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THE RUTHLESS RULE
Kassie Jungle Law: Only the Strong Survive
In my never-ending attempt at seeking to make sense of events in the world today, I, as a reflex, regularly look back at the first fourteen-and-half years of my life in South Africa, 1960 June – 1975 January. Growing up in the then racist apartheid state has profoundly impacted my life. Day-to-day living was ever so dramatically charged. Such that, on the one hand, one could but choose to numb oneself to the volatility of emotions, if not traumas arising, and live on disenchanted and detached from the gruesome, disenfranchised reality.
On the other hand, one could look at, hop onto the intricate traumatic feelings and thoughts bandwagon, learn survival ropes, and hope for the best; longevity being a remote idea. Wishful thinking. Although the OPEC oil crunch of the early 1970s had already begun to make its mark globally, this period could easily be seen as the golden years of the apartheid regime’s economic might. The oppressed Black population segment was subjected to extremes of state security agencies’ violence.
Oppression is some costly business. It curtails human resources productive potential growth and manifestation. Atrocious. Oppression will last to the extent that the oppressors’ financial base remains sufficiently robust to sustain the oiling of the oppressive state machinery at all levels. Money talks. Money rules. As it is with South Africa, a country’s endowment with a variety of natural resources that the world is willing to pay generously for is of crucial importance. Oppressors maximize their hold by capturing the wealth of their nations, therefore. They personalize the wealth, becoming super-rich individually and along with their family members, as well as their power clique hounds: oligarchs’ fangs drooling kleptocracy and nepotism poison in everything they touch. At the same time, their nations get caught in quagmires of long-term poverty and international indebtedness.
The Soweto Students’ Uprising of June 16, 1976, would not only change the liberation struggle course. It changed the political landscape of South Africa as well; further weakening the oppressive state’s capital base. Apartheid had to ultimately collapse. Not because somebody woke up one morning and suddenly discovered that the system was in fact diabolic. The fact is that it simply was no longer economically viable. And prospects of any meaningful bounce back were bleak. Added pressure from the international trade sanctions had brought the country down on its knees.
The effective brutality of the apartheid regime reproduced itself across the entire Black populace by default – in the home; at absolutely all levels of social interaction. That to the extent that the nature of fundamental survival power relations dynamics cultivated then amongst Black people themselves have endured. Albeit manifest at even more sophisticated, grander scale, and more destructive levels in keeping with societal management complexities and technological advancements of the times in the 21st Century.
During the apartheid domination years, many a Black South African exile carried along with them these survival power relations dynamics into the Diaspora. Not that it helped the concerned exiles much from the point of view of applying the same survival strategies as generally functional in the township, or kassie culture in Black South Africa. Kassie is a corruption of the Afrikaans language word, lokasie; which means location. Observing, establishing, and maintaining links with fellow South African exiles has kept my fascination with the Black people’s fundamental survival power relations dynamics alive during all these years.
Post-1994 South Africa has also been accessible to me. It’s the land of my birth, the land of my family’s maternal-side ancestry, after all. Thirty-eight-and-half years since living abroad, I returned to stay in the country for five years, 2013-18. As such, I have been in touch with the trends in the land all along. Much had changed drastically at about all levels. However, characteristic personal survival attitudinal attributes have remained constant. I shall dwell on these later on in this essay as I unravel prerequisites for the workings of the ruthlessness of kassie jungle law rule.
Kassie is a funky catchphrase these days. But originally, it essentially implied a slum; not much unlike Brazilian favelas, for example. In practice, the meaning hasn’t changed in any big way. From the colonial era, peaking during the apartheid years, and stretching into contemporary times, tens of thousands-upon-thousands-to-millions of Black South Africans were dumped here. It initially was predominantly male labourers working in the mines and the agro-industrial complex.
There would be a few state functionaries and even fewer professionals in various vocational categories here and there. Much as there would be numerous fortune hunters engaged in all kinds of illicit endeavours; from petty crimes to large-scale organized crime activities involving alcohol, drugs, precious stones and metals smuggling, human trafficking, prostitution, and more. Family units would eventually emerge as a natural human development process, of course. Children would be born, raised, become adults, lead miserable lives, and subsequently die; the indignity of poverty accompanying them to the grave. Causes of death variable, from murder to illness, if not natural causes.
Prevalent land conditions are far from prime in the townships. This makes the construction of decent domiciles a daunting challenge for impoverished people. Sustainable subsistence food production from the land is near impossible. Minimal to total lack of functional social amenities comes with the package here. If there was anything prime about the original townships, it was the potential to induce and generationally perpetuate poverty with all its attendant maladies: disease, moral decay, ignorance. All that to facilitate self-annihilation amongst Black people: kill them; let them kill themselves; create space for more European trash to come to work, settle, and add to the growth of the white population in the country.
Conditions are even worse these days, taking into consideration, since 1994, the influx of millions of refugees and fortune hunters from war-torn, dysfunctional African states to the north. Others come from other parts of the world, especially Asia. Competition for limited resources and livable spaces in the townships has spiked exponentially, apparently in favour of the new immigrants. Many of the latter come into South Africa with more by far international hustling experience: higher academic qualifications and vocational experience in both the social and natural sciences, military or guerilla warfare experience, and all that it entails – daring nature, PTSD, and other related outcomes. Also, investment capital for entrepreneurial ventures in various fields, often starting with small-scale grocery stores called spaza shops.
The latter attributes above are often accompanied by extreme manifestations of arrogance of power towards the locals, who are considered to be intellectually lacking, lazy, and fearful of White people, who still own the land, anyway. It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that strong anti-immigrant sentiments have mushroomed across the country, culminating in several outbursts of brutal xenophobia-inspired violence in recent years. Afro-xenophobia expression is ascribed to South African Black-on-African Black violence. In keeping with characteristic basal kassie culture, violence is the first instinctual option to eradicating conflict. Tragedy is ever the outcome that never brings forth solutions for a peaceful co-existence for all in the country.
The reality of the matter is that, much like the Ununited States of America, South Africa owes much of its economic might to the historical inflow of migrants from all corners of the world. As I’ve already implied above, these people bring into the country a wide diversity of creative/ intellectual/ academic, productive, and entrepreneurial skills that contribute to the robustness of the country’s vibrant economic and social advancement in the long run.
There’ll always be a few bad apples here and there. But assuming a functional justice system prevailing in the land, relevant policing and legal institutions are there to deal with lawbreakers. South Africa is truly a multi-cultural melting pot. Bishop Desmond Tutu’s broadly embraced Rainbow Nation nickname for the country supersedes discrimination neither based on race nor origin of the people that call South Africa their home, either by birth or immigration.
From an epistemological perspective, it is clear that the concept of township/ location/ kassie in South Africa was never meant to create ideal, conducive conditions for Black people to thrive and propagate themselves; neither to attain ever higher standards of living in time, in pace with national economic growth prospects.
The rise of apartheid economic might was at the expense of the lives of Black people, both at the hands of the apartheid state security machinery, and intra-Black violence across mainly urban South Africa. Many other Black lives were also lost through fatal accidents and occupational diseases in the agro-industrial-mining complex. Functionally concerning apartheid intentions, townships were supposed to provide temporary shelter for lives destined to be “… solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”
But then again, survival instincts abode in all humanity. People can remain wretched only for so long. If they are not wiped off from the face of the earth, they shall engage in all sorts of means to prolong their existence. Perhaps fate can change for someone, someday: break the bonds of subjugation, rise and liberate the people, and, ideally, live happily ever after in boundless abundance.
In the meantime, at the individual level in the South African kassie context, survival was and still is about ruthless “semphete ke o fete” (Sesotho: don’t overtake me, I overtake you) tendencies. Here, the strong survive. The ruthless rule; applying cruelty as their claim to prosperity and longevity.
Brought forth, elaborated in my Black South African context, and set in alphabetical order below are personal dispositions I’ve identified as being cardinal for relative individual survival and ruling potential in the South African kassie culture of violence. That as a tool for understanding the nature of human relations power dynamics, and consequences thereof, at all levels of contemporary society, both locally and globally (In the latter, i.e., globally, the USA fits in like a glove). The respective attributes may be understood regarding the identification of the individual as to who they are, and what their social standing is concerning behavioural phenomena observed of them. In essence, this is the making of despots ekassie, a microcosm of the Dream of America nightmare:
- Bodomo (street parlance – Setsotsi) is derived from the Afrikaans word dom. Alternatively bokwala (Sesotho), it means stupidity; downright idiocy. Amidst events, act like you don’t know what’s going on. Go about your daily business indifferent as to whether or not you cause others harm in your endeavours; you lack empathy. You are not interested in reason. You are a denialist. You are a revisionist.
- Bokhopo (Sesotho) is cruelty. When it is deep-seated, merciless, non-benevolent, and non-repentant it is called khohlahalo in the same language. Rule by absolute iron-fisted fearsomeness. Without exception, anybody transgressing you in any way shall suffer the full ruthlessness of your wrath in line with the nature of the offence and the choice of punishment you dim fit. The line between life and death is often very thin here. This tends to elicit baffling loyalty from your cohorts. Much to the bewilderment of your detractors.
- Ho tella (Sesotho)/ ukudelela (isiZulu) is an uninhibited show of lack of respect. Total disdain. You are brazen. You bulldoze your way through towards the attainment of your power or material acquisitions, and other egocentric ambitions. In your interpersonal and other relations in the community, it’s your rules or no rules at all.
- Lenyatso (Sesotho) is the root of ho tella and leqhoko, immediately above and below respectively. It means to undermine, to belittle other people. Tools applied include patronization, ridicule, insults, unjust criticism, passive aggression, isolation or exclusion, subjugation; all propelled by jealousy and/ or feelings of threat irrationally perceived or real because the victim may, indeed, be the better person in many respects. The idea is to crush the victim, cut them to size, and put them in their place of insignificance. This is pure mental and emotional abuse that often easily degenerates to physical abuse.
- Leqhoko (Sesotho) is provocativeness. Be agitative even out of nothingness just so your presence is noticed, is not forgotten. Be relentlessly disruptive. Cause havoc; be an ass. Instigate and sustain fear. Use all means at your disposal: bully, defame, riot, vandalize, pillage, depose, fight, maim, kill. Ultimately, emerge as the leader of the pack; level-headed and solution-oriented, if only to cow and manipulate the terrorized towards aiding to secure attained dominant safe position.
- Mamello (Sesotho)/ Qinisela (isiXhosa/ isiZulu) refers to tolerance capacity; endurance in both hard and good times, depending. Good times are generally no big deal. But in hard times, practice self-preservation by keeping to yourself and your own. Hang in there. Stay away from trouble. Be invisible. Make no noise. Cultivate hope. Keep the faith because everything is going to be alright someday. Persevere.
For the mighty, though, mamello/ ukuqinisela means staying the course no matter what: keep on pushing; stand tall, don’t fall. Never, never, never give up! Never change the course of action once commitment to act in a certain manner is made. Here, mamello/ ukuqinisela becomes an interplay of bodomo, bokhopo, ho tella, leqhoko, and manganga in variable doses and combinations according to the circumstances prevailing at any one time and space. - Manganga (Sesotho)/ Inkani (isiZulu) is absolute stubbornness. Take a stand, be resolute to the very end, whatever the cost. Whether or not original intended goals are attained is not the essence. You are defiant to the extreme. Stay rock-steady as a matter of principle because you cannot be wrong, or you cannot be denied your demands. You are the truth. You are the light. If you are not the son of God, then you ARE God! Your opponents shall declare you as deranged, delusional; but that doesn’t bother you at all. You are mmampodi (Sesotho)/ champion; you rule. You live above the law. You own your followers through and through. Each one of them understands that you are their life saviour.
A street parlance (Setsotsi) adage goes like this, “Maziwaziwe, maz’bidlikaz’bidlike! (isiZulu)/ If they (e.g. towers) fall, they fall; if they collapse, they collapse!”
It is what it is.
Tyrants, hard-core conspiracy theorists, and charlatans fall under this category. So, in the USA, Coronavirus is just the common flu; “… it’ll disappear just like a miracle!”
Not forgetting The Big Lie that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the presidential elections of November, 2020. And then supporters of The Big Lie insurrect The Capitol peacefully like tourists, leaving destruction and carnage behind. Very special people that The Big Lie spinner loves.
You can also do an egotistical, parochial, typically falls premises pushed brexshit and pull your country out of a body of international solidarity in the Western world.
Neither does State Capture exist in South Africa. You know none in your family that has contracted AIDS in South Africa. Therefore, it doesn’t exist. Step aside rule in the ANC? What’s that? If you are indeed going to fall, you don’t go alone. You are vindictive. - Sebete is a Sesotho word for liver.The liver is considered to be an organ of courage in my part of Black South African culture. A courageous person is said to “have a liver”/ O sebete. Courage is a common thread linking all survival, or power attributes in kassie.
Ho sa (Sesotho, noun), lumps together the attributes above into one virulent trait: petulance as gross as only an extremely spoiled brat can display. The descriptive form of ho sa is “O sele!”, meaning “He/ she is petulant!”
People of all ages manifesting ho sa as a characteristic social interaction trait are some of the most dangerous a community can have. Makings of despots emerge here.
Underpinning the relative kassie individual survival and ruling potential laid out above is the question: O tshepile mang (Sesotho)? Which directly translates as, “Who is it you trust?”
Who’s covering your back?
Simple as the question might seem, it is not necessarily a daily conversation question posed in my original part of Black South Africa. The question is profound to the extent that it is asked a person directly, or others are asked about a particular individual when the latter’s negative behaviour defies not only mainstream social protocols across the board, but sheer common sense as well. It is believed that there must be some extra-ordinary qualities, some mystic about these kinds of people. For example:
- What gives them the guts? What makes them tick?
- Whose progeny are they? What are their lineages?
- Do they have some guardian angels, perhaps? In that case, who are the latter? Where are they?
- What do they have that ordinary people do not have?
- Are they working for somebody even more powerful than themselves? Who are these people?
- Are they protected by God? Ancestral spirits? Wizards and witches?
- Or are they just raving mad, sick in their heads? Are they bewitched?
- Do they have magical powers themselves? If so, from where do the powers derive?
- Are they members of some organized crime gangs? Or some secret societies? The Illuminati?
- Is it just because they are too rich? But where does their wealth come from?
It’s only if and when sufficient knowledge about these treacherous people is gathered that concerned individuals or the community can effectively react to get rid of them in one way or another. It’s not unusual that the former fall from glory in the most dramatic and humiliating fashions; those who lived by the sword dying exactly as they lived. Such is kassie life. The ruthless rule but momentarily.
The strong are often the smart with senses of moral and ethical awareness. They tend to survive, break out of the mould of kassie misery and ignorance, and live longer. Some in this category will in time even travel wide and see the world, permanently breaking the spell of kassie anti-life attributes. Expressing themselves through diverse media and creative and performance forms, they may also become proponents of liberty, justice, and equality as fundamental Human Rights tenets all of humanity on earth is entitled to.
Meanwhile, South Africa has yet to cleanse itself of the kassie anti-life attributes spell, to the extent that it’s possible. However, given the current display of elite kassie mentality antics in various judicial and organizational platforms in the country, it is clear that much more work remains to be done at this rate. Well, cumulatively from the onset of contemporary European colonialism in the 17th Century up to the apartheid era in the 20th Century, the mechanizations that facilitated their imposition had at least four hundred years to dehumanize my people and screw up our psyche. The Rainbow Nation is only twenty-seven years old.
Khotso is a common Sesotho name for South African males. It means peace. The female version is Mma-Khotso both as a formal name and may denote that the woman is a mother of a boychild called Khotso. The name has significant connotations. In practice and conceptually, peace is a universal prerequisite for progressive human co-existence. That making for harnessing humanity’s creative potential towards a sustainable, infinitely fulfilling life for all. The South African national anthem, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika! (Nkosi Sikelela) is essentially a cry for peace, captured in the Sesotho text:
Morena boloka sechaba sa heso/ Lord Almighty, save my nation
O fedisa dintwa le matshwenyeho/ Bring an end to strife and suffering
Were the ruthless and the smart kassie people of South Africa and beyond to realign their attitudes and heed the message of Nkosi Sikelela, the future would be bright for all. I want to be here in four hundred years to gloss in the glory of the heaven on earth that South Africa and the rest of the world will have become. I sit here in a space of relative peace. I breathe. I dream. I write. Ever conscious of the lasting impact that my kassie life background has had on me, I have every reason to want to choose to be hopeful.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
May 29, 2021
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I REFUSE – A Poem
Fairytales in My World
Must I look away
From children
In my daily
Living spaces
On 2021 17 May
Norway’s National Day
Show-casing tangible
Children’s worth and joy
In a free world of peace
Whilst other children perish
At this very moment
In ravages of war
In baby Jesus’ world
Where peace is but
A concept in foreign vocabularies
Studied in Military Sciences
At Ivy League universities
Of this world
Jesus was a child of the wind
May be reason why
Nobody cares about
The fate of
Children of the soil
When the missiles rain out there
Must I obliterate myself
From the scene
The moment I hear
Children’s voices
In my proximity
Must I sing
I would rather go blind
Than to see
Children’s eyes on me
In their fields of vision
Fields of play
Must I be
Malignant angel
To a child
Warming my heart
With their purity of emotion
As I sense them
Must I suppress
My paternal instincts
To want to assure
A child that
I want only to
See them happy
Exuberant and free
Must I refrain from
Singing for a child
Dancing for them
Clowning for them
Reaching out
To touch them
For them to feel
The warmth
The honesty
Of my actions
My intentions
Must I ever look over my shoulders
In children’s presence
For fears
Of my actions
My intentions
Being misconstrued
By eyes
Seers of whom
For reasons obtaining
From their own fears
The nature of their lives’ journeys
Has taught them
To see only evil
In the acts of
The joyous
Glowing in the light
Of children
Yet to know
The sentiment of envy
The force of hate
I refuse
‘cause
I don’t know
How not to suffuse
Pure affection profusion
In view of children
I refuse
To succumb
To malicious fairy tales’ pitfalls by
Delusional prejudicial minds
Seeing reality
Through
Diabolic colours-tinted lenses
Tainting my honour
In view of confrontations with
Their own insecurities
In which their design
Their display
My hands
Never had a role to play
Could never want to
Never
Never
Never
On the contrary
My hands sought
Only
To build
Pillars of strength
Towers of power
Alas
In a moment of
Attention gone astray
Monsters were birthed …
(Continues in the book MACHONA POETRY: Rage and Slam in Tigersburg)
©Simon Chilembo 16/05-2021
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
May 30, 2021
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
COLOUR OF MY SKIN – A Poem
AS IS COLOUR OF MY SKIN I AM
I’m ‘y skin colour
I waste no light
You see no colour
You’re out of sight
Light shines through you
Your
Condescendence
Ignorance
Insensitivity
Superficiality
Ubiquitous
I walk
My colour
I talk
My colour
I breathe my colour
I live my colour
You see no colour
I run over you
My voice colour laser
Pierces your eardrums
You choose not to see
You choose not to hear
You’ll never learn
You’ll stay colourless
Dumb
You might as well
Be dead
Bigot
Your words say
And I quote
Oh, dear
I am indeed white
And that is a fact
God-given
My blood is
Racism pure-red-free
White is my world
Pure and clean
I do not see
Black in the people of God
Black is the colour of shame
That notwithstanding
Black is the appearance of the colour of the skin of my lover
When we perform coitus
I shut my eyes closed
Really
I do not see colour
I feel only delight
Primal pleasures of the flesh flavour
Close quote
Clearly
Your vision
Is twisted
Your hearing
Is clogged
Even then
I invite you
To read my lips
If you can
For one last time
Vocalize my words
Inside your head
For you to hear
What I have
To say to you
I’m colour of my skin
I give meaning to light
Black define’ space
In your time
Black colours
Contours of your life
Black contrasts the universe
For creation’s diversity
Ever unfolding
Inside of you
In everything
Your senses perceive
In your world
Big or small
I’m colour of my skin
I stand here
A plural faced prism
I disperse light
In all directions
In all its
Spectrum splendour
Colour possible tones
Imagination unbound
When some call me
A person of colour
It’s because
They see something
Of themselves
In me
In all corners of the world
The day you decide
To open your eyes
Come into me
Find the colour of your skin
For who you truly are
Walk with me
Your colour
If you want
As I walk mine
Walk my talk
Your ears might heal
Talk my colour
Your ears might hear
They might be
Receptive
To Black person
Dancing
In the light
Singing
You cause me harm
For colour of my skin
You harm yourself
See my colour
See yourself
Feel your pain
For the day
Light might cease
Falling on me
In the dark
Everything is possible
You created Satan
Made it
My alter ego
And yet
Satan is
The face
Of your fear of my skin
Of your hate
Of the colour of my skin
I’m shining bright
In the light
Of the smart
Come in sight
Self-knowledge is might
Sit tight
Time is right
Waste no light
I’m infinite
By right
I’ll teach you right
Colour of my skin is erudite
Just treat me right
I wish you might
Expedite
Be contrite
For your spite
Immortal is
Colour of my skin
Get used to it
See colour
If only
For your longevity
Life is good
For the colourful
In a world
Tainted by
The
But me
I don’t see colour
I see people
Oh, yeah
People come in
All colours
All shapes
All sizes
You blind
To that reality
Move to the side
Stay out of sight
Moron
END
©Simon Chilembo 23/ 03-2021
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
March 29, 2021
Tel.: +4792525032
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES: TO BE OR NOT TO BE SUSCEPTIBLE
WE ARE WHAT WE ARE
From the outset, our physical and physiological attributes as humans are coded in our DNA. Our unique individual manifestations of our conscious and unconscious socio-cultural traits are directly linked to the workings of our visceral systems as dictated by our respective genetic make ups. Personal genome sequencing can reveal actual or potential states of our physical and mental health.
Our overall health status has a bearing as to how we relate to nature; how we carry and present ourselves to society at any level, at any one time. The potential that we have to execute both physical and mental work necessary for our survival in any setting in nature and society is crucially dependent on our state of health.
We shall be robust and function well, living in peaceful co-existence with others to the extent that we are in good health. Though not absolutely defined, but for purposes of this presentation as a starting point, good health presupposes normal, balanced functioning of the visceral system. Meaning that, for example, the physical and chemical functioning of the digestive system from the intake of food to elimination of waste is normal: homeostasis. That supported by as normal and balanced central nervous system. The latter consists of the brain and the spinal column, through which the body’s necessary internal functional reflex signals are transmitted in response to stimulations from the hormonal system.
The brain’s work is manifest through outward expressions of motoric abilities, sense of orientation, feelings, thoughts, language, and recollection. That in the beginning we are what we are as social beings, and that we can only be what we are presently is a function of how the brain works given the nature of its wiring, or development.
All things remaining equal, the ever-complex interplay of human developmental processes from fertilization to birth to subsequent growth into adulthood, determines how the brain shall interpret for us what it makes of reality in our immediate and distant ecologies. In order that we shall instinctively or consciously respond accordingly in any given context, the brain shall respond and structure our behaviour according to messages conveyed through the central system. These messages are conditioned by specific hormonal responses. The hormonal responses are transported in the bloodstream.
In joyous moments, we shall express happiness through various ways – laughter, dance, storytelling, and much more – because the brain has come under the influence of happiness hormones: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins. In moments of fear, the brain is powered by adrenaline. Closely related to the latter is cortisol, the stress hormone.
The brain constantly feeds and reinforces our behavioural attributes, as well as expressions thereof in given situations. It conditions our view of the world. As the brain works, qualitatively developing in sophistication or degenerating depending on circumstances, our world view may stay parochial or variable over time. This defines an individual’s mental disposition.
Things fall apart when, out of a myriad of potential causes, the brain is either not fully developed or it both cognitively and physiologically degenerates with time. Things don’t get any better when the brain serves, or is serviced by a body in obvious pathological disorder. Things get even more interesting when the brain is stimulated by visceral, central nervous, and hormonal systems chronically out of balance. Meaning that the systems either individually or collectively do not work optimally as a synergic functional order to ensure good health for the individual.
The visceral, central nervous, and hormonal systems may be out of balance as an inherent outcome. They may come out of balance as a result of external factors also: diseases, aging, intoxicating substances, electro-magnetic radiations, amongst others.
That we are as we are as individuals is not an accident, therefore. Through our constant or variable behavioural attributes, we are expressions of our mental dispositions as an outcome of, or in reaction to given existential circumstances. As human beings, our personal genomes are a subset of the grander human genome.
The human genome is the key determinant factor that ensures successful sexual reproduction amongst people of the world. That irrespective of race, colour, religion, or creed. This fact essentially crushes racism to pieces because the oneness of humanity is imprinted in the core of, if not in the fundamental building blocks of the human organism.
Humanity’s oneness is not visceral in a manner of speaking; it is visceral for real. It is in our blood. Differentiation in blood types is more an evolutionary response to the body’s ability to resist infectious diseases. It also enables adaptation to durable ecological transformations either in one location, or consequent upon relocations from space to space in search of better and more life-sustaining environments.
Response to hunger, sexual drive, variable climatic conditions, fear, affection, and numerous other survival imperatives sensations are a common factor across humans the world over. Humans are driven by the same needs and wants. Differences occur in the competition for the fulfilment of these needs and wants by way of ownership of resources or circumstances facilitating this. Ownership ensures lasting control of supply and distribution of resources and facilitative circumstances.
Ownership entails power. Power, actual deliberate exertion of effort energized by applicable material and conceptual resources, entails domination. Domination entails suppressive rule over weaker competing parties, unilaterally determining the latter’s often undesired, destructive destinies. Suppression ultimately gives rise to rebellions as the oppressed rise to claim their rights to access resources and circumstances imperative for survival: wealth, liberty.
It is in this competitive environment that external human characteristics and cultural practices are applied to justify domination, laying foundations for imperialism and establishments of colonies over generations all over the world. At the same time the human genome and its intrinsic attributes remain a constant.
In terms of human power relations contra survival imperatives fulfilment or lack of, people of identical mental dispositions attract one another. This attraction cuts across all unnatural power barriers instituted to justify domination and dehumanization of others. Political orientations arising in the organization of society are instituted upon people’s mental dispositions influencing and expressing their value judgements. As such, Conservatives don’t like change to the extent that they rule. Whereas Liberals seek to overturn the status quo inhibiting liberty, justice, and equality in society.
Level-headed people are of calm mental dispositions. They are inclined to reason and conventionally held testable truths in the pursuit of finding life-supporting solutions to the ever-present human life existential questions. These people appeal to the like-minded also. The mind being the encapsulation of our total individual view of life as manifest in how we think and act according to how we relate to our existence in the universe
Overt and private choices and activities we engage in by way of vocation, or simply in response to ever-changing realities of life reflect the workings of our minds. The nature, magnitude, qualitative, and intentional aspects of manifestations of the workings of our minds determine the degree to which we shall impact society, both locally and globally.
Great minds are those which inspire and support sustainable human progress in all life’s endeavours. That may be through political thought and philosophy, science and technology, arts and culture. Great minds are not only sensitive to the suffering of mankind; they strive to eliminate that suffering. Benevolence is a trait that knows no irrational, bigotry boundaries created amongst people of the world in their physical but superficial diversity from the point of view of the right to exist for all.
Small minds are destructive. They are prone to lack of capacity to, or interest in thinking about the big questions of life in a humanity unifying, uplifting manner. They are narrow-one-track-minded. Small minds are self-serving at the expense of others’ wellbeing and right to life worthy of dignity and honour. They ever conspire to create and sustain alternative universes of factually false truths contra mainstream paradigms in society, or against certain individuals, if not certain interest groups.
Small minds thrive on fear, uncertainty, lies, rumour-mongering, deception, manipulation, threats, cruelty, hate, chaos and violence, amongst others. Small minds derange. Small minds are delusional. This mental disposition has its kind of people across the board the world over. It explains how even one of the most blatant, most obnoxious of white supremacists and his white nationalist cohorts have black supporters and apologists. Also Latino supporters. And Asians too.
Above is the premise upon which I base my take on the generic conspiracy theories phenomenon as propounded in my newest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
January 11, 2021
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
JANUARY 21, 2021: BREAKING NEWS – Responding to reports that African and Eastern European immigrants in Norway are sceptical to vaccines; and have the highest rates of Coronavirusdisease (Covid-19) infections in the country, particularly Oslo, the capital city.
Click on my YouTube channel video response introducing the book and my thinking behind it: Covid-19 AND I BOOK TALK 1
FURTHER READING 1: “List of unproven methods against COVID-19” on Wikipedia.
FURTHER READING 2: Vaccine misinformation: What to do when it’s coming from leaders – By Tian Johnson• 28 February 2021, Daily Maverick
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ON ABORTION
TO HAVE OR NOT TO HAVE A CHILD:
WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE
I wouldn’t hesitate to have the pregnancy terminated were I a woman and I found that I was expecting a child that my being was not ready to have and subsequently raise. Reasons for my decision being mine, and mine alone; coming from the deepest recesses of my being, where no one but me alone will ever reach, feel and know.
It’s a natural eventuality that the human race, as with numerous other species, shall propagate itself. But it’s not a given that absolutely all women shall, or must fall pregnant and be perpetual baby-making machines. Furthermore, it’s not a given that all pregnancies shall complete the normal nine-month cycle of foetal development to birth of a wholesome child: stillbirths. Neither is it a given that all children shall be born with perfect physical symmetry and neurophysiological functionality. Pure science.
To begin with, it’s not a given that sexual encounters resulting in pregnancies would have all occurred under ideal conditions. The latter being, amongst others, mutual consent, healthy woman and man, as well as a myriad of other biological and sociological factors. It has to be a woman’s prerogative to choose whether or not she shall carry will-be children in her body. That regardless of her civil status as an adult. Morality.
Especially decisions around minors’ pregnancies need to be attended to with absolute care under the guidance of relevant professional personnel across the board. It goes without saying that the same shall be made available to adult women as a matter of course. It’s only that minors’ and adults’ realities are non-identical, non-comparable. Ethics.
Child bearing is not an obligation. Child rearing is. The latter is primarily an obligatory venture between the parents of the child. The parents’ micro and macro villages shall render their assistance according to their abilities and prevailing social norms and values. It’s worth noting that modern society’s parental constellations are more than just about female-male/ same-sex in all sorts of cohabitation arrangements as married, single-living-together-apart; female or male single parenting. Also, artificial insemination enables pregnancy without direct sexual intercourse. Surrogate parenting and surrogacy options add more complexities to the dynamics of modern society’s parental constellations. Changing times. Inevitable.
A woman’s choice to abort a pregnancy does not have to be independent of the existence of the child-to-be’s father. That assuming earlier or current relationship of one kind or another between the two. Rape and other forms of abuse upon the expectant mother ought to preclude the rapist’s right to claim or seek to influence the sexually abused pregnant victim’s decision to terminate the condition. It’s bad enough for a woman to have to endure the trauma of rape in the first place. Compassion.
I hold the view that, having weighed her options, when of own volition a pregnant woman of normal faculties settles for abortion, she needs all the support and love from the sperm donor above all other relations. That to the extent that there is some form of functional relationship between the two, of course. Rapists and abusers need not have any part in this. Empathy.
Normal birthing is an ever so excruciatingly painful and precarious exercise. In fact, the entire pregnancy-to-birth journey is a high potential death affair. In non-ideal conditions of inadequate or non-existent, if not deliberately instituted limited access to, public or private health services infrastructure, the rate of maternal mortality rises exponentially. As such, it’s one monumental deal for a woman to decide to make the drastic choice of abortion despite the risks and actual attendant physical and mental torment arising. This leaves me in even greater awe of women as bearers of untold physical, emotional, and mental suffering. In this together. Solidarity.
I maintain that for a child-bearing woman to lose a child under any circumstance has to be an all-round tortuous experience no man can ever come close to comprehending. Then, who is any man, or another woman for that matter, to want to get in the way of a woman’s right to choose to keep a pregnancy or not? Justice.
Life to the living first. It’s the living thriving in environments and times of abundant love, wellbeing, liberty, equality, and solidarity that will create conditions for higher standards of living for the yet to be born children when their time, place, and opportunity to be part of humanity present themselves. Realism.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
November 17, 2020
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
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LANGUAGE AND DESCRIPTION OF EXPERIENCE: COVID-19 OUTCOMES CASE
IT IS WHAT YOU SAY
More talk on how to cope with survivor issues around outcomes of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on a personal level. Talk structured around principles of my COOL Coaching (Chilembo Optimal Outcomes Life Coaching) method*.
Pivotal point in awareness of language usage: “Reality manifests itself with impressions that the mind creates as from the language it processes,” Simon Chilembo.
E.g.
1. Ahmet Altan: “… like all writers, I have magic. I can pass through walls with ease.”
2. Mwamedi Semboja, Twitter account tagline: “You can travel anywhere, just by closing your eyes.”
Earlier presentations:
1. SHOULD I DIE: COVID-19 Reflections
2. CORONA VIRUS DISEASE COVID-19 SHALL FALL: My Reason for Optimism
3. Ode to Manu Dibango: WALK SOUL MAKOSSA
4. SIMON’S KITCHEN IMPROMPTU COVID-19 QUARANTINE VEG STEW
*Subsequently edited and presented in the book Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories)
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
April 14, 2020
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
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SELF-DOUBT
WHEN I’M HERE
NOTE: Contributing to discussion on UNSTUCK – The Refinition of Manhood
“I live with no doubts. If I have any doubts, I don’t do it. If I do it anyway and get burned as a result, too bad. What’s done is done. If I die, I die. Closed chapter. If I don’t die, no regrets. I pay the price I have to pay, and move on; assuming that I can still breathe, stand, walk, and think,” Simon Chilembo.
©Simon Chilembo 2017
It was as a four-and-half-year-old on my first day at school in Lesotho that I first became aware of my hereness. That was as an immediate response to the awareness of my differentness. The latter arose from my consciousness awakening to find me surrounded by many people. I somehow just understood that all were school children of all ages. There were numerous of my age, and others older. My guide, Dineo, was an older girl from the estate where I was staying not so far away from the school.
I found Dineo alternately being aggressively protective of me, and talking proudly about how far smarter I was compared to local children: I was of course tinier and blacker than all the other children because I was not one of them; I was not of their blood since my father came from a land far, far away in the north. In this so distant land, no Lesotho person had ever been. Dineo emphasized.
She went on to remind everyone about how ruthless her father was. So, if anybody was unkind to me, her father would come and destroy their lives the whole lot of them! Also, my father could do terrible things to them using powerful wizardry from his lands. Otherwise I was a sweet and happy child easy to be with, Dineo concluded.
This was a strange and fascinating scenario I could only watch without uttering a word. I did not only not know what to say or do, the atmosphere was also overwhelming in its simultaneous bewilderment and euphoria. The following day my grandmother took me to another school. I recall hearing whispers that word had been going around in the village that it was not safe for me to be at the first school. The alternative Peka Catholic school would be a safer bet for me, therefore.
At Peka Catholic school I recall being initially received by a group of nuns and the parish priest, Father Hemmel. The next thing was that I found myself in a room with several other children. We were singing “I am a tea pot. This is handle. This is mouth. Pour me out! Pour me out!”
Tracking animal pictures pasted up and around the walls of the room, I recall us repeating after the teacher, Mme Blandina, “A baby cow is called a calf. A baby sheep is called a lamb …”
And then, “A cat mews. A bull bellows. A hen cackles …”
Such began my school career. I would be at Peka Catholic school for four years, 1965-69. These remain the happiest years of my school life. This is the time I understood that I somehow grasped lessons faster than the lot of my classmates. I further found out that the teachers were extra fond of me. All nuns. The warmth they afforded me is unforgettable.
My popularity extended to older pupils, especially girls, in higher grades. At the same time, though, there were older boys that were not fond of me at all. They used to engage me into fights almost every day after school. I got my beatings much as I gave my share of the same. It ever infuriated everyone so much because I was unusually strong and stubborn for my age and, especially, body size.
I never thought too much about limitations of my personal attributes. All I knew was that I could never allow anybody to beat me up and get away with it. This was particularly so from age six, after my mother had instilled in my head the warrior heart attitude of learning to fight my own battles and settle scores alone.
I was already a seasoned fighter by the time that in my older youth years, my Karate teacher, in response to a report about a legendary fight that I had put up against some of the most notorious and dreaded street-fighters of Lusaka, Zambia, said, “If you must fight, fight. But don’t lose!”
That ethos drives my survival instincts in all situations to this day.
In the commotion typical around street fighting scenes, I would pick out ludicrous utterances that I was the way that I was as a hard-fighting child because of the strange blood that I carried from my strange, alien father. I was a little wizard that had to be killed whilst I was still a child because I was going to kill everyone else if I was to be allowed to grow up into a man.
These were really not nice things to hear for a child not even eight years old then. Now I’m a grown-up man soon to be sixty-years-old. Not a single person has perished in my hands yet. On the contrary, I have in my work saved more than one lives.
I thus learned how to balance getting unwanted extreme attention very early in my life. That, together with receiving much love on the one hand and buttressing myself against prejudice and hatred on the other, inculcated in me a strong sense of awareness of where I am at any one time.
Therefore, when I’m here, I’m here. What has to be will be. I shall do what I have to do to sustain my hereness for as long as possible, or for as long as it is necessary. If I have to love, I shall love. If I have to fight, I shall fight. The assumption being that my presence is valued here and now, and that my being here is not detrimental to my continued real and conceptual existential imperatives.
It’s not uncommon for me to hear that I take too much space when I’m here. It’s of little interest for me to seek to impose my hereness to personal and conceptual spaces that cannot, or are not willing to accommodate my being here.
If I’m here for a specific reason, I’ll do what I have to do to the best of my ability according to expectations, if not instructions. If it is really fun, I tend to go beyond, though. I’ll perform and deliver to the extent that what has to be done is compatible with my values and defined obligations vis-à-vis the given situation.
If I succeed, I succeed. If I fail, I fail. If the latter is due to factors I can correct, I shall do so accordingly. If it’s beyond my powers to correct, or do anything else in order to attain the original desired outcome, then I let go and move on to next level challenges; paying the price I have to if need be. It is what it is.
I never carry on with regrets. I carry on with new learned experiences that often empower me to perform better in the next level, even if the next level may not be related to the previous fiasco in any way. What matters is the new mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical fortification I’ve attained for the new way forward.
Throughout my life I’ve lived with the consciousness that I’ll meet all kinds of resistance in my endeavours to live my life as I see it, and as I wish to live it within the parameters of established life-supportive societal norms. I learned very early how to exert my presence with all my outward expressive faculties. This was an important skill to develop given the fact that I, as earlier stated, was a tiny child in a partially but grossly cruel world. In my adult years I never grew up to be the physically biggest man around either.
My mind, my intellect is my weapon. I load my mind with knowledge acquisition pursuits. I fire with my words: I write, I speak. I can sing too. My body is my combat machine. In this state of being, self-doubt is a known but non-applicable phenomenon to me. That is how I’ll always rise above negative forces working against me. Indeed, I might fall and lose one thing or another.
Actually, I have lost a lot of tangible and intangible things during the last twelve-to-fifteen-years. If I don’t die, I’ll rise again. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, but I will rise again. I am on the rise again as it is. My death can wait. I ain’t got no time to die as yet.
It happens time and time again: for each knock and fall I get, for each loss, at least tenfold new options for the better present themselves upon my rising again. For that reason, I never cry over spilt milk. When it is clear that the milk loss is inevitable no matter what preventive measures I may apply, I let go without shedding a tear.
No resistance. When change is gonna come, it’s gonna come. If one of the new options emerging after the milk loss will be a dairy cow, I hardly ever get surprised. Nevertheless, I remain ever humble in the face of continuous favours bestowed upon me by nature, my ancestral spirits, and my God. The resilience I put forth in times of trouble, in my darkest hours, does wonders for my ego. But that resilience is of origins far beyond the realms of my ego’s mind games’ current manifest performance and ultimate potential.
Deep down inside of me I know that constant pursuance of being a decent human being is my inclination by default, much as are my human fallibilities. When I get a knock for my own failings, my inadequacies, I shall with dignity take the punishment I get. My sense of dignity gets even more profound in the face of injustice and malice directed upon my person. Always.
I am cognizant of my strengths and vulnerabilities. These two qualities annihilate any sense of self-doubt I might have in any given situation. Because I know, i.e. my personal cognitive and intuitive data bases are adequately supplied with relevant information and energy, I’ll always have options in both good and challenging times.
The phrase Machona Awakening came not only from that moment I finally understood for myself that a place called home can be more a function of thoughts and feelings, contra its being one’s place of birth only. Machona Awakening is also about that moment in time it dawned upon me that I, indeed, am that I am. I am that I am with all the beauty and the ugly that define me in the eye of the beholder. That with respect to the conscious and unconscious display of my deeds as I dance through the intricacies of my life for as long as I live.
Fear I might have. Insecurity I might have. These may arise in times and situations where I lack applicable functional and conceptual knowledge. When and where I don’t know, I’m likely to be invisible; silent. If I’m ignorant relative to a given reality, it may perhaps be because it’s neither interesting nor important for my existential needs here and now, or there and then. Knowledge is power over fear, insecurity, and self-doubt. It’s about knowing what branch of knowledge is relevant where, how, and when.
I’m not a thrill-seeker. As such I’m not given to blind pursuits of the unknown at any cost. So, let it pass. Ain’t no love lost. No regrets. Self-doubt possibilities eliminated. But does that not limit maximal growth potential? Well, all things considered, I can only grow to the level I reach today. The next levels of growth tomorrow and beyond are only dreams with today’s growth experiences as their launch pad; as certain as the sun shall rise tomorrow for all living creatures of the earth. No doubt from the self, neither from nature. Solid knowledge. Self-doubt expunged.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
March 02, 2020
Simon Chilembo 