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𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗥𝗨𝗧𝗛𝗟𝗘𝗦𝗦 𝗥𝗨𝗟𝗘, 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟮
𝗠𝗔𝗚𝗔 𝗔𝗠𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗔 𝗦𝗔𝗠𝗘 𝗔𝗦 𝗗𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗔𝗙𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗔: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮 𝗖𝗮𝘀𝗲
I’m 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 America’s 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 they’d be anywhere else in the world for they are human too, vile fortune hunters who’d 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 people’s 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 people’s The Promised Land. Little did my music-loving South African aunts and uncles know about the history of Black African people’s 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 couldn’t 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 Ali’s 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 people’s 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 country’s 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, it’s just as well that I’ve 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. I’ll shortly demonstrate this in an exposé of the Township Nightmare power relations personality traits. In the same vein, I’ll 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 it’s 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 exposé 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; it’s beyond their cognitive capacities. For a psychopath, it’s 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 ‘nothing’ side of a psychopath, they are likely to eliminate you in various ways. You’ll hear threatening expressions like, “We are coming for you!”. So, “… 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,” 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 ‘world despots’, please! It’s 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. Don’t allow yourself to be charmed by the cheap-feelgood-chronic-diarrhoea-like buffoonery antics of psychopaths.
If you don’t know how to identify a psychopath, call my number. For I’m not a medical doctor, I’ll guide you through an illuminating philosophical discourse that works all the time. It’s 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; don’t cheat. Don’t 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 person’s socio-behavioural incongruencies, whether they exhibit psychopathic tendencies or not, a close brother-confidant of mine once said, “So, a psychopath need not be a raving mad personality in our midst?”
Yours truly, “Yepp, that’s right!”
Brother-confidant, “It 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?”
Yours truly, “Sure thing! But it’s 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 don’t 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. It’s a doctor’s 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 “Uncivility 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.
“Failure to break through psychopaths’ noise and deficient knowledge barriers should lead to withdrawal from talks, if feasible.
“Otherwise, 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.
“Democracy 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.”
Any reasonably intelligent person who’s 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 don’t 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!
Don’t 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 don’t 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 exposé 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 exposé 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 – 1975 January. Growing up in the then-racist apartheid state has profoundly impacted my life. Day-to-day living was ever so dramatically charged. Such that, on the one hand, one could but choose to numb oneself to the volatility of emotions, if not traumas arising, and live on disenchanted and detached from the gruesome, disenfranchised reality.
On the other hand, one could look at, hop onto the intricate traumatic feelings and thoughts bandwagon, learn survival ropes, and hope for the best; longevity being a remote idea. Wishful thinking. Although the OPEC oil crunch of the early 1970s had already begun to make its mark globally, this period could easily be seen as the golden years of the apartheid regime’s economic might. The oppressed Black population segment was subjected to extremes of state security agencies’ violence.
Oppression is some costly business. It curtails human resources’ productive potential growth and manifestation. Atrocious. Oppression will last to the extent that the oppressors’ financial base remains sufficiently robust to sustain the oiling of the oppressive state machinery at all levels. Money talks. Money rules.
As it is with South Africa, a country’s endowment with a variety of natural resources that the world is willing to pay generously for is of crucial importance. Oppressors maximize their hold by capturing the wealth of their nations, therefore. They personalize their wealth, becoming super-rich individually and along with their family members, as well as their power clique hounds: oligarchs’ fangs drooling kleptocracy and nepotism poison in everything they touch. At the same time, their nations get caught in quagmires of long-term poverty and international indebtedness.
The Soweto Students’ Uprising of June 16, 1976, would not only change the liberation struggle course. It changed the political landscape of South Africa as well; further weakening the oppressive state’s capital base. Apartheid had to ultimately collapse. Not because somebody woke up one morning and suddenly discovered that the system was 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 – 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 people’s fundamental survival power relations dynamics alive during all these years.
Post-1994 South Africa has also been accessible to me. It’s the land of my birth, the land of my family’s maternal-side ancestry, after all. Thirty-eight-and-half years since living abroad, I returned to stay in the country for five years, 2013-18. As such, I have been in touch with the trends in the land all along. Much had changed drastically at about all levels. However, characteristic personal survival attitudinal attributes have remained constant. I shall dwell on these later on in this essay as I unravel prerequisites for the workings of the ruthlessness of kassie jungle law rule.
Kassie is a funky catchphrase these days. But originally, it essentially implied a slum; not much unlike Brazilian favelas, for example. In practice, the meaning hasn’t changed in any big way. From the colonial era, peaking during the apartheid years, and stretching into contemporary times, tens of thousands-upon-thousands-to-millions of Black South Africans were dumped here. It initially was predominantly male labourers working in the mines and the agro-industrial complex.
There would be a few state functionaries and even fewer professionals in various vocational categories here and there. Much as there would be numerous fortune hunters engaged in all kinds of illicit endeavours; from petty crimes to large-scale organized crime activities involving alcohol, drugs, precious stones and metals smuggling, human trafficking, prostitution, and more. Family units would eventually emerge as a natural human development process, of course. Children would be born, raised, become adults, lead miserable lives, and subsequently die; the indignity of poverty accompanying them to the grave. Causes of death 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 – 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. It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that strong anti-immigrant sentiments have mushroomed across the country, culminating in several outbursts of brutal xenophobia-inspired violence in recent years.Afro-xenophobia expression is ascribed to South African Black-on-African Black violence. In keeping with characteristic basal kassie culture, violence is the first instinctual option to eradicating conflict. Tragedy is ever the outcome that never brings forth solutions for a peaceful co-existence for all in the country.
The reality of the matter is that, much like the Ununited States of America, South Africa owes much of its economic might to the historical inflow of migrants from all corners of the world. As I’ve already implied above, these people bring into the country a wide diversity of creative/ intellectual/ academic, productive, and entrepreneurial skills that contribute to the robustness of the country’s vibrant economic and social advancement in the long run.
There’ll always be a few bad apples here and there. But assuming a functional justice system prevailing in the land, relevant policing and legal institutions are there to deal with lawbreakers. South Africa is truly a multi-cultural melting pot. Bishop Desmond Tutu’s broadly embraced Rainbow Nation nickname for the country supersedes discrimination neither based on race nor origin of the people that call South Africa their home, either by birth or immigration.
From an epistemological perspective, it is clear that the concept of township/ location/ kassie in South Africa was never meant to create ideal, conducive conditions for Black people to thrive and propagate themselves; neither to attain ever higher standards of living in time, in pace with national economic growth prospects.
The rise of apartheid economic might was at the expense of the lives of Black people, both at the hands of the apartheid state security machinery, and intra-Black violence across mainly urban South Africa. Many other Black lives were also lost through fatal accidents and occupational diseases in the agro-industrial-mining complex. Functionally concerning apartheid intentions, townships were supposed to provide temporary shelter for lives destined to be “… solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”
But then again, survival instincts abode in all humanity. People can remain wretched only for so long. If they are not wiped off from the face of the earth, they shall engage in all sorts of means to prolong their existence. Perhaps fate can change for someone, someday: break the bonds of subjugation, rise and liberate the people, and, ideally, live happily ever after in boundless abundance.
In the meantime, at the individual level in the South African kassie context, survival was and still is about ruthless “semphete ke o fete” (Sesotho: don’t overtake me, I overtake you – 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 I’ve identified as being cardinal for relative individual survival and ruling potential in the South African kassie culture of violence. That as a tool for understanding the nature of human relations power dynamics, and consequences thereof, at all levels of contemporary society, both locally and globally (In the latter, i.e., globally, the USA fits in like a glove). The respective attributes may be understood regarding the identification of the individual as to who they are, and what their social standing is concerning behavioural phenomena observed of them. In essence, this is the making of despots ekassie, a microcosm of the Dream of America nightmare:
- Bodomo (street parlance – Setsotsi) is derived from the Afrikaans word dom. Alternatively bokwala (Sesotho), it means stupidity; downright idiocy. Amidst events, act like you don’t know what’s going on. Go about your daily business indifferent as to whether or not you cause others harm in your endeavours; you lack empathy. You are not interested in reason; you are 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, it’s your rules or no rules at all.
- Lenyatso (Sesotho) is the root of ho tella and leqhoko, immediately above and below respectively. It means to undermine, to belittle other people. Tools applied include patronization, ridicule, insults, unjust criticism, passive aggression, isolation or exclusion, subjugation; all propelled by jealousy and/ or feelings of threat irrationally perceived or real because the victim may, indeed, be the better person in many respects. The idea is to crush the victim, cut them to size, and put them in their place of insignificance. This is pure mental and emotional abuse that often easily degenerates to physical abuse.
- Leqhoko (Sesotho) is provocativeness. Be agitative even out of nothingness just so your presence is noticed, is not forgotten. Be relentlessly disruptive. Cause havoc; be an ass. Instigate and sustain fear. Use all means at your disposal: bully, defame, riot, vandalize, pillage, depose, fight, maim, kill. Ultimately, emerge as the leader of the pack; level-headed and solution-oriented, if only to cow and manipulate the terrorized towards aiding to secure attained dominant safe position.
- Mamello (Sesotho)/ Qinisela (isiXhosa/ isiZulu) refers to tolerance capacity; endurance in both hard and good times, depending. Good times are generally no big deal. But in hard times, practice self-preservation by keeping to yourself and your own. Hang in there. Stay away from trouble. Be invisible. Make no noise. Cultivate hope. Keep the faith because everything is going to be alright someday. Persevere.
For the mighty, though, mamello/ ukuqinisela means staying the course no matter what: keep on pushing; stand tall, don’t fall. Never, never, never give up! Never change the course of action once commitment to act in a certain manner is made. Here, mamello/ ukuqinisela becomes an interplay of bodomo, bokhopo, ho tella, leqhoko, and manganga in variable doses and combinations according to the circumstances prevailing at any one time and space. - Manganga (Sesotho)/ Inkani (isiZulu) is absolute stubbornness. Take a stand, be resolute to the very end, whatever the cost. Whether or not original intended goals are attained is not the essence. You are defiant to the extreme. Stay rock-steady as a matter of principle because you cannot be wrong, or you cannot be denied your demands. You are the truth. You are the light. If you are not the son of God, then you ARE God! Your opponents shall declare you as deranged, delusional; but that doesn’t bother you at all. You are mmampodi (Sesotho)/ champion; you rule. You live above the law. You own your followers through and through. Each one of them understands that you are their life saviour.
A street parlance (Setsotsi) adage goes like this, “Maziwaziwe, maz’bidlikaz’bidlike! (isiZulu)/ If they (e.g. towers) fall, they fall; if they collapse, they collapse!”
It is what it is.
Tyrants, hard-core conspiracy theorists, and charlatans fall under this category. So, in the USA, Coronavirus is just the common flu; “… it’ll disappear just like a miracle!”
Not forgetting The Big Lie that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the presidential elections of November, 2020. And then supporters of The Big Lie insurrect The Capitol peacefully like tourists, leaving destruction and carnage behind. Very special people that The Big Lie spinner loves.
You can also do an egotistical, parochial, typically 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 doesn’t exist. Step aside rule in the ANC? What’s that? If you are indeed going to fall, you don’t go alone. You are vindictive. - Sebete is a Sesotho word for liver.The liver is considered to be an organ of courage in my part of Black South African culture. A courageous person is said to “have a liver”/ O sebete. Courage is a common thread linking all survival, or power attributes in kassie.
Ho sa (Sesotho, noun), lumps together the attributes above into one virulent trait: petulance as gross as only an extremely spoiled brat can display. The descriptive form of ho sa is “O sele!”, meaning “He/ she is petulant!”
People of all ages manifesting ho sa as a characteristic social interaction trait are some of the most dangerous a community can have. Makings of despots emerge here.
Underpinning the relative kassie individual survival and ruling potential laid out above is the question: O tshepile mang (Sesotho)? Which directly translates as, “Who is it you trust?”
Who’s covering your back?
Simple as the question might seem, it is not necessarily a daily conversation question posed in my original part of Black South Africa. The question is profound to the extent that it is asked a person directly, or others are asked about a particular individual when the latter’s negative behaviour defies not only mainstream social protocols across the board, but sheer common sense as well. It is believed that there must be some extra-ordinary qualities, some mystic about these kinds of people. For example:
- What gives them the guts? What makes them tick?
- Whose progeny are they? What are their lineages?
- Do they have some guardian angels, perhaps? In that case, who are the latter? Where are they?
- What do they have that ordinary people do not have?
- Are they working for somebody even more powerful than themselves? Who are these people?
- Are they protected by God? Ancestral spirits? Wizards and witches?
- Or are they just raving mad, sick in their heads? Are they bewitched?
- Do they have magical powers themselves? If so, from where do the powers derive?
- Are they members of some organized crime gangs? Or some secret societies? The Illuminati?
- Is it just because they are too rich? But where does their wealth come from?
It’s only if and when sufficient knowledge about these treacherous people is gathered that concerned individuals or the community can effectively react to get rid of them in one way or another. It’s not unusual that the former fall from glory in the most dramatic and humiliating fashions; those who lived by the sword dying exactly as they lived. Such is kassie life. The ruthless rule but momentarily.
The strong are often the smart with senses of moral and ethical awareness. They tend to survive, break out of the mould of kassie misery and ignorance, and live longer. Some in this category will in time even travel wide and see the world, permanently breaking the spell of kassie anti-life attributes. Expressing themselves through diverse media and creative and performance forms, they may also become proponents of liberty, justice, and equality as fundamental Human Rights tenets all of humanity on earth is entitled to.
Meanwhile, South Africa has yet to cleanse itself of the kassie anti-life attributes spell, to the extent that it’s possible. However, given the current display of elite kassie mentality antics in various judicial and organizational platforms in the country, it is clear that much more work remains to be done at this rate. Well, cumulatively from the onset of contemporary European colonialism in the 17th Century up to the apartheid era in the 20th Century, the mechanizations that facilitated their imposition had at least four hundred years to dehumanize my people and screw up our psyche. The Rainbow Nation is only twenty-seven years old.
Khotso is a common Sesotho name for South African males. It means peace. The female version is Mma-Khotso both as a formal name and may denote that the woman is a mother of a boychild called Khotso. The name has significant connotations. In practice and conceptually, peace is a universal prerequisite for progressive human co-existence. That making for harnessing humanity’s creative potential towards a sustainable, infinitely fulfilling life for all. The South African national anthem, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika! (Nkosi Sikelela) is essentially a cry for peace, captured in the Sesotho text:
Morena boloka sechaba sa heso/ Lord Almighty, save my nation
O fedisa dintwa le matshwenyeho/ Bring an end to strife and suffering
Were the ruthless and the smart kassie people of South Africa and beyond to realign their attitudes and heed the message of Nkosi Sikelela, the future would be bright for all. I want to be here in four hundred years to gloss in the glory of the heaven on earth that South Africa and the rest of the world will have become. I sit here in a space of relative peace. I breathe. I dream. I write. 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 somebody’s day every day into the future.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
May 29, 2021
𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘 𝗟𝗘𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦 𝗣𝗢𝗘𝗧𝗥𝗬
𝗪𝗛𝗘𝗡 𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗞 𝗦𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞𝗦 𝗖𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗜𝗧𝗬, 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗗𝗢 𝗬𝗢𝗨 𝗗𝗢?
DISCLAIMER
I am not an employee of NAM (Nasjonalmuseet/ the National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design). I work at NAM on behalf of an outsourced service provider, in which I have full-time employment. This presentation today is one of several literary creative inspirations that I have so far gotten whilst performing my formal duties at NAM. The presentation is unsolicited, and it is done with no inherent ulterior motives. It is done and delivered with but the best of intentions, without fear or favour.
Neither NAM nor my employer can or must be directly nor indirectly associated with the thoughts, opinions, and sentiments I am going to express in this presentation. I alone am responsible for the contents herein. I hope, though, that the output shall be of a quality and standard that shall cause neither embarrassment nor disrepute for both NAM and my employer.
The inspirational moment, and its subsequent outcomes, i.e. poem, publication in a book, and the social media video recital here would have happened regardless of whether or not I worked at NAM. All that needed to happen was for my eyes to fall on the particular inspirational object. It could have been anywhere, at any time. It just happened to be at NAM, Oslo, on October 28th, 2022 this time around.
As I walk through, back and forth, round and around in my professional errands in the various public exhibition spaces in the museum, the vast variety of objects on display works my emotions and thoughts in phenomenal ways. Many a time I feel like I see myself floating in this boundaryless enclosure that is an intermingled environment of what I’ve gathered of ideas of heaven and hell. In this environment, the material and the conceptual are all merged into one new reality that defies human speech for description. The opposites as we know them on the earthly plane cancel out one another in this strange new reality. And it doesn’t matter.
For example, in this temporary but recurring new reality, I don’t see the environment as I do with my eyes distinguishing between normal light and darkness. The sensory organs don’t work in the conventional way here. When I expect to hear a sound in my head, as from observing a painting depicting fire, somehow silence claims its space. It’s in conflicting but harmonic moments like these that I get lost in time and space.
And, in silent thunderous flashes of light, clouds of inspiration engulf my thoughts with darkness. Through this haze, I get to sense words in either written or spoken forms. In this state of mind, I lack a background upon which to base my experience of these words that I hear in what I perceive as silent sound in stationary motion. This is how my writings come to be. Preserving my sanity, thereby. I appreciate art for what its charming beauty and its irresistible goriness do to ever kindle my creativity. A work of art has not moved me if my response to it does not inspire an expressive textual idea in my head.
Immersed in the writing process, I do not create writing ideas from nothing. My writing ideas are stimulated through my responses and reactions to my actual interactions with events and attributes of my environments at any one time. It is not always that the writing idea shall be manifest at all. It is one thing to have an inspiration, and it is another to bring the inspiration to life – the mood, time, and space have to be right. That means that my literary output so far is only the tip of the iceberg concerning how much more I shall potentially produce. Every day I can’t help but get several concrete inspirational moments stored in my creative database in my brain. Therefore, I work at the right place at the right time. I shall live to see my 1000th book published before I’m a hundred years old.
Every piece of poetry, essay, or novel that I write helps me to hold my feet on the ground. The writing process cleanses my soul; it elevates my passion for living. This is so because, when I write, I get lost in a realm of being in which asking existential questions and finding functional answers are the imperatives for survival. This is the realm in which, with text, I get to materialize for life my dreams, my hopes, and fears. I am eternally grateful for the privilege of working at NAM for what immense value the workspaces add to my creativity.
Currently, and until January 14th, 2024, NAM has a major exhibition of some of the works of Harriet Backer. The exhibition is called Every Atom is Colour. Whenever I’m in the magnificent exhibition hall, I get a sense of a warm, safe, homely feeling. This is reminiscent of the better part of my formative years whilst attending school in Lesotho, 1965-69. I feel and see so much of my late maternal grandmother’s aura throughout the space.
Harriet Backer gives me a reassuring, here-and-now sensation in my entire being. I see myself walking into a bright future standing still with time in Harriet Backer’s presence. This is much like seeing the visions of the kingdom of God that my grandmother used to tell me about. She used to say that I was a chosen child of God; when I’m grown up, I’d be king of my people. And, when I die, I’ll be headed to heaven, where I’ll sit on the right side of God, and live happily ever after. Amen!
I’m not quite ready to die yet. Heaven can wait.
I first met Harriet Backer in the northern spring of 2022, a few months before the official opening of NAM. Upon entering the room through its main entrance, I saw a portrait of a letter-reading girl hung up on the wall facing the entrance squarely from across the room. This was one of those love-at-first-sight moments that often make my heart sing throughout my body. The girl’s enthralling beauty reminded me of a girl that I once knew as a growing-up boy-to-man in South Africa in the early 1970s.
Each time I entered the room I’d daydream about the many, many love letters I’ve written in my time. The girl in the portrait is there but not there at the same time. I could bring her to life in my fantasies, but I could never have her in the flesh, yet I love her all the same. Hopeless love.
In the same manner, the girls I used to write letters to in many parts of the world were there in my fantasies as I sat down and wrote. The fantasies would get wilder tortuous during the replies waiting phases, which could be weeks to months in those pre-internet days. Upon receiving even only one reply after the long wait, I used to curse my fantasies for failing to bring in the flesh these girls home to me. But I kept hoping that one day, it would happen. I’m keeping the dream of love alive in memories of some of the girls now dead.
I’ve met numerous other new girls since. We don’t write letters these days. Social media and other modern communication platforms do the trick. But it’s not the same. I guess that’s how it took about six months before the poem inspired by the letter-reading girl came forth.
One day, as I stepped into, the Harriet Backer room, I marvelled at the especially silently exuberant nonchalance of my beloved letter girl on that particular day. Thinking that I saw the painting moving like it was being pushed towards the door, I feared she was shutting me out for once. At the same time, I felt welcome as I confirmed that the painting was attached fast to its regular spot.
I realized, then, that I hadn’t before thought about what the message in the letter could have been and from whom it may have come. I also realized that I had never gotten to look into her eyes since they were so fixed on the letter in her hands. Perhaps I should write her a letter, I thought. At that moment, then, I suddenly heard poetic words singing in my head; the poem Love Letter became the real-world outcome.
Before I read the poem, I have to make another disclaimer as I, in my words, describe what art is:
DISCLAIMER 2
I do not have any academic or professional training in art. My articulation of what art is a function of my layman’s instinctual appreciation of things beautiful against the ugly; both in the figurative and abstract manifestations as my senses perceive it in any given situation and space, at any given time. All I know is how to think and write, and write and think.Art is what I feel. If I feel it, I can think it. If I think it, I can write it. Writing is my art, my artistic expression. Writing is what I do; all attributable to my academic training.
WORKPLACE OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS
People do from time to time visit museums of all kinds for all kinds of recreational, educational, and research reasons. I work at Norway’s Nasjonalmuseet. The institution has proved to be an awesome literary creative’s wet dream for me as an author and poet. I get at least one goosebumps moment each day I am at work. Tens of thousands of works of art are on display throughout the eighty-nine exhibition spaces at the museum. In all their widely variable expressive forms, these artworks move me in a way that ever fills me with love and joy like I have never experienced before. Working here is a privilege I am much grateful for.
At different points in all the exhibition spaces in the museum, there are rest stations comprising benches upon extensions of which are placed, amongst other items, wooden playing cards. The cards have various quizzes and games for the guests to have a go at as they sit and rest. I, together with Ole, a fine but ever condescending colleague young enough to be my grandson, happened to have been engaged in a discussion about various aspects of the museum when we approached one such station. Ole then unexpectedly reached out and randomly pulled out a card from the bench extension. It turned out to be a quiz card with the question: ‘What is Art?’; creating a gotcha moment that I saw Ole revelling in.
Talking about Ole’s gotcha moment, this was yet another one of those moments in which a person of European extraction comes to me with the pre-conditioned notion that Black people are not cultivated enough to appreciate the finer aspects of European culture. Anyhow, my immediate response in this case was, “Art is the capturing of an experiential moment in time and space in order to, perhaps, tell a story about that experience in the future. This capture can be in any form or medium according to the proclivities and talents of the artist.”
Ole, “I hear you. But you will have to elaborate more on all that you have just said!”
Seeing as we had to attend to each our respective duties at work then, I replied, “I shall write an essay for you, then. Deal?”
“Deal!”
My definition of art shall be both conceptual and functional. Conceptually, I know art when I perceive it. I do not have to be told. I do not have to be instructed. I know art when my senses register it. Regardless of the representational form, the sentimental response that I get from experiencing any manifestation of art that I consider as beautiful is a constant. Conversely, an unattractive, unpleasant artistic form as I experience it emotionally affects me in the same way relevant to it irrespective of the form or the representational style.
Whenever I read a storybook (or even write one) that I enjoy, my breathing rate slows down, the total bodily relaxation I get gives me a wonderful warm feeling all over; I get goosebumps, and my palms get warmer and moist. This kind of feeling brings me immense joy. The dreamy state it gets me into sends me into a fantasy world of all things possible. If I had been, for one reason or another, going through hard times, this state brings hope home; it fills me with a sweet sense of freedom. In this state, I am invincible. This is my subjective domain for defining what beautiful art is for me as my perceptive senses – eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose, intuition – register it, feed my hormonal system (feel-good hormones), and the latter instruct my nervous system to induce my being to act accordingly. Pure joy.
Whilst recognizing it for what it is, art that is repugnant to me is exactly that. If it makes me cringe, if it casts a shadow of pessimism over me, if it fills me with negative thoughts and associations, if it gives me a cold sweat, then it is bad art for me. There are times when I can see beauty in bad, ugly art, though. I think about the hands, or some other body parts, that created the work. Every hand shall tell its story according to its owner’s neuro-hormonal wiring and physical capabilities. One man’s apparent gory art may be another’s depiction of heaven. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Functionally, art is a conveyor of messages, a storyteller; a courier of generational narratives in humanity’s dances with nature and itself over time. Art can be an instrument of change. Art can repair the once broken. Art can inspire hope, faith, trust, and love. To the extent that art is a personal expression, art may speak for its creator. Art creators have the potential to make or break society. Ask God, man’s most divisive, master-of-carnage creation. God may have created man instead, her most complex work of art. The outcome is not any better.
Art is identity. Identity may be deception obscured in art. From the outset, art may be true by intent and purpose. But when human perception and interpretation of reality are as polychotomous as there are so many people on earth, art shall be true or fallacious as to the perceptive state
and cognitive capacity of the observer. Therein lies the mystique, the intrigue of art. Who am I? I am a man in love with art.
Art is some powerful stuff. Art is a human creative potential deserving to be handled with tender, loving care. At its best, art is an instrument of peace; art has the potential to stimulate reflection on the human condition. We rise, we fall; art captures all that. Art is beauty. Without beauty, life is not worth living.
Beauty moves humanity forward and higher on the scale of qualitative and quantitative improvements in life. It is not for nothing that nations of the world, interest organizations of all sorts and sizes, wealthy individuals, and many others invest heavily in the promotion, conservation, preservation, and storage of some of our most impactful of artworks over the epochs into the future. Art immortalizes human experience.
WHAT IS ART WORTH?
Your eyes see what they see. Your brains process your perceptions as to their inherent OS programming, i.e. the brain in concert with the hormonal system, which affects behaviour, ultimately influencing our decision or choice-making processes. Your expressive potential is manifest through your creative skills and particular materials and work tools preferences.
The expression of your observed reality or conjured fantasy isolated in your creative expression of choice shall, then, manifest the outcome we see as a work of art in its unique presentation that only you can tell it like it is. It’s up to the eye of the beholder to see or not to see the beauty, the function, and/or the worth of the work.
Simon Chilembo, December 29, 2023
I’ll write you a letter
Etch my words on paper
If it’s a crime to love you
Here is the evidence
My love for you
Is not
A judicial affair
For courtroom theatricals
For juries’ deliberations
For judges’ adjudications
I’ll etch portraits
Of my love for you
On canvas
Lock them in frames
We’ll want to meet again
The other side of
A thousand years ahead
Hanging on walls
In art museums
Of the world
For a billion eyes to see
I couldn’t hide
My love for you
For your eyes
That could never see
My love for you
In plain sight
END
©Simon Chilembo 28/10-2022
SIMON CHILEMBO
Oslo
Norway
January 07, 2024
𝗛𝗢𝗪 𝗜 𝗔𝗠 𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗣𝗬 𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗘
𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗣𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗦 𝗦𝗔𝗩𝗘𝗦 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗘𝗦. 𝗧𝗥𝗬 𝗜𝗧!
CHANGE VERSUS SELF-LOVE
I love me just the way I am. That’s a given. If I could go changing, I don’t know if I’d be pleased with the outcome. For as sophisticated an organism as a human being is, change as an objective and subjective process is a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon. If planned and executed with specific, predetermined elements within specific parameters, change outcomes of the changeable could be predicted.
Randomly occurring change can lead to any previously known or unknown outcomes in any direction. A human being cannot be one thing or another, and that’s it. From the outset, human beings become the way that they are out of chance, instantaneous combinations of fixed familial heritage (i.e. genetics) and time-progressive, ever-variable socio-environmental factors (nurture).
INNER PEACE
The day I understood that I could only be what I am and that I could only do what I do at any one time because that’s what’s accessible to, doable, and fun here and now, I found inner peace; I loved myself more. I internalized the idea that I could, indeed, do anything towards the attainment of my dreams only to the extent that what is available and doable is compatible with my values. Compatibility with my physical and mental strengths, and my philosophical and spiritual equilibria, is an important determinant factor too.
THE IMPOSSIBLES
I’ll never venture to do the impossible beyond what my mind and body are not keen to pursue for lack of interest, curiosity, relevant competence, or application tools and other resources. For example, a Mt Everest Mountain climb expedition is out of the question for me. Neither do I even dream of traversing the Antarctic to reach the South Pole. I walk on the moon in my poetry only. I’m simply not cut out for these. No love lost.
Nonetheless, I do profoundly admire those people who partake and succeed in these and other related extreme effort endeavours. Attitudinally, these people inspire my will to win when I know that I do have what it takes to overcome obstacles to triumph in given contexts.
That’s how I could, in the comfort of my creative work studio on a tropical island somewhere, exclusively sit, think and write, and write and think every day of my life until the end of time. That’s me. My extreme sport is my far-reaching, deep-tranced, time-unbound literary creative exploits mind-games.
EXPLANATORY MODELS IMPERATIVE
If I cannot synthesize for myself an independent, scientifically sound, humane explanatory model for some material or conceptual endeavour I’m challenged or tempted to perform or be part of for any purpose, I’m not likely to do it. This attitude has enhanced my sense of freedom in the free world. It has empowered me with the idea that I do have much greater influence as to the direction and extent of the potential of my destiny; unpredictabilities of nature, human vulnerabilities against the forces of nature, and world socio-politico conditions notwithstanding.
My finding inner peace has enabled me to better know myself, appreciating my strengths in the hustle and bustle of living. Whilst not trivializing my apparent weaknesses in given situations, I never put much thought into the former. If I’m weak at it, then it’s not important for me. I care but little about it. I’ll always strive to harness all the strength I need in my efforts to realize the expected objectives of any endeavours that are of significant importance for my survival, or fulfilment of my professional and social obligations.
MY HERITAGE
Thanks to the inner peace that I enjoy, I have come to appreciate my origins more and more. I value more my parents, and I respect my lineages even more. All the glory I’ve basked in, and the hard times that I’ve had to endure in my life so far have more meaning now. The continual existential lessons owing to these life experiences form the foundation upon which my emotional-spiritual and mental-philosophical premises stand.
I have a greater sense of confidence in my perennial work to carve spaces of safety and comfort conducive to my creative work growth and consolidation. My hope for and faith in arriving at a future of light and abundance into longevity and immortality are enhanced. I have never been more optimistic about the future.
In my current state of overall well-being, I find myself risen above, if not distanced from all the major primitive, hate-laden man-on-man murderous wars tragedies in the world today. Daily, the world is online fed in real-time surreal images of extremes of cold-hearted human brutality played out by man on fellow man. All this is beyond my comprehension, defeating my capacity for independent, scientifically sound, humane explanatory model formulations in my endeavours to better understand my world. So, I withdraw, look into myself, and revel in my inner peace state of being in my war-free corner of the world.
BEAUTIFUL THINGS FULL OF LOVE
I look out into my immediate world and marvel at how blessed I am to live the life that I live, where I live in Norway. Many a weekday at my place of work is started by the smallest kindergarten children coming over to check out and learn about the wonderful works of art displayed here. When the mood is right, I get to sing for the children the first lines of the song ‘The Greatest Love of All’. Recollections of the joyous moments this unofficial bonus show creates for all I’ll take with me to my grave, should I die.
Throughout the work days, Tuesday-Sunday, locals and international tourists of all ages and walks of life flock to my workplace of beautiful things. Interacting with all these people is a joyous privilege that invariably contributes to the fortification of my inner-peace state of being. I’m happy at work.
PERVASIVE HAPPINESS
My happiness permeates all aspects of my life: the visible to the external world, and the invisible that form the core of me, my essence, that only I can experience and fathom. The latter is so profound that I cannot explain it in words. I only know that it’s there; and it plays itself out all the time in my interactions with people at all levels, be it in professional work or social settings. It plays itself out in my solitary moments also. That’s how it is that I don’t know what loneliness is as a personal experience. If I have an ever-green, loyal lifelong companion, it is my happy all the time state of being.
My jovial disposition is legendary even to me. I’ve been happy all the time for as long as I can remember. My happiness lives a life of itself inside of me. Of course, people and things will frustrate and anger me from time to time. I’m only human. I will express my frustration and anger in one way or another. The intensity or severity of my sentiments and reactions depends on the gravity of the matter as I see it there and then. But the core of my happiness has yet to crumble. Should my happiness ever crumble, then, that’ll be my demise. Goodbye, world; goodbye, beautiful people!
WHEN IT STARTED
I associate my first conscious encounter with happiness with Boxing Day morning, 1964. I was 4 ½ years old, then. Neighbourhood children poured into our home yelling incessantly, “Christmas box, Simon’s father, Christmas box …!!!”
In what I’d later understand to be Father Christmas style, Pappa came out of our house carrying a large box full of various kinds of colourful and noisy toys. There were lots of candies too. I stood there looking in amazement at these children happily pouncing upon the box, each child seeking to get as much as possible of the presents therein. Letting go of the box and stepping aside in some effusive laughter fit, my father showed the happiest moment of him the like of which I would never see again after this.
A short while later, Pappa, together with my mother and grandmother, gave me my boxed present. I never got to find out what the present was exactly because I soon lost it in the melee of happy children all around me in our yard. That Boxing Day 1964 children’s party would be a one-time event that made a lasting impression on all the neighbourhood children and their respective families. However, Pappa would continue thrilling us children by every so often buying us ice cream from the ice cream bicycle men doing business up-and-down the streets. This would last until my family left South Africa in January 1975.
By the time we left South Africa, the happiness bug had become chronic in me. I’ve got the incurable exhilaration jungle fever. I’m ever happy by default, therefore. Even so, I know how to switch my happiness machine on and off at will according to occurrences around me at any time and space.
DEFIANCE HAPPINESS
Having taken neo-slavery to the next level of sophistication in the 20th Century, the former Apartheid system in the land continued to subject us, Black people, to deliberate, systemic, effective application of extreme violence everywhere every day. This violence was so degenerative of the human spirit that it even reproduced itself in the home. Violence remains endemic in South African society to this day. Despite all that, there were always innumerable remarkable moments of unrestrained joy in various situations every day.
There was always something about anything or anybody to laugh about. My contemporaries and I laughed at each other: friends and foes alike. We could grossly laugh at each other into fights; much as we used to do the same to stop fights and create conditions for a peaceful coexistence in a hard world, short-lived as the peace would be.
Our days on the streets consisted of ever intertwining circles of play, fight, peace, song and dance, mutual or unilateral group mobbing, arguments, fighting, and so on and on and so forth. Repeat. And repeat. All of this was threaded with humour through and through. There was never a dull moment. At the grossest levels, we used to both weep for and laugh at those that got knifed and killed on the streets. Humour as dark as it got. Chilling childhood memories.
ENTER THE MOVIES
The appearance of the bioscope in our midst from about the close of the 1960s onward introduced us to cinematic comedy shows. That took our appreciation of humour and our storytelling capacities to the next level. Unforgettable all-time favourites included The Three Stooges and, of course, the outrageously funny Charlie Chaplin. At the end of the day, we often complained of ribcage pains from profuse laughter all day long. Bodily pains from fighting blows were part of the humour drive. So, they didn’t matter so much to the extent that no one sustained acute injuries.
Looking back, we were a happy lot defying the evils of oppression with humour. We learned to use humour to endure or overcome the most difficult life experiences on the streets, at school, and in the home. To this day, if it’s not worth wasting my breath on, I diffuse potentially harmful human relations tension moments with a smile and laughter. It works all the time. Almost. I have yet to make a stone laugh. But then again, a stone knows nothing about human relations. When a human is as thick as a stone, I can’t help them.
HAPPINESS FOR PEACE
Conditional upon neither the boundaries having been crossed, nor the swords not drawn yet, my ability to manifest my state of happiness through humour has, on many occasions in time, been a powerful diplomacy agent in the face of all kinds of hostilities in all kinds of circumstances. Some people derive and celebrate their happiness states by bombing others. Diplomacy work is explosive here.
If I can laugh about the absurdities of some overtly provocative antagonism towards me, I may be willing to resolve matters peacefully through talk if the talk is mutually tenable. I might also choose to simply walk away to deescalate the potential for violence outbreak; possibly permanently severing any further links with the antagonist. Short of eliminating extreme, unpacifiable antagonists, I opt to isolate and exclude them from my life in spaces and situations that I have control over; as in my feelings. I don’t know how to accommodate detractors of my right and potential to be happy, and to not unduly repress my happiness expressions.
When I’m happy I’m strong, I’m resilient, I’m confident, I’m dominant, I’m optimistic, I’m logical, I’m a charmer, I’m sensitive; I see beauty in all things, I am an open book; I’m discerning, I’m patient, I’m tolerant, I’m free, I’m fearless, I can be brutal; I’m invincible, gregarious like hell, I win my fights clean – no broken bones, no blood spilt, no death.
On the one hand, happiness is my weapon of mass destruction in hostile times. On the other hand, happiness is my ballistic missile shield against personal evil forces. Therefore, happiness is my magic carpet ride to longevity and immortality. It is my means of disabling animosities, ensuring victory over my enemies, with laughter crumbling the grounds upon which they stand.
When I am happy, I am genuinely so. I don’t know how to be fake happy. Although my happiness is self-propelled because I am happy by nature, it doesn’t mean that I go around glaring my teeth and laughing like a fool seeking attention everywhere all the time. My life is a circus. But I am not a clown.
It does happen, though, that unrestrained public expressions of my joy are calculated and intentional, spontaneous as a humorous situation I may have created, or I respond to might seem to be. This may be to create confusion and distraction in foreseen or proceeding conflict situations, pre-empting potential escalation to violence. It may also be to break the ice when meeting people for the first time for any reason, or to ease the tension in challenging inter-personal communication skills scenarios, as in negotiations at any level.
CLEAN HAPPINESS
My happiness expressions are not dependent on any intakes of chemical or herbal central nervous system stimulatory substances. I don’t consume tobacco in any way or form. I don’t do any form of drugs; neither through inhalation nor intravenously. I very rarely drink alcohol.
And whenever I do drink alcohol, it is never because I’m in the chase for happiness. I’m ever so happy with or without the consumption of alcohol. I never touch alcohol when I’m upset over one thing or another. When I’m upset, alcohol tastes like horse urine. Yeuk!!! Yes, I have in my time tasted fresh horse urine from the ground. That teaches you how to fold your lips so that you can learn how to whistle, see?
HERMITISED HAPPINESS
Inner happiness doesn’t have to be expressive all the time. Some of my truly happiest moments are when I feel happy inside, enjoying the happiness feelings as an exclusive, private affair of mine: solitary joy. These are the moments when I’m at my most perceptive and most creative; moments of illumination. These are the moments when solutions to pressing personal challenges of all sorts manifest themselves. In this emotional contentment state, I’m able to see through the mediocrity of thoughts and actions by power players and other thought leaders in humanity’s big existential questions. I crush conspiracy theories from this domain of unlimited, ignorance-proof, pure thought possibilities.
ETHICO-MORAL AWARENESS
It is at this level that my senses of justice (good v/ bad) and fairness (right v/s wrong) get heightened in my analysis of world events. This forms the basis upon which my decisions to take particular stands on certain local and global divisive socio-politico issues are anchored. It is also at this level that my social relations are categorized as to the extent of sharing or not sharing certain critical values as active social beings.
HAPPINESS-PERFORMANCE MUTUAL DEPENDENCY
Outcomes of my happiness-induced high creativity and problem-solving capacity further fuel my happiness state. My happiness, creativity, and problem solutions form an essential functional loop for my existence and my appreciation thereof. If the loop breaks, I might as well be dead. Therefore, my happiness is my elixir of youth, my longevimmortality engine amplified by laughter. Such is the value of my happiness.
I cannot afford to be unhappy. I do not want to be unhappy. If I have an addiction, it is happiness as an expression of my being here and alive for life right now. No one can take that away from me for as long as I consciously strive to be a decent human being wishing and enjoying sharing my happiness with others who see a mutuality of value addition to each other’s lives. My happiness and my ability to sustain it are a gift I’ll treasure for life.
HAPPINESS PRIVILEGE
Commenting on one of my Facebook feeds posts recently, a colleague and friend has said, “Being happy every single day is a privilege that not everyone has.”
I agree with that statement only partially. And that is looking at the statement as an expression of humble gratitude for being able to live on ever-generous doses of happiness daily. The idea is to identify the source of the happiness doses. I shall address this aspect below.
A privilege is a good enjoyed at the pleasure of external forces, be they human relations dynamics, or random if not predictable circumstances prevalent in nature. The privilege may or may not have strings attached. However, the assumption is that the privilege recipient has little control over the provider or facilitator of the particular privilege enjoyed. The privilege afforded to one by the high and mighty could be used as a manipulatory or control tool by the latter. As such, the state of being happy experienced and lived as a privilege may not be sustainable.
HAPPINESS AS A FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT
In my world, happiness as a lived experience and feeling is a personal, non-negotiable human right to enjoy and share with others, if so desired. The sharing is done through various communicative means and platforms. I do acknowledge the ubiquitous prevalence of overwhelming tangible personal, societal, and natural challenges constantly working at destroying our basis for being happy. Nevertheless, I maintain that we do have both the potential and capacity to choose to be as happy and as expressive of happiness as we wish to do and to be.
A person’s foundation of self-knowledge is a key prerequisite to mastering the skills of how to be happy as a conscious mental and emotional choice according to events occurring around the individual. The latter may, for example, include the attainment of certain predetermined material or conceptual goals, which, for instance, could be to reach stated production targets at work. Creating a happy and congenial work atmosphere could inspire efficiency and effectiveness in production or service for all parties involved in the work process.
Success at work and in personal relations may result in the recognition of one’s efforts through adulations and rewards in one form or another; this way potentially compounding and prolonging the already pre-existing state of happiness. A person who thrives in happiness is likely to strive to create conditions for happiness to bloom for as long as it is possible.
ATTRACT HAPPINESS
I have learned that happiness never comes to me of its own accord. The happiness living inside of me is a given. But, whether I’m solitary or in public, I attract and receive at least as much happiness as I feel inside, or the happiness that I radiate according to prevailing circumstances and space.
REGULATE YOUR HAPPINESS
My permanent inner happiness notwithstanding, I can at will switch on and off the outward flow of my happiness as necessary. It is not always that the environment shall be positively receptive to my exuberance. And, that’s okay. Misunderstandings, insecurities, and prejudices are also prevalent everywhere people interact. These are common thwarters of happiness.
GUARD YOUR HAPPINESS
Identify your sources and hacks of happiness. Own them for the empowerment they afford you for your overall health and wellbeing, thereby fortifying your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual resilience; opening up your mind to realms of possibilities beyond what the eye can see. This makes for your optimal performance potential in the things you do both for a living and recreation. Make longevity your goal as gratitude for your gift of happiness as your prime mode of existence choice.
EXTRAORDINARY HAPPINESS
Happiness makes for the attainment and creation of extraordinary things. The extraordinary carve permanent spaces in human memory banks. You become immortal out of your deeds claiming lasting recognition in history. Worry not. Be happy. Live forever through your mark in history inspiring others to seek and live for happiness always. Happiness is the way of love and peace, attributes that humanity so sorely needs today.
HAPPINESS FOR YOU
Only you can define your happiness on your terms. Be happy for your own sake, first and foremost. Cause no one harm. Wish none ill. Share your happiness abundantly with those who appreciate you for being who and what you are. Conserve your energy and capacity to live and love by staying away from happiness-dampening, toxic relationships. Never let go of those that make you happy. Happiness is a mutually supportive human quality. Even animals know this. That’s how we can keep pets.
SEE TO BE SEEN
Depending on how you organize your life as you wish to live it, take it for granted that you want to see and be seen. Therefore, allow your happiness to be an integral element of the unique brand that you are. Your brand highlights your worth as an active participant in societal development as per your skills, talents, and proclivities vis-à-vis your occupation. The happier you are, the more productive you can be, and the more valuable you can be. Happiness is the mega power tool for personal and professional success. Try it, you’ll see. It works all the time.
HAPPINESS BRILLIANCE
Not all ever-happy people are buffoons. You are happy because you have a brilliant mind. You know yourself. You know what you want. You know your worth. You are self-assured. You own earth surfaces you step on. You are happy because the extraordinary things you do change lives for the better for others looking at you, inspiring them to want to tap into their happiness reserves for life. Although you speak faster and louder than many, your physical presence and aura take up too much space around you, you don’t have to be apologetic about your happiness and its expressions according to your communicative, or creative talents.
FUTURE OF PEACE IN HAPPINESS
If you have to fight, make your deeds your first line of defence. Fight smart, choose your fights. Never give fools any fighting chance. Bring down your detractors’ walls of Jericho with smiles, laughter, and a glint in your eyes; all packed in love as a weapon of peace. Peace is a durable ride into and for the future. As such, when we are finally dead and gone, friends and foes alike say, “May your soul rest in eternal peace!”
HAPPINESS LEGACY
The happiness-inducing memories of you in the eyes and hearts of your survivors may be a measure of how much peace you’ll possibly enjoy in the afterlife. We are not sure about there being an afterlife. But, for purposes of this talk, way say that it is there. The future is ever bright and hopeful for the happy. Happiness propels us into the future with confidence and fortitude. Faith knocks on the heavens’ doors for the happy. When our work on Earth is done, we’ll live happily ever after in the farthest spaces of the future, assuming that humanity does not erase itself from the future of the universe.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
22.11.-19.12.2023
ARE CHILDLESS MEN NOT REAL MEN?
Real Men Raise Their Children
Ever since my young adulthood years, I have been told to my face, or I’ve heard on various platforms numerous self-righteous people of various persuasions, social standings, and ages say stuff like a childless man is a worse man than a single, unmarried man. These people emphatically say that childless men, married or unmarried, deserve a worse punishment than death: they must stay alive; they must live through the worst possible suffering that God can inflict upon the living.
Furthermore, the anti-childless men people say that the fatherhood-shy men are lower than mules by social status; they are useful only as oxen are (beasts of burden), and must experience physical and mental pain unimaginable. That for failing to fulfil God’s glorious gift and obligation to man: propagation of the species. Single, unmarried men who are fathers might be forgiven, though.
Lastly, the pro-propagation people argue that humanity is the summation and manifestation of God’s ultimate creative potential. Through humanity, God defines her purpose. Humanity is the beginning and infinite expression of the power of God. Without humanity, the essence of God would cease, as would the entity herself. That would be the end of creation, the end of the universe.
I argue, however, that humanity actualizes creation and the universe for itself. Humanity exterminated would just as well render creation and the universe more relevant to other animal species. These have, or may have other terms of reference to nature beyond the comprehension of human cognitive capabilities. Therefore, God in all her multiple manifestations and interpretations across the world, and across the epochs, is but one of humanity’s self-created survival tools. Humanity created God to assist itself in making sense of the complexities of the world and its pressures on humanity’s existential challenges.
When the going gets tough, humanity prays to God, fights, murders itself, its own, and destroys the world, its home. God just loves it that way. Humanity makes weapons of destruction right under God’s nose. I’m convinced that the omnipresent God sits in every missile head fired in wars of the world. Wars must be God’s forms of a party; grooving in humanity’s idiocy into self-extinction, God’s own bloody demise.
Name any apocalyptic war anytime any place, God is there; God will have been there. We have many more wars brewing for the future. It just got worse in the Middle East. Television moving pictures showed but two missiles of multitudes colliding in mid-air over there the other day.
Reporters said that one missile was launched from one land of a star, and the other missile from another land of a star. The collision gave rise to meteoric explosions. God torn apart fell to the ground in a million stars, burning everything on their path, scorching the earth. People dying crying, “God have mercy on us!” Everyone crying murderous vengeance in the name of God in both lands of the stars. And the beat goes on for God. Oh, yes, the Gods must be crazy.
In the Ukraine war, people are killed like hunter boys burning wild pigs on Trumpland streets. In fake-border-walls Trumpland, Black death bodies get riddled with bullets for their lives that don’t matter in the eyes of White Supremacist lunatics playing war games whilst people are praying in houses of God.
The inadequate-balled killers don’t spare children either. They spray bullets on children in school classrooms; them children in there only seeking enlightenment through learning how to read, write, and count. Trumpland set for extended ignoramocracy well into the future. Humanity’s foolishness is boundless. Glory be to God. Amen.
It is in the light of my argument above that I dismiss God’ supposed works as nothing but humanity’s wishful thinking outcomes when they cannot solve their own problems, and experience their minuteness against the forces of nature. There is no God sitting somewhere above ever having sadistic fun cruelly punishing childless men.
But the childless men condemners are relentless, uneducated fools. And they continue:
Men who are not contributing to the numerical growth of humanity defy God’s divine design for man; which is to go out and make children upon children for generations to ensure endless perpetuation of God’s relevance to man, if not creation in its entirety. As if God really cares.
Childless men present a possible extintification of God, notwithstanding it being as long a shot as can be. Woe betide these men. May they burn forever in hell should they die from the pain that God inflicts upon them for their horrendous transgression, anyhow.
God and his glory are forever. That for as long as men live up to their non-negotiable duty of unfailing baby seed planting in women. Those men defying God’s plan shall and must suffer all the indignities humanity can think of and apply upon them.
Culturally, childless men are irresponsible. They are selfish. They are respectless towards their ancestors. It is the duty of every tradition-abiding man to perpetuate not only his private lineage but, above all, that of his forefathers.
Men who do not produce children disrupt the growth and might of their clans, right up to the grand level of humanity as one, big family. Ancestral spirits do not take kindly to this state of affairs. Therefore, the ancestral spirits see to it that childless men shall be isolated, ridiculed, and abused in all sorts of dehumanizing ways.
When non-child-producing men die, they must never be afforded the same ritualistic honours that good, culturally-attuned, baby-prolific men would be. Were it possible, many a childless man would be made to vanish into thin air upon their demise. It’s just as well that the latter is not the case. Otherwise, the infertile dead men would pollute the rare air that the ancestral spirits breathe. The former exacerbating their already debilitating ill-fortuned existence, thereby. Childlessness is the worst abomination a man can endure, by the look of things. This is when I dump culture and God in the same ancient pit latrine of humanity’s extremes of diabolic, psychopathic anal discharges.
If I don’t say it, or if no third party that is familiar with me says it, no one will know whether I have children or not. In fact, almost everyone that asks me about how many children I have gets surprised when I tell them that I don’t have, and neither have I ever had any children of my own that I know of.
Everyone assumes that I shall have a number of children here and there. After all, as many often state, I am a fine, good-looking, strong man oozing attributes of an honourable man. That way immediately crushing the notion that childless men are not men if child production capacity is the definition of one’s being a real man of honour.
Others even go as far as to express their dismay at my childlessness given my apparently unfettered Valentino image. So much for my outgoing personality, discerning as I might be in more ways than one. My extroverted nature feeds the fantasies and pre-conceived ideas about my observed manly socializing attributes. Therefore, to many that do not know me well, I ought to be the wildest womanizer around. Clearly, then, I don’t need to father any child in order that my manhood qualities shall exude themselves with no fuss.
In my world, the definition of a man and his good is in his deeds as an agent of positive change for the good of society at large, no matter the extent and quality of his input. Making or not of children is not a deal breaker contribution because, as is the nature of sexually reproductive species, and with all things remaining equal, sexually mature men will make children upon mating with equally sexually mature women. However, it’s not a given that every non-protected male-female sexual encounter will result in the impregnation of the woman.
It’s not a given that every pregnancy will culminate in the birth of a child either. It’s not a given that a successful birth will bring forth a healthy, safe and sound child. And it’s not a given that the child’s father will be there for them.
Were children made like bread, I’d have fathered a hundred of them already. At the least. And I’d be a good father to my children by being there for them from the time I’d know of their conception, throughout the post-natal developmental stages to adulthood until whenever I’d die.
That I’ve not had children of my own up to this point in my life has nothing to do with whether I’m a man or not by way of my fertility status. My potency as a man is known only by women who have carried my seed before. Otherwise, everyone else who doesn’t know me that way had better shut the ‘f’ up and leave me alone with my happy so-called childless way of life that causes no one any trouble.
All across the world today exist millions of fatherless children. Hundreds of thousands of children are born daily without their biological fathers in their midst. So-called real men rape and impregnate women in all sorts of circumstances, from street violence, domestic violence, to wars. So-called real men in positions of econo-politico privilege and power go on predatory rampages and take sexual advantage of and apathetically impregnate underprivileged, weak, and vulnerable women. Philanderers charm and impregnate women of all ages everywhere, every fucking day.
When the children are born, these lots of so-called real men, the children’s fathers, are nowhere to be found. Many of the children grow up enduring much emotional and physical torment. They grow up with demeaning adjectives such as bastardes applied to describe them. I cringe whenever I hear a child being described as illegitimate for their absent father.
Looking at it from a layman’s perspective, it is atrociously insulting to call a child illegitimate. That way even if the expression in man-made legal terms means that the child was conceived and born outside official wedlock. A human child born as such is a human being of flesh, bones, and blood like everyone else conceived from the mergence of human sperm and egg in a woman’s body.
Sperm-egg fertilization occurs and develops into a zygote in the fallopian tubes. The zygote then gradually grows into a full physical human expression in the mother-to-be’s womb over a nine-month period, assuming a normal, uneventful pregnancy. It’s, therefore, also grossly distasteful, and disrespectful to the woman to have her children labelled as illegitimate. This demeans motherhood, a state of being worthy of respect by all men alive.
Writing in the Morocco World News online publication of September 12, 2017, journalist 𝗔𝗺𝗮𝗹 𝗕𝗲𝗻 𝗛𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗮 posted an opinion with the title 𝗙𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗻 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗜𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲. Citing her in part, she presented her case that “Children born out of wedlock are usually called ‘illegitimate’, ‘bastards,’ and ‘sons and daughters of adultery,’ and are often treated unfairly. They are seen as a source of shame and dishonour by traditional societies.
“Being a fatherless child in Morocco is nearly a lifelong condemnation. Article 446 of the Moroccan Jurisprudence describes ‘any person born outside marriage [as] a bastard; whether he is recognized by his biological father or not.’
“Why should innocent children suffer the consequences of an act that they did not commit? How can a justice system deprive children from their fathers only because they were conceived outside marriage?”
From a religious perspective, Amal Ben Hadda argues further that “In the Quran, fatherless children should be first assigned to their biological fathers if they are identified, otherwise society should treat them fairly as normal children, with no stigmatization or segregation.
“[…] Muslim societies should fulfil their obligations towards abandoned and fatherless children. As per the Quran, the first step that should be taken is to identify the biological father and to assign his name to his child. All kinds of discrimination and social segregation should be banned, as it is morally reprehensible to stigmatize fatherless children. The term ‘illegitimate’ is in itself a discrimination against defenceless human beings.”
The expression fatherless child is also a misnomer. This is because it linguistically cancels the presence of a male person’ sperm in the child’s conception process. Women’s eggs don’t fertilize themselves, neither in the body nor in the test tube. It’s only Maria who could be impregnated with the wind; a miracle only performed by God, who doesn’t know crap about sexual reproduction: fhhhhh…., let there be a child! And, voila, Jesus was born. No living man is God. No child is fatherless.
A normal man’s and a normal woman’s reproductive materials combine, internally or externally. That subsequently produces, all things remaining equal, a physically and physiologically normal human baby that will, hopefully, grow up normally into normal adulthood of, amongst other things, normal human sexual reproduction indulgences with the opposite sex.
This child will have the same cravings and needs for food, shelter, parental, and societal protection, as well as tender loving care, and much more; just like everyone else. These are basic Human Rights aspects we are all entitled to regardless of our parentage’s civil status at the time of our conception and eventual birth. It’s not as if children just show up from the blues unsolicited and impose themselves upon their chosen will-be parents.
Now, that’s what could be termed an illegitimate act of unilateral personal imposition by a stranger upon an innocent, unsuspecting, and/ or possibly unwilling couple. That in itself not denying the child’s legitimacy as a human being. Which further explains, for example, the prevalence of rigidities of child adoption laws in many nation states. Therefore, it defies logic that some unfortunate children are still labelled as illegitimate in the 21st Century, the age of superlative, ever expanding human knowledge that ought to inspire more empathy in the world.
As a rhetorical observation, it would be interesting to know how the often absent, extra-marital prolific so-called real men think and feel about their so-called illegitimate children out there somewhere in the world. It’s no wonder, then, that, on the other hand, there are in the world today millions of other men who consciously choose not to father any children under any circumstances, if they can help it.
Indeed, I do not have any children of my own that I know of. I truly hope that there is no child I have unknowingly fathered that is walking up and down the streets of the world bearing the abhorrent illegitimate child tag on their person. I’ve never been keen to want to have children when I’ve never been keen on marriage. I’ve never been keen on marriage to the extent that I’ve never felt emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and, most decisively, durably economically adequate for it. No wealth, no wife-and-kids for me. Simple.
I’ve more than once been in near husband-and-wife relationships in which I was relatively an economic underdog. I was, by extension, considered to be intellectually deprived and culturally inferior. Disaster. I’m not interested in being with poor women, either. It is what it is.
The difficulties of children growing up without their fathers being present in their lives, for whatever reasons, struck me already from an early age whilst growing up in South Africa in the 1960s to the mid-1970s. Much as did the rough times of those fathers that also longed to be with their absent children but, for variable and unique individual reasons, had limited, if no access at all to their children, wherever they were in the Southern African sub-continent.
By the time I got to Zambia as a mid-teenage aspirant young man in 1975, I had already long taken the personal stand that I would never want to have any children of my own if my life circumstances are that being there for them would be a complicated socio-economic matter. Such continues to be the state of my life as I live it today: a happy, economically barely surviving free man of the world with much love for women and children. Nevertheless, soon I’ll have my lasting millions back. I’ll then marry my ten-women-in-one woman, my Super Lady. We’ll make a hundred-children-in-one-to-x-number-of-children and live happily ever after as one big-together family.
I find it ironic that some of my meanest critics for my current wilful childless existence are real men who, both knowingly or unknowingly, have fathered, and unabashedly continue to father countless children all over the place. If there are dogs of war whose occupation is to travel the world, go out to shoot and bomb enemy people and leave them for the dead, these critics of mine here are dogs-of-pussy who father children everywhere, and leave them for the dead. I have little regard for these kinda fools. I have this vile thought in my head that some of these abandoned children could someday find these negligent fathers of theirs. The children should, then, castrate the men in revenge for themselves, and vengeance for their estranged mothers. Poetic justice served.
But I am more concerned about the existential conditions of children growing up without their fathers in their lives. My concern is regardless of the circumstances that lead to, or have led to the fathers’ absence. I wish that people could bang their heads against the walls more for ideas as to how to better living conditions of all children of the world, especially those that are deprived of the presence of their biological fathers in their midst.
Society has more to gain from taking care of underprivileged children of the world in need of love, care, and protection here and now. Speaking for myself, I know that I have in my time directly played a much-appreciated father figure role for many a child, so-called fatherless or not, across the world. I haven’t had a need to have a pigsty for a playing field full of piglets for children to know how to be a decent human being who understands fully the importance of adults being there for children. Particularly so their own blood children once they, the adults, have become parents themselves.
Childless as I may be, I can with confidence, pride, and dignity state that I am a good father figure and male role model for children and youth. Prove me wrong, if you can. Simple. Go and raise your own children and let me be. I have books to write. I have money to kill. There is a future mother of my children awaiting me in the horizon yonder. And that’s my case alone to deal with.
In the meantime, I absolutely do not wish to be a conscious contributor to the ever growing and infuriating statistics of the so-called fatherless, or illegitimate children of the world. The living conditions of the vast majority of these children represent an aspect of being human that I find debasing my humanity as a man.
I care profoundly about the well-being of children the world over. Therefore, when some ignoramus knowing no shit about me comes out to criticise, judge, and ridicule me for having no children of my own, I not only get upset, I hurt deep inside. The hurt is out of the apparent trivialization of the values that I hold as the upright man I strive to be always.
My values shape the stands that I take in relation to critical personal choices that I make in my never-ending aspirations and efforts to be a decent human being in a world immersed in hate and human self-annihilatory tendencies. In all this, I’m ever conscious of the confines of the generally accepted, life-supporting norms and laws of the land wherever I find myself.
A Google search of fatherless children produces tonnes of academic research, hobby or professional societal conditions commentaries, special socio-politico interests organizations findings and reports, and much more information and ideas material on the harsh realities of children growing up without their fathers present in their lives. I shall list a few select links below at the end of the presentation.
As a global phenomenon, regardless of race, colour, religion, creed, political orientation, or sexual orientation, the significance of a father in a child’s life is generally recognized by all. This is a general starting and guiding principle before the vast constellation of complications of human relations culminating in the existence of fatherless children. Argument presentational style bias according to the source’s background granted, the general consensus, for example, is that [Source: South African online newspaper Daily Maverick, June 14, 2023]:
- […] Children are at much greater risk of being victims of violence if they grow up in father-absent families. Girls in particular are more likely to get involved in abusive or exploitative relationships, and boys could go on to become perpetrators of violence, including gender-based violence, themselves. Growing up with a positively involved father, however, reduces these risks, and helps to nurture long-term violence prevention strategies.
- […] While substance abuse has many complex causes, teenagers with absent fathers have been shown to be a high-risk group — boys in particular. Children are also likely to follow in their father’s footsteps if he battles with substance abuse. With a supportive father present, these issues dissipate, and children are generally less prone to substance abuse, and the related issues of addiction, depression and suicide.
- […] Absent fathers can exacerbate depression, anxiety and mental health disorders in children, and worsen their academic performance. When fathers are involved in a positive way, on the other hand, children’s mental health improves. They have greater faith in their own value, tend to do well at school, and are able to form secure attachments as they grow.
The Daily Maverick article quoted above says further that “According to the Human Sciences Research Council, most children in South Africa — over 60% — don’t live with their biological fathers. And 20% only have contact with their biological father twice a week …”
Another South African online newspaper, IOL, reported on October 5, 2019, that “The General Household Survey 2018 by Stats SA revealed that, 43.1 percent of children lived only with their mothers while a much smaller percentage (3,3%) of children lived only with their fathers in 2018 … [Furthermore] … Research conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and the South African Race Relations Institute (SARRI) over a period of 5 years showed that 60% of SA children have absent fathers. More than 40 percent of South African mothers are single parents.”
In the UK, Fathers4Justice states that “Nearly 4 million children are fatherless in the UK. (Office of National Statistics)”
Whereas in the USA, Fatherhood.org reports that “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18.4 million children, 1 in 4, live without a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home.*
That’s enough children to fill New York City twice or Los Angeles four times over.
Research shows that a father’s absence affects children in numerous unfortunate ways,
while a father’s presence makes a positive difference in the lives of both children and mothers.
*U.S. Census Bureau. (2022). Living arrangements of children under 18 years old: 1960 to present. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau.)
Fathers.com presents data that shows that “… children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involved in drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems. Boys are more likely to become involved in crime, and girls are more likely to become pregnant as teens.”
With relevant references detailed in the article immediately above, the organization lists six of the many ills associated with fatherlessness as follows:
- POVERTY
– Children in father-absent homes are almost four times more likely to be poor. In 2011, 12 percent of children in married-couple families were living in poverty, compared to 44 percent of children in mother-only families.
– Children living in female-headed families with no spouse present had a poverty rate of 47.6 percent, over 4 times the rate in married-couple families. - DRUG AND ALCOHOL ABUSE
– […] Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse […]
– There is significantly more drug use among children who do not live with their mother and father. - PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL HEALTH
– A study of 1,977 children age 3 and older living with a residential father or father figure found that children living with married biological parents had significantly fewer externalizing and internalizing behavioural problems than children living with at least one non-biological parent.
– Children of single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to commit suicide. - EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT
– Children in grades 7-12 who have lived with at least one biological parent, youth that experienced divorce, separation, or nonunion birth reported lower grade point averages than those who have always lived with both biological parents.
– Children living with their married biological father tested at a significantly higher level than those living with a nonbiological father.
– Father involvement in schools is associated with the higher likelihood of a student getting mostly A’s. This was true for fathers in biological parent families, for stepfathers, and for fathers heading single-parent families.
– 71% of high school dropouts are fatherless; fatherless children have more trouble academically, scoring poorly on tests of reading, mathematics, and thinking skills; children from father-absent homes are more likely to be truant from school, more likely to be excluded from school, more likely to leave school at age 16, and less likely to attain academic and professional qualifications in adulthood. - CRIME
– Adolescents living in intact families are less likely to engage in delinquency than their peers living in non-intact families. Compared to peers in intact families, adolescents in single-parent families and stepfamilies were more likely to engage in delinquency. This relationship appeared to be operating through differences in family processes—parental involvement, supervision, monitoring, and parent child closeness—between intact and non-intact families.
– A study using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health explored the relationship between family structure and risk of violent acts in neighbourhoods. The results revealed that if the number of fathers is low in a neighbourhood, then there is an increase in acts of teen violence. The statistical data showed that a 1% increase in the proportion of single-parent families in a neighbourhood is associated with a 3% increase in an adolescent’s level of violence. In other words, adolescents who live in neighbourhoods with lower proportions of single-parent families and who report higher levels of family integration commit less violence.
– Children age 10 to 17 living with two biological or adoptive parents were significantly less likely to experience sexual assault, child maltreatment, other types of major violence, and non-victimization type of adversity, and were less likely to witness violence in their families compared to peers living in single-parent families and stepfamilies.
– A study of 109 juvenile offenders indicated that family structure significantly predicts delinquency. - SEXUAL ACTIVITY AND TEEN PREGNANCY
– A study using a sample of 1409 rural southern adolescents (851 females and 558 males) aged 11 – 18 years, investigated the correlation between father absence and self-reported sexual activity. The results revealed that adolescents in father-absence homes were more likely to report being sexually active compared to adolescents living with their fathers.
– Being raised by a single mother raises the risk of teen pregnancy, marrying with less than a high school degree, and forming a marriage where both partners have less than a high school degree.
CONCLUSION
This has not been a presentation to promote a cause. Neither has it not been my intention to moralize with this presentation. Nor have I intentionally sought to hangout and/ or judge anybody. I have striven to be as objective as humanely possible in my writing this presentation; especially so given the enduring emotional abuse I’m ever subjected to as a childless man. By choice.
If I had anything I wished to address myself to, it is the pathetic ignorance, nauseating double standards, and pitiful awe towards me of my critics. Many of these shameless, psychosomatic critics of mine neatly fall under the dogs-of-pussy category I’ve mentioned earlier on in the presentation.
The idea is to inform and teach. Hoping that the reader/ listener shall know me better and, thus, be in a more enlightened state in their subsequent choice to either nail me on the cross, or celebrate me for my being who I am, living my life as I do. I am a free spirit with no fear for the unknown contra my personal integrity; I have nothing to hide. That said, other than the personally fulfilling irrepressible urge to educate, I’m under no obligation to explain, defend, and justify myself to any fool for my private life-style choices. However, I’ll happily respond to well-intended queries about how and why I live my life in the way that I do, given where in the world I live at any time.
Meanwhile, the so-called friends and relatives wishing to cancel me for my unconventional way of life as relates to having wife and kids, may do so now. Good riddance. That’s all they can do for their own good. They cannot oppress me in any way. I am not afraid of them at any level.
I know that there are many more voluntary or involuntary childless men and women everywhere. Some are afraid and voiceless because of the extremely oppressive sociocultural conditions under which they live in their respective parts of the world. Beyond my desire to inform and teach, I hereby speak some more for the tormented, the afraid, and the voiceless. This is simply because I can.
And lastly but not least, I wish, with profound humility and admiration, to acknowledge the millions of single-parent mothers of the world throughout the ages. Against the meanest odds, many of these suffering single-parent mothers manage to birth and raise children that eventually grow up to be high-bar, across-the-board decent human beings that are a joy and gift to the world.
One of these single-parent mothers gave birth to and raised a 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐘𝐨𝐮–type fine gentleman who has remained my best friend and brother-from-another-mother since we first met at school in January, 1977. He was then a 12-year-old boy-to-man with more brains and refined social skills higher than those of many a 21-year-old young man I know to this day; I was 17-years-old myself. Living in separate continents today, engaged in each our own unique vocational occupations, and living our separate lives as grown-up men, walking into the future together with Anele is a never-ending blessing. Thanks to our beloved Mimmi, the most inspiringly resilient single-parent mother I know.
Through Anele, I salute all the survivor, achiever, change-maker, ruler children of single-parent mothers of the world. One of these remarkable children, Barack Obama, broke all the barriers and prejudices of all kinds to become president of the United States of America. Despite its flaws, the country remains the most powerful nation on earth today.
Barack Obama effectively becoming the most powerful man in the world for eight years is a humongous feat that has inspired a whole generation of children and youth throughout the world. Hope, faith, love, tenacity, and the future live in those that have the capacity and will to overcome difficult life outcomes due to the absence of their biological fathers, if not any other supportive male figure in their lives. The slogan Yes, We𝐘𝐞𝐬, 𝐖𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐧 Can rings in my head.
The so-called fatherless, illegitimate children are as legitimately children of the future as any other child. The future belongs to us all in the present. The past may have dealt us unfair hands in the form of unworthy fathers, but we all deserve a fair chance at enjoying and shaping what the future promises us all. Real men walk into the future along with theirs, and all other children of the world.
Of course, there are millions of estranged men across the world who, for various reasons the analysis of which is beyond the scope of this presentation, are directly denied the opportunities to be there for, if not with their children. I feel for these men, many of whom do genuinely yearn to be with their children but are ever hindered by circumstances they do not have control over. Even then, as I’ve already stated above, I have little empathy for libido drunk philanderers and dogs-of-pussy who care but little of whether or not they leave children behind in their sex escapades all over the world.
As for me, I continue with awaiting the future mother of my children to find me. If she can. If she wants to. The quality of my manliness transcends the need to go around making non-attached babies with anything that’s child-bearing. I live for extra-ordinary things. I’m inspired by extra-ordinary things that the arts and science do for human progress throughout the epochs, for the good and bad.
Human life in all its physical and esoteric aspects is as extra-ordinary as can be. To the extent that the extra-ordinary is defined from human experience terms, the extra-ordinary begins and ends with human life. Procreation of human life is not an extra-ordinary phenomenon, or achievement. Human life will happen, anyway; extra-ordinarily enough. In mortal human terms, the quintessentially extra-ordinary about human life and the state of being a progressively functional human being, is in the capacity and willingness to not only create life, but in the nurturing of it. Therefore, you are an ‘f’-ng real man, you make children, you raise them. Simple. I rest my case.
DEATH TO SINGLE MEN is the video I’ve posted earlier on. Watch it in order to see more how my choice to not have children connects with my views on marriage.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
30.08.-11.11.2023
Tel.: +4792525032
𝗘𝗡𝗘𝗠𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗜 𝗗𝗢𝗡’𝗧 𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪
𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦 𝗜𝗡 𝗠𝗬 𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗟𝗗, 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟮
I dedicate this presentation here to my late beloved mother, who died five years ago on October 7th, 2018. May her soul continue resting in eternal power. On Monday, October 2nd, 2023, my mother would have turned 83 years old. Happy posthumous birthday, Machona Mother – Shebeen Queen dearest!
When as a child growing up in South Africa up to the age of 14½ years I was in various spaces hassled for my Blackness and other envied personal attributes, my mother instilled in me a fierce sense of pride and personal integrity. She constantly told me how beautiful I was, and that, as my academic performance demonstrated time after time at that time, I was the most intelligent kid around. I believed her, and, with humility and gratitude, I’ve aimed to live her words since then: beautiful, intelligent man that thrives amongst other beautiful, intelligent people.
August month, 2023, marked the 35th anniversary of my stay in Norway. The tangible plan I had upon leaving Zambia, my fatherland, in June, 1988, was that I’d complete the 3½ years’ post-graduate business studies programme I had privately secured for myself, with a little help from my friends. Afterwards I’d then move on out to the bigger, wide, wide world.
Twelve years was the timespan that I had given myself that when subsequently big and strong with an Economics PhD degree and international big business and global technocracy experience clutched under my armpits, I’d then return to South Africa, land of my birth, and become the country’s Reserve Bank Governor. I had the earth moving under my feet; what could stop me, then?
The accompanying supportive Norwegian State Education Loan Fund scholarship offer was the first to come my way. I accepted it without second thoughts because I just had to get out of Zambia at the earliest opportunity. This was a matter of both ambition and the nearly untenable personal living conditions in extremely hard family and national survival environments at that time.
That I’d somehow ultimately stay in Norway for a longer period, not in the least permanently, was never even an iota of an idea in my head. Dream of America calling, Baby. In January, 1991, towards the end of the business studies programme, a bureaucratic glitch led to my ceasing to receive financial support from the scholarship fund. I was left with a huge debt in tuition fees and other costs to the school. Indefinite termination of my studies at the school became unavoidable. This was the beginning of my economic dire straits that would last at least five years in this first cycle. As fate would have it, I’d fall in love with a sweet Norwegian woman during this time.
In the meantime, I had opened and had been running two Karate schools in Oslo since my arrival in 1988. That’s how I got to stay in Norway to this day. Both love and Karate no longer rule my life in Norway. But I’m still here; largely because of the joys, trials, and tribulations that the love and Karate exposed me to in the country. I experienced the joys, I wanted more and more. Norway delivered; I got addicted to the land.
I having been overwhelmed by difficult circumstances beyond my control, once unleashed, the trials and tribulations were ruthless. Under the hardships of life in Norway, I’ve seen many a lesser man from the African Diaspora spiritually buckle, fall, rise, and walk dead. All faith gone, no hope, neither mental nor physical strength left, they die. Literally. I decided that if I fall, I shall fall. But I would never die. I didn’t travel more than half the world to let problems of life kill me so far away from home. One way or another I’d find a way to rise again; just I can breathe. I could never return neither to Zambia nor South Africa poor and without a business PhD degree. Never.
Indeed, I fell once; I fell a second time. On the third fall I lost everything, including face. My people networks collapsed. For once left alone, Rockstar popularity dissipated, I got the opportunity to be better acquainted with myself as a grown-up man. I saw clearly my dreams, my potential in life. I became my bestiest bestie. Now I know myself well. Better than ever. My self-knowledge trip gets better and better and more rewarding each and every new day that comes and goes.
I got to understand that my social survival navigator skills by way of my sellable talents may be many, but the relevant shall come forth and carry me through only specific situational needs in order to respond accordingly to given conditions in different epochs and spaces. The constant steering ethos being my personal motto of change, win, adapt, or die.
I’ve learned to change perspectives, acquire new skills sets, and adopt varying modus operandi to ensure victory in the face of adversity, no matter how long it takes. This knowledge also helps me to take to the next level what I already know and works in my favour presently. Concurrent with applicable talents, the ability to adapt to, and flow with the currents of changing or changed circumstances is a powerful tool for success for me. I have yet to die. I might talk about death on the other side, should I die.
Whilst recovering from the major fall following the devastating personal economy knock that I got from the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, I had fully embraced the idea that all I had to do was to chill and wait for my next big break. I had suffered enough. I had learned more about myself and the ways of the world to know that I had to stay alert, fresh, and strong for the impending big break; whatever it would be, wherever it would take me, and whatever it would do with me.
It was a painful wait. Much reading, thinking, and writing rechannelled the emotional and mental torment to the enhancement of my creative potential as a writer. If I can read about it, I can write about it; tell a story about it in my own words.
If I can write about it, I can deconstruct it; I will better comprehend the challenges, I will see solutions. If I can write about it, I can dream. If I can dream, I can hope. My faith is shaped in the messages of my dreams. My writings tell the story that everything’s gonna be alright ahead. Keep moving.
I have been through so many personal falls and rises that I know when an opportunity for my self-reinvention is nigh. The feeling of anticipation I get in times like these is like no other. I become larger than life in my thoughts so that when the opportunity for me to rise again arrives I won’t lose control of my sensibilities.
Whilst I had visions of yet another multi-million-dollar international trade business venture, as the book writing inspiration suddenly revealed itself one fine morning in August, 2015, I knew that my real calling had finally come home. I got into a frenzy. Feeling like one possessed by the spirits of our greatest ever historical and contemporary world authors, I went on to write the first of my dream-of-one-thousand-plus books before I turn 100 years old.
The debut novel, When the Mighty Fall – rise again mindgames, I wrote in fourteen days. It became about the story of my first twenty-five years in Norway presented in a semi-autobiographical, or fantasy memoir format. Intense emotions and scenes arise in the book: boundaries are pushed and crossed; limitations are overcome, people reset themselves and their lives, stereotypes are crushed. All played out by at least equally intense and exceptional characters. The book has changed my life; it has made me a better person. It started the process by which I continue to learn and understand humanity and our universe better the more I write and think, and think and write.
Working with the book from the start, and living with the variable impacts it continues to have on its readers are a constant, in real-time steep learning curve. I guess it’s a mark of a significant book when the author gets a mixed bag of strong reactions from the readers. Acquire and read the book for yourself so that you can make your own conclusions. Love or hate me as you wish; it is your prerogative in a free world. If you wish to destroy me for your hate, I won’t take you lying on my back.
My embracing this book writing calling of mine was with a clear awareness that my works would never be appreciated by all. I’ve in my life read more than enough books to appreciate that fact well. I’ve over the years come across numerous literary critiques on various media also. What has shocked me, though, is the gross misinterpretation of my thoughts and intentions in and with the aforementioned book. This has been especially so given that it is the least expected section of my readership that has been thoroughly brutal in their condemnation of me and the book. Perhaps this makes the point for writers knowing about their actual and potential target readers. However, as for me, to the extent that I so far write personally inspired factual and fictional narratives as opposed to formal academic, or professional literature, I in principle write for myself. I could never write if I went around thinking about who my readers are, or shall be, and how they will judge my works eventually.
Working clandestinely, my aforementioned brutal critics, on utterly wrongful, naïve conjectures, have gone around tarnishing my reputation in Norway. People read my books. In their readings they come face-to-face with demons they conjure for themselves. They panic; lose it. They judge and punish me without a trial. Pathetic.
Because my conscience is clear, and because of my resolute dedication to growing and developing my creative writing talent and occupation to the 1000th book and beyond, the hurt and emotional turmoil I initially felt are gone. I’m healed. I’m strong. I’m on the rise again, destined for higher and higher heights of success than ever. I’ve written eight more books since the When the Mighty Fall publication. I’m on the roll; right on track. No one, nothing can stop me.
Travelling from Lusaka back to Oslo with Qatar Airways two weeks ago, it was on the first leg of the trip, Lusaka-Doha, that I took time to take a deep dive into reflections of my highs and lows in Norway over the years. I couldn’t help but dwell upon encounters with some really bad people that have always been there to hinder my climb to success in the things that I do by way of making a living in the country. The bad people were in total contrast to the loving and caring ones that I met during my short family matters visit in Lusaka, from August 20-29, 2023.
These bad people have striven to ever hamper my genuine efforts to work to be a decent human being with a well-intended commitment to my personal aspiration of adding value to society to the extent that I’m resourceful and productive. Some have been outright about their dislike of, and disdain for me. I can live with that.
Others have turned out to be Judases in the end. A sickening lot that once ranked high as confidants in my world. These provoke my primordial survival instincts when I consider that they are ever gathering somewhere conniving to micro-assassinate me slowly. A mission I could never allow them the pleasure of achieving. Unless I am overtly potentially or actually caused bodily harm, I am not likely to resort to violence as an immediate self-preservation recourse. However, my warrior creative spirit observes, or experiences and analyses everything.
I apply different writing styles as dictated upon by the moments when I celebrate or decry events around me, both near and distant. I do the same with uplifting or destructive actions specifically directed towards me. That way I get to vent out my frustrations and anger without spilling a drop of blood. Then I can sustain my sense of personal safety and integrity in the face of adversity; irrespective of whether the adversity is overt or discreet. My words are my armour.
The poem I’m going to read came forth during the process of thinking about the latest Judases, wolves in sheep’s clothing that have emerged with their true colours in the dark in recent years. It is a self-preservation, protest poetry piece. This poem also sets my eyes on October 24th, 2023, which will mark the fifth year of my return to Norway after a five-year creative exile in South Africa.
Aware that my enemies had already drawn their swords to slay me, I felt like I had brought myself into the mythical lions’ den at my arrival in Oslo. But I knew I was blameless contra the enemies’ smear campaign against me. I’m grandson of a Daniel, father of my mother. The Biblical Daniel was “… saved from lions by the God of Israel “because I was found blameless before him” (Daniel 6:22). So, I’m still intact; standing tall, breathing happy and free, crafting words into literary expressions in my efforts to make sense of my world.
Similar to other writings of mine addressing my personal life conditions and states of being owing to simply being who I am and the personal choices that I make all the time, I’ve written the poem not out of a need to defend, explain, or justify myself. I do not seek any validation nor accolades from some Jacks and Jills anywhere either. I listen only to my teachers, to men and women of authentic benevolence: proven mediums of global human excellence, love and peace.
I primarily write to purify my soul, ease my pains, and fortify my spirit. I write as a good-intentions, free, have-no-fear spirit with nothing to hide in a free world. I feel good about what I do; I know I’m good at it. And that’s all that matters to me. It is what it is. I am that I am. Take me, or leave me as it is your prerogative in your free world.
I publicise my works in response to what I feel to be a higher call to share my thoughts with those that want to hear my words. This call inspires me to aspire to teach and to speak for the young, the weak and vulnerable: the afraid, the oppressed, the voiceless. That from my life experiences as lived-in moments in time. Also as learned from hearing the voices of others that are much wiser than me.
The wiser than me being my teachers across the board, including some of the most impactful historical and contemporary philosophical and spiritual wells of wisdom of the world. All from one-on-one teachings and discussions with the living, or through consumption of the wise’ thoughts through the variety of multimedia platforms available in our times: from the written word in books, to sight, sound, and motion presentations in live theatres; on cinema, television, and computer screens.
Thanks to the power of the internet, we today have the said multimedia platforms compressed and collapsed into the palms of our hands via mobile telephone technology. Knowledge acquisition and dissemination of the same, verification of facts and propagation of truths, debunking of falsities and crushing of conspiracy theories, are all at the tips of our fingers these days. Therefore, those that manage and live their lives on unchecked assumptions; uninformed, factually fallacious decision-making tendencies do so at their own peril.
©Simon Chilembo 11.09.2023
𝗘𝗡𝗘𝗠𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗜 𝗗𝗢𝗡’𝗧 𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪 – 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝗲𝗺
Self-made
New enemies of me
People I don’t know
Lurk in dark corners
I don’t know
Wish me dead
They don’t know
I’m a free soul of the light
I don’t know how to hide
I don’t know how to die
Darkness cannot contain me
Invincible to eyes that see
I worry but little
Of fools groping in the dark
Hoping for a lucky strike
To annihilate me
I’m not
In a state of war
I fear no drones
No stealth missiles threats to
My soul of the light
Defence system
My shield is
My words
I push back with
My voice
I sing one moment
I preach the next
I wail this moment
The moment I growl
Earth trembles under my feet
Self-made
New enemies of me
Faceless people I don’t know
Fools with reasons for
Enmity I don’t know
Duped in fake storytelling tales
Of witches in fright
Of demons of them
Confronting them
In the glow of light
Permeating
The darkest recesses of the universe
In fright
Fight
Shadows of themselves in the dark
Tumbling in muddy faeces
Of their own
Gathered in trenches
Of massless conspiracy constructs
Meant to implode
A free soul of the light
They cannot see
I could never collapse
Into myself
Squash me
Sprout me
As particles of
My flesh and bones
In deep waters
Delusionals don’t know
That’s the closest they’ll ever
Come to harming me
Envious fools don’t know me
Inconsequential fools’ll never see me
Repugnant fools embraced by
Darkness I don’t know
Darkness I don’t care about *
I cannot run away from the light
I have nothing to hide
I don’t know how to hide
I have nowhere to hide
Not even a tomb can contain me
I had to break the law
Drank and drove
For prison walls to hold me
If only for a while
You’ll never find
Remains of me
In pyramids of Egypt
In a thousand years
When I say catch me if you can
I play with words
No longer do I play with
Bloodsuckers
Stabbed me in the back
I could have bled to death
Had it not been for
The light stronger than
Enemies’ self-consuming malice
In the dark
Resilience is the name of
Dark-hearts-impervious
Light games I play
Here I am to see
For all eyes with love
I’m a soul of invictus
I breathe love
As a matter of course
I’m here to stay
Longevity is the name of
My dance for life
Immortality is the name
Of my end-game
Beat that
If you can
𝗘𝗡𝗗
©Simon Chilembo 11.08.2023
On the 24th of October, 2019, I wrote the following article on my private blog, chilembowarriormoves.com:
𝐔𝐍𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐃 𝐌𝐄𝐍 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐃𝐈𝐄?
𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐍?
Sometime last year, 2022, whilst I was in the middle of working with my latest and nineth book, MACHONA GRIT – Onslaught On Hate, I came across an Instagram reel that caught my interest fleetingly. In this reel, the speaker made fiery, disparaging, and violence instigating remarks against single men. The speaker is a prominent American religious leader whose thoughts influence hundreds of millions of people across the world. However, not all will be direct adherents of his unique religious flock within the broader global faith movement of the umbrella religion, which could be Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other. They all serve the same purpose: harnessing of our primitive instincts, limiting the extent to which we can think we are free-thinking, independent individuals. Religion, a tool of oppression as destructive as can be.
I choose not to name the religious leader because I’ve failed to find the said Instagram reel for a concrete reference source. Nevertheless, I have throughout all my adult life so far, come across innumerable sentiments like those uttered by the man of God vis-à-vis men living alone without women as their marital partners.
Basically, the unmarried men haters’ contention is that solitary living unmarried men are not real men; because they are not real men, they are anti-God, and thus they deserve to die. The unmarried men haters say that God must kill single men, and it is the duty of all married men serving God to ensure that God’s will is fulfilled: death to the unmarried. Amen!
It’s strange that Catholic priests don’t get married, though. Celibacy doesn’t mean abstinence. Catholic priests do get caught doing the hanky panky too. When the priests sexually abuse small boys, I wonder about where God is when all this happens. Does he turn blind eyes? In that case, God is an accessory to a heinous crime.
Personally, such emotional abuse and death threats I’ve outlined above are beneath me; they don’t scathe me even a single bit. I’m sixty-three years old. I’m single, and I’ve never been married by choice. Over the years, I’ve on various fora already mentioned that I’m under no obligation to explain, to justify, or to defend my unmarried, solitary living to anybody. All men-of-God wanting to kill me for my choice to stay young, free, and single must just bring it on anytime. God himself is such an illusion so full of contradictions I have not time for.
For God so thrives in tyranny he made man in his, undefinable, multifaceted, illusory image. He accordingly polarized man; made man into a treacherous, murderous creature of fellow man for transgressions of frivolous, ill-defined, prejudicial so-called sins. A God of love who rules by threats and application of murder does not make sense to me.
To solve a dominance problem, brothers believing in the same God go to war against one another; as in, say, the current case of Russia against Ukraine. They simultaneously pray the same God for protection of themselves on the one hand, and power to annihilate the other on the other hand. For the time it shall take as to location of the war and the relative strengths of the warring parties, absolute mayhem, pillage, and murder could go on until the last man. Somebody might set off atomic bombs, and then we’ll all be gone tomorrow. Adios, God!
Killers praising God for strength. The dying praying God for mercy. Priests praying God to receive the spirits of the dead in heaven; whilst the shredded body parts, if not ground flesh of the dead rest in eternal peace on earth fertilizing Ukrainian killing fields, if not the Congolese killing jungles. God nowhere to be seen. Not a sound from God.
No, the whole idea of the existence of an omnipresent God does not make any sense to me at all. God as an idea and a possible entity amongst us defies all logic. But, of course, his believers can have him. We are all already burning here on the hell that is planet earth, anyway. Heaven is in the minds of the free-spirited seekers and propagators of humane truths in pursuance of fairness and justice for mankind on earth.
In my countering the idea of death to men-without-women, I take the liberty to speak for the voiceless, the weak and vulnerable, the oppressed; the afraid. I do so simply because I can. I am no Messiah. I am a free spirit that scientifically knows that apart from the fundamental genetic coding that separates humans from other animals, each human being has an own unique subordinate genetic makeup that characteristically distinguishes them from other human beings. That distinction manifests itself in all aspects of being human, from state of health and its vulnerabilities to behavioural proclivities that may or may not reflect or condition our values in adulthood.
To the extent that human beings share a common physiological essence of being, it means that, although individually unique, our personal human attributes expressive traits are not finitely closed to the individual. Therefore, each our respective individual behavioural patterns, as reflected and influenced by our cognitive powers and processes, will cross, and interact with others. This is how relationships are formed, both voluntarily or through coercion. Human social organizations of all sizes and all sorts of interests, agendas, philosophies, and aspirations stem from here.
However, some people’s human proclivities constructs will be so incongruent from others that they cannot easily fit into any structured social organization cage reflecting certain strictly defined control and manipulative values, such as religion, political movements or orientations, marriage, and many more. These are the eccentrics, the think-outside-the-box types, the innovators, the critics who, for the good or bad, question everything.
Through the epochs, there arise, amongst others, unconventional analysts, critical thinkers, philosophers, artists of all talents, social change makers, rebels, radicals, and freedom fighters whose thoughts and actions have lasting impacts on society. So, much as not everyone can be a rocket scientist; and not everyone can be an Usain Bolt, or be a religious fanatic, not every man can want to marry, or will be married by force or hook or crook. Marriage is not for every Jack and Jill.
Marriage does not define a man. Marriage is a concept a man gets into. With or without marriage, a man is a man. A brilliant man will be brilliant irrespective of whether they are married or not. In my private and professional lives, I have come across many idiotic married men. I can write volumes about idiotic married men. But for now, I’ll reduce all that to the total lack of respect these men subject their wives to.
Married men who beat up their wives disgust me. Married men who spend minimum time with their wives but unashamedly ‘f’ around with other lovers and mistresses do not score high in my books. Many of these abused and neglected wives are some of the most melancholic women I’ve ever seen. In my travels around Europe many years ago, I met a grown-up lady who once said to me something like, “Simon, it’s taken me thirty years to realize that I got married to an a-hole of a man!”
Thirty-three years later, the couple now older and even more weary of each other, their marriage is still going strong. That’s because, “We are Catholics. We don’t divorce!”
Oh, help me God!
Which reminded me of what a dear brother of mine once said to me about women who hang on all their lives to marriages with a-hole men, “According to our African cultures, divorce is unthinkable for many a woman. Divorce is ‘haram’, you see!”
Jeeezzuzzz!!!
I’m not anti-marriage. Reality is that I’m a great fan of marriage. Serious. If ever the poet’s one fine day finds me at the right time and place, I could get married at the snap of a finger. Marriage is good. That to the extent that it mutually fulfils both the conceptual and functional expectations of the marriage partners.
By the conceptual I refer mainly to the subjective sentiment of love, the feelings it induces, and the expectations and obligations it imposes on those in love. Simply because we can never read people’s minds, we can never know the feelings of other people, just as we can never know their expectations and self-defined obligations when in love. But fidelity and devotion are principles I’ve learned that they play an even more critical role in marriage. If these hold, marriage has chances of a long life.
Functional expectations in marriage are about the objective practicalities of day-to-day life that the married will and do encounter in their living together as a couple and, subsequently, as parents if children do come into the picture in time. Here are included aspects of family economic strength; an important consideration in the determination of how and where the family shall live. Other crucial questions to address will include division of duties in the home, management of extended families and other social relations, faith, culture and traditions, political affiliations, career development and ambitions, family wealth creation and sustenance, as well as many other practical considerations.
In my world, a marriage that fails to deliver on the mutual conceptual and functional expectations for the married couple cannot hold. It need not hold at all cost, ‘haram’ or no ‘haram’. Marriage is not supposed to be an institution reminiscent of slavery. Neither is marriage supposed to be an institution of permanent dependency of women to physical-emotional abusive men.
Marriage is not an institution carved in stone. In any case, marriage is not an inherent feature of being human. Marriage is but one of many institutions man-created for purposes of social order maintenance, or social engineering. I fail to see how a non-functional, degrading marriage can contribute to social order. This brings forth the element of divorce, of which I’m as great a fan too. Whereas, indeed, marriage is good, divorce liberates. If ever I do get married at some point in the future, I’ll be the first to file for divorce as soon as I detect irreconcilable dysfunctionalities in my marriage.
People that are deeply in love, and wish to be together for life often look forward with glee to getting married. The same enthusiasm could be shown for impending, or desired divorce from a bad marriage. Women must not be afraid of divorce. There’ll always be a better, stronger, and more caring man for a lover or new husband according to what civil status the divorced woman wishes to have. It’s ok to be single also. Again, in both my private and professional lives, I’m familiar with divorcee women that live happily ever after; divorce having given them a chance to pursue new paths towards fulfilling and sustainable self-reinvention efforts.
Some of the happiest men I know are married. Equally, there’s a hell lot of infectiously happy single, unmarried, never-been-married men I know. Of course, contents of the happiness baskets vary from the one man to the other man, regardless of civil status. Nevertheless, happiness is happiness. Happiness makes for a balanced, productive citizenry.
Conversely, the unhappiest, loser types of men I know, and have known are, or have been married. I have in my time come across extremely lonely married men. Weakened of spirit, and hoping to find happiness and comfort away from their wives, many of these sad married men are prone to extremes of costly promiscuous tendencies. Some end up falling prey to alcohol and substance abuse, with potentially dire consequences. Suicidal tendencies are not uncommon here. So much for marriage as an instrument of social cohesion. There absolutely are other ways to prove that a man is a man and worthy of societal recognition as such than apparently ‘f’-ing around and holding women in the bondage of dehumanizing marriages.
I pity men that get into and remain in unhappy marriages for ‘reasons beyond my control’: family and/ peer pressure, ‘that is what people do’, children, potential impoverishment through loss of accumulated wealth to the ex-wife in the event of a divorce, and other reasons.
It ought to be a given that nation states will strive as much as it is humanely possible to create all necessary conditions for a happy state of existence for the people. The various social interests organizations prevailing in society are there to ensure that the state lives up to its obligations for the people. This is what social justice work is about.
It’s not up to social interests organizations leaders to arbitrarily judge and condemn to death certain categories of their fellow citizens for being non-confirmatory to fluid social conventions such as marriage. Single, unmarried, and/ or never-been-married men deserve to live life to its fullest potential just like everyone else. Jesus was killed for other reasons than for that he was unmarried.
And talking about God, biographyonline.net says, “Swami Vivekananda, [a] spiritual teacher and important figure in Indian renaissance of the late nineteenth century. A great believer in the virtues of celibacy [says] “If one wastes the most potent forces of one’s being, one cannot become spiritual. All history teaches us that the great seers of all ages were either monks and ascetics or those who had given up married life; only the pure in life can see God.”
Furthermore, biographyonline.net says that “Nikola Tesla was a unique inventor who threw himself into discovering new advances in electronics and science. He had no interest in marriage and saw sex as a distraction from his life’s purpose. A famous actress of the time, Sarah Bernhardt, tried to attract him, but, he merely saw her as a distraction. When asked about marriage, he replied: “I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.”
WHEN THE MIGHTY FALL ON MARRIAGE
From my debut novel, WHEN THE MIGHTY FALL – rise again mindgames I’ll read a passage on marriage. That is from p. 63 to p. 66:
“People get married for a myriad of reasons. There are some who seem to have gotten married not knowing why and how it began at all, though. They just found themselves in it. Trying to make sense of it all with time, they simplistically and conveniently conclude that, well, everyone else does it, why not them?
“Culture and social norms dictate it, they shall reason. Inevitably they make a mess of it, making life extremely miserable for themselves, their marriage partners, as well as everyone else who has anything to do with them in about all aspects of life. Many a person in this category marries themselves into murder and suicide, the ultimate tragedy of marriage.
“Marriage is another unnatural institution the functionality of which is a non-ending attempt at structuring, engineering, and regulating instinctive, natural human behaviour in certain predictable directions. If it is instinctive, it happens freely according to its own predetermined, internal logic, irrespective of whether external factors are conducive, congruent or not.
“From society to society, culture to culture, marriage rules determine how many marriage partners one can have in either direction, how often, when. The rules will also specify rituals to be followed in order to sanctify the coming together of people in marriage.
“Sanctification of marriage is enforced through the morals and ethics around it, particularly with respect to aspects of fidelity, respect, trust, duty, and obligation. Meaning that, in a perfect world, once bound in and by marriage, people ought to be together for life; thereby ensuring order, stability, and harmony in society.
“Marriage defines boundaries and territorial integrities of the married, and their subsequent family units. These have to be acknowledged and respected in order to provide for peaceful co-existence, as well as orderly and systematic growth, progress, and development in society.
“Perhaps an often-overlooked function of marriage contra instinctive, natural human behavioural tendencies is the population growth control aspect of it.
“Without the perceived and learned value of marriage as a behavioural moderation institution in societal functioning, society would be thrown into total chaos as humans respond unrestrained to instinctive, natural urges of sex, and sexual reproduction.
“Jealousy, power, domination, and control inspired violence in the competition for partners towards letting out, and responding to the said instinctive natural urges would be the order rather than the exception for collective human existence.
“Without the rigidities of formalized marriage rules with respect to family expansion by way of conception, birth, and raising of children, human population pressure on planet earth and its limited resources would most probably be of magnitudes much higher relative to what the situation is today. A recipe for the eventual extinction of the human race on earth due to, among other things, territorial wars making what the world currently experiences of regional wars look like a children’s Sunday picnic in the park.
“Marriage is, therefore, some very serious business. It is not for the non-thinking, and faint-hearted.
“For marriage to work for the married, or yet to be married, and therefore be beneficial to society, people have to fully understand its implications and ramifications. Irrespective of the reasons, or circumstances leading to marriage, it is of vital importance to understand and acknowledge that marriage is ultimately a personal journey.
“Its life-changing implications are huge, they can never be overestimated. Life is never, it will never be the same once married. Chances of marriage being a lasting success are higher in cases where the process and the institution are congruent not only with the feelings of the concerned, but also their beliefs, faiths, values, hopes, dreams, and aspirations, among others.
“Pitfalls of marriage are many, deep, and wide in cases where people unwillingly, or uncritically, fall into the trap by marrying to fulfill expected conventional behaviour. The latter may be in relation to culture, religion, life circumstances, and peer pressure.
“Marriage stands chances of going the distance to the extent that it is both a mutually voluntary, as well as a well-thought-out space of the most intimate of human interactions to choose to venture into.
“There are those who shall base their marriages on love. They deeply love one another above anything or anyone else on earth. Marriage will, therefore, be a natural consummation of that love. But love alone is never adequate to sustain a marriage.
“Love facilitates, and spices up marriage; it does not make a marriage. Love is the key to a potential marriage partner’s heart. Love is a ringing bell into another person’s, a potential marriage partner’s, life. To be sustained and sustainable, love itself needs tender loving care. But it cannot on its own guarantee a happily-ever-after life of marriage.
“To the extent that in many a perfunctorily functional marriage, love may not be the driving force, love and marriage can be mutually exclusive in the same space. Trouble in paradise.
“There is, there will always be much love to get outside marriage. As a natural instinct, people will always know when they are in love or not. Love instinctively gravitates towards love. If there is love in marriage, chances are that the marriage can be kept together.
“Love is a natural force of emotion that knows no colour, race, religion, or creed. Because it is a vital part of, but larger than marriage, any marriage the importance of which is attached more to man-made concepts of culture, religion, and other social conventions than love is doomed to failure.
“The natural urge to want to feed love with, and on love, is ever so strong that people in miserable marriages will as a matter of course and natural predictability go out to look for love elsewhere. That done with either open defiance, or total discretion to the extent it will last. In many cases, this will turn out to be a direct order for the ultimate tragedy of marriage.
“Reality is that when a supposedly unfaithful marriage, or romantic, partner is dead, they are dead, and they are so with all the things the murderer demanded; they will never come back. Much as when the supposedly betrayed marriage, or romantic, partner has committed suicide, there is no knowing that they will find what they demanded of their partners on the other side.”
That’ll be it for today. If you want to get married, do so and be happy; only if the matrimony meets your conceptual and functional expectations; not forgetting obligations to yourself as a person and as a matrimonial partner. If the marriage doesn’t work, get out of it. Fast. The paradox is that you’ll never know if your marriage will work or not until you’ve gotten into it first. If it works, it works. Well and good. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Leave.
Divorce might cost you a lot of things in the beginning. It is what it is. Freedom doesn’t come cheap. Hang in there. Have hope. Keep the faith. The future is bright. Time heals. Make it your goal to live long enough to see the good that the future has in store for you.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
July 03, 2023
𝗨𝗚𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗔 𝗞𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗦 𝗟𝗚𝗕𝗧𝗤+ 𝗣𝗘𝗢𝗣𝗟𝗘
𝗘𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗜𝗿𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗕𝗶𝗴𝗼𝘁𝗿𝘆
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 isn’t 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 person’s essence as encoded in the person’s 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 God’s prayers to 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘵 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 – 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 person’s 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. That’s how you can love who you love; and, where applicable, you can reproduce with whom you will, regardless of race, status, colour, or creed.
Don’t come to me with the 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦, 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘱𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘢𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘴 crap talk. Of course, these animals are of incompatible breeds. They aren’t 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
- 𝘐𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵, 𝘢𝘣𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘭, 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
- 𝘔𝘢𝘭𝘦 –𝘧𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘦 –𝘪𝘯 –𝘰𝘯𝘦. 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, I’ll 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.
I’m 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 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦-𝘪𝘴-𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦, 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦-𝘸𝘩𝘰-𝘺𝘰𝘶-𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦, you don’t go around sexually abusing children. You don’t go around taking sexual advantage of the weak and vulnerable. You don’t 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. I’ll 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, raped… 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 won’t just be helping in Uganda — you’ll 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. |
𝗗𝗢𝗘𝗦 𝗔𝗡𝗧𝗜-𝗟𝗚𝗕𝗧𝗤+ 𝗛𝗔𝗩𝗘 𝗔𝗡𝗬 𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗢𝗠𝗜𝗖 𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟𝗘?
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 country’s annual GDP accruing from the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in all its extents?
Well, in Norway, for example, one of the country’s most important conglomerates is Orkla. “Orkla 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,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkla_ASA
Orkla’s Majority Shareholder is Stein Erik Hagen, 66 years old. As at June 25, 2023, he’s 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.
Norway’s GDP in 2021 was US$482.17 billion. Population number stood at 5.4 million then. That’s against Uganda’s population of 45.8 million people, and GDP of only US$40.5 billion in the same time period.
Norway’s 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 countries’ 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 country’s LGBTQ+ people are together with their fellow in-action citizens fighting side-by-side against Putin’s 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 aren’t the prerogative of mad heterosexuals with potentially dubious sexualhabits camouflaged in their irrational hatred for LGBTQ+’s. 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. I’ll 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 Putin’s attacks on Kiev. Putin even launched another attack on Kiev whilst the African delegation was in town, defiantly breaching and giving a blatant ’𝘧 ’ to International Relations protocols.
The aggressor was simply making a point that he could have the 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳𝘴 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. That’s Mzansi for you fo sho; myopic, parochial, outdated-communists’ 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 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘮𝘢𝘯 is LGBTQ+ loathing Museveni, who got scared ‘s’less 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 (o’clock, 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.
What’s funny about Uganda in this context is that I first came across the words 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 and 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘮 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 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭 activities, the article reported. It was a given that many a girl would go down with their boyfriends as well. Of course.
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 ‘JC’/ 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.
“They do it slightly different, but that’s basically it: having sex together man-to-man,” Buti-Gabriel said. He further reminded me that we already knew how lonely men living in the then ‘Men Only’ hostels in Welkom’s 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. I’ve had a laid-back attitude towards homosexualism since then.
A life-long 𝘐 ’𝘮–𝘢–𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳–𝘯𝘰𝘵–𝘢–𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘦𝘳, 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 I’ve 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: 𝘈 𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘢 𝘜𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘢 / “Let’s Praise Ugandans”.
Brutal Idi Amin’s 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, I’ll 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 haven’t 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 can’t imagine it having been any different in the Copperbelt urban centres such as Kitwe and Ndola.
I also can’t 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 Lusaka’s finest neighbourhoods. His house so overwhelmed me with its beauty and raw manifestation of opulence that my immediate reaction was to make the comment, “All the hottest girls of Lusaka would be in trouble if I had a house like this one, Mr Dukes!”
He curtly replied, “Hot girls are the least of my troubles, Mr Chilembo!”
Serving efficiently prepared bacon-and-cheese sandwiches and tea, he stated, “I live alone here. I don’t need women in my life.”
We ate in silence. Outside of business talks, I wouldn’t 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 I’d 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 couldn’t 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 “worse than dogs and pigs”, 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-à-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 I’ve 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? That’s 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 doesn’t 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 one’s 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.
𝗨𝗡𝗜𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗔𝗟 𝗗𝗘𝗖𝗟𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗢𝗙 𝗛𝗨𝗠𝗔𝗡 𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧𝗦
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, “All 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.”
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, “All 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.”
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 “All peoples shall have the right to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development.”
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.
𝗢𝗦𝗟𝗢 𝗣𝗥𝗜𝗗𝗘 𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗗𝗘 2023
Oslo’s 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 Oslo’s human diversity in world display without fear or favour. Norway’s 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.
It’s Monday, July 03, 2023 as I write this section of the essay. I’ll 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.
“Oh, 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,” cried Beya.
“Argh, man, ok! You guys are impossible!” yours truly.
In the ensuing laughter amidst group amicable comments/ inside jokes like, “Black Jew Simon just thinks money, money, money. He doesn’t have a social life!”, the DJ suddenly plays full blast Stevie Wonder’s 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, “But, Simon, you ARE hetero, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am,” 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, “Yes, I am heterosexual, but I love you for that!”
In Norwegian, “𝘋𝘶, 𝘚𝘪𝘮𝘰𝘯, 𝘥𝘶 𝘌𝘙 𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘰, 𝘪𝘬𝘬𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘵?”
“𝘑𝘰, 𝘫𝘦𝘨 𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘰. 𝘔𝘦𝘯 𝘫𝘦𝘨 𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘬𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘵!” yours truly/ “… But I love you all the same!”
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 he’d 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, I’d 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. It’s 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, there’ll 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 a𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 overbearing White car salesman that “My money is NOT black!”
Money knows no gender, no sexuality, no skin colour. Money just loves good business. If money makers are fair, they’ll 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 𝘙𝘶𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘢𝘯 & 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘱𝘴 on South African oligarch’ 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 devil’s 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-à-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.
Africa’s future is doomed. All for leaders caught up in the 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 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 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 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 Who’s sleeping with who? At the same time Dead Aid keeps flowing into the country. Morbid.
𝗜𝗡 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗖𝗟𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡
I’ll 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. 𝘑𝘦𝘦𝘦𝘻𝘻𝘶𝘻𝘻𝘻, God is the most divisive, most lethal of man’s responsibility escapism creations. Religion is a weapon of death in the name of God. Religious texts are murder prescriptions.
Neither am I interested in “𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦” reasoning. The moment I hear expressions like, “𝘈𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺!” 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 beings’ creative potential. Myths intended to create perpetual fear and uncertainty in people’s 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 mankind’s 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. That’s 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. I’ll 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 woman’s 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 systems’ 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 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘵 and 𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘴 by those individuals or collectives wielding societal power.
For as long as I can breathe, I’ll speak and write for justice and fairness. I’ll 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 ain’t heard nothing yet. The biggest global freedom storms are yet to come. To the oppressed, the persecuted of the world: 𝖳𝖧𝖤 𝖥𝖴𝖳𝖴𝖱𝖤 𝖨𝖲 𝖡𝖱𝖨𝖦𝖧𝖳. Believe me.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
July 03, 2023
𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊𝐒 𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄
Reserve Husband in House of Beautiful Things
In my Tumbuka tribe in Zambia, a man is his brothers’ wives’ reserve husband. Traditionally, this is an informal but serious involuntary and platonic bond that commits the reserve husband to taking care of the sisters-in-law and, especially, the children, should some incapacitating or fatal misfortune visit the brother.
I am a single, never-been-married man with several wives from a few select blood brothers and bosom friends. I introduce one of the wives as I invite you on a day at my work place of beautiful things.
Our vehicle is the poem ARTWORKS ALIVE, which happens to be the very first piece in Onslaught 1 in the MACHONA GRIT poetry book.
Poems in Onslaught 1 reflect some aspects of my defiant intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual Personal Integrity Fortress against those that hate me.
𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊𝐒 𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄
Separated
By the pond
Wife from another husband
My Dear Brother Ricky
Son Bolokiyo’s
𝘔𝘢𝘮𝘢 𝘝𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘢 and I
Met in the face of a book
In cyberspace
Celebrating her birthday
We took mikes and sang
We Dj’d
We danced
Fell on our backs in joy and laughter
We dropped the mikes
Went our separate ways
In the perennial dollar chase
𝘈𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘦 𝘈𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘢
Blazing in my head
Yandikani Lungu’ spirit
With me in
𝘔𝘶𝘻𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘶 𝘔𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥
In the north
From where lost souls never return
Black Diamonds
Hustling to bling
In the land of
Black gold
Got to work
I’m so happy
I feel
Artworks’ eyes
On the walls
On me
I clear my head
I see
Artworks on the walls
Dance for me
Artworks’ subjects
Come to life in the frames
[…]
𝗘𝗡𝗗
©Simon Chilembo 14/12-2022
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +92525032
April 07, 2023
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𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐒 𝐀𝐑𝐓?
𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐃𝐒𝐓 𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐈𝐅𝐔𝐋 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒
DISCLAIMER
I do not have any academic nor professional training in art. My articulation of what art is a function of my layman’s instinctual appreciation of things beautiful against the ugly; both in the figurative and abstract manifestations as my senses perceive it in any given situation and space, at any given time. All I know is how to think and write, and write and think. Art is what I feel. If I feel it, I can think it. If I think it, I can write it. Writing is my art, my artistic expression. Writing is what I do; all attributable to my academic training.
WORKPLACE OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS
People do from time to time visit museums of all kinds for all kinds of recreational, educational, and research reasons. I work at Norway’s Nasjonalmuseet. The institution has proved to be an awesome literary creative’s wet dream for me as an author and poet. I get at least one goosebumps moment each day I am at work. Tens of thousands of works of art are on display throughout the eighty-nine exhibition spaces at the museum. In all their widely variable expressive forms, these artworks move me in a way that ever fills me with love and joy like I have never experienced before. Working here is a privilege I am much grateful for.
At different points in about all the exhibition spaces in the museum, there are rest stations comprising benches upon extensions of which are placed, amongst other items, wooden playing cards. The cards have various quizzes and games for the guests to have a go at as they sit and rest. I, together with Ole, a fine but ever condescending colleague young enough to be my grandson, happened to have been engaged in a discussion about various aspects of the museum when we approached one such station. Ole then unexpectedly reached out and randomly pulled out a card from the bench extension. It turned out to be a quiz card with the question: ‘What is Art?’; creating a gotcha moment that I saw Ole revelling in.
Talking about Ole’s gotcha moment, this was yet another one of those moments in which a person of European extraction comes to me with the pre-conditioned notion that Black people are not cultivated enough to appreciate the finer aspects of European culture. Anyhow, my immediate response, in this case, was, “Art is the capturing of an experiential moment in time and space in order to, perhaps, tell a story about that experience in the future. This capture can be in any form or medium according to the proclivities and talents of the artist.”
Ole, “I hear you. But you will have to elaborate more on all that you have just said!”
Seeing as we had to attend to each of our respective duties at work then, I replied, “I shall write an essay for you, then. Deal?”
“Deal!”
My definition of art shall be both conceptual and functional. Conceptually, I know art when I perceive it. I do not have to be told. I do not have to be instructed. I know art when my senses register it. Regardless of the representational form, the sentimental response that I get from experiencing any manifestation of art that I consider as beautiful is a constant. Conversely, an unattractive, unpleasant artistic form as I experience it emotionally affects me in the same way relevant to it irrespective of the form or the representational style.
Whenever I read a storybook (or even write one) that I enjoy, my breathing rate slows down, and the total bodily relaxation I get gives me a wonderful warm feeling all over; I get goosebumps, and my palms get warmer and moist. This kind of feeling brings me immense joy. The dreamy state it gets me into sends me into a fantasy world of all things possible. If I had been, for one reason or another, going through hard times, this state brings hope home; it fills me with a sweet sense of freedom. In this state, I am invincible. This is my subjective domain for defining what beautiful art is for me as my perceptive senses – eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose, intuition – register it, feed my hormonal system (feel-good hormones), and the latter instructing my nervous system to induce my being to act accordingly. Pure joy.
Whilst recognizing it for what it is, art that is repugnant to me is exactly that. If it makes me cringe, if it casts a shadow of pessimism over me, if it fills me with negative thoughts and associations, if it gives me a cold sweat, then it is bad art for me. There are times when I can see beauty in bad, ugly art, though. I think about the hands, or some other body parts, that created the work. Every hand shall tell its story according to its owner’s neuro-hormonal wiring and physical capabilities. One man’s apparent gory art may be another’s depiction of heaven. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Functionally, art is a conveyor of messages, a storyteller; a courier of generational narratives in humanity’s dances with nature and itself over time. Art can be an instrument of change. Art can repair the once broken. Art can inspire hope, faith, trust, and love. To the extent that art is a personal expression, art may speak for its creator. Art creators have the potential to make or break society. Ask God, man’s most divisive, master-of-carnage creation. God may have created man instead, her most complex work of art. The outcome is not any better.
Art is identity. Identity may be deception obscured in art. From the outset, art may be true by intent and purpose. But when human perception and interpretation of reality are as polychotomous as there are so many people on earth, art shall be true or fallacious as to the perceptive state and cognitive capacity of the observer. Therein lies the mystique, the intrigue of art. Who am I? I am a man in love with art.
Art is some powerful stuff. Art is a human creative potential deserving to be handled with tender, loving care. At its best, art is an instrument of peace; art has the potential to stimulate reflection on the human condition. We rise, we fall; art captures all that. Art is beauty. Without beauty, life is not worth living.
Beauty moves humanity forward and higher on the scale of qualitative and quantitative improvements in life. It is not for nothing that nations of the world, interest organizations of all sorts and sizes, wealthy individuals, and many others invest heavily in the promotion, conservation, preservation, and storage of some of our most impactful artworks over the epochs into the future. Art immortalizes human experience.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +92525032
April 07, 2023
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Order, read, and be inspired by my latest and 9th book, 2nd poetry volume, MACHONA GRIT: Onslaught on Hate
𝐆𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐃𝐀𝐘𝐒
Living in the Now
I don’t live
On past glory
Past glory is what it is
Done
Dusted
Trashed
Buried
Closed chapters
Unforgettable
Crystalized
In my songs
History
For posterity
Education
And they
Detractors
Don’t understand
How it is
That I can rule today
Despite their throwing stones
At me everyday
They thought
They knew me
During my glory days
They can’t figure out
What’s become of me
When they expected
I’d vaporize
In lustreless
Post-glory days life today
Them
Pathetic dimwits
Thinking they are
My redeemers
When even
Jesus ain’t my cuppa tea
I sing Hallelujah
Only ‘cause
It is a beautiful song
Written by a human
Out of human experience
It kindles
My glory
Which comes from within
I’m smooth
I shine
I’m glass
Reinforced
Animosity might rattle me
I won’t crack
I won’t break
I’m black
I’m bold
I glitter
I’m diamond
I’m gold fortressed
Amalgamated
I’m steel
Stainless
Dirt don’t sit on me
Animosities bullet-proofed
Stones might hit me
They won’t punch holes
Through my skin
They won’t cause me harm
Hate war machines might strike me
I won’t crack
I won’t bend
I won’t fall
Glory days might come and go
True to form
Constant
My presence shall beam
Irrespective of time and space
Indomitable
When it is
My time
To grace
My space
Which is all times
All places I stand
Glory is my gift of life
For life
And they
Haters
Will never understand
How it is that
I fear not the future
Faithful to my fate
I have nothing to hide
Never had
I’m an open book
I walk my written words
That’s my nature
True to my name
Writing’s on the wall
Expository
Glory days
Spill the beans
In more ways than one
It’s only a matter of time
Bring it on
Alert
When they appear tomorrow
Them the haters
I’ll see them from afar
Fazed
They don’t know
They don’t know me
They’ve never known me
They’ll never know me
No love lost
Resilient
I live my life today
For future glory today
That’s life worth living today
Elixir of life
Any given day
Glory
Hallelujah
Praise be to
Immortality
Living hard
Living tough
Living strong
Today
Crush me if you dare
𝐄𝐍𝐃
©Simon Chilembo 30/11-2022
Simon Chilembo 