38 YEARS AN EXILE: XI
HOME AT LAST! Part 11
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Ama-a-andla nga wethu! We’ve got it all so wrong in Mzansi fo sho. Power To The People! Is not all about the right to toyi-toyi for the next 350 years over even the most banal of people’s dissatisfactions against, or demands from the government. It is not about the false-premised belief in the right to the indiscriminate orgy of vandalism, theft, abuse, and misuse of public infrastructure with impunity due to poverty, daily evident in the most unequal society in the world today. Power To The People! is not a statement of delusional entitlements to excesses of privilege and power to members of the ruling, as well as other elite classes, and their beneficiaries … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA AWAKENING – home in grey matter”. Order book on Amazon).
Simon Chilembo
Riebeeckstad
Welkom
South Africa
November 30, 2014
38 YEARS AN EXILE: X
HOME AT LAST! Part 10
LIFE IN THE DIASPORA – MUCH TO PROVE
Once you land in exile, even more so if you do eventually get stuck out there, you have everything to prove. You have to. Your life depends on it. Exile confronts you first and foremost as the individual. Troubles in your country of origin will only make sense, or not, on the basis of what story you talk and walk. Consciously chosen or not, it may be your mission to be a Messiah for your people. Prove that you are; their lives depend on you.
Regardless of your real or imagined social status in your homeland, the fact that the latter and yourself can no longer thrive in each other’s presence, and because countries do not move, people do, you hit exile with much of you hanging on the line … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA AWAKENING – home in grey matter”. Order book on Amazon’s CreateSpace here).
Simon Chilembo
Riebeeckstad
Welkom
9459
South Africa
November 25, 2014
38 YEARS AN EXILE: IX
HOME AT LAST! Part 9
WALOBA AWARD 2014
E L W Chilembo, S Chilembo
My father the original exile, Mr Elias Lazarus Waloba Chilembo, would have turned 83 years old on Wednesday, November 19, 2014. When the pangs of British colonialism induced poverty were too much to bear, he, like his own father before, Waloba The First, trekked from our remote village in Eastern Zambia, to South Africa in search of greener pastures. This was soon after the end of World War II, in 1947. Four years later his mother died. He came back home to bury her. As per clan norms among my people, he being the eldest offspring in my grandmother’s house, Pappa should have stayed on to help Waloba The First look after his large, polygamous family. But no, he preferred to go back to exile in South Africa, where he would firmly plant his own roots in the land of diamonds and gold by eventually getting married, and establishing a family … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA AWAKENING – home in grey matter”. Order book on Amazon).
Simon Chilembo
Riebeeckstad
Welkom
South Africa
November 20, 2014
SOUTH AFRICA: LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE BRAVE
THIS FREEDOM IS MINE TOO
Just had a Lafayette, SanFransisco, feeling this midnight hour: Not a soul on the streets; not even the midnight Black Cat of Suburbia. Only an accasional car this and that way. No police, no private security patrol vehicle on sight. But they are there. Press Panic Button, and they will appear as if from nowhere, in no time. Things money can buy in opulent society.
Strutting up and down, with two buckets as I chose to manually water my street side garden flowers and trees, I can’t help anticipating that from the shadows yonder, someone can throw a projectile at me anytime. If this is my night, they might even shoot, KABOOM!!! Goodbye, Ngamla. Welcome to Mzansi fo sho, land of the living dead.
But then again, I wonder, how free can I feel, and be free and if I go around paranoid of getting killed in my free land? In my world, freedom as a living sentiment in the whole of my being means that I will, and shall, defy death, as well as uncalled for death threats from societal deviants. Freedom is courage to choose to live, and victor over enemies of liberty for the free, the peaceful and peace loving, as well as the progressive.
I did not fight for the freedom of my land for it to be enjoyed by criminals and gangsters alone, giving them the prerogative to decide when and how I shall die. Neither can they decide for me how I shall live, enjoy, and manifest uttributes of the freedom of my land. So, I shall water my garden in peace, anyhow, anytime I want to.
When done, as I did this midnight in front of a recently planted flower, I shall perform my Tai Chi form powerfully with grace, in praise of Freedom, in profound thoughts of all fallen freedom fighting heroes for generations the world over. There are still beautiful things about South Africa. These are what I’ll take with me to Exile II.
SIMON CHILEMBO
RIEBEECKSTAD
WELKOM
SOUTH AFRICA
November 17, 2014
Simon Chilembo 