad studies, I understand very well what that radio personality meant.
And that is the significance of the creation of this blog. To create a platform where discussion is opened and it is a discussion that is aimed at making a real impact on our lives. Protests and industrial actions are strategies of a battle. The war is won in the boardrooms between CEOs and trade union representatives. Dr. Clarke once said that marching and protesting as a strategy has run its course. He made an example about the Japanese. That they went to war with America. Important to highlight that Japan is the one that stuck the first blow. And America responded by dropping not one, but two nuclear bombs. Those bombs not only defeated Japan but ended WWII right there and then. Japan, rebuilt. Japan, rebuilt a nation that is one of the richest in the world today. Dr. Clarke suggested that we need to learn from the Japanese and find out what they did that worked and emulate it in our African societies.
The Chinese followed a similar narrative. The Jews followed a similar narrative. The narrative of us Black people is not the same. Yes, there are plenty of factors to consider but the key factor is that there are fewer African thinkers and philosophers in the modern age. It does no good that those who think they can think and create philosophies, create them on narratives that have been played out to death. It does no good to take what one gets from the dark web or from that near I-need-mental-help friend’s posts as truth. What defeats me personally is that when you engage with most social media activists is that they really don’t know what they talking about.
One guy went on about how the ANC has failed us and that we need change. I asked him, what is that change we need, he had no answer. As opposed to a politically mature friend of mine who feels the same way and he broke it down to me changes that could bring real transformation in our societies and in the ANC itself. Others talk about how we should have destroyed everything and built South Africa from scratch. Again, I asked them how, they don’t know. On top of that, they don’t know South Africa was on the brink of bankruptcy when the ANC took over. They do not know about the near civil war of ’93. Mind you it was not just IFP (who were supplied by the army with arms) against ANC, but also there were extreme whites in the form of AWB and them. Most of them don’t know that the election actually took two days because the electric vote-counters were being manipulated. The country was a mess. A mess that the ANC tried their best to clean.
By no account am I ignoring the problems of the country. It breaks one's heart, for instance, to see the town hall in Harrismith looking like a den of opium users. There are issues in our country. These issues require intellectuals and philosophers who can break them down and provide sustainable and implementable policies that will lead to real change. Unfortunately, we have too many social media activists who enjoy being an “outcast”, a rebel to the man without any credible sources of information to justify their cause.
Hence I began writing this blog. This blog was aimed to engage and create a community of intellectuals and next-generation thinkers. To open a platform where real intellect is discovered. Because we need that. We need more thinkers and philosophers. It is saddening that when we think of leaders, in most cases we think of Steve Biko, Malcolm X, and those guys of the past. They laid the foundation. Their battle was mostly a political one. In today’s world, it’s more than that. A friend of Mandela, Mac Maharaj once said that politically they have won the battle. But the struggle is far from being over.
As a student of entrepreneurship and wealth creation, seeing how most Black businesses still end being local mom-and-pop businesses, I realise what Mac Maharaj is saying. Fact that most South Africans can tell you everything about world politics and nothing about ours, I realise what Mac Maharaj is saying. Fact that we find our youth finding identity in African-American culture and being oblivious to being Black South Africans, I realise what Mac Maharaj is saying. Fact that it is acceptable for Thando to be called Tido and not acceptable for Marius to be called Motebang, I realise what Mac Maharaj is saying when says the struggle is far from over.
This struggle will be won by intellectuals. Japan and China can be argued that they invested in the minds of their citizens in order to create the world that they living in now. With 30% giving you access to university in our country, we seem to be failing in this regard. Those who have superior knowledge in education, if they were to be in a room of those who are politically mature, best believe if a conference of this nature were to happen, there will be change in our education space. The reason policies such as BBBEE and the Employment Equity Act are in place is because great minds in business like Lot Ndlovu met with great minds in politics. Yes, there are flaws in the policies and there are other acts that need amending as well. But this was a start we needed. BBBEE has elevated many Africans to the middle class. There was a documentary in the ‘90s, while it was still just BEE, that was so insightful. It showed so many Africans who said that they lived in various townships in the country but because of BEE and affirmative action, this brought great change to them and their families. It also showed the historically called “poor whites” who were obviously bitter about BEE. A good 80% of these poor whites said that they wish that it was like “the good old days.” Those good old days when they had a leader like Verwoerd who worked relentlessly for the advancement of the poor whites who, in his time, were Afrikaners.
And mind you, across multiple sources, they say that Verwoerd intimidated people with his intelligence. That is extremely profound. The intelligence of Thabo Mbeki and them brought the philosophy of Ubuntu that was so well-engineered that we believe it’s an essential element of being African in South Africa. Pure and true intelligence is what brings change. This blog aims to bring true intellectuals together in order for that change to happen. In order for the struggle to be finally over. Maybe not in our lifetime, but hopefully in the next.
The fact that the blog is now beginning to gather these intellects, is what scares me. Perhaps that’s the real reason I haven’t written anything in months. The idea of being someone’s mentor scares me. For who am I? Who am I to guide someone else? In most cases, those who look up to me I realise that they were far better than me in every way. That thought overwhelms me and renders me weak. But in the same breath, it excites me because it shows that the country still has intellects. And this blog is a tool to allure them out. Because it is these modern-day intellects that will bring true transformation in this land we call South Africa.
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