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๐ฆ๐ข๐จ๐ง๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐๐’๐ฆ ๐๐๐ฅ๐ข-๐ซ๐๐ก๐ข๐ฃ๐๐ข๐๐๐-๐๐จ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ฃ๐ข๐ฅ๐ง๐๐ง๐๐ข๐ก ๐ข๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐ข๐ก๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ก๐ง๐ฆ ๐๐จ๐ง๐๐๐
๐ง๐๐๐ฌ’๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐!
Your deported foreigner Black African neighbours shall be back, Black South African, you being Afro-xenophobic or not. Nothing, no one can stop the tide. More and more Black Africans will keep finding their way into South Africa, one way or another. They ARE coming! Just like theyโve been flowing into the country for four-hundred years and more.
Send them back!!! process is only effective in the now, the moment of execution; providing short-term victory laps to ruthless, envious, ill-advised, myopic, ignorant, insecure, Apartheid malice intoxicated, corrupt, culturally vain, self-hating, tribalist, regionalist, non-patriotic, petty, egocentric Black South Africans.
What do you think would happen to Black South Africans if, hypothetically, all the unwanted Black African immigrants were to go away, never to return? Well, Black South Africans would be left with only themselves to confront with their centuries-long anger and frustration over the deprivation of enjoyment of the fruits of the mighty post-1994 South African economy. What next, then? Letโs hear your thoughts in the โComments belowโ.
Isolated to Black South Africans for purposes of this presentation, the globally acknowledged endemic violent nature of the South African society is deeply embedded in the long-time Black South Africans tribal divisions faults. It may be plausible to argue that in reality, Afro-xenophobia may, for now, be a diversionary tool off the power relations tensions ever pulsating both in the undercurrents and crevices of Black South African ethnic divisions.
STATISTICS
Without a structured medium to long-term empirical research exercise, itโll currently be difficult to state categorically that a certain percentage of the recently June 30, 2026, South African Afro-xenophobia deportees will return to the country after a while. It could take only a few days to several years depending on a plethora of variabilities amongst the concerned individuals or particular social constellations from anywhere in Africa.
According to the South African government information services online platform, 109 344 deportations were carried out during the 2024 and 2025 financial years. Various news media, including The Associated Press (AP) estimate that at least 53 000 were deported on June 30, 2026. This brings the approximate grand total to 162 344.
Granted illnesses and other incapacitating misfortunes, death, or outright disappearances without traces, even simply successfully resettling once back home, Iโll bet that about half of these deportees will return, or will make concerted efforts to return to South Africa over the next few years. In time, some may not return in the first person but through their foreign-born progeny, relatives, and friends. In the minds of the people, South Africa is the next best thing to heaven. Theyโll do anything to get to South Africa, and stay there for as long as possible, if not forever; no matter what it takes. To them, the bad of South Africa, if at all, is a seeing is believing matter.
IGNORANCE
Many South Africans have limited knowledge of the world and history, as well as how the progressive part of humanity functions in the world today. That includes those South Africans that may be well-educated and have travelled the world but remain analytically base, ignorant, and myopic. How the ruthless rule and destroy South Africa in front of our eyes!
Colonial-to-Apartheid oppression intergenerationally traumatized cognitively impaired South Africans have no clue as to how profoundly attractive South Africa is in the heads of fellow Africans to the north. This is a lingering colonial implanted mindset amongst the people. Because many militant nationalist Black South Africans are ignorant of history, they have no clue as to how the illusion of heaven-on-earth South Africa was ever so intensely inculcated in the minds of former colonial subjects, especially in the Southern African region.
DIVIDE AND RULE
That was done so as to both induce and coerce then African colonial subjects to come and sell their labour cheaply in South Africa; that way alienating Black South Africans from the bounty of their land – effectively terribly curtailing the potentially higher growth of liberation struggle forces. Oppressed, disjointed, poverty-stricken people are easier to dominate, manipulate, and, subsequently, annihilate. Start with the English divide-and-rule strategy from the colonial days. Thatโs the story of Black South Africans, even more brutalized and antagonized against one another during the Apartheid years, 1947-94.
South African divisional tribal stereotypes that emerged from the divide and rule colonial applied strategy were taught at school and church. With a Bible in hand. The divisional tribal stereotypes were further planted with violence on the streets, and stratified in work places, by predetermining accessibility to which jobs for which African ethnic groups, where in the country.
I personally experienced that whilst growing up as a child in South Africa in the 1960s and the early 1970s. For example, following the earliest 19th Century dramatic encounters between European settlers and the African people of the now KwaZulu Natal, the Zulus have since been institutionalized into an impressionable, non-rational, impulsive, brutal warrior class. King Shaka and othersโ successful war prowess and strategies were trivialized in the European settlersโ subsequent domination manipulatory strategies.
These days, as portrayed in diverse visual media platforms whenever social upheavals occur in especially urban South Africa, ibeshu, the Zulu warrior outfit, has been diminished into a street violence brand. Pathetic. The original impi must be turning in their graves.
The Xhosa were classified as the cleverest Blacks of South Africa; the learned that spoke Fort Hare University Shakespeare English to claim superiority to other Blacks, such as the supposedly cowardly Basotho that ran up Thaba Bosiu fleeing the White man. That Basotho saved their kingdom doesnโt matter; nxargh, they are still poor, mos.
Labelled as weak and timid, the Batswana withdrew north-westwards into the Kgalagadi Desert. They later found diamonds in the 20th Century. National economic success owing to this discovery has boosted Batswanaโs sense of pride. Whoโs laughing now?
Itโs not as if African immigrants came into the country only with the advent of the post-1994 South Africa. Historically migratorily speaking, Africans have always been in South Africa. The history of contemporary South African economic might growing with, and consequent upon the European Industrial Revolution during and post the Age of Enlightenment from the 16th Century onwards is written upon the backs and bones of African migrant labourers and slaves. Of course, yes, the colonialists brought slaves from everywhere in the former colonies. We, for now, dwell on the plight of Black Africans in the context of this presentation.
EVERYONE IS A FOREIGNER
The Khoisan will tell you that everyone, including Black South Africans, is a foreigner in South Africa. Scientific sociological research documents that South Africaโs oldest people are the Khoisan. These people have been in the country for more than a hundred thousand years. From my motherโs side, Iโve inherited a hybrid of Khoisan-Bantu-European genetic legacy. I can feel it in my whole being. Yet, with my non-typical Black South African physical appearance taken after my pedigree African Zambian father, I risk getting killed on the streets of South Africa for being tagged as a foreigner. At home and abroad in the Diaspora, I have lived with South African anti-Black African hostility overtly and subtly directed towards me all my life, actually.
CHANGE THE NARRATIVE
The magnitude of the impact of the historical presence of Black African migrant labourers and other modern hustlers across the entire South African society and economic endeavours is enormous. It far outweighs the argument of Africa having accommodated South African refugees during the latterโs liberation struggle days.
That Grand Old Mother Africa stood with and for now-spoilt, apparently ungrateful liberated South Africa has become an impotent point of contention because it, indeed, is the truth that much of independent Africa stood by the then South African anti-Apartheid struggle. No Black South African in their right frame of mind can deny that. Done and dusted deal.
Looking at it from a tit for tat perspective in that regard, I have yet to come across any credible estimate that places the number of South African refugees above 100 000 people globally. If anybody can come up with any more substantive input here, please comment and give references in โCommentsโ below. The low number of South Africans that were hosted by African states during the anti-Apartheid struggle days nullifies the arrogance of power and the sense of entitlement to things often exhibited by some African immigrants in the country.
Iโve further argued elsewhere that Black Africans must be clear as to whether they expected Mandela to, in meek gratitude, annex the rest of the continent after the fall of Apartheid. As a sovereign state, South Africa is under no obligation to succumb to unreasonable demands and unbecoming social conduct from continental Africans seeking protection and opportunities as refugees and ordinary migrants in the country.
Letโs get this straight once and for all in the 21st Century and beyond: Black Africans are not in any way superior to Black South Africans. Black South Africans owe Black Africans no crap. People will be as unique and as special as to how they relate to the inherently variable earthly environments in which they find themselves against challenges of propagation, longevity, and immortality.
In the Norwegian language, a reflection (speilbilde) is directly translated as โmirror pictureโ. As it ought to be for all humanity, Black Africans and Black South Africans are one anotherโs mirror pictures everywhere they meet. They all gotta learn to live together in both the good and the bad times. They gotta learn to amicably solve challenges that threaten all our common existence and legitimate claims to the right to live on and love the planet.
Yeah, love thy neighbour, mothers, nxhh! What say Yee, God-fearing Christians and other like-minded uppity, fake people of fake faiths of the world?
The South African constitution does not give ordinary citizens the right to take the law into their hands and apply violent vigilante militancy against Black African, or any other, immigrants irrespective of the latterโs official status in the country. Itโs the job of the police and other mandated national security and safety organizations to deal with those that break the law of the land, including the so-called illegal immigrants.
In our time, talk about the dynamics that are firing up Black South African Afro-xenophobia contra what I call the RAINBOW BROADBAND: Atlas-to-Cape Exodus. Perhaps the Millennials will understand you when you speak the language of reality today. The future is shaped by younger generations of today walking into the outcomes of choices made today. That informed, amongst others, by the guidance of older generations not ever glossing in glories of past solutions to outdated challenges.
Africaโs biggest challenge today is the need for applied unified action towards continental developmental growth. Paranoidal Afro-xenophobia is indicative of an acutely broken sense of mutual trust and dependency amongst Black Africans across the continent. Divide and rule is alive and well in Africa. As is the continental lack of capacity or willingness to learn and apply necessary skills imperative to successful governance of modern states in the face of overwhelming competing global econo-politico and theological hegemony interests.
MIGRATION POEM TO THE SOUTH
RAINBOW BROADBAND: Atlas-to-Cape Exodus is a poem I wrote on December 28, 2021, following the violent South African Afro-xenophobia events of the year. Iโll read some stanzas from the middle of the piece (the poem is on p. 111 of the second poetry collection book of mine called MACHONA GRIT โ onslaught on hate):
[โฆ]
Revolutionary Africa
Been at war
With itself from during
Anti-colonial struggle days
Civil wars continued upon
Independence attainment
Free at last to play out
White manโs burden
Transgenerational trauma
Self-annihilatory black curse games
To this day
Freedom is a relative state
In all African states
Basest result of state dysfunctionality
In Africa
As elsewhere
Is a constant
Including America
Staying alive
Feeding on
Murder in all its execution variabilities
Survivors rot in jail
People endure suffering
In all its construction variables
People dream of life-supportive
Freedoms elsewhere
Since Mandelaโs
Betrayal of
The African self-determination cause
Twenty-seven years ago [32 years ago now!]
Mzansi fo sho
Has yet
To degenerate to levels
Of truly liberated
When free Mother Africaโs people
Give up on the miseries
Of their tyrannical
War-torn lands
Of once upon a time
Ancient Mega Star Warrior Kings
As accessible to today as
The horizon of history
Choose to rather not
Get roasted walking the Sahara
Drown treading the Mediterranean
Thereโs a rainbow broadband
Linking the poles of Africa
Making a joke of
Cecil Rhodeโs Cape-to-Cairo
Highway dream
Following this rainbow
Many an African soul
Crushed under own meaning
Of true self-annihilatory African liberation
Land in awesome Gauteng
Cradle of Humankind grounds
City of gold
Mystical
Below as above
The ground
People begin to breathe here
People of Black America know this here
People get no knees on necks here
People grow wings here
People reach all corners of Mzansi fo sho from here
Peopleโs dreams come true here
The rest is magic
Argh, cxh
Afro-xenophobia
Comes and goes
Now and then
Mzansi fo sho
Playing out its own version of
White manโs burden
Transgenerational trauma
Self-annihilatory black curses
Call it divide and rule devices
Iโve asked before
Whoโs better
Whoโs worse
Same difference
[โฆ]
IMMIGRATION STATUS IN SOUTH AFRICA
The current number of African immigrants in South Africa is around 3-million people by several accounts. The 162 344 deported above is 5.4% of the number, a mere 0.25% of the overall South African population of approximately 65 million people. How such a relatively small number of people could cause so much havoc in mighty South Africa boggles my mind.
Both South Africa and the rest of other African countries have yet to get their governance right. On the one hand, and on the surface, South Africa has kept its act together and has yet to collapse as a functional modern society. All things considered, as a land of hope in contemporary Africa, the South African state machinery has sustained that old paradise myth about the land. Thatโs how Black Africans and others will keep streaming to the country for protection and work by all means possible; by all means necessary, if you will. All continuing, and all major wars breaking out in the world today mean ever more refugees seeking protection all across the world, including South Africa.
The challenge is for the South African immigration authorities to streamline and patch up loopholes in the processing of entry visas, residence and work permits, political asylum issuances, as well as such other relevant bureaucratic measures to ensure the integrity of the system and all the people concerned.
On the other hand, the dysfunctionalities of the 30-50 years earlier independent, self-governing African states continue unabated. Destructive conflicts and wars of all extents in time and space go on unabated in much of Africa. Strife and disease prevail – Ebola is rocking the DRC right now. Provision of social amenities is an unknown phenomenon in some regions. Lack of food and essential commodities are the order of the day.
Abuse of state police and military powers is rife in Africa. People are oppressed by their own in their homelands; even where there, on the surface, is peace, order, stability, and productivity. People live in subjugating fear not unlike in tyrannical states, where Human Rights is a concept spoken about by traitors against the state. Once identified, the traitors must be punished in the extreme, if not eliminated altogether.
Under the conditions above, the historical, colonial-inculcated beckoning of South Africa is ever relentless. Pragmatic, resourceful people would rather be in South Africa than endure the kind of suffering they find in their homelands. Therefore, as soon as opportunity arises, the people head back to South Africa, hoping for the best. That regardless of whether the return entry into South Africa will be legal or not. When their homelands fail them, Afro-xenophobia plagued South Africa is the lesser evil. How many more Black Africans will South African gangster Afro-xenophobes kill with impunity? Itโs important to bear in mind that Afro-xenophobia is not state-sanctioned in South Africa.
โBut why is the South African state not doing anything convincing to protect the Afro-xenophobesโ brutalized immigrants?โ people ask, often with much hostility, upon hearing that I come from South Africa originally.
โWhy do the concerned African states not protect their people against murders perpetrated by their own home-grown Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, and the M23 group, where applicable respectively, to name but three, for example?โ I retort.
Samme fรฆn! as we say in Norwegian.
Yet, as a fundamental principle, states, whether opulent or poverty-stricken, have the duty to ensure that their citizens are durably sufficiently provided with the most basic of human needs: education, food, health, protection, and shelter. Peopleโs choices of unilaterally migrating to South Africa in search of a better life must be looked at in the broader context.
Without condoning or justifying the South African Afro-xenophobia violent and inhumane practices tendencies, I ask: what is better or worse off โ desperate African youth getting roasted on the vast braai earth that is the Sahara Desert, or drowning in the Mediterranean Sea in their futile attempts to get to anticipated illusory opulent living in Europe? Or suffering unspeakable indignities at the hands of human traffickers in Libya?
UBUNTU HIJACKED
Regarding South Africa, if we acknowledge the suffering that the African immigrants are running away from in their countries of origin, what happened to the concept of Ubuntu? Iโve argued before that Ubuntu has been defiled. Which, for me, explains the degenerate Afro-xenophobia movement in South Africa. Ubuntu in its simplest form means humanity living itself with humaneness. Humaneness manifest and sustained through acts of ceaseless, boundless compassion.
At the same time Ubuntu does not negate the presence of humility on the part of those to whom Ubuntu extends its helping hand. Ubuntu implies a peaceful, progressive co-existence for all, with all playing their respective roles within the context of mutual recognition of one anotherโs human strengths and vulnerabilities.
When the balance amongst multi-level conflicting interestsโ variable strengths and vulnerabilities breaks down, chaos seeds are planted, and phenomena like Afro-xenophobia arise. Likewise, the civil wars ravaging many a dysfunctional Black African state do not start by themselves as if they were randomly occurring calamitous forces of nature beyond manโs control. Itโs not as if non-Black African states are doing any better in this regard either, so we are clear.
The moment business understood the Marketing value of Ubuntu as a concept, they bought it, branded it, and developed lucrative modern business models around it. The most prominent is South African-born Mark Shuttleworthโs global Linux-Ubuntu IT enterprise.
Business has eaten Ubuntuโs heart away. Historically ignorant, culturally inadequate, egocentric Black South Africans and their Black African immigrant guests are equally responsible for the Afro-xenophobia mess currently prevailing in the country. A solution to this has to necessarily be a joint effort by all African leaders and their people.
DEPORTATION DEHUMANIZES
Deportation is a very painful experience. Particularly so when itโs indiscriminately targeted towards certain particular groups more out of prejudice and deliberate misinterpretations of the law to justify the actions of the deporting state. Often are large sections of these groups already weak and vulnerable at the bottom of economic success ladders in society. Even worse is when people are dispatched to, and dumped at new places that they had never been to before, or they hadnโt been to for many years.
It may be a different story for the global wealthy, though. Some of these even go to the extent of wilfully deporting themselves from their own countries. Doing that often in protest against certain national economic policies that have perceived or actual negative impact on sustainable private wealth creation and management. So-called tax-havens such as British Virgin Islands are self-deportation refuge states of choice for the wealthy of the world.
For married people, the impact of deportation can have dire, lasting consequences for their families. Divorces are not uncommon. Separation of families where the husband or the wife is deported alone and never manage to reunite with their spouses and children again is another tragedy. Deportation can bring a sudden tarnishing of identity and sense of belonging especially for children.
For example, South African-born children of a Zambian man and a South African woman discovering that they neither have strong bonds with either countries can lead to challenging anti-social behaviour in some cases. In my MACHONA โ emigrant series of books I explore and expound upon the theme of getting caught up in the various traps of migration, of which, I venture to say, deportation is one of the most dehumanizing.
During the last push of the former South African Apartheid regimeโs Bantustans/ Homelands in the early 1970s, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Black South Africans were stripped of their South African citizenship. People were through force and deceit internally deported and displaced from mainly urban South Africa to impoverished tribal homelands that many had no prior relationship with, or knowledge of.
Sometime in 1970-71, I witnessed a lot of suffering of thousands of people. They were dumped overnight on a rocky piece of land surrounding a hill across a road about half a kilometre from my uncleโs house in Thaba Nchu, Free State Province. Thaba Nchu fell under the then Bophuthatswana homeland. But these people represented the entire spectrum of the major Black South African tribes. I got to play with some of the children my age there; so, I know.
All were left to fend for themselves regarding creation of private spaces and the like. No law, no order existed. Needless to say, violence and abuses of all kinds were the order of the day. Recollections of those tragic times in Thaba Nchu make me cringe. How I survived all that is a miracle for me.
Although Botshabelo is today a thriving, larger, modern community lying between Thaba Nchu and Bloemfontein, its origin, structure, and demographic composition is similar to the one Iโve just described above. Human survival conditions were really bad for a long time here. Black South Africans forget these things. Or they really just donโt know the history of their land. (And this is why we write books. People must read!)
In post-1994 South Africa, the phenomenon of the under-privileged peopleโs rebellious establishment of informal settlements in and around major urban centres across the land is widespread and continues unabated. This follows, and is the legacy of the same pattern established by both the authorities and scammers during the displacement of the people to the Bantustans in the 1970s as narrated above.
I felt much empathy for the internally deported people dumped overnight in no-manโs land bordering my maternal uncleโs formally partitioned Bophuthatswanaโs then Builtfontein No. 3 zone in Thaba Nchu. But my empathy was of a detached nature. I.e., I felt their pain, but there was nothing I could do for them. I had already begun to appreciate my own sense of non-belongingness myself as a son of a Zambian immigrant man. At my former Thaba Nchu school, Namanyane Primary School, and our neighbourhood in general, there was much talk about these people and many more others that had also recently been dumped at Botshabelo.
I recall hearing how the adults used to talk about how these displaced people deserved what they got because many of the latter were lazy drunkards that didnโt want to work, or were simply unemployable because of their backwardness โ stupid villagers; wasted farm-hands! And, besides, there were there also far too many foreigners from neighbouring countries. If these foreigners didnโt want to return to their own countries such as Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) then, their suffering is self-inflicted. This didnโt bode well with me. But there was nothing I could do. I was only a child then.
As children anywhere would, I got to interact with the new arrival, so-called lower-class children in no time. We fetched water from the same well for our respective families. We all drank and washed with the same dirty water. Together with my neighbourhood boys about by age, 10-11 years old in 1970-71, we played competitive football with the new kids on the block. There wasnโt much talking; and playing was never so enthralling. There were too much negativity and fear around. Too much pain.
THE REAL AFRICA HARDSHIPS
It wasnโt until my parents, my three younger siblings, Thabo, Sisi, and Sono, and I got to Blantyre, Malawi, in February, 1975, that the fate of deportees came closer to home. The former South African Apartheid regime had from the mid-1960s already been deporting Malawians, (Southern) Rhodesians, Tanzanians, and Zambians on a large scale. That was mainly in reaction to the independence wind of change blowing across colonial Africa then.
Even more Zambians would subsequently be deported in retaliation to Zambiaโs hardcore anti-apartheid stance. It is worth noting that almost all the deportees were middle-aged and older men that had lived and worked in South Africa since the 1940s, if not earlier in some cases. They were deported together with their South African-born wives and children.
In about all the cases, instant deportation orders would be delivered and effected there and then, often in the middle of the night. The latter as a surprise element when people would be sleep-drunk and, therefore, easier to cow into deportation trucks, and, later, trains. It was also so as not to draw too much attention from the neighbours.
That meant that the deportees would arrive in their respective countries poorly clothed, and with the barest minimum of personal effects. Money was not a thing to talk about. Many of these people were already poor in South Africa; the men would have reached pension age without having been able to save any monies. Theyโd have worked for years in various industries and sectors grossly under-paid. Crushing the longstanding local myths that Machonas earned tons of monies in South Africa.
There were also cases of severely ill and/ or physically handicapped unmarried and childless younger men that had survived industrial and mining accidents whilst working in South Africa. These would have been deported without any form of workmanโs compensation from their former employers.
That the deported Machonas returned home tired and poor upset many in their larger family circles and the wider community.
Because my fatherโs return to Zambia had instead been a planned affair by his wife, a successful Shebeen Queen, a female night club entrepreneur, in our former township, Thabong, my parents did have a bit of cash to carry along with. Their plan had been to take us children to school in Zambia, and theyโd go back to South Africa and continue with the life they knew there. However, due to complications arising from the then intensifying anti-Apartheid liberation struggle dynamics, my parents got stuck in Zambia. In June, 1976, my mother managed to travel back to South Africa. My fatherโs chance would emerge ten years later.
My family encountered some hardships on the three months train and bus journey to Zambia, via Botswana, Rhodesia, Mozambique, and Malawi. But our hardships were a world apart from what some of the deportee families we found already both in Blantyre and Lusaka had to endure on the way from South Africa.
For one thing, my family travelled on the more comfortable then-2nd Class train carriages with the luxury of private compartments options of 1-person to 4-people sleeping facilities. We dined on fine food in the restaurant wagons. Except one incident on the last Beira (Mozambique)-Blantyre stretch, my father and his family were treated with deference by train staff as well as fellow passengers in the exclusive class, only below the ultra-premier Whites Only 1st Class in the then Apartheid South Africa rail travel system. At their prime, my parents were a smashing power couple.
The other families told us of harrowing experiences of over-crowded trains and buses, all-the-way harassment by officials and fellow travellers upon the discovery that the families travelling from South Africa were poor deportees; pathetic Machona losers! Worst of all were degrading racial attacks on the often light-skinned or Coloured/ mixed race Machona wives and their children. Tired, confused, ashamed, and far outnumbered by their own people, the deportee Malawian and Zambian men could only sit and absorb stoically the extreme hostilities they and their families were subjected to.
Final arrival in Blantyre and Lusaka, where applicable, presented even more degrading experiences that would traumatize some children to severe recurrent depression bouts over many years. Others got outright mental breakdowns. Some cases of suicide were reported here and there. I, for one, know that although I have now found inner peace and joy, the thirteen years I lived in Zambia, 1975-88, remain the unhappiest years of my life so far.
The hard choices on matters such as love, marriage, fatherhood, and identity that I had already made for myself as a twelve-year-old in South Africa became reinforced in Zambia. I continue to live by those principled choices: I wonโt fall in love with just anything; I donโt want a wife and children to the extent that Iโm economically inadequate to sustainably provide for my wife and kids. Iโve never been interested in getting involved with some rich women whoโll shower me with their monies. I create my wealth on my terms. ย ย ย
In Lusaka, large deportee families with as many as fifteen children had no immediate suitable accommodation available. This exposed the children to varying degrees of abuse and exploitation on the streets, as well as in ever temporary abodes that theyโd get with relatives and family friends here and there. In the most extreme cases, children never even attended school; ending up languishing on the streets.
Exhausted and spiritually crushed, the semi-to-fully-illiterate fathers and mothers without any formal career skills, had problems getting into the Zambian normal employment mainstream. Life was hard for these people. It was a sad state of affairs to see. The plight of poor, unemployable, deported Machonas with little or no entrepreneurial skills or interest was projected into the Zambian popular culture by the legendary singer/ songwriter/ band leader Nashil Pichen Kazembeโs blockbuster song titled“A-Phiri Anabwera”. (Iโve provided the YouTube link for the song in the โCommentsโ below).
By the time Iโd leave Lusaka for Oslo myself in 1988, some few South African deportee families had come under the tutelage of the African National Congress (ANC) and other liberation movements with presence in Lusaka. Through confidential personal relations with certain functionaries at various leadership and operational levels, my family served the ANC in several ways.
Through these liberation movements, either direct recruitment into combat guerilla forces or academic studies abroad were facilitated for older children. Numerous died under various circumstances in different parts of the world. Others survived and have, against the odds, made decent humans out of themselves both in the Diaspora and post-1994 South Africa.
Almost without exception, all the deportee families we met and heard of in Blantyre and Lusaka dreamt of returning to South Africa someday. And by hook or by crook several of these had, indeed, made successful returns.
The wave of the UN-guided repatriation of South African refugees in Lusaka in 1993/ 4 took with it many deportees from the 1960s and 1970s. That notwithstanding, there are still thousands of undocumented, now-grown-up South African-born children and their descendants living under various existential challenges in Malawi and Zambia.
The plight of many of these first-generation South African born children stranded in Africa has largely been shaped by their parentsโ lack of resourcefulness and resilience capacities in hostile environments. The African fathers had been caught up in a vicious cycle of exploitation and impoverishment:
- Born, raised, and broken in then then British colonial administration.
- Landed in South Africa poorer than they were upon leaving their villages in Africa.
- Overwhelmed by sudden but inaccessible to opulence due to racial and capital barriers to entry, many would never break and take themselves out of the poverty conundrum. If at all in some form of formal employment, these people were paid paltry sums of money for salaries. Perpetual poverty and misery were guaranteed here, enabling continuing capital accumulation making for sustenance of the then Apartheid regime in South Africa.
- Forced to suddenly return home twenty-to-thirty years later, hard-beaten by the realities of life in the ever volatile then Apartheid and current South Africa, they find a new Africa that does not value them much either. Many men give up all hope and cease to make any efforts to find ways and means to better the lives of their imported families. They die; leave their families destitute. And the spiral of poverty and suffering goes on and on.
These are some of the peripheral outcomes that deportations subject fellow human beings to. South Africans kick foreigners out, throwing their own children into the lionsโ dens at the same time. I was raised with the ethos that every Black child born in South Africa was a child of the land. At the same time, if one of the parents is a foreigner, the child is also a child of the land of the parent from abroad.
Despite everything else, then, the recognition and the love I have for both South Africa and Zambia are founded on the principle that I am both conceptually and in practice a child of these lands at any one time. Sadly, this holds to the extent that I am, as an extension of my parentsโ joint legacy, resourceful, strong, and resilient. No one in the world can deny me my claim to my dual South African-Zambian heritage.
South Africans have no clue as to how strong the South African bug ever is, and how deeply the dizzying Joโburg city lights impact plant themselves into the psyche of Africans that have sat foot in the country!
The deportees ARE coming back soon, Black South Africa. There will be more and more illegal immigrants getting into the country. How many more Afro-xenophobia killing orgies are going to take place in the country? Strengthen borders? My foot! How? Build walls? Fences? Dig trenches? This crap will never give sustainable solutions. It hasnโt worked for centuries. Solution lies in deep thinking about what Ubuntu is and what its implications are.
CORRUPTION: Incompatible with Ubuntu
To begin with, Ubuntu principles are incompatible with the corruption that underpins national leadership dysfunctions across Africa. When people are hungry, theyโll go where food is found. It goes without saying. When people are sick, theyโll go where public health care services work. If itโs in South Africa, so be it. It is what it is.
Shame on Black African states that the leadership of whom also must be accountable for the plight of their own people in primitive, selfish, ungrateful South Africa. At the same time, somebody in the global capitalist network goes laughing to the bank. The Chinese are also reaping the rewards of African chronic lack of adroitness in problem-solving nationally, regionally, continentally, and geo-politically.
Africaโs future can be saved, though. Itโs in individual or collective progressive forces working with the Millennials and the following generations to teach them how to look at and appreciate reality for what it is today. And that reality is that Africa is raped, Africa is screwed. Only fresh, deeply analytical, critical thinking, forward-looking, long-term thinking leaders of the future can get things on track, facilitating the real application of African oneness ideals.
People must reset their minds in relation to wealth creation and sustenance thereof. Wealth creation endeavours, such as corruption, lacking in ethical (right v/s wrong) and moral (good v/s bad) awareness donโt often end well. When successful, corruption tends to offer instant hedonistic gratification; and nothing more and beyond.
Genuine, functional, Ubuntu fuelled African oneness can eliminate Afro-xenophobia within a short space of time. Our anti-racism struggle will never victor parallel to thriving Afro-xenophobia in South Africa. As Iโve stated above, โThe future is shaped by younger generations of today walking into the outcomes of choices made today. That informed, amongst others, by guidance of older generations not ever glossing in glories of past solutions to outdated challenges.โ
A viable future demands that the problems of today be solved with forward-looking solutions of today.
END
ยฉSimon Chilembo 20.07.2026
SIMON CHILEMBO
August 31, 2026
American Brains: A Reflection on Society
๐๐ข๐ช ๐ช๐๐๐ฅ๐ ๐๐๐ก ๐ง๐๐๐ฌ ๐๐?
American brains
Denied knowledge
Books burnt away
From
American brains
Herded back to
Stone Age
In the name of God
No
Redeem them
Father
For they know not
What they do
Sound
From Jesus
Uhhh, it ainโt Easter yet, dude
Whatever
Silence of the lambs
Strangled on
The highway to hell
American brains
Burning on
Broken infrastructure
We are The World sense
Canโt breathe
Under the rubble
Evil is born
Fear kneed-on-neck
Of the free world
Inside and
Outside of America
Felon re-given power
Highway to hell strangulations
Empowered
I canโt breathe
Utterance
Emasculated
Rock yokes
On peopleโs necks
Chained
American brains
Mental health issues
Case study
May be true
Maybe not the case
It is what it is
Bring back
The Twin Towers
Heal the land
American brains
Galloping
On
Horse medicine
Bodies hit with ultra-light
Running tummies
In one minute on
Felonโs
Bleach-disinfectant cure
Spewing blood
In
Pandemic times
Thousands plus thousands
Died
20/20 vision gone
2024, felonโs back
Scot-free
American brains
Lost the plot
Art of the deal
Defiled Lady Liberty
To no life
Suicide pack just signed
American Dreamโll
Never be the same
American Nightmare
Just got darker
A thing for horror movies
Hollywood cringes
Sugar glass crumbles
Golden glitter fades
Studious fall
Skies open
Heavenly stars beckon
Angels wonโt fly
Waxen wings
Melted away
Black brains
Long for
The Dark Continent
They donโt know
Roots go deep
Black blood
Coagulated in grief
Black brains
Blood-clotted in slow death
See redemption in
American brains
Venomous
Given white a bad name
Colour blindness a
Black curse
Hope is gone
Perished in the Atlantic
Walking on water
On the
Back to Africa trail
American brains
Black
Resilient
Sing
We shall overcome someday
Though
Thrill is on
Want to say it in
Latin
Donโt work
Solidarietas
In White
Beyond Black bodies
American brains
Divide and rule
The real deal
England
Has never
Left this place
Hate
A thing skin-deep
Brains crusher
Immigrants beware
The dogs
Have come to America
Theyโre coming for you
Whatโre yโall gonโ eat today
Beneath skin
Blood knows no race
Knows no faith
Splash blood on
God
Sheโll be red
Amen
The Budha
Was human
Goes without saying
OM
Heartbeat stops
All decease
CPR
Same for
Ayatollah or The Pope
The rich and the poor
Flamboyant or hermit
Russian brains
Strewn over the steppes of
The fallen USSR
Katyushad to manure
In Ukraine grain soils
Become killing fields
In the name of
The Great Russian Empire
Resurrection
The past
Glorious
Recreated on stage only
Death in
Swan Lake
Stuff for fairytales
No brains dead
For real
On stage
The Bolshoi is open
Tchaikowsky is calling
The brain-dead
Canโt hear
Have forgotten grace
Have forgotten how to love
Russian brains
Lost the plot
Middle Eastern brains
Blown up
Burning in midday oil
Expression
Burning the midnight oil
Turned around
Middle Eastern brains
Burning the midnight oil
Devise illusive conquest
Linear
One way
Another way
Generation after generations
Perpetual
Life-death cycle
Clockwise
Anti-clockwise
Donโt know
Where to go
Middle East long turned
Into chessboard
Human massacre games
Played by infants
Obstreperous
Care not about
Pawns
Knights
Queens
Distinctions
Rules for fools
No brains
No cool
Midday oil burns
Sun donโt set
Middle East brains
Infernos canโt cease
A place called hell
The plagues
Never ceased
In
The Middle East
Hate
Burned clay
Buried in
Desert dunes hearts
Defied
American brains
Bush desert storms operation
On lies
Doomed to lose
From the word go
Bush fires
Unsustainable
In sand storms
Anointing oils
No longer godly
But for the
King of England
Sitting in Buckingham Palace
Watching BBC World News
Showing
Middle Eastern brains
Perish
In real life Armageddon
Could be Brexshit
Goodness gracious
When will this ever end
The King wonders
He should know
English brains
Have a hand in this
Age-old
Brain-spillage
Preceding the written word
On papyrus
Moses carved on stone
Godโs
Ten Commandments
Love thy neighbour
Fell on
Brain-dead ears
From day one
Middle-East brains
Lost the plot
As it was in the beginning
Remains to be seen
Which brains
It shall be
That God shall will
To re-part
The Red Sea
For the
Middle-East brains
Omega
At last
It wonโt end
There is no God
The Dead Sea is dying
The Red Sea is drying
Soon
Climate change for you
Mon ami
Far-Eastern brains
Build bridges
Connect China
With itself
Beyond the seas
Connect with Africa
African brains see
God in Mao Zedong
Turn a blind eye to
The Cultural Revolution
African brain pain
Chronic
Rivers run dry
No rains
Far-Eastern brains
Dragons
Burn no books
The brain-dead
Comprehend not
How
China is the future
Chinaโs got the plot
Makes everything possible
We visit Tiananmen Square
Another place
Another time
Uyghursโ voices are heard
The tiger roars
Gouge the eye out
No Rocky
On the movies in Beijing
Cry freedom brains
To see not
The future
We respond
For humanityโs sake
God can wait
For brainsโ sake
Pyongyang
Far-Eastern brains
Rejoice
Stone Age
American brains
Returned to power
Fest
Ginger Head
Rocket Man
Love letters
To resume
Second time around
Reckless
Nukes heads agitated
In the name of
World hegemony ambitions
World says to freeze
These brains back
To Ice Age
Ginger Head
Mr President 2.0
Wonโt go to jail
American brains
Deranged
God save America
Anyhow
If youโre there
๐๐ก๐
ยฉSimon Chilembo 07.11.2024
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
November 16, 2024
๐ช๐๐ฅ ๐๐ข๐ฅ ๐ฃ๐๐๐๐?
๐ ๐๐ผ๐ป๐ด ๐ง๐ถ๐บ๐ฒ ๐๐ผ๐บ๐ถ๐ป๐ด
WAR FOR PEACE?
When humanity makes
War for peace
Devoid of love
Hate
The human nuclear fusion powerhouse
Holds humanity survival
Hostage
In wait for one
Hot-nutted manโs
Testicular explosion
To start
The 3rd World War
Blowing humanity
Into annihilation
No historian will write about
Thereโll be
No victors
To tell no story of
Humanity burnt to ashes
Blowing in
Nuclear fall-out clouds
Blanketing emaciated
Planet Earth
Across the universe lost meaning
Humanity done trampling the soil
To barrenness
For life
Climate change could never do
A better job
No more ambition
No more brains
No more curiosity
No more dreams
No more exploration
No more fantasy
No more games
No more idols
No more jubilations
Independence a thing
Of once upon a time
No audience
No storytelling
No more memories
No more sex
No more God
No more hallelujah
Jesus just a small boy
Crucified by his own
On track to
Humanityโs self-annihilation pursuits
No more scriptures
Unholy
In shadows of fear
No more cathedrals
Acoustics for
Angelic song voices
Blown up
Into mushroom clouds
Nuclear bombs wars
For you
Baby
No more lies
No more fortunes
No more gold
No more diamonds and pearls
No more black gold
Or is it liquid gold
From beneath arid lands
From ocean floors
Beneath heavy waters
Running wild
Caught up in the money trap
Call it
The greenback
The Euro
The Kroner
The Rand and
The Ruble
Archaic
Imperial Russia revivalists
Untenable Marxism alliance
Workersโ Revolution
Corruption-soiled pipedream
Might as well keep smoking opium
Afghan poppy, needless to say
Vodka-drunk
Drown in
Castle Lager pools
For the Indian Ocean
Mahatma Gandhi
Could have taught them
A lesson or two about
The way of peace
In social transformation
The Yen or
The Yuan
Oriental mystic
Incense stickโ
Smoke
Dazes Africa to
Sleep
In sweet-sour
Bloodless neo-imperialism yokes
Subtle
In Shaolin Kung Fu
Mastersโ dances
No murderous visions
In Tai Chi meditation trances
Peaceful conquest
In the landmass of the wretched
Yogaโs bhujangasana
Broke Africaโs back
Chant: OM
Namaste
Land of the Rising Sun
Got a rude awakening
In World War 2
Yet, fools of the world
Donโt wanna learn
America-induced blood baths
Flow in rivers of the world
In charred after-World War 3 world
Planet Earth shanโt recall
What a river once was
Blood not even a concept
Yet, America wants to make
A mad man rule the world
Four more years
May be the last
The longest
The permanent
As in
Stillness state
The other side of
I canโt breathe
Last breath
Nothingness lasts
When thereโs
Nothing to breathe
See you
On the mythical other side
We meet as atomic particles
In nuclear fallout
Feeding on itself
Mankind finally equal
In a state of nothingness
Humanity obliterated
From planet earth
For nothing
When air to breathe
Is free for
All
Living creatures
Freedom is
All
About that
In wars for peace
It doesnโt work
Like that
America
Ought to know better
Today
In the Middle East
We could still be
Living in Biblical times
Quick sanded in
The Old Testament
Fighting vicious battles
As old as
A thousand Methuselahs
In
Who wants to live forever mayhems
For life
To the last man
The Tigris didnโt save
Saddam
Weapons of mass destruction
Are here for real
Today
World War 3 knocking
On heavensโ doors
For the chosen ones
And they say
Heavenly God
Loves us all
Discrimination from
The source
When all are born sinners
According to
The Scriptures
Satanic hell is a place
Packed in nuclear warheads
Once they all strike
Weโre all gonna roast
Right here on earth
No escape
NASA crumbled
Space-X grounded
Space travel
Gone with the inferno
Branson last said
Would star with virgins
In Battle Star Galactica
Bezos last seen in the Amazons
Blue in the face
Heaven can wait
Humanity come to an end
Closed chapter of
Creationโs darkest story
No one to read
Creationโs wasted expression
Of itself through man
No more power
Elon Musk: spaXced out
Gangsters: garroted
Trumpsters: magnetized
Fascists: suicidal
All burnt-up excrement
Like everyone else
Reduced to
Carbon dust particles
Polluting the universe
Lonesome planet earth
Rotating on its axis
Ever since creation
Indifferent to
Love or hate
Humanityโs creation
They could have chosen
Love
Weโd live happily
Forever and ever
In peace
Writing human history
Infinite
In all forms
Through the epochs
Letโs
Make love
Not war
Futile cry of
Language impotentized
Falling on imploded eardrums
We write it down
In love letters
Immortalize it in books
Catalogue them in libraries
Of the world
Anyway
Might survive
The apocalypse
Make history
Be not
Beast of war
Grotesque
Be apex-dog of letters
Read history now
You just might
Save Humanity
๐๐ก๐
ยฉSimon Chilembo 2024
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
September 15, 2024
๏ผฎ๏ผก๏ผด๏ผต๏ผฒ๏ผฅ ๏ผฏ๏ผฆ ๏ผท๏ผก๏ผฒ
DOES NOT CHANGE
It doesn’t change
Since time immemorial
Women abused
In war
Women distraught
Primordial
Survival instincts driven
Open their womanhood depths
Embrace their men
Cold
Eyes blank
Passion dead
Women seeking comfort
When war sirens wail
Since World War II
Jet fighters roar
Zig-zag the sky
Modern-day drones
Wizz above peopleโs heads
Missiles crater Mother Earth
In all directions
Extraterrestrials will never land
On earth again
We are the last remnants
Of anything similar
To human civilization on earth
Safety a thing
Only
For explosives encased
In weapons of war
Awaiting discharge
To murder women
With children
In their bellies
Children
On their backs
Children massacred
In wide-open playing fields
No godly shields
To see any place
School buildings
Hospitals
Walls pulverized
Under missiles attacks
Children die
Under their mothersโ bodies
Women wish
Mothersโ backs were
Turtle shell strong
In the least
Woman and child die
Warlords say
Peace is coming
Just another
One more lethal missile rain
This way
And that-a-way
Shredded human body parts
Crumbled with
Concrete jungle
Rubble
Unidentifiable
Thatโs the idea
These are animals
Warlords say
Weaken the enemy
Just a little more
Pre-emptive attack
Turtle shells strength
Only a metaphor
Terrorism is a chronic disease
Warlords say
Eliminate terrorists
With no mercy
They kill
So they can live
Warlords say
Peace is coming
Paid for at
The ultimate price
Either way
One more woman to demean
One more infanticide cycle
To execute
Ever so easy when
Woman and child canโt run
They canโt hide
Their cries drowned in
Storms of war
Who has forgotten
But one
Enduring calamity
Bush push
Operation Desert Storm
Amongst multiple others
In the timeline of
Human history
To this day
Ceasefire
Talks, talks, talks
Yuppy, yuppy, yuppy
Bla, bla, bla, blas
Give woman a break
More children to bake
Canons ever so hungry
For human fodder
Military-Industrial Complex
Got the Moola to harvest
On the spoils of war
Warlords kill
Every which way
The smart run
To the bank
Smiles on their faces
Wall Street is happy
Who wants to be a billionaire
Peace awaits manโs fall
Into the belly of
The earthโs crevices
Ignite World War 3
Burn motherfucker, burn
If thatโs what itโll take
For peace to find itself
Live for itself
Without man
On the face of the earth
Warlords kill
Women and children in vain
Peace looks with dismay
At war hawksโ
Stupidityโs absurdity
War hawks think that
Peace romances carnage
When carnage breeds hate
Germinates vengeance seeds
In blood
That never dries in the earth
Even stones bleed human blood
Here
Dry tears in the rain
Peace waits for us all to die
When we are all gone
Tomorrow will be a better day
For peace
If it is there beyond
Bloodied planet earth
Iโll go to heaven
Bring back the women
Bring back the children
Heal their bodies and souls
Thereโll be a few good men
In heaven too
I figure
Iโll bring them along
We give peace a chance anew
We gonna make a change
This time around
No more wars
In the future
Let women live
Let children grow
War hawks
Stand
In the forefront
Go fight in hell
By yourselves
Show us
Then
Who the real men are
The strongest men
In the world
Skew-nutted
Short-circuited
In the head
Afraid to die
I for one
Stand for peace
If I could
Iโd be a global
Missile defense system
In all inter-human hostilities
Of the world
Killing wars
Dead on their tracks
Unlike the
United Nations Security Council
Toothless
Permanent membersโ
Vetoes locked its jaws
Forked its tongues
Might as well build
New Tower of Babel
New York City-style
In Trumpland nightmaresโ
Post-insurrection killing fields
Vetoes have tied
The hands though
Tragic
Just as well
Better forget the idea
The Twin Towers fell
Misery wonโt end
War hawks think
Iโm mad
Iโm naรฏve
They have blood
On their hands
Milk and honey drip
Off my hands
Life is sweet
In my land of peace
21st Century Canaan
North Pole side
But then again
These ainโt godly times
Prayer has no meaning
When
Women die
Children die
Nations collapse
In wars
Instigated
In the name of God
Fortified
In the ways of God
Sustained
By the grace of God
The future is bleak
For Godโ sake
Hope is no freak
I wonโt shut my beak
For peace, shall I speak
Words hard as teak
Never shall I peak
Ever in the mood for peace
I have a woman to please
Childrenโs fears to appease
Wars must cease
Mother and child beseech
END
ยฉSimon Chilembo 2024
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
September 15, 2024
๐ฆ๐๐๐ข๐ฃ๐จ๐, ๐ฃ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ ๐ฎ
๐๐ฅ๐๐๐ง๐จ๐ฅ๐ โ ๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐ง๐ต๐ถ๐ป๐ด. ๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐ง๐๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ป๐.
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐ ๐ฎ๐ธ๐ถ๐ป๐ด๐ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐ฎ ๐๐๐บ๐ฎ๐ป ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฐ๐ฒ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ฒ๐๐๐ฟ๐๐ฐ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป
Donald Trump reminds me of sethotsela in South Africa, the land of my birth. Sethotsela is the outcome of a once-buried corpse returned to life by witchcraft methods. This is a creature of the night. It is meant to spread terror in certain human-populated areas, although it may be met in the wild of the night in the forests or mountains. In dark mountain caves, sethotsela can be encountered at any time of day.
With the years, and especially since I started writing and publishing books since 2015, I find myself resorting to my mother tongue, Sesotho, in my efforts to understand sociological phenomena in the world. Growing up and going to school in Lesotho during my formative years in the 1960s, the expression bohlale ba hloleho was used to describe children and adults of exceptional intelligence.
Intelligent children shone at school, and socially. Intelligent adults shone in all human productive endeavours, from agricultural work to national leadership roles. Translated to English, bohlale ba hloleho means natural intelligence, or intrinsic wisdom. People with bohlale ba hloleho are the kind of people who just know it. They just have it. They are effortless problem solvers, ever with viable explanations of how things in nature and society work at all levels.
It is in the concepts and metaphors of bohlale ba hloleho abound in deep Sesotho language speakers that I have found greater clarity in my strive to make sense of my world, its joys, and traumas. The calibre of our world leaders and the outcomes of their work for the good or bad of their respective societies and the global community fascinates me profoundly.
Donald Trump features in this presentation for what I perceive of him as his abundantly manifest disconcerting unhinged intrigues of being. No other prominent incompetent pseudo-politician in the world today does it worse than Trump.
The Donald Trump brand enshrines amongst others, blatant extreme White Supremacist racism, bravado, career suicide, condescendence, denialism, fascism, fraud, idiocy, incongruity, inconsistency, indecency, infantility, ingratitude, lies, manipulation, mockery; there is also misogyny, mayhem, obstinacy, petulance, rigmarole, shamelessness, vindictiveness, vulgarity, and white privilege. It beats me that there exist pro-Trump racial interest groups under the banners such as Blacks for Trump, Chinese Americans for Trump, Indian Americans for Trump, and Latinos for Trump, to name a few. And, then, there are Women for Trump. Jeeezzzus!
CLARIFICATION
This presentation is an extended and updated version of an original essay I wrote and published on my blog, Chilembo Warrior Moves. The publication was on January 13, 2022. Iโve been following with fascination as to how, with his cult of personality intrigues, Donald Trump has managed to polarize the American society.
I do not expect that the stuff that I write or say about Donald Trump will ever make any difference if ever they got to him, or his cohorts. It is not my goal either. I neither write nor speak about the man for his sake. I do this for myself, for the preservation of my sanity. Donald Trump is not my cup of tea.
People have the right to hold opinions on anything or anybody they like or donโt like. However, I am ever so baffled by people who say that they donโt know anything about politics, and that they neither are interested in the concept and practice of politics.
Politics is the science of governance. People that are indifferent to, or ignorant of the various aspects of politics, myopically distance themselves from basic human relations management mechanisms that engineer society at all levels. From society to society in different epochs with time, human collectives will either spontaneously, or through force, arrange themselves in particular ways. The intention being to influence human behaviour contra existential imperatives such as the search for, production, and distribution of food and shelter. Thatโll include the creation of systems and structures that enhance and sustain the peopleโs general well-being, ensuring the propagation of the species.
Historically, different ideologies have emerged in efforts to explain the roles and positions of people in the processes of living in a world of limited survival resources. Marxism looks at how classes emerge in society as to what and how much access the people have to the ownership and control of the means of production. The upper, ruling classes own more at the expense of the lower classes, who are the oppressed. Socialism propagates ideas that the workers shall share ownership of the means of production.
In Capitalism, the means of production are in varying magnitudes owned by individuals or corporate structures. Those that donโt own shall be in perpetual servitude to the Capitalists, the former selling their labour cheaply to the latter. Capitalism aims to earn profit upon selling their goods and services at prices higher than production costs, which include labour costs.
Ideally, Communism eliminates private property and socio-economic classes. Here, the state owns the commanding heights of the economy and manages the economy for the people, who are co-owners and shall be equal beneficiaries of the bounty of the land according to their respective needs. Communism takes Socialism to the next level.
Regardless of where we are in the world, politics permeates all aspects of our lives. It doesnโt matter whether one is oblivious to the intricacies of politics or not. It is the politically ignorant and/ or indifferent that make for the rise of pathetic politicians as to the likes of Donald Trump. To understand politics is to understand humanity and its place in the universe.
If USAโs January 6, 2021, insurrection is anything to go by, politicians of personalities like Donald Trump are some of the most dangerous national leaders we can have anywhere in the world. Being the most powerful country in the world, whatever good or bad happens in the USA has enormous positive effects or repercussions in the world. This affects us all, irrespective of whether we are interested in politics or not.
If you are a practicing or an aspiring International Trade business person, follow events in America in your wealth creation and management endeavours.
Those who follow local and international politics with critical thinking minds are never taken by surprise when world peace conditions or world economic trends point north or south. The well-informed can predict potential outcomes of events at home and/ or abroad. Therefore, because I can see the potential danger that Donald Trump poses to his country, and subsequently the rest of the world, I write and talk about him to quell my frustration with the American Nightmare.
Furthermore, I write and talk about Trump to repeal my anxiety, and to fortify my soul in the threat of the World War III outbreak peril heโd pose to humanity should he return to power in the forthcoming USA Presidential Elections 2024, on November 5. First, thereโll be the 2nd American Civil War. People, get ready! Iโve done my part: Iโve told you so.
SETHOTSELA (continued)
Sethotsela scares the living daylights out of those who encounter it. The unfortunate can even die. Those who have been in the presence of sethotsela and survived can become so traumatized that they begin to worship its mystic; doing everything possible to avoid crossing paths with the dreadful spectre.
This creature can also be deliberately made out of various materials, making a mannequin to represent a likeness of a marked dead person. Witchcraft rituals are then applied to give life to the mannequin. At worst, a sethotsela can be a silent, elusive killer; an instrument of coercion. Amongst others, the idea may be, on behalf of the witchcraft practitioner, to eliminate people from, or to force them by fear to vacate certain areas. That way, enabling the witchcraft people to acquire more land and property, enhancing their power over their fellow citizens.
SEBOPUA
In my mother tongue, Sesotho, the verb โto moldโ (with clay) is ho bopa (ka letsopa). By extension, ho bopa describes โto formโ, or โto createโ a tangible, inanimate object out of clay or any other similar malleable material. The objects made may be of functional, ornamental, or both values. They may also be aesthetically attractive or repulsive according to the eye of the beholder. And, they may either be destructive or life-supporting, either by design or accident, through intentional application.
For purposes of this presentation, we shall work with the concept of ho bopa in terms of creation as a force. In this case, creation manifesting a dysfunctional output; a thing, with a potential for destruction of the self and/ or its environment. I define creation here to be the supra-human force that is responsible for the existence of the universe and all that exists or doesnโt exist in it. What is, how, and when creation made the universe is a question answered relative to earthlingsโ capacity to fathom the extent of the universe as to the universeโs magnitude and its functional attributes.
Human beingsโ capacity to understand creation as a conceptual or objective reality is a function of the individualโs cognitive wiring. This influences the individualโs reasoning power contra existential questions, big or small. Therefore, whilst one person might attribute creation to the power of God, another will attribute it to the Big Bang. In-between, there are alternative explanatory models as numerous as there are humans on earth. I wonโt go there.
Etymologically expanding ho bopa leads us to, amongst others, the adjective sebopua. The latter approximately translates as โa product of creationโ. i.e., a thing, an object the existence of which is acknowledged simply because it exists as a result of creationโs infinite creative potential. Creation gets it right most times; it screws up badly sometimes.
Sebopua is thus used to describe people of various degrees of physical handicaps and intellectual disabilities; often from birth. It may be due to birthing complications, illness, inherent neurological or genetic aberrations, accidents, and many more. The expression sebopua is often applied derogatively. It may also be used in exasperation as a manifestation of grief against a condition of hopelessness, extreme suffering for the afflicted, and the next of kin as well; including national social welfare authorities, where applicable.
On the one extreme, thereโll be a wholly physically disabled person of any age; drawing sympathy from others: harmless, poor, unfortunate product of Godโs creation.
On the other extreme, thereโll be a borderline, apparently normal person. But they will have all kinds of eccentricities. These render the sebopua incapable of functioning within socially conventional boundaries of human interactions. Much so in adulthood, people in this category tend to live in parallel universes contra mainstream social wisdom concerning how society is organized; from the smallest family units to the larger national entities. Here, the term sebopua is applied derisively, and it may attract animosities towards the concerned.
Sebopua people break all the rules, either purposely or because โit is what it isโ. They donโt know anything else but their unique ways of looking at the world. They cannot understand that others can think or act differently from them in given situations. They simply donโt know how to empathize: itโs their way or no way at all. Civility is a concept unknown here. Sebopua people are ever such spoilt brats, from childhood to the grave. They are bullies; outright dumbheads. They are deceitful charmers capable of gross manipulation of the emotionally and/ or mentally weak; instilling lasting loyalty to the self from the subjugated through fear: The Ruthless Rule.
Nevertheless, some of human historyโs greatest thinkers and inventors the works of whom society benefits from even today can easily be drawn from the eccentrics above. These often tend not to be too much of a burden to society. For example, love or hate Elon Musk for screwing up by X-ing Twitter; he has given us the Tesla brand, SpaceX and Starlink. It is those that are inclined to destruction that are a curse to humanity. Some of the most perilous leaders in human history have emerged from the latter category of sebopua, a freak of creation. Donald Trump fits into this category. Perfectly.
The thing about sebopua is that they are just a thing. They are devoid of coherent feelings and thoughts expression, be it verbal or written. Sebopua are one-way-traffic dysfunctional communication machines. Their language skills often leave much to be desired. Sebopua given to verbal diarrhoea crap-talk inclinations, talking to one could as well be as good as talking to a clay-molded human figure.
Sebopua can be indifferent to the elements; they might know no pain. The only form of pleasure that matters for sebopua is their staying alive at the expense of their perceived and real enemies, not understanding how anybody can be so stupid compared to their, sebopuaโs superior intelligence. Sebopua brutality can be horrendous. Woe to the spineless that fall for sebopuaโs deceptive charisma. Woe to non-stayer enemies of sebopua. Find Yevgeny Prigozhin, heโll tell you about Vladimir Putin. Mike Pence barely survived Trumpโs Maga lynching mob
Another thing about sebopua is that an eccentric sebopua is a sebopua. The condition knows no colour; it knows no race. The only difference is the relative extent of power exercised, and access to weapons of destruction according to sebopuaโs location on the planet. This here debunks racism as an ideology that claims and pushes ideas that some races are inferior to others. In a perfect world of the free, people group in cliques not always out of racial identity solidarities.
Both for the good and the bad, people are drawn to and bond with one another out of shared mental constructs; i.e., shared world views as to common fears, or other human passions. Opposite poles attract is a magnetic studies principle in Physics. In human relations, bonds reflecting and upholding certain innate behavioural attributes are captured in the idiom birds of a feather flock together.
Thereโs sebopua in a cul-de-sac in America today: Donald Trump. The walls are closing in. I wonder what heโs going to do when he canโt breathe anymore. They say he farts all the time. In England, another one bit the dust: Boris Johnson with Brexshit. The world must now learn to stop political experiments with dibopua (sebopua plural form) if we have learned anything from the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
In the old days, dibopua used to be hidden away. Or worse. Democracy is a wonderful thing in our times: everyone has the right to live. In principle. Whatever the cost. However, thereโs a tipping point to everything in life. May the fair and just prevail in all holes and surfaces of the planet. May light reign supreme. Ultimately. The future must be bright for all.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
January 13, 2022
Updated: 20.05.2024
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๐ง๐๐ ๐ฅ๐จ๐ง๐๐๐๐ฆ๐ฆ ๐ฅ๐จ๐๐, ๐ฃ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ ๐ฎ
๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ ๐ ๐๐ฆ ๐๐๐ฅ๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐๐: ๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐น๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ฆ๐ผ๐๐๐ต ๐๐ณ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ ๐๐ฎ๐๐ฒ
Iโm ever so fascinated by the USA. At first, it was the illusion of the Dream of America. This Dream of America still lures poor, mostly involuntary wretched souls of the earth hoping to taste heaven on earth before they die. Some get to believe that they have secured a better future for their offspring, just from the first step on the soil of the land of dreamers. Going down on their knees, they kiss the Dream of Americaโs Mother Earth in deep felt gratitude.
The poor souls will have survived atrocities-extreme and/ or natural calamities in their original homelands in various parts of the world – elimination hole countries, as one elimination munching American mouth has called them. The stench of America emanating from the mouth nauseating the world. Like theyโd be anywhere else in the world for they are human too, vile fortune hunters whoโd eat their own mothers are also in the Dream of America rat race, abusing the poor hopefuls in all sorts of abhorrent ways.
The vile hustlers get to the land of Lady Liberty. They ride on the American Nightmare blood train, amassing the Green Back by any means. With the Dollar might, they burn and turn the land and the world red with their relentless destructive ways of relating to and managing society, to say the least of Mother Earth. Just hear them crap-talk Global Warming as a concept and reality. Sometimes I wonder if these cognitively inadequate people have their filthy elimination holes as the abodes for their brains. Scum of humanity.
My continuing fascination with the USA is about the elimination holes brains personalities fronting the American Nightmare discourse and social engineering efforts. I throw their supporters in the same boat of inherent or wilful ignorance and bigotry: dim-witted charlatans.
Between 1960 and 1975, I was born and raised in a systemically racist, self-encaged, media-repressive, stifled African peopleโs education, international relations pariah then-Apartheid South Africa. Elimination holes brains personalities fronting the American Nightmare want to establish a 21st Century Apartheid Dream of America state. A messy, costly, bloody lost cause.
From my childhood days in the 1960s to the mid-teens in the 1970s, the American Dream of heaven on earth was fed into my eyes through beautiful pictures of American life in carefully state-selected and censored magazines and movies. There were, of course, glimpses of pictures of violence on Black people here and there; also, those of gruesome assassinations of politicians and entertainers. Pictures of homeless people languishing on city street pavements, if not under bridges appeared here and there too.
But, the pictures of the glamorous Dream of America were overwhelming; from Miss World-type girls to style, automobiles, and New York City night neon lights, amongst others. The visual impact was accentuated by the sound of music. Some of them aware or not, Mega Stars across the musical genres sold the Dream of America more effectively than any other propaganda agents. In the South Africa of my childhood days, all the adult Jazz and Soul music lovers that I knew dreamt of going to America to see their favourite stars. Many believed that, given the apparent success of big names like Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, and Aretha Franklin, to name but a few, America sure was Black peopleโs The Promised Land. Little did my music-loving South African aunts and uncles know about the history of Black African peopleโs slavery in the making of the American Dream economic might.
On the radio, jingles accompanying adverts of consumer items from cornflakes to tobacco always left me giddy in the head in their sweetness of melodies and painting of America as the epitome of high living. I couldnโt wait to get to America to enjoy all these amazing products from the source. Man, imagine me drinking Coca-Cola sitting in the Waldorf Astoria New York in the company of an American Miss World! That used to be a truly compelling dream.
And there was sport. Muhammad Aliโs boxing prowess notwithstanding, his political outspokenness in the Civil Rights sphere painted the path for my journey to The Promised Land someday. Post-the-Apollo 11 moon landing of 1969, I would for many years in wonder gaze long at the full moon. I never had ambitions of flying to the moon, but I used to think that if America could send men to the moon and back, then, in America, I could be all the great things I dreamt of being when I grew up.
In reality, though, I only wanted to be a medical doctor so that I could operate on peopleโs hearts like Dr Chris Barnard had done in Grooteschuur Hospital, Cape Town, on the 3rd December 1967. And I wanted to be rich and famous like the flashy heart surgeon. I was seven-and-half years old, then, and was already beginning to read newspaper headlines. Living in a highly politically charged environment whilst going to school in Lesotho at that time, I had already become an aspiring avid radio news listener. Therefore, I understood early that since I was not White, I could but with difficulty, perhaps, be a heart doctor in then-Apartheid South Africa. Instead, America would make me a great doctor, I earnestly believed.
From South Africa, via Zambia, I would end up in Norway 21 years later. I became a jack of many trades, but not a doctor. It is what it is. No worries. I have become an author; I write books. I am happy. I look at the USA with mixed emotions: feeling lied to, but not crushed. I am disappointed and appalled by the inhumane, parochial, and degenerative side of America that nearly half of the countryโs population not only exhibits with impunity but strives to expand and perpetuate. All spearheaded by the insular, living-in-the-past racist White Supremacist MAGA America movement bent on establishing an Apartheid Dream of America state in the 21st Century.
As I write and think, and think and write, I find that the sociology of the American Nightmare half of America is not in any way divergent from that which I left behind in my Black South African township, Thabong, Welkom. This is transferable to urban South Africa across the board from Apartheid days to the present.
South Africa is a perfect USA microcosm match in more ways than one. In that sense, itโs just as well that Iโve ended up in Norway; a country by far better run than both South Africa and the USA. If the then-Apartheid South Africa came close to crushing my soul, the USA would have killed me already, I suspect. By the numbers, and by the guns, vicious MAGA America is more lethal than the pre-1994 South African township at any time, like-minded as they may be.
The regressive nature of American MAGA power relations dynamics is not different from that prevalent in Black South African townships. Iโll shortly demonstrate this in an exposรฉ of the Township Nightmare power relations personality traits. In the same vein, Iโll implicitly demonstrate that human personality traits are driven by inherent internal biological structures and processes that supersede race and ethnicity theories.
For example, a human heart as an organ is a human heart whether itโs in the body of a male or female White, Black, or whatever colour of the spectrum person. Similarly, adrenaline is adrenaline; the nervous system is the nervous system. A certain neuro-hormonal imbalance will cause universally predictable behavioural outcomes cutting across race and ethnicity. That is how MAGA America can be understood in the context of the dark side of South African Black township culture. After all, South Africans and Americans are all human. Any human disease will similarly kill them if no necessary and recommended conventional medical preventive measures or curative treatments are given and adhered to. Needless to say, the recent COVID-19 pandemic caused havoc in much the same it did in South Africa as in the USA, including the rest of the world, of course.
The underlying guiding idea in my exposรฉ is the consideration of psychopathy as an observable antisocial behavioural tendency amongst many MAGA America and South African Township Nightmare types.
Reacting to the strange, destructive behavioural tendencies exhibited by prominent American MAGA proponents, I, on October 13th, 2020, posted a comment on my Facebook feed. I have edited and expanded on the original text for this talk. And it goes as follows:
The hassle about psychopaths is that they cannot listen to reason; itโs beyond their cognitive capacities. For a psychopath, itโs their worldview or nothing. Conventional Ethics (right v/s wrong) and Morals (good v/s bad) are irrelevant concepts to psychopaths.
Depending on where in the world you live, are you on the โnothingโ side of a psychopath, they are likely to eliminate you in various ways. Youโll hear threatening expressions like, โWe are coming for you!โ. So, โโฆ if you fuck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before,โ Guess Who.
As history documents over and over again, a dead opponent to a psychopath is the preference. Nevertheless, history is full of examples of how psychopaths in leadership roles across the board tend to have tragic demises. Google โworld despotsโ, please! Itโs free.
Despite its imperfections, where democracy works comparatively kind of okay, people shall seek to talk issues over through various established governance platforms, no matter how challenging or futile the exercise may be. In the end, votes are taken. Assuming a perfect world, outcomes are acknowledged. And the winner takes it all. Life goes on.
Democracy allows for election outcomes to be challenged when irregularities have been observed at any point during the process. Or even when the losing side just wants to be a nuisance. Democracy in practice can stand a lot of crap. Psychopaths thrive on the latter fact.
As current history unfolding shows somewhere in the world, when psychopaths win, humanity gets ever closer to thresholds of self-annihilation. Therefore, be ever so careful about who you elect to power in your land. Donโt allow yourself to be charmed by the cheap-feelgood-chronic-diarrhoea-like buffoonery antics of psychopaths.
If you donโt know how to identify a psychopath, call my number. For Iโm not a medical doctor, Iโll guide you through an illuminating philosophical discourse that works all the time. Itโs all about, amongst others, a solid academic and professional training background. Go to school. Acquire knowledge for human progress. Take your children to school. Read much and well. Pass exams clean; donโt cheat. Donโt burn books.
Ultimately, the reality is, though, there is a psychopath in all of us. Summarizing my philosophical discourse on what attributes to look out for in deciding, after analyzing a personโs socio-behavioural incongruencies, whether they exhibit psychopathic tendencies or not, a close brother-confidant of mine once said, โSo, a psychopath need not be a raving mad personality in our midst?โ
Yours truly, โYepp, thatโs right!โ
Brother-confidant, โIt means, then, that a psychopath may be the everyday smart-looking person sitting next to, or in front of you right now at any place?โ
Yours truly, โSure thing! But itโs all about relativism, see? Know thyself!
Whether or not I have a personal or some other human aspects relationship with the concerned, my labelling of a person as a psychopath is my pre-emptive self-preservation measure. This also helps me to put into perspective events in my immediate and distant worlds given who the dominant actors are in the different parts of the world, them sharing or not sharing common interests.
In my private survival instincts world, I donโt need to have a medical doctor to declare for me whether I am dealing with or am observing a psychopath in my immediate spaces or far out in the wide, wide world. Descriptively, I know a psychopath when I see one. I then behave accordingly to protect myself and my own in the face of actual or potential psychopathic onslaughts upon us. Itโs a doctorโs job to diagnose and treat the patient accordingly. They can take all the time they need.
And, talking about personal survival instincts, I had on an earlier Facebook post declared that โUncivility is an effective manner of attaining some degree of civilized talks with psychopaths. Communication leads to mutually desired outcomes to the extent that involved parties apply the same language and familiar terms of references.
โFailure to break through psychopathsโ noise and deficient knowledge barriers should lead to withdrawal from talks, if feasible.
โOtherwise, the fools must be isolated, if not excluded from civilized social interactions. In the worst-case scenario, it may be necessary to eliminate them. Diplomacy has to have limits even in the free world.
โDemocracy is designed to neutralize our passions in common human relations interaction spaces and circumstances. Wars and societal collapse are direct outcomes of lunatics being allowed too generous opportunities to play out their antics for far too long.โ
Any reasonably intelligent person whoโs gone to school and can read, think, see knowledge linkages, and can thus synthesize functional, universally applicable explanatory models towards understanding how life works on earth, can read many a professional text and make sense of it. If they donโt understand, they ask as a matter of course; they actively seek more information from relevantly knowledgeable human sources or books and other information storage and distribution facilities to debunk or confirm initial conclusions made. This is called research.
Through my various learning pursuits in my time, my private operational definition of what constitutes psychopathy or not is based on readings of publicly available subject literature that is written and wilfully published by qualified medical personnel of various specializations and levels of academic and professional standing across the globe. This includes literature publicized by a plethora of international human behavioural sciences professionals. Google this shit!
Donโt let yourself be intimidated by the arrogance of power from doctors, psychologists, and others whose professional literary works we all, with much admiration, flock to in our efforts to study and better understand the overall complexities of human nature. If they donโt want us free spirits to speak about human wellbeing issues, then, they must withdraw their publications. They must cease making their expertise publicly available reference materials in libraries and social media.
Simon Chilembo
Oslo
12.10.2020
I wrote the exposรฉ essay of the South African Black Township Nightmare power relations personality traits on May 29th, 2021. Posted in my blog on the same date, the exposรฉ bears the title:
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 โ 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 regimeโs economic might. The oppressed Black population segment was subjected to extremes of state security agenciesโ violence.
Oppression is some costly business. It curtails human resources’ productive potential growth and manifestation. Atrocious. Oppression will last to the extent that the oppressorsโ 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 countryโs 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 their wealth, becoming super-rich individually and along with their family members, as well as their power clique hounds: oligarchsโ 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 Studentsโ 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 stateโs capital base. Apartheid had to ultimately collapse. Not because somebody woke up one morning and suddenly discovered that the system was 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 to its knees.
The effective brutality of the apartheid regime reproduced itself across the entire Black populace by default โ in the home; at absolutely all levels of social interaction. That is visible to such an extent that the nature of fundamental survival power relations dynamics cultivated then amongst Black people themselves have endured. It is 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 peopleโs fundamental survival power relations dynamics alive during all these years.
Post-1994 South Africa has also been accessible to me. Itโs the land of my birth, the land of my familyโs 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 hasnโt 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 varying, 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 liveable spaces in the townships has spiked exponentially, apparently in favour of the new immigrants.
Many of the new immigrants 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 โ daring nature, PTSD, and other related outcomes. They also have 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. Itโs 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 Iโve 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 countryโs vibrant economic and social advancement in the long run.
Thereโll 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 Tutuโs 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 โโฆ solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.โ
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 โsemphete ke o feteโ (Sesotho: donโt overtake me, I overtake you โ the rat race) 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 Iโve 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 โ Setsotsi) is derived from the Afrikaans word dom. Alternatively bokwala (Sesotho), it means stupidity; downright idiocy. Amidst events, act like you donโt know whatโs 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 obstinate like hell. 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, itโs 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, donโt 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 doesnโt 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, โMaziwaziwe, mazโbidlikazโbidlike! (isiZulu)/ If they (e.g. towers) fall, they fall; if they collapse, they collapse!โ
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; โโฆ itโll disappear just like a miracle!โ
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 false 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 doesnโt exist. Step aside rule in the ANC? Whatโs that? If you are indeed going to fall, you donโt 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 โhave a liverโ/ 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 โO sele!โ, meaning โHe/ she is petulant!โ
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, โWho is it you trust?โ
Whoโs 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 latterโs 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?
Itโs 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. Itโs 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 itโs 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 humanityโs creative potential towards a sustainable, infinitely fulfilling life for all. The South African national anthem, Nkosi Sikelelโ 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. I make YouTube videos. 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.
I can be hopeful about the future because I am happy all the time. Watch this video here to see how you can be happy all the time, and make somebodyโs day every day into the future.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
May 29, 2021
๐จ๐๐๐ก๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ฆ ๐๐๐๐ง๐ค+ ๐ฃ๐๐ข๐ฃ๐๐
๐๐ฐ๐ผ๐ป๐ผ๐บ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ ๐๐ฟ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป๐ฎ๐น ๐๐ถ๐ด๐ผ๐๐ฟ๐
Uganda has recently legalized extreme persecution of LGBTQ+ people. People of non-heterosexual dispositions now make love with state sanctioned murder threat looming over their heads. The Ugandan state seeks to eradicate LGBTQ+ people from the face of the earth. This is a flagrant, futile, outdated, time and resources wasting exercise rooted in ignorance in the face of the most enlightened time in the history of humanity, the 21st Century. Pathetic.
Enlightened, liberated, forward-looking, resourceful, valuable people of the world know that sexuality isnโt a matter of choice but an inherent state of being. As but an extension of the infinite totality of being human in its as infinite expressive forms, sexuality is exuded and played out from the core of a personโs essence as encoded in the personโs unique genetic makeup.
Sexuality is permanent. Sexuality is not acquired. Sexuality is not a disease; it cannot be cured, neither medically nor magically, nor by any other outlandish method. If God made man in her own image, God is then the queenpin of sexuality. Use of Godโs prayers to ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ๐ต homosexuals is tantamount to asking God to annihilate herself. Herein lies invalidation of the existence of an omnibenevolent, all-loving God. Amen!
Sexuality is not an attitude; it is not a lifestyle. Sexuality is what it is: it is it โ a constant. It is the unidirectional, one-track express train towards the orgasmic peak experience that, in a perfect world, those in love aspire to achieve as a consummation of their oneness in love in all the possible constellations of love matchings humans are capable of as to their diverse intrinsic sexual orientations.
Every personโs unique genetic makeup is in turn an extrapolation of the human genome. The human genome is the unalterable existential thread that binds humanity together in its diversity of physical and physiological attributes. Thatโs how you can love who you love; and, where applicable, you can reproduce with whom you will, regardless of race, status, colour, or creed.
Donโt come to me with the ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ช๐ฏ ๐ฏ๐ข๐ต๐ถ๐ณ๐ฆ, ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ฑ๐ฉ๐ข๐ฏ๐ต๐ด ๐ฅ๐ฐ๐ฏโ๐ต ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ญ๐ข๐ต๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ช๐ต๐ฉ ๐จ๐ช๐ณ๐ข๐ง๐ง๐ฆ๐ด crap talk. Of course, these animals are of incompatible breeds. They arenโt genetically wired to be sexually stimulative of one another, to begin with.
Depending on the ever-abundant factors affecting the lives of the sources and quality of human reproductive material, i.e., sperms and eggs, the outcome from fertilization to birth (assuming a problem-free pregnancy, and survival of the birthing agony), a child, can be anything of manifestations of being human. For example, the child can, amongst a myriad of other possibilities, be
- Wholesome and healthy
- ๐๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ง๐ฆ๐ค๐ต, ๐ข๐ฃ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ, and/ sickly. I.e., have physical, and physiological incongruities reflected in all kinds and extents of physical handicaps and mental or cognitive incapacities, if not inadequacies
- Distinctly male or female as to the construction of relevant reproductive organs; hormonally steered
- ๐๐ข๐ญ๐ฆ –๐ง๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ๐ฆ –๐ช๐ฏ –๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฆ. I.e., intersex
- Reproductive or barren upon attainment of sexual reproduction maturity age
- Sexually active or celibate
- Heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and much more in the human sexuality expression spectrum.
It ought to be a no-brainer that LGBTQ+ people are human just like everyone else. They have the right to live; just like everyone else. They have feelings; just like everyone else.
From an ethico-moral standpoint, show me an immoral LGBTQ+ person, Iโll show many more amoral heterosexuals. By the numbers, heterosexuals are by far responsible for the worst human-to-human and human-to-nature atrocities ever.
Iโm convinced that the world would be a better place for all were people of the world allowed to love mutually consensually who they love of their psychosocial maturity equals. That means that, bearing high the flag of ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ-๐ช๐ด-๐ญ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ, ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ-๐ธ๐ฉ๐ฐ-๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ-๐ญ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ, you donโt go around sexually abusing children. You donโt go around taking sexual advantage of the weak and vulnerable. You donโt go around defiling animals.
AVAAZ E-MAIL: UGANDAN LGBTQ+ LAMENT
On June 4, 2023, I received an e-mail from the global campaign network, Avaaz. This was on behalf of an anonymized Ugandan LGBTQ+ rights activist asking for moral and financial support. Iโll print the e-mail in full:
ALERT: BRUTAL ANTI-GAY LAW SIGNED — FINAL CALL TO HELP!
WARNING: This email has descriptions of sexual violence that may be upsetting.
Dear Avaaz members,
I write from Uganda, where a vicious ‘anti-gay’ law was just signed into existence — and gay people are being hunted like animals.
Days ago, neighbours castrated a transgender person with a kitchen knife. We couldn’t go to the police as we’d be arrested — and had to search for a friendly doctor, as most wouldn’t help us.
We’re being fired from work, rejected by family, evicted, beaten, rapedโฆ and worse.
I’m appealing for your support. Please.
This could be our last call for help. Under this new law, everything we do, including sending this email and raising funds, will soon become illegal. But right now, before the law is implemented, there’s still a narrow window when LGBTQ+ groups can receive support — and your donation could help save lives.
You’d fund safe houses where people can hide, along with emergency medical care, legal support, and trauma counselling. We urgently need more safe houses, as we constantly have to run when angry mobs arrive.
We’re being flooded with frantic calls for help, but without more funds we can only help a tiny fraction of people. I’m heartbroken, and don’t know where else to turn.
And it’s all because of who and how we love. In the face of unimaginable cruelty and violence, please stand up for our right to Love. Donate what you can now:
The new law effectively makes it impossible to exist as an LGBTQ+ person in Uganda.
I could get a life sentence for kissing my partner, and be executed for repeated homosexual ‘offences’. Renting to gay people is now illegal — and I could serve 20 years in jail just for sending this email.
They call us “ungodly” filth, but we aren’t the ones inflicting unimaginable cruelty on already vulnerable people. I know girls who’ve been raped by family members to ‘cure’ their ‘lesbian disease’.
That’s why safe houses are so critically important– providing a place of sanctuary in a country burning with hatred. With your help, we could:
- Fund dozens of new safe houses and emergency shelters across the country;
- Provide emergency health care and legal support for those who’ve been arrested — and meals for people in jail;
- Help fund the development of a new legal case to challenge the law in court; and
- Power emergency response campaigns, like this one, to defend communities facing discrimination, assault, and war around the world.
Every penny raised will support LGBTQ+ people in Uganda, and power Avaaz’s emergency response work around the world. By donating, you wonโt just be helping in Uganda — youโll be ensuring this crucial capacity is maintained for others like me, facing unimaginable terror.
Gay, straight, lesbian, transgender — we all just want to live and love in peace. I don’t know when that day will come, but it is not today, and our fight for love must go on. Wherever you are in the world, please stand with us. Donate what you can now.
| I’ve been part of the Avaaz community for years. I’ve seen the difference it makes when we come together fast for those in need. Now it’s my community being attacked — me and my people need this movement’s help. With hope and the deepest of gratitude, ****** and the whole team at Avaaz Note: As the anti-gay law has just been signed, the consequences for an email like this could be deadly — in many ways, they already are. For that reason, names have been removed and photos are anonymous. PS. This might be your first donation to our movement ever. But what a first donation! Did you know that Avaaz relies entirely on small donations from members like you? That’s why we’re fully independent, nimble and effective. Join the over 1 million people who’ve donated to make Avaaz a real force for good in the world. |
๐๐ข๐๐ฆ ๐๐ก๐ง๐-๐๐๐๐ง๐ค+ ๐๐๐ฉ๐ ๐๐ก๐ฌ ๐๐๐ข๐ก๐ข๐ ๐๐ ๐ฅ๐๐ง๐๐ข๐ก๐๐๐?
Now, I ask a rhetorical but serious question with profound socio-economic analysis implications:
Can Uganda, or any other tyrannical anti-LGBTQ+ country, for that matter, provide statistics showing any value-added number to the countryโs annual GDP accruing from the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in all its extents?
Well, in Norway, for example, one of the countryโs most important conglomerates is Orkla. โOrkla ASA is a Norwegian conglomerate operating in the Nordic region, Eastern Europe, Asia and the US. At present, Orkla operates in the branded consumer goods, aluminium solutions and financial investment sectors. Orkla ASA is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange and its head office is in Oslo, Norway. As of 31 December 2021, Orkla had 21,423 employees. The Group’s turnover in 2021 totalled NOK 50.4 billion,โ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkla_ASA
Orklaโs Majority Shareholder is Stein Erik Hagen, 66 years old. As at June 25, 2023, heโs worth US$2.1 billion, making him the 1468th wealthiest man in the world; number 6 in Norway as at February 24, 2023. Stein Erik Hagen is gay. Culturally sophisticated, he is a renowned international art collector, and philanthropist.
Norwayโs GDP in 2021 was US$482.17 billion. Population number stood at 5.4 million then. Thatโs against Ugandaโs population of 45.8 million people, and GDP of only US$40.5 billion in the same time period.
Norwayโs highest standard of living in the world is powered by people in all walks of life, including, in all national production, service, and leadership strata. Norwegian LGBTQ+ people are/ have been, amongst others, Government Ministers, Bishops of the Church of Norway, and many more in the commanding hights of the economy. Much as it is a generational global trend, the Norwegian arts and culture industries are teeming with LGBTQ+ people. I have yet to see Norway come even anywhere near to going under. In the meantime, the country just keeps on growing on and on as a world economic and geopolitics force.
The biggest brands in the global fashion, design, and cosmetics industries are a trove of some of the biggest creative talents in the world, some of the most influential of whom are LGBTQ+ people living with pride. Their enterprises are global economic giants to reckon with; creating hundreds of thousands of jobs across the world, and paying billions of dollars of value-added GDP revenues in various countries. One of the greatest flesh and bone human brains to ever walk on our planet earth is Leonardo Da Vinci. His phenomenal interdisciplinary work in the sciences, mathematics, art, and philosophy permeates all aspects of our modern life. The man was gay.
So, Uganda and your fellow tyrannical anti-LGBTQ+ countries in the world, what are your value-added numbers to your respective countriesโ annual GDPs accruing from the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in all its extents?
It is globally demonstrable that persecution of LGBTQ+ people deprives society of vital workforce resources across the board. LGBTQ+ persecution is clearly counterintuitive to equitable national economic growth; which is even more glaring in poor countries like Uganda.
The like-minded oil-rich, religio-conservative Gulf states have managed to harness their ultra-wealth to overrun all local and international resistance and critic against their atrocious anti-LGBTQ+ practices. However, these societies could attain even higher standards of living and more credible and durable geopolitics influence had they allowed their citizens to unleash their full human potential, free to mutually love who they love of their contemporaries.
And in Ukraine, the countryโs LGBTQ+ people are together with their fellow in-action citizens fighting side-by-side against Putinโs imperialistic invasion of their country. Because they, indeed, are people like any heterosexual, LGBTQ+s are also capable of killing other beings. Violence and murder arenโt the prerogative of mad heterosexuals with potentially dubious sexualhabits camouflaged in their irrational hatred for LGBTQ+โs. Like in all Human Rights struggles, when push comes to shove and the oppressed finally pick up weapons of war and fight back, the latter wins. Wake up, bigots, and smell the coffee!
On June 16, 2023, Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa and Hakainde Hichilema, of South Africa and Zambia respectively, led an African peace mission to Ukraine and Russia. Iโll leave discussion of the merits or demerits of this trip for another time.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni chickened out at the last minute because of the escalation of Putinโs attacks on Kiev. Putin even launched another attack on Kiev whilst the African delegation was in town, defiantly breaching and giving a blatant โ๐ง โ to International Relations protocols.
The aggressor was simply making a point that he could have the ๐ด๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ ๐ฑ๐ญ๐ข๐บ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ด African delegation sent back to their respective countries in body bags, if he wanted to. The Africans recovered from the shock, talked with Zelensky, and went on to check on Putin the following day, anyway; wagging their little tails like poodles. Progressive South Africans look at Ramaphosa with dismay. Thatโs Mzansi for you fo sho; myopic, parochial, outdated-communistsโ bootlickers.
Real men persevere even in the most ominous of circumstances. Real men may be as gay as those fighting in the Ukraine army against the Russian invasion. A warrior is a warrior regardless of who of sexual maturity equal and sexual orientation they love.
Real men and women know that once they become a head of state, death comes with the territory; they automatically assume tyrannical or constitutional prerogatives to terminate or redeem life, according to prevailing circumstances. They also embrace the reality that they can under variable circumstances get killed on the job on any day.
How much of a ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ข๐ญ ๐ฎ๐ข๐ฏ is LGBTQ+ loathing Museveni, who got scared โsโless out of thechances of getting caught up and dying in the Putin-made killing fields in Ukraine, I wonder? With no guts to face up to his national sovereignty leadership equals, he goes after soft targets, the LGBTQ+ community of Uganda. Coward. Loser.
South Africa legalized same sex marriage in 2006. Although there are still unofficial, yet potent obstacles here and there, the LGBTQ+ community thrives in the country. LGBTQ+ personalities feature prominently in all spheres of South African econo-socio-politico life. And their influence grows by the day. After 9 (oโclock, pm), hetero-married South African gay men exit their closets for their true loves outside.
Despite its governance challenges, South Africa remains a haven for Africans running away from their dysfunctional, war-torn anti-LGBTQ+ countries, including Uganda itself. South Africa remains an African economic powerhouse providing sustainable entrepreneurial opportunities for African immigrants from the latter countries, Afro-xenophobia violence issues notwithstanding.
Whatโs funny about Uganda in this context is that I first came across the words ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ๐น๐ถ๐ข๐ญ๐ช๐ต๐บ and ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ๐น๐ถ๐ข๐ญ๐ช๐ด๐ฎ in an article in Drum Magazine in 1972/3. Fifty years ago, in Welkom, my hometown in South Africa!
If I recall, the article was about how Ugandan men would meet up at local Sunday afternoon football matches in their villages. Some men would, then, pair up and disappear into the nearby bushes to engage in ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ๐น๐ถ๐ข๐ญ activities, the article reported. It was a given that many a girl would go down with their boyfriends as well. Of course. ย
At age 12/13 then, this thing about homosexuality and homosexualism confused me a bit. I then ventured to ask an older friend to explain for me. Buti-Gabriel was in โJCโ/ Grade 10 at that time; he sure would know these things, I reasoned. He told me that homosexualism is when men sleep together like we sleep with our women.
โThey do it slightly different, but thatโs basically it: having sex together man-to-man,โ Buti-Gabriel said. He further reminded me that we already knew how lonely men living in the then โMen Onlyโ hostels in Welkomโs gold mines had sex with one another in the absence of women. Aha, oh, yes, of course!
These womanless men came from the entire Southern African hinterland, as well as remote-lying, extremely poverty-stricken parts of South Africa. The guy said this in as matter-of-factly, and as ever cool as he was as a person and older brother that I had grown to be very fond of. Iโve had a laid-back attitude towards homosexualism since then.
A life-long ๐ โ๐ฎ–๐ข–๐ญ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ–๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ต–๐ข–๐ง๐ช๐จ๐ฉ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ, Buti-Gabriel taught me how to be a gentleman to girls, and subsequently to women in my grown-up age. We remained great friends until he died in 2016. I miss him dearly. MHSRIEP!
Prior to the intriguing homosexuality and homosexualism mystery in Uganda as Iโve related above, there had already been an especially edifying association imprinted in my mind about the country. One of the earliest hymns that I recall singing at my childhood school between 1965-69, St. Rose (Catholic) Primary School, Peka, Lesotho, was about the Martyrs of Uganda: ๐ ๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ณ๐ฐ๐ฌ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐จ ๐ฃ๐ข ๐๐จ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ข / โLetโs Praise Ugandansโ.
Brutal Idi Aminโs entry on the Ugandan presidential scene, 1971 to 1979, shook the heavenly picture I had held in my head for the country of the great martyrs. I recalled the latter, forty-five of them, being held in the highest reverence in the Lesotho-South African Catholic Church community that I knew then.
Yoweri Museveni has been in power since 1986. He has taken the Ugandan murderous persecution plague to the next level.
As regards Zambia, the LGBTQ+ plus struggle is still hard, yes. However, Iโll make a sweeping statement and postulate that woke, Zambian middle-class youth growing up and grooving in the Lusaka party scene in the late 1970s to the late 1980s (I havenโt lived in Lusaka since 1988) will attest to the existence of a flourishing gay subculture in the city and the environs at that time. I canโt imagine it having been any different in the Copperbelt urban centres such as Kitwe and Ndola.
I also canโt imagine the Zambian gay scene as having diminished with the years. We had public secret gays as schoolmates and teachers, as relatives, including work colleagues.
I had just recently graduated from the University of Zambia in 1986 when, in one of my then business hustles in Lusaka, I got to strike a South Africa-Zambia commercial goods import deal with a super wealthy, fine-looking gentleman who, I thought, could probably leave an Afro-American movie star kissing his shoe heels. I got highly rewarded for the deal upon its closure.
After a business meeting that went late into the night one day, this man, we call him Mr Dukes, invited me for a snack and drink at his home in one of Lusakaโs finest neighbourhoods. His house so overwhelmed me with its beauty and raw manifestation of opulence that my immediate reaction was to make the comment, โAll the hottest girls of Lusaka would be in trouble if I had a house like this one, Mr Dukes!โ
He curtly replied, โHot girls are the least of my troubles, Mr Chilembo!โ
Serving efficiently prepared bacon-and-cheese sandwiches and tea, he stated, โI live alone here. I donโt need women in my life.โ
We ate in silence. Outside of business talks, I wouldnโt know how to start any meaningful personal conversations with Mr Dukes after that incident.
Nearly three decades would go before a mutual acquaintance would reveal to me that Mr Dukes was gay, and that he had had a harem of young men that he sexually exploited at will. Inviting me to his house may have been a trap, but, sadly for the man, my mind was on the things Iโd do with girls in his awesome house. Besides, he admired me for my Karate prowess and the local rock stardom I had already begun to enjoy in Lusaka. He really couldnโt impose himself on me. I learned that Mr Dukes died in yet another one of those gruesome road traffic accidents involving huge, luxury cars driven at high speeds on Zambian pothole-laden roads twenty years ago.
My feeling is that Zambia will soon legalize Gay Rights protection in the country. The country is on a path to economic recovery at a relatively better pace by far as compared to, say, Zimbabwe, where gays are โworse than dogs and pigsโ, according to projecting Robert Mugabe, the late and former dictatorial president.
The point I want to make about South Africa (land of my birth) and Zambia (my fatherland) vis-ร -vis the LGBTQ+ condition is that tolerance liberates positive energy in society. Tolerance inspires and sustains creativity. Tolerance unleashes productive empowerment across the board in society. This is a crucial element of overall national development and growth. The case of Norway as Iโve outlined above is a perfect example of how this works. And, Norway is but one of the LGBTQ+ tolerant countries with the highest standards of living in the world.
The fear that the LGBTQ+s want to take over the world is unwarranted. Unlike religion, no one is converted to LGBTQ+ existence. You are either gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc., or not. If conditions become such that more and more LGBTQ+ people come out as time goes on, what the heck? Thatโs the way of the world.
LGBTQ+ people of Uganda and the world, stand up and fight for your rights. You are not alone. We all suffer together. Freedom doesnโt come cheap. Absolutely ALL Africans ought to know this fact.
So, LGBTQ+ contradicts African cultural values? In what way is murder an African cultural values defence mechanism, then? Well, with effective brutality untold, Arab and, subsequently European invaders, applied relentless murder as a tool for imperial-colonialism imposition and sustenance. African has been left generationally culturally and cognitively raped and screwed.
Killing oneโs own people for them exercising expressions of an emotion as fundamental of being human as can be, love, does not make post-colonial Africa any better than the primitive former imperial-colonial masters.
As the human genome carrying entities, Africans are essentially not different from any other people on earth. In varying degrees according to location on the planet, and exposures to multitudes of natural and artificial variants that enable humanity to adapt or die in given situations, Africans face the same existential challenges and joys as anybody else. Therefore, the spectrum of sexual orientations manifestations amongst Europeans or Asians is not in any way divergent from that found amongst Africans or people of any other racial classification, the latter being a curse to humanity.
Therefore, insisting upon the narrative that LGBTQ+ism is un-African is as banal as it is downright lacking in cognitive development maturity. Unadulterated stupidity oblivious to the ever-growing abundance of contemporary human knowledge database. Human love sentiment is truth constant in time and space; much as is the human need for liberty, equality, and solidarity. That underpinning the universal concept of Human Rights.
Whereas the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted without any African representation, the universality of Human Rights principles validity cannot exclude Africa. The assumption being that Africans are part of humanity. Much of Africa still under the Euro colonial yoke in 1948, no African country had the requisite political national sovereignty to be considered as worthy of participation in the process then. Independent Africa would eventually come out with its AFRCAN CHARTER ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES RIGHTS in subsequent years; adopted in 1981, and ratified in 1986.
๐จ๐ก๐๐ฉ๐๐ฅ๐ฆ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ง๐๐ข๐ก ๐ข๐ ๐๐จ๐ ๐๐ก ๐ฅ๐๐๐๐ง๐ฆ
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages. The UDHR is widely recognized as having inspired, and paved the way for, the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties, applied today on a permanent basis at global and regional levels (all containing references to it in their preambles).
ARTICLE 1 of the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS reads as follows:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
ARTICLE 19 of AFRCAN CHARTER ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES RIGHTS agrees by saying, โAll peoples shall be equal; they shall enjoy the same respect and shall have the same rights. Nothing shall justify the domination of a people by another.โ
ARTICLE 3 of the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS says:
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
ARTICLE 20 of AFRCAN CHARTER ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES RIGHTS agrees. It says, โAll peoples shall have the right to existence. They shall have the unquestionable and inalienable right to self-determination. They shall freely determine their political status and shall pursue their economic and social development according to the policy they have freely chosen.โ
ARTICLE 5 of THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS SAYS:
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
ARTICLE 24 of AFRCAN CHARTER ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES RIGHTS adds that โAll peoples shall have the right to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development.โ
ARTICLE 6
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
ARTICLE 7
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
ARTICLE 9
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
ARTICLE 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
ARTICLE 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
ARTICLE 27
- Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
๐ข๐ฆ๐๐ข ๐ฃ๐ฅ๐๐๐ ๐ฃ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐ 2023
Osloโs PRIDE PARADE 2023 was held on Saturday, July 01. It was a massive, happy, incident-free event attended by a record 90 000+ people; a rare event putting the beauty and love of Osloโs human diversity in world display without fear or favour. Norwayโs national television transmitted the event live. The huge turnout was defiant of the possible terror attack threat similar to that carried out outside the London Pub in central Oslo, June 25, 2022.
Itโs Monday, July 03, 2023 as I write this section of the essay. Iโll bet my last penny that the USA risks yet another day of shooting massacres across the nation on July the 4th than Norway shall any day soon endure satanic fires for being pro-LGBTQ+s right to exist happy and free in the country.
On Monday night, June 07, 2010, I reluctantly agreed to join a diverse group of some friends of mine for a beer at the London Pub, Oslo. I have never been into partying on weekdays, a fact my close friends know well. However, on this one night, my friends applied all the tools of the charm to get me to come along with them. We had to celebrate the final exams success of Greg, a younger, super talented jazz singer from Cape Town, South Africa. Ok.
All went well at the pub until I noticed that time was fast approaching midnight. I really had to go. A long working day was awaiting me ahead.
โOh, no, no, no, please, Simon, just wait another few minutes and we shall all leave this place together as a group and then go our separate ways home,โ cried Beya.
โArgh, man, ok! You guys are impossible!โ yours truly.
In the ensuing laughter amidst group amicable comments/ inside jokes like, โBlack Jew Simon just thinks money, money, money. He doesnโt have a social life!โ, the DJ suddenly plays full blast Stevie Wonderโs iconic Happy Birthday song. Before I knew it, I had been yanked onto the dance floor, and this group of between 20-30 men were singing along and dancing all around me. These men were all gay. That was the most wonderful surprise and kick-off moment for the subsequent series of parties marking my 50th birthday, which fell on June 08, 2010. A truly moving experience that I cherish to this day.
After the dance, a Champagne bottle was popped. For a moment I found myself sitting alone, as if my friends had made a quick dash and left me without any good-byes. Argh, just as well, I thought. I was set to go away, anyway. Suddenly, an unfamiliar, exuberantly perfumed, finely attired, beautiful young man sits next to me on the right, and makes as if to want to snuggle with me. As I turn to look at him, he looks me deep in the eyes and says, โBut, Simon, you ARE hetero, arenโt you?โ
โYes, I am,โ yours truly.
The disappointment wave emanating from the boy was palpable. As he apologetically and cautiously pulled away from me, a surge of paternal care cut through me, and the flirt in me woke up. So, I reached out, gently grabbed his hands, and pecked his left cheek, saying, โYes, I am heterosexual, but I love you for that!โ
In Norwegian, โ๐๐ถ, ๐๐ช๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ฏ, ๐ฅ๐ถ ๐๐ ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฐ, ๐ช๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฆ ๐ด๐ข๐ฏ๐ต?โ
โ๐๐ฐ, ๐ซ๐ฆ๐จ ๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฐ. ๐๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ซ๐ฆ๐จ ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ด๐ฌ๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐จ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ต!โ yours truly/ โโฆ But I love you all the same!โ
After my words and moves, I have never seen anybody waltzing away from me onto a dance floor in as glamorous and as joyful mood as that young man. Numerous eyes were on him. I hoped heโd find someone to love him then. That made me happy. I rose and quietly left the pub with the thought that, had that situation involved a girl, and I was in the mood, Iโd have gotten laid that night.
The terror attack tragedy outside the London Pub last year upset me at least as much as it did anybody else. Oslo gay groove house London Pub is a viable business entity. Public records show that it was registered in 2007. Itโs 2022 revenue was NOK 35 million, over twice as much as the previous year. During the said financial year, there were twenty-six employees. With outsourcing of security and other auxiliary services, thereโll be even more people earning a living working here.
The gay joint, London Pub is 50-50 owned by two gentlemen, Avni Fetisi and Selassie Desta G E G. I have reason to believe that the latter is of Ethiopian origin. And, last time I checked, Ethiopia was an African country. Just saying. Whilst living in South Africa as a child sometime in the late 1960s, my father once reminded a๐ฏ๐ข๐ต๐ถ๐ณ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ๐บ overbearing White car salesman that โMy money is NOT black!โ
Money knows no gender, no sexuality, no skin colour. Money just loves good business. If money makers are fair, theyโll pay their workers well regardless of non-professional considerations such as gender, sexuality, race, and all. Hopefully.
Violence against LGBTQ+ people and institutions will never succeed in ridding the world of people who love outside the narrow heterosexual stream. Launching surprise attacks on unarmed, peaceful people is a sign of sheer cowardice; idiocy supreme.
Real men fight men of their own sizes in real, bloody battles. At any one time, there are scores of wars played out in the world for trigger happy fools to go and play their silly, fake-manhood games. Prigozjin and his Wagner Group has room for soldiers of fortune he can use to feed the Putin-created meat grinder in Ukraine, for ๐๐ถ๐ด๐ด๐ช๐ข๐ฏ & ๐๐ฉ๐ช๐ฑ๐ด on South African oligarchโ State Capture braai coal flames. Check out Sudan too, if not the perennial DRC bloodbath.
It boggles my mind that a so-called man can run away from genocidal conditions in his country of origin – Iran, Pakistan, and others; find protection in Norway. Thrive. Grow up into a big and supposedly strong man. Is, or gets unhappy about the liberal, globally uplifting Norwegian way of life. Then decides to play the devilโs executor role and kill innocent people in/ of Norway; shooting them as if they were dummy targets in a shooting range.
There is no courage in fleeing from the fight for liberty in the land of your birth. There is no honour in killing your innocent, new landsmen only seeking to love who they love in the free world.
From the point of view of harnessing and growing a productive manpower resources base vis-ร -vis attainment of sustainable national developmental goals, there can be no bright economic future for Uganda in its use of state resources to persecute the LGBTQ+ community in the country.
As Uganda is not alone in this counter-progress tendency in Africa, I really do not see the continent coming out of the Africa Screwed. Africa Raped quagmire I mention in one of my earlier talks.
Africaโs future is doomed. All for leaders caught up in the ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ธ๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ฌ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ๐ด syndrome. The techno-socio-economic future of the world is shaped by forward-looking, problem-solving leaders. These apply contemporary tools available and relevant today, addressing needs for a successful push into the future of ever so rapidly changing and growing understanding of the workings of nature.
As I use the expression, the ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ธ๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ฌ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ๐ด syndrome refers to the inclination towards reliance on knowledge that may have prevailed once upon a time when society was high and mighty during, say, the Stone Age. Useless.
When progressive countries of the world are investing heavily inArtificial Intelligence (AI) Research and Development (R&D), Uganda is applying scarce resources in the hunt for Whoโs sleeping with who? At the same time Dead Aid keeps flowing into the country. Morbid.
๐๐ก ๐๐ข๐ก๐๐๐จ๐ฆ๐๐ข๐ก
Iโll happily engage with anybody that reaches out on this topic. Do write your comments below. But I am not in any way interested in any crap talk about God and religion. ๐๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ป๐ป๐ถ๐ป๐ป๐ป, God is the most divisive, most lethal of manโs responsibility escapism creations. Religion is a weapon of death in the name of God. Religious texts are murder prescriptions.
Neither am I interested in “๐๐ต’๐ด ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ณ ๐ค๐ถ๐ญ๐ต๐ถ๐ณ๐ฆ” reasoning. The moment I hear expressions like, โ๐๐ง๐ณ๐ช๐ค๐ข๐ฏ ๐ค๐ถ๐ญ๐ต๐ถ๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ฅ๐ฐ๐ฆ๐ด ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ต ๐ฑ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฎ๐ช๐ต ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ๐น๐ถ๐ข๐ญ๐ช๐ต๐บ!โ I see insular, static cultures oblivious to, or dismissive of local or global societal paradigm shifts with time. These insular, static cultures inhibit growth of curious, innovative minds. The latter being capable of, and ever willing to explore new frontiers of knowledge in efforts to find solutions to existential challenges facing society on all fronts.
Spearheaded by the ruling elites, parochial, conservative African cultures kill liberated human beingsโ creative potential. Myths intended to create perpetual fear and uncertainty in peopleโs lives are applied as effective oppressive tools, much like the holy scriptures in organized religions.
Bring me science of consistent, universally applicable, infinitely testable principles that effectively contribute to mankindโs efforts in the never-ending pursuit of bettering the quality of life for all on earth. I have no time for Conspiracy Theories bs-talk. Show me numbers. Thatโs all that interests me in this topic here.
This here is my voice. The voice of an independent, free spirit with no fear for the unknown, or peddlers of untruths and negative endeavours to the detriment of society. I speak for myself, reflecting the workings of my one-man intellectual and creative powerhouse.
I represent no particular interest groups anywhere. Neither do I speak on behalf of any special influential individual. I neither receive nor solicit any monies from any individual or groups, as a motivation to be their mouthpiece or speak favourably about them. Nobody owns me. No one owns my brains. I owe nobody no favours.
My take on the LGBTQ+ rights violations in Uganda and elsewhere is founded on universal Human Rights tenets. I neither hate nor disrespect the people of Uganda. My reaction is against appalling, out-of-tune-with-the-times, power abusive, oppressive, leadership. If the latter is fronted by Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, the heat shall be on him by default; it comes with the territory. Iโll lash out at any regressive national leader, be they Zuma, Mugabe, Putin, Trump, or whoever.
Purely from a Human Rights standpoint, I feel very, very strongly about the LGBTQ+ right to exist case. If I could have just one cause to fight for in my life, this would be it. As a matter of a deep-felt principle, persecution of LGBTQ+ people the world over touches the core of my injustices-against-humanity sensitivities in a profound way. This is a struggle for freedom. Any struggle for freedom is my struggle.
My pro-LGBTQ+ right to life is humanist, and is as solid as a rock. Those of my so-called relatives, friends, and other social relations across the board wishing to cancel me for my views on the LGBTQ+ question and other ludicrously controversial issues such as a womanโs rightto access abortion as she deems fit according to her life circumstances, may do so now. The time has come for hypocrites and cowards to stay clear. Good riddance.
It is okay to have differences of opinions on anything. In fact, it is absolutely natural that people all over the world will have certain commonly shared instinctually broadly and/ or narrowly defined proclivities according to their respective individual neuroendocrine systemsโ wirings. The latter being a function of both inheritance and infinite, known, and unknown immediate and distant environmental factors of short or lasting terms.
But it is not okay to hate. It is not okay to, by all means possible, actively work to exterminate people labelled as ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ท๐ช๐ข๐ฏ๐ต and ๐ด๐ช๐ฏ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ด by those individuals or collectives wielding societal power.
For as long as I can breathe, Iโll speak and write for justice and fairness. Iโll stand for the weak and vulnerable. Amongst other motivations, I do this for our children for them to not be afraid of the future, no matter how weird and unconventional they might be viewed to be, and treated as adults. I have this vision that, given the superior knowledge and courage we impart in our children today, theirs will be a better world for all tomorrow.
The MAGA movement bans and burns books, curtails liberatory education for enlightenment provision for American children today. I shudder to think about how primitive the future world would be would MAGA ever dominate fully the American society. That would also spell hell on earth for American LGBTQ+s. And mine will be one of the loudest resistance voices. You ainโt heard nothing yet. The biggest global freedom storms are yet to come. To the oppressed, the persecuted of the world: ๐ณ๐ง๐ค ๐ฅ๐ด๐ณ๐ด๐ฑ๐ค ๐จ๐ฒ ๐ก๐ฑ๐จ๐ฆ๐ง๐ณ. Believe me.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
July 03, 2023
๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐. ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐.
๐ก๐ข ๐๐ข๐ ๐ ๐๐ข๐ฅ ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐๐ง ๐ ๐๐ก
๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐, ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐?
Question asked by confidants, cynics, and the disdainful alike. To the extent that the current existential reality of the world, and that of myself as an individual remain unimproved, Iโll stay in Norway. I couldnโt live in Africa. Suffering from chronic post-colonialism Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Africa is a place just too messed up for me. Iโve lost all hope for the future of Africa as a progressive, equal geopolitics partner.
Acknowledging the presence of exceptional individual African minds; also, the potential of imparting good citizenry awareness to children and youth, my hope is not really totally lost. Addressing the attendant transgenerational trauma with a view to healing it is a long parallel process.
Were I to be a national political leader in Africa, Iโd become a tyrant overnight as Iโd be brutal against the corrupt, incompetent, and insolent ignoramuses. I rather prefer working at the grass-roots.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
09 September, 2022
๐ข๐ก ๐๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ง๐๐ข๐ก: ๐ฃ๐๐ฅ๐ง ๐๐
ษชษด๊ฐแดสแดแดแด ๊ฑแดแดษดแด แดษด แดกแดแดแดษดโ๊ฑ ๊ฑแดxแดแดส สแดแดสแดแด แดแดแดษชแด แด สแดแดสแดส สษชษขสแด๊ฑ
I came to the world via South Africa, where I spent the first fourteen-and-half years of my life, June 1960-January 1975. As I get older and older for each new year that comes and goes, the impact that growing up in that country has had on my fundamental views of life becomes ever more glaring. That as I strive to make sense of the multitudinous manifestations of horrendous sociological choices outcomes in the world today. In that sense, I was born at the right place, in my time.
The horrendous sociological choices outcomes I mention above arising from apparent mental derangement states in which some of our national and global political leaders thrive as they pathetically engineer society to perpetual dysfunctionality. They think out, formulate, and work to impose outrageous rules and laws that are obviously detrimental to the well-being of society. In fact, these lunatics present an existential threat to human and other life on earth. This as evidenced by national social upheavals owing to ever degenerative leadership quality across the world.
Social collapse attendant to dominant degenerate ethico-political leadership characteristically culminate in civil and international wars, ill-management of potential and actual natural catastrophes, including pandemics. The current Covid-19 pandemic is supposed to have given the world a wake-up call. Of course, this is an outlandish idea to many a national-global leader, and, not in the least, a segment of the new socio-cultural influencer class at the same scale. The latter extensively prevalent in the vast and ever so rapidly growing internet social media platforms sphere.
In the world today, Rocket Science knowledge is not a pre-requisite for the ability to pinpoint where on the globe the scum of society are all out to deprive people of the right to live free and happy in the abundance of survival resources existence provides for all. Itโs all on Google. Itโs all in the news. If you read and/ listen to conspiracy theories news publications, you are no different from the scum of the earth. Wretched souls beyond redemption. Shame.
Growing up in South Africa, I was from an early age mentally conditioned that I might at some point have to sacrifice my schooling opportunities for the benefit of my younger sister, Sisi. Prime assumption being that misfortune could somehow befall my parents. In that event, they would eventually fail to finance my siblingsโ and Iโs education, caught up in the doldrums of endemic Black South Africansโ poverty-stricken existence.
Seen from a global human perspective, parenting and all that it entails is what it is by default. It is not my intention to want to trivialize the challenges of parenting elsewhere. But parenting in the then inherently doomed, dysfunctional, systemically racist Apartheid South Africa was an arduous, unpredictable endeavour for Black people: unemployment, disease, violence, rampant sudden death. Other than the new faces on driversโ seats of post-Apartheid South African socio-economic transformation state machinery, not much has changed for the masses of the underprivileged in the country, though.
It was never difficult for me to understand that in the event that some tragedy would befall my parents, especially my father, Iโd have to stop schooling, go find work, and earn some money to continue where theyโd have left to financially support the family. The idea that Iโd defy the misfortune fate of my people had already been long engrained in my head. Therefore, it wasnโt accidental that my mother encouraged me to earn my own pocket money by selling oranges on the streets during school holidays. I was ten years old the first time. Three years later, 1973, I landed my first ever formal employment job as a junior waiter at a then Whites Only Italian Restaurant in my hometown, Welkom.
Iโm still alive. With variable rates of success over the years, I have lived to fulfill my obligations as a supportive elder brother to my two surviving siblings from my mother. Owing to circumstances beyond my control, I havenโt been able to be there for my half-siblings from my fatherโs other procreative endeavours exterior to my mother, prior to or after their marriage.
Any fool ought to know by now that education is a historically powerful facilitatory tool to appreciable degrees of progressive participation in, and gain from socio-economic activities of our modern, digital age global society. Indeed, some guys with all the luck and some other special attributes will become economically and politically high and mighty without having gone far by way of academic education attainment. These may or may not be partners in crime vis-ร -vis upliftment or destruction of society.
The unabashed manifestation and relentless growth of misogyny in the later years of my life boggle my mind. Thatโs because I grew up aware that upon having weighed the options in time, it was a trend in my neighbourhood that priority was given to pushing girls to acquire as much education as possible. The girls could be nurses and teachers when grown up. Costs of more specialized education in medicine, engineering, and other such related fields of academic or professional training were prohibitive. This fact, combined with generally demotivating Apartheid state policies towards Black education, created a major barrier for my peopleโs pursuit of higher education ambitions.
It made sense to empower girls because, ideally, they grew up to be mothers of the nation, starting with their respective family units. An educated girl subsequently getting married to a well-bred young man was worth gold to her family. In my then communityโs perfect world within the context of the imperfect Apartheid world then, boys having sacrificed their own education for their sisters could always come back and continue schooling once their sisters had at least completed pre-university studies. If the plan didnโt succeed, the boys would simply continue working, get married, have children, and see the latter go through the same cycle of sacrifices with little prospects of sustainability in practice.
From my generation in my childhood neighbourhood in Thabong, Welkom, I donโt know of even a single girl that ever obtained at least full high school education level. Although possibly true in some instances, this is not necessarily mainly a result of family economic constraints nor personal cognitive inadequacies.
My only concern, if not fear, about the idea of me delaying my academic advancement for my younger sisterโ sake was the potential of her getting pregnant whilst still at school. In that case, thatโd be the end of dreams, for both of us, of a better life derived from well-paying jobs education aspiringly led to. Experience showed that once the boys entered the labour market, not many ever got the opportunity to continue with their educational ambitions later on as life progressed.
If anything, the boys would also soon make other girls pregnant and then get caught in the trap of lasting poverty as they get overwhelmed by economic hardships of their own. Paradoxically, once a young girl got pregnant, that was it: she was finished. No more school. Never. As a general observation, which to a large extent remains true to this day, early-age pregnancy totally destroyed girlsโ lives. The situation would be worse if the impregnator refused to take responsibility for looking after or supporting the immature mother-to-be.
My mother-tongue, Sesotho, is the most disparaging, derisive language I know. In Sesotho, a young girl getting pregnant is described as โo senyehileโ. It means that โshe is destroyedโ. And sheโll be treated as such by both her family and the community. Sheโs brought shame not only to the family but everyone around her. At worst, sheโd be treated with much disrespect. Boys and men now seeing her as cheap, and, therefore, reduce her to a readily available sexual object moving forward. Consent not a concept adhered to by the male sex predators in this case. Many a girlโs life has been destroyed this way, culminating in suicides in the extreme.
โO ntshitse mpaโ translates as โShe has taken out the stomachโ. Abortion is described as โHo ntsha mpaโ in Sesotho, therefore. Graphically, โHo ntsha mpaโ as a process means โto remove the stomachโ. Consequently, Iโve since my childhood days associated abortion with excruciating physical pain for the girls concerned. As I grew older in my mid-late teens, I began to be cognizant of, and think independently on ethical and moral issues. It was at this point that I concluded lastingly that regardless of the circumstances prevailing around a pregnancy, it must be an extremely tortuous decision for a woman to choose to terminate it.
As a firmly held philosophical stand-point, I concluded that it took much resolve and courage for a woman to choose to endure the physical and emotional pain that abortion necessarily entails. This is one area in which I feel and think that women manifest magnanimity deserving the highest and unreserved admiration. To force a woman to carry to the full a pregnancy thatโs uncontestably detrimental to her physical and mental health, if not life-threatening, ought to be the crime.
Abortion as a medically defensible procedure to safeguard and enhance the well-being of women in the living ought to be a right understood from a womanโs perspective. Stupid old men who have no practical idea at all about what it takes and feels to be pregnant and subsequently give birth must stay out of promulgating laws that interfere with womenโs sexual reproductive health rights. Anti-abortion women dancing to the tunes of stupid conservative old and young men are traitors against their own kind. These women need help. When one woman appallingly postulates that another woman can opt for abortion at the point of actual birthing, it suggests some serious mental imbalance issues. Another one is about women aborting children already born. Jeeezzuzzz!!! ย
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
July 25, 2022
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐
๐๐ก๐ข๐ญ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ฉ๐ซ๐๐ฆ๐๐๐ฒ ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฉ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ ๐๐๐
Look to Ukraine War 2022
To see
Ukraine people tearing
Replacement Theory apart
In practice
The last of
European fascistic scum falling apart
Replacement assumes plunder
Predicates
Displacement carnage
Genocide
The last of
European American fascistic scum
Daily murder Black descendants
Ancestors of whom
Got displaced from Africa
Got placed into slavery in the Americas
Thirteen million of them
Two million of whom
Became meals for
Sharks of the Atlantic
African prosperity halted
With the gap of the loss of
Bodies and brains
Replaced forever by
Poverty and misery
Disease scaling the cake
Dysfunctional states
A legacy
The Democratic Republic of the Congo
But one case in point
Gory Leopold of Belgium
Exterminated ten million people
As if they were flies here
Numerous others left with
Amputated limbs
Setting standard for
Sierra Leoneโs Charles Taylor
Decades later
Rwanda genocide
Shocked the world
Historically objectively viewed
Replacement Theory
In practice
Gave us colonialism
Gave me Apartheid
As welcome to earth present
In South Africa
Displaced
My motherโs people
From their land
Subjected us to
Poverty-driven subservience
Decimated us
Denied us the living
Opportunities for
Human potential maximization attainment
Replacing our human worth
With
Systemic racism oppression untold
Supremacist repressive methodologies
Blue prints perfected here
Apartheid a fascist catchphrase
These days
If you ask me
Five-hundred years later
Iโm in Europe
Begging bowl
In my hands
โ๐๐ข๐ฏ๐จ ๐๐ช๐ฌ๐ฆ ๐๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐ฆ!โ noose
Around my neck
Waiting for me
To take just one misstep
To lynch me
Survived
Have I already
Several a
Direct killer attempts
Me simply doing
What I gotta do
To be a decent human being
Everyday
Tailing after bounty
Stolen from my ancestors
Meanwhile
Hangmen-in-waiting
Scandalize my name
Already stabbed me in the back
That notwithstanding
Still standing
Stepping forth up-and-up
I can breathe
In America
Survivor posterity of my ancestral roots
Defy the highest odds
Living from day to day
Ever in search in the heavens
For reasons why
The colour of our skin
Is such an abomination
If there is a God
It is not for
People of colours
Children of the indigenous
Inhabitants of the
Americas land masses
Daily decry
Genocide of
Tens upon tens of millions of their ancestors
Fifty-six million perished
In the first one hundred years
At the hands of European scum settlers
Next time you see
The pre-match Haka
Do discern All Blacks
Souls of the Mฤori bemoaning
Replacement from their ancestral lands
In New Zealand
The Wallabies are no consolation
For the Aborigines
Replaced from their
Ancestral procreative spaces
To make room for replenishment of
Australian white supremacist
Grooming endeavours
Christchurch slaughters didnโt just happen
Beyond Peleโs legendary fecundity
On the soccer pitch
Millions more of
Survivor posterity of my ancestral roots
Languish
Displaced in
Brazilian favelas
And the hinterland
In Argentina
History just as dreadful for
Survivor posterity of my ancestral roots
Displace
Debase
Excruciate
Exclude
Incapacitate
Isolate
Replace
Discard
Eliminate
Thatโs the way of
Replacement Theory peddlers
In practice for real
Playing itself out
With impunity
With the right hand of God
Unbeknown to compassion
Jesusโ civility defiled
Today
Fleeing ravages of wars
Inseparable from
Ways of original global masters of
Replacement by murder: Imperialists
People of the world
Run to modern Europe unchanged
Steam to
United States of America the cursed un-united
Resurface in
The land down under
Traumatized
World emigrants
๐๐ฆ๐ด ๐ช๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ช๐จ๐ณรฉ๐ด ๐ฅ๐ถ ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ฆ
๐๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ด ๐ถ๐ต๐ท๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ
๐๐ข๐ต๐ด๐ข๐ฎ๐ข๐ช ๐ฃ๐ข ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ง๐ข๐ต๐ด๐ฉ๐ฆ
๐๐ฎ๐ข๐จ๐ฐ๐ฅ๐ถ๐ฌ๐ข
๐๐ฎ๐ข๐ค๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ข
Want not to kill anybody
Want not to rape anybody
Want not to plunder anybodyโs land
They only ask for
Shelter, food, and love
Hopefully
Packaged in something called
Human dignity
Ukraine War 2022 style
In our times
White Supremacists
Scared shitless of
Self-created myths
Of non-white people of the world
Wanting to eat
White people
Off the face of America
My foot
We are better than that by far
Oh, come on
If racist whites
Have failed to eliminate
People of colours
From black to magenta
For more than half a millennium
What makes
Hot-nutted
Small White American men
With guns in hands
As in
Buffalo shooting
Think that they can
Eradicate us now
We define resilience, dudes
Black donโt crack
Goes the rap
Letโs all live together in harmony
Now
Oh, by the way
In the 21st Century
And years pushing on ahead
Monoethnics are dying breeds
Multiculturalism is
The future of humanity
United in diversity today
Grow up
And
Get used to it, yโall bigots
Wash your damn bloody hands
Stay clean
For human solidarity
For love
Abound in the world
Despite the mess
You ever
So relentlessly strive
To sustain
How dum
Can a human being be
๐๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ป๐ถ๐ป๐ป๐ป
END
ยฉSimon Chilembo 22/05-2022
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
June 02, 2022
PS
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