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๐ง๐๐ ๐ฅ๐จ๐ง๐๐๐๐ฆ๐ฆ ๐ฅ๐จ๐๐, ๐ฃ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ ๐ฎ
๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ ๐ ๐๐ฆ ๐๐๐ฅ๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐๐: ๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐น๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ฆ๐ผ๐๐๐ต ๐๐ณ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ ๐๐ฎ๐๐ฒ
Iโm ever so fascinated by the USA. At first, it was the illusion of the Dream of America. This Dream of America still lures poor, mostly involuntary wretched souls of the earth hoping to taste heaven on earth before they die. Some get to believe that they have secured a better future for their offspring, just from the first step on the soil of the land of dreamers. Going down on their knees, they kiss the Dream of Americaโs Mother Earth in deep felt gratitude.
The poor souls will have survived atrocities-extreme and/ or natural calamities in their original homelands in various parts of the world – elimination hole countries, as one elimination munching American mouth has called them. The stench of America emanating from the mouth nauseating the world. Like theyโd be anywhere else in the world for they are human too, vile fortune hunters whoโd eat their own mothers are also in the Dream of America rat race, abusing the poor hopefuls in all sorts of abhorrent ways.
The vile hustlers get to the land of Lady Liberty. They ride on the American Nightmare blood train, amassing the Green Back by any means. With the Dollar might, they burn and turn the land and the world red with their relentless destructive ways of relating to and managing society, to say the least of Mother Earth. Just hear them crap-talk Global Warming as a concept and reality. Sometimes I wonder if these cognitively inadequate people have their filthy elimination holes as the abodes for their brains. Scum of humanity.
My continuing fascination with the USA is about the elimination holes brains personalities fronting the American Nightmare discourse and social engineering efforts. I throw their supporters in the same boat of inherent or wilful ignorance and bigotry: dim-witted charlatans.
Between 1960 and 1975, I was born and raised in a systemically racist, self-encaged, media-repressive, stifled African peopleโs education, international relations pariah then-Apartheid South Africa. Elimination holes brains personalities fronting the American Nightmare want to establish a 21st Century Apartheid Dream of America state. A messy, costly, bloody lost cause.
From my childhood days in the 1960s to the mid-teens in the 1970s, the American Dream of heaven on earth was fed into my eyes through beautiful pictures of American life in carefully state-selected and censored magazines and movies. There were, of course, glimpses of pictures of violence on Black people here and there; also, those of gruesome assassinations of politicians and entertainers. Pictures of homeless people languishing on city street pavements, if not under bridges appeared here and there too.
But, the pictures of the glamorous Dream of America were overwhelming; from Miss World-type girls to style, automobiles, and New York City night neon lights, amongst others. The visual impact was accentuated by the sound of music. Some of them aware or not, Mega Stars across the musical genres sold the Dream of America more effectively than any other propaganda agents. In the South Africa of my childhood days, all the adult Jazz and Soul music lovers that I knew dreamt of going to America to see their favourite stars. Many believed that, given the apparent success of big names like Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, and Aretha Franklin, to name but a few, America sure was Black peopleโs The Promised Land. Little did my music-loving South African aunts and uncles know about the history of Black African peopleโs slavery in the making of the American Dream economic might.
On the radio, jingles accompanying adverts of consumer items from cornflakes to tobacco always left me giddy in the head in their sweetness of melodies and painting of America as the epitome of high living. I couldnโt wait to get to America to enjoy all these amazing products from the source. Man, imagine me drinking Coca-Cola sitting in the Waldorf Astoria New York in the company of an American Miss World! That used to be a truly compelling dream.
And there was sport. Muhammad Aliโs boxing prowess notwithstanding, his political outspokenness in the Civil Rights sphere painted the path for my journey to The Promised Land someday. Post-the-Apollo 11 moon landing of 1969, I would for many years in wonder gaze long at the full moon. I never had ambitions of flying to the moon, but I used to think that if America could send men to the moon and back, then, in America, I could be all the great things I dreamt of being when I grew up.
In reality, though, I only wanted to be a medical doctor so that I could operate on peopleโs hearts like Dr Chris Barnard had done in Grooteschuur Hospital, Cape Town, on the 3rd December 1967. And I wanted to be rich and famous like the flashy heart surgeon. I was seven-and-half years old, then, and was already beginning to read newspaper headlines. Living in a highly politically charged environment whilst going to school in Lesotho at that time, I had already become an aspiring avid radio news listener. Therefore, I understood early that since I was not White, I could but with difficulty, perhaps, be a heart doctor in then-Apartheid South Africa. Instead, America would make me a great doctor, I earnestly believed.
From South Africa, via Zambia, I would end up in Norway 21 years later. I became a jack of many trades, but not a doctor. It is what it is. No worries. I have become an author; I write books. I am happy. I look at the USA with mixed emotions: feeling lied to, but not crushed. I am disappointed and appalled by the inhumane, parochial, and degenerative side of America that nearly half of the countryโs population not only exhibits with impunity but strives to expand and perpetuate. All spearheaded by the insular, living-in-the-past racist White Supremacist MAGA America movement bent on establishing an Apartheid Dream of America state in the 21st Century.
As I write and think, and think and write, I find that the sociology of the American Nightmare half of America is not in any way divergent from that which I left behind in my Black South African township, Thabong, Welkom. This is transferable to urban South Africa across the board from Apartheid days to the present.
South Africa is a perfect USA microcosm match in more ways than one. In that sense, itโs just as well that Iโve ended up in Norway; a country by far better run than both South Africa and the USA. If the then-Apartheid South Africa came close to crushing my soul, the USA would have killed me already, I suspect. By the numbers, and by the guns, vicious MAGA America is more lethal than the pre-1994 South African township at any time, like-minded as they may be.
The regressive nature of American MAGA power relations dynamics is not different from that prevalent in Black South African townships. Iโll shortly demonstrate this in an exposรฉ of the Township Nightmare power relations personality traits. In the same vein, Iโll implicitly demonstrate that human personality traits are driven by inherent internal biological structures and processes that supersede race and ethnicity theories.
For example, a human heart as an organ is a human heart whether itโs in the body of a male or female White, Black, or whatever colour of the spectrum person. Similarly, adrenaline is adrenaline; the nervous system is the nervous system. A certain neuro-hormonal imbalance will cause universally predictable behavioural outcomes cutting across race and ethnicity. That is how MAGA America can be understood in the context of the dark side of South African Black township culture. After all, South Africans and Americans are all human. Any human disease will similarly kill them if no necessary and recommended conventional medical preventive measures or curative treatments are given and adhered to. Needless to say, the recent COVID-19 pandemic caused havoc in much the same it did in South Africa as in the USA, including the rest of the world, of course.
The underlying guiding idea in my exposรฉ is the consideration of psychopathy as an observable antisocial behavioural tendency amongst many MAGA America and South African Township Nightmare types.
Reacting to the strange, destructive behavioural tendencies exhibited by prominent American MAGA proponents, I, on October 13th, 2020, posted a comment on my Facebook feed. I have edited and expanded on the original text for this talk. And it goes as follows:
The hassle about psychopaths is that they cannot listen to reason; itโs beyond their cognitive capacities. For a psychopath, itโs their worldview or nothing. Conventional Ethics (right v/s wrong) and Morals (good v/s bad) are irrelevant concepts to psychopaths.
Depending on where in the world you live, are you on the โnothingโ side of a psychopath, they are likely to eliminate you in various ways. Youโll hear threatening expressions like, โWe are coming for you!โ. So, โโฆ if you fuck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before,โ Guess Who.
As history documents over and over again, a dead opponent to a psychopath is the preference. Nevertheless, history is full of examples of how psychopaths in leadership roles across the board tend to have tragic demises. Google โworld despotsโ, please! Itโs free.
Despite its imperfections, where democracy works comparatively kind of okay, people shall seek to talk issues over through various established governance platforms, no matter how challenging or futile the exercise may be. In the end, votes are taken. Assuming a perfect world, outcomes are acknowledged. And the winner takes it all. Life goes on.
Democracy allows for election outcomes to be challenged when irregularities have been observed at any point during the process. Or even when the losing side just wants to be a nuisance. Democracy in practice can stand a lot of crap. Psychopaths thrive on the latter fact.
As current history unfolding shows somewhere in the world, when psychopaths win, humanity gets ever closer to thresholds of self-annihilation. Therefore, be ever so careful about who you elect to power in your land. Donโt allow yourself to be charmed by the cheap-feelgood-chronic-diarrhoea-like buffoonery antics of psychopaths.
If you donโt know how to identify a psychopath, call my number. For Iโm not a medical doctor, Iโll guide you through an illuminating philosophical discourse that works all the time. Itโs all about, amongst others, a solid academic and professional training background. Go to school. Acquire knowledge for human progress. Take your children to school. Read much and well. Pass exams clean; donโt cheat. Donโt burn books.
Ultimately, the reality is, though, there is a psychopath in all of us. Summarizing my philosophical discourse on what attributes to look out for in deciding, after analyzing a personโs socio-behavioural incongruencies, whether they exhibit psychopathic tendencies or not, a close brother-confidant of mine once said, โSo, a psychopath need not be a raving mad personality in our midst?โ
Yours truly, โYepp, thatโs right!โ
Brother-confidant, โIt means, then, that a psychopath may be the everyday smart-looking person sitting next to, or in front of you right now at any place?โ
Yours truly, โSure thing! But itโs all about relativism, see? Know thyself!
Whether or not I have a personal or some other human aspects relationship with the concerned, my labelling of a person as a psychopath is my pre-emptive self-preservation measure. This also helps me to put into perspective events in my immediate and distant worlds given who the dominant actors are in the different parts of the world, them sharing or not sharing common interests.
In my private survival instincts world, I donโt need to have a medical doctor to declare for me whether I am dealing with or am observing a psychopath in my immediate spaces or far out in the wide, wide world. Descriptively, I know a psychopath when I see one. I then behave accordingly to protect myself and my own in the face of actual or potential psychopathic onslaughts upon us. Itโs a doctorโs job to diagnose and treat the patient accordingly. They can take all the time they need.
And, talking about personal survival instincts, I had on an earlier Facebook post declared that โUncivility is an effective manner of attaining some degree of civilized talks with psychopaths. Communication leads to mutually desired outcomes to the extent that involved parties apply the same language and familiar terms of references.
โFailure to break through psychopathsโ noise and deficient knowledge barriers should lead to withdrawal from talks, if feasible.
โOtherwise, the fools must be isolated, if not excluded from civilized social interactions. In the worst-case scenario, it may be necessary to eliminate them. Diplomacy has to have limits even in the free world.
โDemocracy is designed to neutralize our passions in common human relations interaction spaces and circumstances. Wars and societal collapse are direct outcomes of lunatics being allowed too generous opportunities to play out their antics for far too long.โ
Any reasonably intelligent person whoโs gone to school and can read, think, see knowledge linkages, and can thus synthesize functional, universally applicable explanatory models towards understanding how life works on earth, can read many a professional text and make sense of it. If they donโt understand, they ask as a matter of course; they actively seek more information from relevantly knowledgeable human sources or books and other information storage and distribution facilities to debunk or confirm initial conclusions made. This is called research.
Through my various learning pursuits in my time, my private operational definition of what constitutes psychopathy or not is based on readings of publicly available subject literature that is written and wilfully published by qualified medical personnel of various specializations and levels of academic and professional standing across the globe. This includes literature publicized by a plethora of international human behavioural sciences professionals. Google this shit!
Donโt let yourself be intimidated by the arrogance of power from doctors, psychologists, and others whose professional literary works we all, with much admiration, flock to in our efforts to study and better understand the overall complexities of human nature. If they donโt want us free spirits to speak about human wellbeing issues, then, they must withdraw their publications. They must cease making their expertise publicly available reference materials in libraries and social media.
Simon Chilembo
Oslo
12.10.2020
I wrote the exposรฉ essay of the South African Black Township Nightmare power relations personality traits on May 29th, 2021. Posted in my blog on the same date, the exposรฉ bears the title:
THE RUTHLESS RULE
Kassie Jungle Law: Only the Strong Survive
In my never-ending attempt at seeking to make sense of events in the world today, I, as a reflex, regularly look back at the first fourteen-and-half years of my life in South Africa, 1960 June โ 1975 January. Growing up in the then-racist apartheid state has profoundly impacted my life. Day-to-day living was ever so dramatically charged. Such that, on the one hand, one could but choose to numb oneself to the volatility of emotions, if not traumas arising, and live on disenchanted and detached from the gruesome, disenfranchised reality.
On the other hand, one could look at, hop onto the intricate traumatic feelings and thoughts bandwagon, learn survival ropes, and hope for the best; longevity being a remote idea. Wishful thinking. Although the OPEC oil crunch of the early 1970s had already begun to make its mark globally, this period could easily be seen as the golden years of the apartheid regimeโs economic might. The oppressed Black population segment was subjected to extremes of state security agenciesโ violence.
Oppression is some costly business. It curtails human resources’ productive potential growth and manifestation. Atrocious. Oppression will last to the extent that the oppressorsโ financial base remains sufficiently robust to sustain the oiling of the oppressive state machinery at all levels. Money talks. Money rules.
As it is with South Africa, a countryโs endowment with a variety of natural resources that the world is willing to pay generously for is of crucial importance. Oppressors maximize their hold by capturing the wealth of their nations, therefore. They personalize their wealth, becoming super-rich individually and along with their family members, as well as their power clique hounds: oligarchsโ fangs drooling kleptocracy and nepotism poison in everything they touch. At the same time, their nations get caught in quagmires of long-term poverty and international indebtedness.
The Soweto Studentsโ Uprising of June 16, 1976, would not only change the liberation struggle course. It changed the political landscape of South Africa as well; further weakening the oppressive stateโs capital base. Apartheid had to ultimately collapse. Not because somebody woke up one morning and suddenly discovered that the system was diabolic. The fact is that it simply was no longer economically viable. And prospects of any meaningful bounce back were bleak. Added pressure from the international trade sanctions had brought the country down to its knees.
The effective brutality of the apartheid regime reproduced itself across the entire Black populace by default โ in the home; at absolutely all levels of social interaction. That is visible to such an extent that the nature of fundamental survival power relations dynamics cultivated then amongst Black people themselves have endured. It is manifest at even more sophisticated, grander scale, and more destructive levels in keeping with societal management complexities and technological advancements of the times in the 21st Century.
During the apartheid domination years, many a Black South African exile carried along with them these survival power relations dynamics into the Diaspora. Not that it helped the concerned exiles much from the point of view of applying the same survival strategies as generally functional in the township, or kassie culture in Black South Africa. Kassie is a corruption of the Afrikaans language word, lokasie; which means location. Observing, establishing, and maintaining links with fellow South African exiles has kept my fascination with the Black peopleโs fundamental survival power relations dynamics alive during all these years.
Post-1994 South Africa has also been accessible to me. Itโs the land of my birth, the land of my familyโs maternal-side ancestry, after all. Thirty-eight-and-half years since living abroad, I returned to stay in the country for five years, 2013-18. As such, I have been in touch with the trends in the land all along. Much had changed drastically at about all levels. However, characteristic personal survival attitudinal attributes have remained constant. I shall dwell on these later on in this essay as I unravel prerequisites for the workings of the ruthlessness of kassie jungle law rule.
Kassie is a funky catchphrase these days. But originally, it essentially implied a slum; not much unlike Brazilian favelas, for example. In practice, the meaning hasnโt changed in any big way. From the colonial era, peaking during the apartheid years, and stretching into contemporary times, tens of thousands-upon-thousands-to-millions of Black South Africans were dumped here. It initially was predominantly male labourers working in the mines and the agro-industrial complex.
There would be a few state functionaries and even fewer professionals in various vocational categories here and there. Much as there would be numerous fortune hunters engaged in all kinds of illicit endeavours; from petty crimes to large-scale organized crime activities involving alcohol, drugs, precious stones and metals smuggling, human trafficking, prostitution, and more. Family units would eventually emerge as a natural human development process, of course. Children would be born, raised, become adults, lead miserable lives, and subsequently die; the indignity of poverty accompanying them to the grave. Causes of death varying, from murder to illness, if not natural causes.
Prevalent land conditions are far from prime in the townships. This makes the construction of decent domiciles a daunting challenge for impoverished people. Sustainable subsistence food production from the land is near impossible. Minimal to total lack of functional social amenities comes with the package here. If there was anything prime about the original townships, it was the potential to induce and generationally perpetuate poverty with all its attendant maladies: disease, moral decay, ignorance. All that to facilitate self-annihilation amongst Black people: kill them; let them kill themselves; create space for more European trash to come to work, settle, and add to the growth of the white population in the country.
Conditions are even worse these days, taking into consideration, since 1994, the influx of millions of refugees and fortune hunters from war-torn, dysfunctional African states to the north. Others come from other parts of the world, especially Asia. Competition for limited resources and liveable spaces in the townships has spiked exponentially, apparently in favour of the new immigrants.
Many of the new immigrants come into South Africa with more by far international hustling experience: higher academic qualifications and vocational experience in both the social and natural sciences, military or guerilla warfare experience, and all that it entails โ daring nature, PTSD, and other related outcomes. They also have investment capital for entrepreneurial ventures in various fields, often starting with small-scale grocery stores called spaza shops.
The latter attributes above are often accompanied by extreme manifestations of arrogance of power towards the locals, who are considered to be intellectually lacking, lazy, and fearful of White people, who still own the land, anyway. Itโs hardly surprising, therefore, that strong anti-immigrant sentiments have mushroomed across the country, culminating in several outbursts of brutal xenophobia-inspired violence in recent years.Afro-xenophobia expression is ascribed to South African Black-on-African Black violence. In keeping with characteristic basal kassie culture, violence is the first instinctual option to eradicating conflict. Tragedy is ever the outcome that never brings forth solutions for a peaceful co-existence for all in the country.
The reality of the matter is that, much like the Ununited States of America, South Africa owes much of its economic might to the historical inflow of migrants from all corners of the world. As Iโve already implied above, these people bring into the country a wide diversity of creative/ intellectual/ academic, productive, and entrepreneurial skills that contribute to the robustness of the countryโs vibrant economic and social advancement in the long run.
Thereโll always be a few bad apples here and there. But assuming a functional justice system prevailing in the land, relevant policing and legal institutions are there to deal with lawbreakers. South Africa is truly a multi-cultural melting pot. Bishop Desmond Tutuโs broadly embraced Rainbow Nation nickname for the country supersedes discrimination neither based on race nor origin of the people that call South Africa their home, either by birth or immigration.
From an epistemological perspective, it is clear that the concept of township/ location/ kassie in South Africa was never meant to create ideal, conducive conditions for Black people to thrive and propagate themselves; neither to attain ever higher standards of living in time, in pace with national economic growth prospects.
The rise of apartheid economic might was at the expense of the lives of Black people, both at the hands of the apartheid state security machinery, and intra-Black violence across mainly urban South Africa. Many other Black lives were also lost through fatal accidents and occupational diseases in the agro-industrial-mining complex. Functionally concerning apartheid intentions, townships were supposed to provide temporary shelter for lives destined to be โโฆ solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.โ
But then again, survival instincts abode in all humanity. People can remain wretched only for so long. If they are not wiped off from the face of the earth, they shall engage in all sorts of means to prolong their existence. Perhaps fate can change for someone, someday: break the bonds of subjugation, rise and liberate the people, and, ideally, live happily ever after in boundless abundance.
In the meantime, at the individual level in the South African kassie context, survival was and still is about ruthless โsemphete ke o feteโ (Sesotho: donโt overtake me, I overtake you โ the rat race) tendencies. Here, the strong survive. The ruthless rule; applying cruelty as their claim to prosperity and longevity.
Brought forth, elaborated in my Black South African context, and set in alphabetical order below are personal dispositions Iโve identified as being cardinal for relative individual survival and ruling potential in the South African kassie culture of violence. That as a tool for understanding the nature of human relations power dynamics, and consequences thereof, at all levels of contemporary society, both locally and globally (In the latter, i.e., globally, the USA fits in like a glove). The respective attributes may be understood regarding the identification of the individual as to who they are, and what their social standing is concerning behavioural phenomena observed of them. In essence, this is the making of despots ekassie, a microcosm of the Dream of America nightmare:
- Bodomo (street parlance โ Setsotsi) is derived from the Afrikaans word dom. Alternatively bokwala (Sesotho), it means stupidity; downright idiocy. Amidst events, act like you donโt know whatโs going on. Go about your daily business indifferent as to whether or not you cause others harm in your endeavours; you lack empathy. You are not interested in reason; you are obstinate like hell. You are a denialist. You are a revisionist.
- Bokhopo (Sesotho) is cruelty. When it is deep-seated, merciless, non-benevolent, and non-repentant it is called khohlahalo in the same language. Rule by absolute iron-fisted fearsomeness. Without exception, anybody transgressing you in any way shall suffer the full ruthlessness of your wrath in line with the nature of the offence and the choice of punishment you dim fit. The line between life and death is often very thin here. This tends to elicit baffling loyalty from your cohorts. Much to the bewilderment of your detractors.
- Ho tella (Sesotho)/ ukudelela (isiZulu) is an uninhibited show of lack of respect. Total disdain. You are brazen. You bulldoze your way through towards the attainment of your power or material acquisitions, and other egocentric ambitions. In your interpersonal and other relations in the community, itโs your rules or no rules at all.
- Lenyatso (Sesotho) is the root of ho tella and leqhoko, immediately above and below respectively. It means to undermine, to belittle other people. Tools applied include patronization, ridicule, insults, unjust criticism, passive aggression, isolation or exclusion, subjugation; all propelled by jealousy and/ or feelings of threat irrationally perceived or real because the victim may, indeed, be the better person in many respects. The idea is to crush the victim, cut them to size, and put them in their place of insignificance. This is pure mental and emotional abuse that often easily degenerates to physical abuse.
- Leqhoko (Sesotho) is provocativeness. Be agitative even out of nothingness just so your presence is noticed, is not forgotten. Be relentlessly disruptive. Cause havoc; be an ass. Instigate and sustain fear. Use all means at your disposal: bully, defame, riot, vandalize, pillage, depose, fight, maim, kill. Ultimately, emerge as the leader of the pack; level-headed and solution-oriented, if only to cow and manipulate the terrorized towards aiding to secure attained dominant safe position.
- Mamello (Sesotho)/ Qinisela (isiXhosa/ isiZulu) refers to tolerance capacity; endurance in both hard and good times, depending. Good times are generally no big deal. But in hard times, practice self-preservation by keeping to yourself and your own. Hang in there. Stay away from trouble. Be invisible. Make no noise. Cultivate hope. Keep the faith because everything is going to be alright someday. Persevere.
For the mighty, though, mamello/ ukuqinisela means staying the course no matter what: keep on pushing; stand tall, donโt fall. Never, never, never give up! Never change the course of action once commitment to act in a certain manner is made. Here, mamello/ ukuqinisela becomes an interplay of bodomo, bokhopo, ho tella, leqhoko, and manganga in variable doses and combinations according to the circumstances prevailing at any one time and space. - Manganga (Sesotho)/ Inkani (isiZulu) is absolute stubbornness. Take a stand, be resolute to the very end, whatever the cost. Whether or not original intended goals are attained is not the essence. You are defiant to the extreme. Stay rock-steady as a matter of principle because you cannot be wrong, or you cannot be denied your demands. You are the truth. You are the light. If you are not the son of God, then you ARE God! Your opponents shall declare you as deranged, delusional; but that doesnโt bother you at all. You are mmampodi (Sesotho)/ champion; you rule. You live above the law. You own your followers through and through. Each one of them understands that you are their life saviour.
A street parlance (Setsotsi) adage goes like this, โMaziwaziwe, mazโbidlikazโbidlike! (isiZulu)/ If they (e.g. towers) fall, they fall; if they collapse, they collapse!โ
It is what it is.
Tyrants, hard-core conspiracy theorists, and charlatans fall under this category. So, in the USA, Coronavirus is just the common flu; โโฆ itโll disappear just like a miracle!โ
Not forgetting The Big Lie that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the presidential elections of November, 2020. And then supporters of The Big Lie insurrect The Capitol peacefully like tourists, leaving destruction and carnage behind. Very special people that The Big Lie spinner loves.
You can also do an egotistical, parochial, typically false premises pushed brexshit and pull your country out of a body of international solidarity in the Western world.
Neither does State Capture exist in South Africa. You know none in your family that has contracted AIDS in South Africa. Therefore, it doesnโt exist. Step aside rule in the ANC? Whatโs that? If you are indeed going to fall, you donโt go alone. You are vindictive. - Sebete is a Sesotho word for liver.The liver is considered to be an organ of courage in my part of Black South African culture. A courageous person is said to โhave a liverโ/ O sebete. Courage is a common thread linking all survival, or power attributes in kassie.
Ho sa (Sesotho, noun), lumps together the attributes above into one virulent trait: petulance as gross as only an extremely spoiled brat can display. The descriptive form of ho sa is โO sele!โ, meaning โHe/ she is petulant!โ
People of all ages manifesting ho sa as a characteristic social interaction trait are some of the most dangerous a community can have. Makings of despots emerge here.
Underpinning the relative kassie individual survival and ruling potential laid out above is the question: O tshepile mang (Sesotho)? Which directly translates as, โWho is it you trust?โ
Whoโs covering your back?
Simple as the question might seem, it is not necessarily a daily conversation question posed in my original part of Black South Africa. The question is profound to the extent that it is asked a person directly, or others are asked about a particular individual when the latterโs negative behaviour defies not only mainstream social protocols across the board, but sheer common sense as well. It is believed that there must be some extra-ordinary qualities, some mystic about these kinds of people. For example:
- What gives them the guts? What makes them tick?
- Whose progeny are they? What are their lineages?
- Do they have some guardian angels, perhaps? In that case, who are the latter? Where are they?
- What do they have that ordinary people do not have?
- Are they working for somebody even more powerful than themselves? Who are these people?
- Are they protected by God? Ancestral spirits? Wizards and witches?
- Or are they just raving mad, sick in their heads? Are they bewitched?
- Do they have magical powers themselves? If so, from where do the powers derive?
- Are they members of some organized crime gangs? Or some secret societies? The Illuminati?
- Is it just because they are too rich? But where does their wealth come from?
Itโs only if and when sufficient knowledge about these treacherous people is gathered that concerned individuals or the community can effectively react to get rid of them in one way or another. Itโs not unusual that the former fall from glory in the most dramatic and humiliating fashions; those who lived by the sword dying exactly as they lived. Such is kassie life. The ruthless rule but momentarily.
The strong are often the smart with senses of moral and ethical awareness. They tend to survive, break out of the mould of kassie misery and ignorance, and live longer. Some in this category will in time even travel wide and see the world, permanently breaking the spell of kassie anti-life attributes. Expressing themselves through diverse media and creative and performance forms, they may also become proponents of liberty, justice, and equality as fundamental Human Rights tenets all of humanity on earth is entitled to.
Meanwhile, South Africa has yet to cleanse itself of the kassie anti-life attributes spell, to the extent that itโs possible. However, given the current display of elite kassie mentality antics in various judicial and organizational platforms in the country, it is clear that much more work remains to be done at this rate. Well, cumulatively from the onset of contemporary European colonialism in the 17th Century up to the apartheid era in the 20th Century, the mechanizations that facilitated their imposition had at least four hundred years to dehumanize my people and screw up our psyche. The Rainbow Nation is only twenty-seven years old.
Khotso is a common Sesotho name for South African males. It means peace. The female version is Mma-Khotso both as a formal name and may denote that the woman is a mother of a boychild called Khotso. The name has significant connotations. In practice and conceptually, peace is a universal prerequisite for progressive human co-existence. That making for harnessing humanityโs creative potential towards a sustainable, infinitely fulfilling life for all. The South African national anthem, Nkosi Sikelelโ iAfrika! (Nkosi Sikelela) is essentially a cry for peace, captured in the Sesotho text:
Morena boloka sechaba sa heso/ Lord Almighty, save my nation
O fedisa dintwa le matshwenyeho/ Bring an end to strife and suffering
Were the ruthless and the smart kassie people of South Africa and beyond to realign their attitudes and heed the message of Nkosi Sikelela, the future would be bright for all. I want to be here in four hundred years to gloss in the glory of the heaven on earth that South Africa and the rest of the world will have become. I sit here in a space of relative peace. I breathe. I dream. I write. I make YouTube videos. Ever conscious of the lasting impact that my kassie life background has had on me, I have every reason to want to choose to be hopeful.
I can be hopeful about the future because I am happy all the time. Watch this video here to see how you can be happy all the time, and make somebodyโs day every day into the future.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
May 29, 2021
๐๐ข๐ช ๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ฃ๐ฃ๐ฌ ๐๐๐ ๐ง๐๐ ๐ง๐๐ ๐
๐๐๐ฃ๐ฃ๐๐ก๐๐ฆ๐ฆ ๐ฆ๐๐ฉ๐๐ฆ ๐๐๐ฉ๐๐ฆ. ๐ง๐ฅ๐ฌ ๐๐ง!
CHANGE VERSUS SELF-LOVE
I love me just the way I am. Thatโs a given. If I could go changing, I donโt know if Iโd 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 thatโs 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 thatโs whatโs 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
Iโll 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. Iโm 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.
Thatโs 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. Thatโs 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 Iโm challenged or tempted to perform or be part of for any purpose, Iโm 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 Iโm weak at it, then itโs not important for me. I care but little about it. Iโll 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 Iโve basked in, and the hard times that Iโve 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 โThe Greatest Love of Allโ. Recollections of the joyous moments this unofficial bonus show creates for all Iโll 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. Iโm 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 itโs 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. Thatโs how it is that I donโt 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. Iโve 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. Iโm 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, thatโll 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 ยฝ years old, then. Neighbourhood children poured into our home yelling incessantly, โChristmas box, Simonโs father, Christmas box โฆ!!!โ
In what Iโd 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 childrenโs 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. Iโve got the incurable exhilaration jungle fever. Iโm 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 didnโt 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 itโs 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 canโt 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 donโt know how to accommodate detractors of my right and potential to be happy, and to not unduly repress my happiness expressions.
When Iโm happy Iโm strong, Iโm resilient, Iโm confident, Iโm dominant, Iโm optimistic, Iโm logical, Iโm a charmer, Iโm sensitive; I see beauty in all things, I am an open book; Iโm discerning, Iโm patient, Iโm tolerant, Iโm free, Iโm fearless, I can be brutal; Iโm invincible, gregarious like hell, I win my fights clean โ 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 donโt know how to be fake happy. Although my happiness is self-propelled because I am happy by nature, it doesnโt 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 donโt consume tobacco in any way or form. I donโt 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 Iโm in the chase for happiness. Iโm ever so happy with or without the consumption of alcohol. I never touch alcohol when Iโm upset over one thing or another. When Iโm 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 doesnโt 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 Iโm 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, Iโm able to see through the mediocrity of thoughts and actions by power players and other thought leaders in humanityโs 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 otherโs lives. My happiness and my ability to sustain it are a gift Iโll treasure for life.
HAPPINESS PRIVILEGE
Commenting on one of my Facebook feeds posts recently, a colleague and friend has said, โBeing happy every single day is a privilege that not everyone has.โ
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 personโs 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 oneโs 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 Iโm 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, thatโs 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. Thatโs 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-ร -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, youโll 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 donโt 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 detractorsโ 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, โMay your soul rest in eternal peace!โ
HAPPINESS LEGACY
The happiness-inducing memories of you in the eyes and hearts of your survivors may be a measure of how much peace youโll 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 heavensโ doors for the happy. When our work on Earth is done, weโll 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
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐?
๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐?
Sometime last year, 2022, whilst I was in the middle of working with my latest and nineth book, MACHONA GRIT โ 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 Iโve 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-ร -vis men living alone without women as their marital partners.
Basically, the unmarried men hatersโ 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 Godโs will is fulfilled: death to the unmarried. Amen!
Itโs strange that Catholic priests donโt get married, though. Celibacy doesnโt 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. ย
Personally, such emotional abuse and death threats Iโve outlined above are beneath me; they donโt scathe me even a single bit. Iโm sixty-three years old. Iโm single, and Iโve never been married by choice. Over the years, Iโve on various fora already mentioned that Iโm 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 weโll 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 peopleโs 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, Iโll 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 โfโ 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 Iโve ever seen. In my travels around Europe many years ago, I met a grown-up lady who once said to me something like, โSimon, itโs taken me thirty years to realize that I got married to an a-hole of a man!โ
Thirty-three years later, the couple now older and even more weary of each other, their marriage is still going strong. Thatโs because, โWe are Catholics. We donโt divorce!โ
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, โAccording to our African cultures, divorce is unthinkable for many a woman. Divorce is โharamโ, you see!โ
Jeeezzuzzz!!!
Iโm not anti-marriage. Reality is that Iโm a great fan of marriage. Serious. If ever the poetโs 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 peopleโs 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 Iโve 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, โharamโ or no โharamโ. 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 Iโm as great a fan too. Whereas, indeed, marriage is good, divorce liberates. If ever I do get married at some point in the future, Iโll 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. Thereโll 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. Itโs ok to be single also. Again, in both my private and professional lives, Iโm 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, thereโs 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 โfโ-ing around and holding women in the bondage of dehumanizing marriages.
I pity men that get into and remain in unhappy marriages for โreasons beyond my controlโ: family and/ peer pressure, โthat is what people doโ, 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.
Itโs 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, โSwami Vivekananda, [a] spiritual teacher and important figure in Indian renaissance of the late nineteenth century. A great believer in the virtues of celibacy [says] โIf one wastes the most potent forces of oneโs 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.โ
Furthermore, biographyonline.net says that โNikola 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 lifeโs 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: โI do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.โ
WHEN THE MIGHTY FALL ON MARRIAGE
From my debut novel, WHEN THE MIGHTY FALL โ rise again mindgames Iโll read a passage on marriage. That is from p. 63 to p. 66:
โPeople 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?
โCulture 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.
โMarriage 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.
โFrom 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.
โSanctification 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.
โMarriage 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.
โPerhaps an often-overlooked function of marriage contra instinctive, natural human behavioural tendencies is the population growth control aspect of it.
โWithout 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.
โJealousy, 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.
โWithout 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 childrenโs Sunday picnic in the park.
โMarriage is, therefore, some very serious business. It is not for the non-thinking, and faint-hearted.
โFor 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.
โIts 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.
โPitfalls 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.
โMarriage 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.
โThere 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.
โLove facilitates, and spices up marriage; it does not make a marriage. Love is the key to a potential marriage partnerโs heart. Love is a ringing bell into another personโs, a potential marriage partnerโs, 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.
โTo 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.
โThere 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.
โLove 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.
โThe 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.
โReality 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.โ
Thatโll 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 doesnโt work, get out of it. Fast. The paradox is that youโll never know if your marriage will work or not until youโve gotten into it first. If it works, it works. Well and good. If it doesnโt work, it doesnโt work. Leave.
Divorce might cost you a lot of things in the beginning. It is what it is. Freedom doesnโt 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
๐จ๐๐๐ก๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ฆ ๐๐๐๐ง๐ค+ ๐ฃ๐๐ข๐ฃ๐๐
๐๐ฐ๐ผ๐ป๐ผ๐บ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ ๐๐ฟ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป๐ฎ๐น ๐๐ถ๐ด๐ผ๐๐ฟ๐
Uganda has recently legalized extreme persecution of LGBTQ+ people. People of non-heterosexual dispositions now make love with state sanctioned murder threat looming over their heads. The Ugandan state seeks to eradicate LGBTQ+ people from the face of the earth. This is a flagrant, futile, outdated, time and resources wasting exercise rooted in ignorance in the face of the most enlightened time in the history of humanity, the 21st Century. Pathetic.
Enlightened, liberated, forward-looking, resourceful, valuable people of the world know that sexuality isnโt a matter of choice but an inherent state of being. As but an extension of the infinite totality of being human in its as infinite expressive forms, sexuality is exuded and played out from the core of a personโs essence as encoded in the personโs unique genetic makeup.
Sexuality is permanent. Sexuality is not acquired. Sexuality is not a disease; it cannot be cured, neither medically nor magically, nor by any other outlandish method. If God made man in her own image, God is then the queenpin of sexuality. Use of Godโs prayers to ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ๐ต homosexuals is tantamount to asking God to annihilate herself. Herein lies invalidation of the existence of an omnibenevolent, all-loving God. Amen!
Sexuality is not an attitude; it is not a lifestyle. Sexuality is what it is: it is it โ a constant. It is the unidirectional, one-track express train towards the orgasmic peak experience that, in a perfect world, those in love aspire to achieve as a consummation of their oneness in love in all the possible constellations of love matchings humans are capable of as to their diverse intrinsic sexual orientations.
Every personโs unique genetic makeup is in turn an extrapolation of the human genome. The human genome is the unalterable existential thread that binds humanity together in its diversity of physical and physiological attributes. Thatโs how you can love who you love; and, where applicable, you can reproduce with whom you will, regardless of race, status, colour, or creed.
Donโt come to me with the ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ช๐ฏ ๐ฏ๐ข๐ต๐ถ๐ณ๐ฆ, ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ฑ๐ฉ๐ข๐ฏ๐ต๐ด ๐ฅ๐ฐ๐ฏโ๐ต ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ญ๐ข๐ต๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ช๐ต๐ฉ ๐จ๐ช๐ณ๐ข๐ง๐ง๐ฆ๐ด crap talk. Of course, these animals are of incompatible breeds. They arenโt genetically wired to be sexually stimulative of one another, to begin with.
Depending on the ever-abundant factors affecting the lives of the sources and quality of human reproductive material, i.e., sperms and eggs, the outcome from fertilization to birth (assuming a problem-free pregnancy, and survival of the birthing agony), a child, can be anything of manifestations of being human. For example, the child can, amongst a myriad of other possibilities, be
- Wholesome and healthy
- ๐๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ง๐ฆ๐ค๐ต, ๐ข๐ฃ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ, and/ sickly. I.e., have physical, and physiological incongruities reflected in all kinds and extents of physical handicaps and mental or cognitive incapacities, if not inadequacies
- Distinctly male or female as to the construction of relevant reproductive organs; hormonally steered
- ๐๐ข๐ญ๐ฆ –๐ง๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ๐ฆ –๐ช๐ฏ –๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฆ. I.e., intersex
- Reproductive or barren upon attainment of sexual reproduction maturity age
- Sexually active or celibate
- Heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and much more in the human sexuality expression spectrum.
It ought to be a no-brainer that LGBTQ+ people are human just like everyone else. They have the right to live; just like everyone else. They have feelings; just like everyone else.
From an ethico-moral standpoint, show me an immoral LGBTQ+ person, Iโll show many more amoral heterosexuals. By the numbers, heterosexuals are by far responsible for the worst human-to-human and human-to-nature atrocities ever.
Iโm convinced that the world would be a better place for all were people of the world allowed to love mutually consensually who they love of their psychosocial maturity equals. That means that, bearing high the flag of ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ-๐ช๐ด-๐ญ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ, ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ-๐ธ๐ฉ๐ฐ-๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ-๐ญ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ, you donโt go around sexually abusing children. You donโt go around taking sexual advantage of the weak and vulnerable. You donโt go around defiling animals.
AVAAZ E-MAIL: UGANDAN LGBTQ+ LAMENT
On June 4, 2023, I received an e-mail from the global campaign network, Avaaz. This was on behalf of an anonymized Ugandan LGBTQ+ rights activist asking for moral and financial support. Iโll print the e-mail in full:
ALERT: BRUTAL ANTI-GAY LAW SIGNED — FINAL CALL TO HELP!
WARNING: This email has descriptions of sexual violence that may be upsetting.
Dear Avaaz members,
I write from Uganda, where a vicious ‘anti-gay’ law was just signed into existence — and gay people are being hunted like animals.
Days ago, neighbours castrated a transgender person with a kitchen knife. We couldn’t go to the police as we’d be arrested — and had to search for a friendly doctor, as most wouldn’t help us.
We’re being fired from work, rejected by family, evicted, beaten, rapedโฆ and worse.
I’m appealing for your support. Please.
This could be our last call for help. Under this new law, everything we do, including sending this email and raising funds, will soon become illegal. But right now, before the law is implemented, there’s still a narrow window when LGBTQ+ groups can receive support — and your donation could help save lives.
You’d fund safe houses where people can hide, along with emergency medical care, legal support, and trauma counselling. We urgently need more safe houses, as we constantly have to run when angry mobs arrive.
We’re being flooded with frantic calls for help, but without more funds we can only help a tiny fraction of people. I’m heartbroken, and don’t know where else to turn.
And it’s all because of who and how we love. In the face of unimaginable cruelty and violence, please stand up for our right to Love. Donate what you can now:
The new law effectively makes it impossible to exist as an LGBTQ+ person in Uganda.
I could get a life sentence for kissing my partner, and be executed for repeated homosexual ‘offences’. Renting to gay people is now illegal — and I could serve 20 years in jail just for sending this email.
They call us “ungodly” filth, but we aren’t the ones inflicting unimaginable cruelty on already vulnerable people. I know girls who’ve been raped by family members to ‘cure’ their ‘lesbian disease’.
That’s why safe houses are so critically important– providing a place of sanctuary in a country burning with hatred. With your help, we could:
- Fund dozens of new safe houses and emergency shelters across the country;
- Provide emergency health care and legal support for those who’ve been arrested — and meals for people in jail;
- Help fund the development of a new legal case to challenge the law in court; and
- Power emergency response campaigns, like this one, to defend communities facing discrimination, assault, and war around the world.
Every penny raised will support LGBTQ+ people in Uganda, and power Avaaz’s emergency response work around the world. By donating, you wonโt just be helping in Uganda — youโll be ensuring this crucial capacity is maintained for others like me, facing unimaginable terror.
Gay, straight, lesbian, transgender — we all just want to live and love in peace. I don’t know when that day will come, but it is not today, and our fight for love must go on. Wherever you are in the world, please stand with us. Donate what you can now.
| I’ve been part of the Avaaz community for years. I’ve seen the difference it makes when we come together fast for those in need. Now it’s my community being attacked — me and my people need this movement’s help. With hope and the deepest of gratitude, ****** and the whole team at Avaaz Note: As the anti-gay law has just been signed, the consequences for an email like this could be deadly — in many ways, they already are. For that reason, names have been removed and photos are anonymous. PS. This might be your first donation to our movement ever. But what a first donation! Did you know that Avaaz relies entirely on small donations from members like you? That’s why we’re fully independent, nimble and effective. Join the over 1 million people who’ve donated to make Avaaz a real force for good in the world. |
๐๐ข๐๐ฆ ๐๐ก๐ง๐-๐๐๐๐ง๐ค+ ๐๐๐ฉ๐ ๐๐ก๐ฌ ๐๐๐ข๐ก๐ข๐ ๐๐ ๐ฅ๐๐ง๐๐ข๐ก๐๐๐?
Now, I ask a rhetorical but serious question with profound socio-economic analysis implications:
Can Uganda, or any other tyrannical anti-LGBTQ+ country, for that matter, provide statistics showing any value-added number to the countryโs annual GDP accruing from the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in all its extents?
Well, in Norway, for example, one of the countryโs most important conglomerates is Orkla. โOrkla ASA is a Norwegian conglomerate operating in the Nordic region, Eastern Europe, Asia and the US. At present, Orkla operates in the branded consumer goods, aluminium solutions and financial investment sectors. Orkla ASA is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange and its head office is in Oslo, Norway. As of 31 December 2021, Orkla had 21,423 employees. The Group’s turnover in 2021 totalled NOK 50.4 billion,โ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkla_ASA
Orklaโs Majority Shareholder is Stein Erik Hagen, 66 years old. As at June 25, 2023, heโs worth US$2.1 billion, making him the 1468th wealthiest man in the world; number 6 in Norway as at February 24, 2023. Stein Erik Hagen is gay. Culturally sophisticated, he is a renowned international art collector, and philanthropist.
Norwayโs GDP in 2021 was US$482.17 billion. Population number stood at 5.4 million then. Thatโs against Ugandaโs population of 45.8 million people, and GDP of only US$40.5 billion in the same time period.
Norwayโs highest standard of living in the world is powered by people in all walks of life, including, in all national production, service, and leadership strata. Norwegian LGBTQ+ people are/ have been, amongst others, Government Ministers, Bishops of the Church of Norway, and many more in the commanding hights of the economy. Much as it is a generational global trend, the Norwegian arts and culture industries are teeming with LGBTQ+ people. I have yet to see Norway come even anywhere near to going under. In the meantime, the country just keeps on growing on and on as a world economic and geopolitics force.
The biggest brands in the global fashion, design, and cosmetics industries are a trove of some of the biggest creative talents in the world, some of the most influential of whom are LGBTQ+ people living with pride. Their enterprises are global economic giants to reckon with; creating hundreds of thousands of jobs across the world, and paying billions of dollars of value-added GDP revenues in various countries. One of the greatest flesh and bone human brains to ever walk on our planet earth is Leonardo Da Vinci. His phenomenal interdisciplinary work in the sciences, mathematics, art, and philosophy permeates all aspects of our modern life. The man was gay.
So, Uganda and your fellow tyrannical anti-LGBTQ+ countries in the world, what are your value-added numbers to your respective countriesโ annual GDPs accruing from the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in all its extents?
It is globally demonstrable that persecution of LGBTQ+ people deprives society of vital workforce resources across the board. LGBTQ+ persecution is clearly counterintuitive to equitable national economic growth; which is even more glaring in poor countries like Uganda.
The like-minded oil-rich, religio-conservative Gulf states have managed to harness their ultra-wealth to overrun all local and international resistance and critic against their atrocious anti-LGBTQ+ practices. However, these societies could attain even higher standards of living and more credible and durable geopolitics influence had they allowed their citizens to unleash their full human potential, free to mutually love who they love of their contemporaries.
And in Ukraine, the countryโs LGBTQ+ people are together with their fellow in-action citizens fighting side-by-side against Putinโs imperialistic invasion of their country. Because they, indeed, are people like any heterosexual, LGBTQ+s are also capable of killing other beings. Violence and murder arenโt the prerogative of mad heterosexuals with potentially dubious sexualhabits camouflaged in their irrational hatred for LGBTQ+โs. Like in all Human Rights struggles, when push comes to shove and the oppressed finally pick up weapons of war and fight back, the latter wins. Wake up, bigots, and smell the coffee!
On June 16, 2023, Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa and Hakainde Hichilema, of South Africa and Zambia respectively, led an African peace mission to Ukraine and Russia. Iโll leave discussion of the merits or demerits of this trip for another time.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni chickened out at the last minute because of the escalation of Putinโs attacks on Kiev. Putin even launched another attack on Kiev whilst the African delegation was in town, defiantly breaching and giving a blatant โ๐ง โ to International Relations protocols.
The aggressor was simply making a point that he could have the ๐ด๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ ๐ฑ๐ญ๐ข๐บ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ด African delegation sent back to their respective countries in body bags, if he wanted to. The Africans recovered from the shock, talked with Zelensky, and went on to check on Putin the following day, anyway; wagging their little tails like poodles. Progressive South Africans look at Ramaphosa with dismay. Thatโs Mzansi for you fo sho; myopic, parochial, outdated-communistsโ bootlickers.
Real men persevere even in the most ominous of circumstances. Real men may be as gay as those fighting in the Ukraine army against the Russian invasion. A warrior is a warrior regardless of who of sexual maturity equal and sexual orientation they love.
Real men and women know that once they become a head of state, death comes with the territory; they automatically assume tyrannical or constitutional prerogatives to terminate or redeem life, according to prevailing circumstances. They also embrace the reality that they can under variable circumstances get killed on the job on any day.
How much of a ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ข๐ญ ๐ฎ๐ข๐ฏ is LGBTQ+ loathing Museveni, who got scared โsโless out of thechances of getting caught up and dying in the Putin-made killing fields in Ukraine, I wonder? With no guts to face up to his national sovereignty leadership equals, he goes after soft targets, the LGBTQ+ community of Uganda. Coward. Loser.
South Africa legalized same sex marriage in 2006. Although there are still unofficial, yet potent obstacles here and there, the LGBTQ+ community thrives in the country. LGBTQ+ personalities feature prominently in all spheres of South African econo-socio-politico life. And their influence grows by the day. After 9 (oโclock, pm), hetero-married South African gay men exit their closets for their true loves outside.
Despite its governance challenges, South Africa remains a haven for Africans running away from their dysfunctional, war-torn anti-LGBTQ+ countries, including Uganda itself. South Africa remains an African economic powerhouse providing sustainable entrepreneurial opportunities for African immigrants from the latter countries, Afro-xenophobia violence issues notwithstanding.
Whatโs funny about Uganda in this context is that I first came across the words ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ๐น๐ถ๐ข๐ญ๐ช๐ต๐บ and ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ๐น๐ถ๐ข๐ญ๐ช๐ด๐ฎ in an article in Drum Magazine in 1972/3. Fifty years ago, in Welkom, my hometown in South Africa!
If I recall, the article was about how Ugandan men would meet up at local Sunday afternoon football matches in their villages. Some men would, then, pair up and disappear into the nearby bushes to engage in ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ๐น๐ถ๐ข๐ญ activities, the article reported. It was a given that many a girl would go down with their boyfriends as well. Of course. ย
At age 12/13 then, this thing about homosexuality and homosexualism confused me a bit. I then ventured to ask an older friend to explain for me. Buti-Gabriel was in โJCโ/ Grade 10 at that time; he sure would know these things, I reasoned. He told me that homosexualism is when men sleep together like we sleep with our women.
โThey do it slightly different, but thatโs basically it: having sex together man-to-man,โ Buti-Gabriel said. He further reminded me that we already knew how lonely men living in the then โMen Onlyโ hostels in Welkomโs gold mines had sex with one another in the absence of women. Aha, oh, yes, of course!
These womanless men came from the entire Southern African hinterland, as well as remote-lying, extremely poverty-stricken parts of South Africa. The guy said this in as matter-of-factly, and as ever cool as he was as a person and older brother that I had grown to be very fond of. Iโve had a laid-back attitude towards homosexualism since then.
A life-long ๐ โ๐ฎ–๐ข–๐ญ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ–๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ต–๐ข–๐ง๐ช๐จ๐ฉ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ, Buti-Gabriel taught me how to be a gentleman to girls, and subsequently to women in my grown-up age. We remained great friends until he died in 2016. I miss him dearly. MHSRIEP!
Prior to the intriguing homosexuality and homosexualism mystery in Uganda as Iโve related above, there had already been an especially edifying association imprinted in my mind about the country. One of the earliest hymns that I recall singing at my childhood school between 1965-69, St. Rose (Catholic) Primary School, Peka, Lesotho, was about the Martyrs of Uganda: ๐ ๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ณ๐ฐ๐ฌ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐จ ๐ฃ๐ข ๐๐จ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ข / โLetโs Praise Ugandansโ.
Brutal Idi Aminโs entry on the Ugandan presidential scene, 1971 to 1979, shook the heavenly picture I had held in my head for the country of the great martyrs. I recalled the latter, forty-five of them, being held in the highest reverence in the Lesotho-South African Catholic Church community that I knew then.
Yoweri Museveni has been in power since 1986. He has taken the Ugandan murderous persecution plague to the next level.
As regards Zambia, the LGBTQ+ plus struggle is still hard, yes. However, Iโll make a sweeping statement and postulate that woke, Zambian middle-class youth growing up and grooving in the Lusaka party scene in the late 1970s to the late 1980s (I havenโt lived in Lusaka since 1988) will attest to the existence of a flourishing gay subculture in the city and the environs at that time. I canโt imagine it having been any different in the Copperbelt urban centres such as Kitwe and Ndola.
I also canโt imagine the Zambian gay scene as having diminished with the years. We had public secret gays as schoolmates and teachers, as relatives, including work colleagues.
I had just recently graduated from the University of Zambia in 1986 when, in one of my then business hustles in Lusaka, I got to strike a South Africa-Zambia commercial goods import deal with a super wealthy, fine-looking gentleman who, I thought, could probably leave an Afro-American movie star kissing his shoe heels. I got highly rewarded for the deal upon its closure.
After a business meeting that went late into the night one day, this man, we call him Mr Dukes, invited me for a snack and drink at his home in one of Lusakaโs finest neighbourhoods. His house so overwhelmed me with its beauty and raw manifestation of opulence that my immediate reaction was to make the comment, โAll the hottest girls of Lusaka would be in trouble if I had a house like this one, Mr Dukes!โ
He curtly replied, โHot girls are the least of my troubles, Mr Chilembo!โ
Serving efficiently prepared bacon-and-cheese sandwiches and tea, he stated, โI live alone here. I donโt need women in my life.โ
We ate in silence. Outside of business talks, I wouldnโt know how to start any meaningful personal conversations with Mr Dukes after that incident.
Nearly three decades would go before a mutual acquaintance would reveal to me that Mr Dukes was gay, and that he had had a harem of young men that he sexually exploited at will. Inviting me to his house may have been a trap, but, sadly for the man, my mind was on the things Iโd do with girls in his awesome house. Besides, he admired me for my Karate prowess and the local rock stardom I had already begun to enjoy in Lusaka. He really couldnโt impose himself on me. I learned that Mr Dukes died in yet another one of those gruesome road traffic accidents involving huge, luxury cars driven at high speeds on Zambian pothole-laden roads twenty years ago.
My feeling is that Zambia will soon legalize Gay Rights protection in the country. The country is on a path to economic recovery at a relatively better pace by far as compared to, say, Zimbabwe, where gays are โworse than dogs and pigsโ, according to projecting Robert Mugabe, the late and former dictatorial president.
The point I want to make about South Africa (land of my birth) and Zambia (my fatherland) vis-ร -vis the LGBTQ+ condition is that tolerance liberates positive energy in society. Tolerance inspires and sustains creativity. Tolerance unleashes productive empowerment across the board in society. This is a crucial element of overall national development and growth. The case of Norway as Iโve outlined above is a perfect example of how this works. And, Norway is but one of the LGBTQ+ tolerant countries with the highest standards of living in the world.
The fear that the LGBTQ+s want to take over the world is unwarranted. Unlike religion, no one is converted to LGBTQ+ existence. You are either gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc., or not. If conditions become such that more and more LGBTQ+ people come out as time goes on, what the heck? Thatโs the way of the world.
LGBTQ+ people of Uganda and the world, stand up and fight for your rights. You are not alone. We all suffer together. Freedom doesnโt come cheap. Absolutely ALL Africans ought to know this fact.
So, LGBTQ+ contradicts African cultural values? In what way is murder an African cultural values defence mechanism, then? Well, with effective brutality untold, Arab and, subsequently European invaders, applied relentless murder as a tool for imperial-colonialism imposition and sustenance. African has been left generationally culturally and cognitively raped and screwed.
Killing oneโs own people for them exercising expressions of an emotion as fundamental of being human as can be, love, does not make post-colonial Africa any better than the primitive former imperial-colonial masters.
As the human genome carrying entities, Africans are essentially not different from any other people on earth. In varying degrees according to location on the planet, and exposures to multitudes of natural and artificial variants that enable humanity to adapt or die in given situations, Africans face the same existential challenges and joys as anybody else. Therefore, the spectrum of sexual orientations manifestations amongst Europeans or Asians is not in any way divergent from that found amongst Africans or people of any other racial classification, the latter being a curse to humanity.
Therefore, insisting upon the narrative that LGBTQ+ism is un-African is as banal as it is downright lacking in cognitive development maturity. Unadulterated stupidity oblivious to the ever-growing abundance of contemporary human knowledge database. Human love sentiment is truth constant in time and space; much as is the human need for liberty, equality, and solidarity. That underpinning the universal concept of Human Rights.
Whereas the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted without any African representation, the universality of Human Rights principles validity cannot exclude Africa. The assumption being that Africans are part of humanity. Much of Africa still under the Euro colonial yoke in 1948, no African country had the requisite political national sovereignty to be considered as worthy of participation in the process then. Independent Africa would eventually come out with its AFRCAN CHARTER ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES RIGHTS in subsequent years; adopted in 1981, and ratified in 1986.
๐จ๐ก๐๐ฉ๐๐ฅ๐ฆ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ง๐๐ข๐ก ๐ข๐ ๐๐จ๐ ๐๐ก ๐ฅ๐๐๐๐ง๐ฆ
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages. The UDHR is widely recognized as having inspired, and paved the way for, the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties, applied today on a permanent basis at global and regional levels (all containing references to it in their preambles).
ARTICLE 1 of the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS reads as follows:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
ARTICLE 19 of AFRCAN CHARTER ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES RIGHTS agrees by saying, โAll peoples shall be equal; they shall enjoy the same respect and shall have the same rights. Nothing shall justify the domination of a people by another.โ
ARTICLE 3 of the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS says:
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
ARTICLE 20 of AFRCAN CHARTER ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES RIGHTS agrees. It says, โAll peoples shall have the right to existence. They shall have the unquestionable and inalienable right to self-determination. They shall freely determine their political status and shall pursue their economic and social development according to the policy they have freely chosen.โ
ARTICLE 5 of THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS SAYS:
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
ARTICLE 24 of AFRCAN CHARTER ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES RIGHTS adds that โAll peoples shall have the right to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development.โ
ARTICLE 6
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
ARTICLE 7
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
ARTICLE 9
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
ARTICLE 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
ARTICLE 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
ARTICLE 27
- Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
๐ข๐ฆ๐๐ข ๐ฃ๐ฅ๐๐๐ ๐ฃ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐ 2023
Osloโs PRIDE PARADE 2023 was held on Saturday, July 01. It was a massive, happy, incident-free event attended by a record 90 000+ people; a rare event putting the beauty and love of Osloโs human diversity in world display without fear or favour. Norwayโs national television transmitted the event live. The huge turnout was defiant of the possible terror attack threat similar to that carried out outside the London Pub in central Oslo, June 25, 2022.
Itโs Monday, July 03, 2023 as I write this section of the essay. Iโll bet my last penny that the USA risks yet another day of shooting massacres across the nation on July the 4th than Norway shall any day soon endure satanic fires for being pro-LGBTQ+s right to exist happy and free in the country.
On Monday night, June 07, 2010, I reluctantly agreed to join a diverse group of some friends of mine for a beer at the London Pub, Oslo. I have never been into partying on weekdays, a fact my close friends know well. However, on this one night, my friends applied all the tools of the charm to get me to come along with them. We had to celebrate the final exams success of Greg, a younger, super talented jazz singer from Cape Town, South Africa. Ok.
All went well at the pub until I noticed that time was fast approaching midnight. I really had to go. A long working day was awaiting me ahead.
โOh, no, no, no, please, Simon, just wait another few minutes and we shall all leave this place together as a group and then go our separate ways home,โ cried Beya.
โArgh, man, ok! You guys are impossible!โ yours truly.
In the ensuing laughter amidst group amicable comments/ inside jokes like, โBlack Jew Simon just thinks money, money, money. He doesnโt have a social life!โ, the DJ suddenly plays full blast Stevie Wonderโs iconic Happy Birthday song. Before I knew it, I had been yanked onto the dance floor, and this group of between 20-30 men were singing along and dancing all around me. These men were all gay. That was the most wonderful surprise and kick-off moment for the subsequent series of parties marking my 50th birthday, which fell on June 08, 2010. A truly moving experience that I cherish to this day.
After the dance, a Champagne bottle was popped. For a moment I found myself sitting alone, as if my friends had made a quick dash and left me without any good-byes. Argh, just as well, I thought. I was set to go away, anyway. Suddenly, an unfamiliar, exuberantly perfumed, finely attired, beautiful young man sits next to me on the right, and makes as if to want to snuggle with me. As I turn to look at him, he looks me deep in the eyes and says, โBut, Simon, you ARE hetero, arenโt you?โ
โYes, I am,โ yours truly.
The disappointment wave emanating from the boy was palpable. As he apologetically and cautiously pulled away from me, a surge of paternal care cut through me, and the flirt in me woke up. So, I reached out, gently grabbed his hands, and pecked his left cheek, saying, โYes, I am heterosexual, but I love you for that!โ
In Norwegian, โ๐๐ถ, ๐๐ช๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ฏ, ๐ฅ๐ถ ๐๐ ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฐ, ๐ช๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฆ ๐ด๐ข๐ฏ๐ต?โ
โ๐๐ฐ, ๐ซ๐ฆ๐จ ๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฐ. ๐๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ซ๐ฆ๐จ ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ด๐ฌ๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐จ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ต!โ yours truly/ โโฆ But I love you all the same!โ
After my words and moves, I have never seen anybody waltzing away from me onto a dance floor in as glamorous and as joyful mood as that young man. Numerous eyes were on him. I hoped heโd find someone to love him then. That made me happy. I rose and quietly left the pub with the thought that, had that situation involved a girl, and I was in the mood, Iโd have gotten laid that night.
The terror attack tragedy outside the London Pub last year upset me at least as much as it did anybody else. Oslo gay groove house London Pub is a viable business entity. Public records show that it was registered in 2007. Itโs 2022 revenue was NOK 35 million, over twice as much as the previous year. During the said financial year, there were twenty-six employees. With outsourcing of security and other auxiliary services, thereโll be even more people earning a living working here.
The gay joint, London Pub is 50-50 owned by two gentlemen, Avni Fetisi and Selassie Desta G E G. I have reason to believe that the latter is of Ethiopian origin. And, last time I checked, Ethiopia was an African country. Just saying. Whilst living in South Africa as a child sometime in the late 1960s, my father once reminded a๐ฏ๐ข๐ต๐ถ๐ณ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ๐บ overbearing White car salesman that โMy money is NOT black!โ
Money knows no gender, no sexuality, no skin colour. Money just loves good business. If money makers are fair, theyโll pay their workers well regardless of non-professional considerations such as gender, sexuality, race, and all. Hopefully.
Violence against LGBTQ+ people and institutions will never succeed in ridding the world of people who love outside the narrow heterosexual stream. Launching surprise attacks on unarmed, peaceful people is a sign of sheer cowardice; idiocy supreme.
Real men fight men of their own sizes in real, bloody battles. At any one time, there are scores of wars played out in the world for trigger happy fools to go and play their silly, fake-manhood games. Prigozjin and his Wagner Group has room for soldiers of fortune he can use to feed the Putin-created meat grinder in Ukraine, for ๐๐ถ๐ด๐ด๐ช๐ข๐ฏ & ๐๐ฉ๐ช๐ฑ๐ด on South African oligarchโ State Capture braai coal flames. Check out Sudan too, if not the perennial DRC bloodbath.
It boggles my mind that a so-called man can run away from genocidal conditions in his country of origin – Iran, Pakistan, and others; find protection in Norway. Thrive. Grow up into a big and supposedly strong man. Is, or gets unhappy about the liberal, globally uplifting Norwegian way of life. Then decides to play the devilโs executor role and kill innocent people in/ of Norway; shooting them as if they were dummy targets in a shooting range.
There is no courage in fleeing from the fight for liberty in the land of your birth. There is no honour in killing your innocent, new landsmen only seeking to love who they love in the free world.
From the point of view of harnessing and growing a productive manpower resources base vis-ร -vis attainment of sustainable national developmental goals, there can be no bright economic future for Uganda in its use of state resources to persecute the LGBTQ+ community in the country.
As Uganda is not alone in this counter-progress tendency in Africa, I really do not see the continent coming out of the Africa Screwed. Africa Raped quagmire I mention in one of my earlier talks.
Africaโs future is doomed. All for leaders caught up in the ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ธ๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ฌ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ๐ด syndrome. The techno-socio-economic future of the world is shaped by forward-looking, problem-solving leaders. These apply contemporary tools available and relevant today, addressing needs for a successful push into the future of ever so rapidly changing and growing understanding of the workings of nature.
As I use the expression, the ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ธ๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ฌ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ๐ด syndrome refers to the inclination towards reliance on knowledge that may have prevailed once upon a time when society was high and mighty during, say, the Stone Age. Useless.
When progressive countries of the world are investing heavily inArtificial Intelligence (AI) Research and Development (R&D), Uganda is applying scarce resources in the hunt for Whoโs sleeping with who? At the same time Dead Aid keeps flowing into the country. Morbid.
๐๐ก ๐๐ข๐ก๐๐๐จ๐ฆ๐๐ข๐ก
Iโll happily engage with anybody that reaches out on this topic. Do write your comments below. But I am not in any way interested in any crap talk about God and religion. ๐๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ป๐ป๐ถ๐ป๐ป๐ป, God is the most divisive, most lethal of manโs responsibility escapism creations. Religion is a weapon of death in the name of God. Religious texts are murder prescriptions.
Neither am I interested in “๐๐ต’๐ด ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ณ ๐ค๐ถ๐ญ๐ต๐ถ๐ณ๐ฆ” reasoning. The moment I hear expressions like, โ๐๐ง๐ณ๐ช๐ค๐ข๐ฏ ๐ค๐ถ๐ญ๐ต๐ถ๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ฅ๐ฐ๐ฆ๐ด ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ต ๐ฑ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฎ๐ช๐ต ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ๐น๐ถ๐ข๐ญ๐ช๐ต๐บ!โ I see insular, static cultures oblivious to, or dismissive of local or global societal paradigm shifts with time. These insular, static cultures inhibit growth of curious, innovative minds. The latter being capable of, and ever willing to explore new frontiers of knowledge in efforts to find solutions to existential challenges facing society on all fronts.
Spearheaded by the ruling elites, parochial, conservative African cultures kill liberated human beingsโ creative potential. Myths intended to create perpetual fear and uncertainty in peopleโs lives are applied as effective oppressive tools, much like the holy scriptures in organized religions.
Bring me science of consistent, universally applicable, infinitely testable principles that effectively contribute to mankindโs efforts in the never-ending pursuit of bettering the quality of life for all on earth. I have no time for Conspiracy Theories bs-talk. Show me numbers. Thatโs all that interests me in this topic here.
This here is my voice. The voice of an independent, free spirit with no fear for the unknown, or peddlers of untruths and negative endeavours to the detriment of society. I speak for myself, reflecting the workings of my one-man intellectual and creative powerhouse.
I represent no particular interest groups anywhere. Neither do I speak on behalf of any special influential individual. I neither receive nor solicit any monies from any individual or groups, as a motivation to be their mouthpiece or speak favourably about them. Nobody owns me. No one owns my brains. I owe nobody no favours.
My take on the LGBTQ+ rights violations in Uganda and elsewhere is founded on universal Human Rights tenets. I neither hate nor disrespect the people of Uganda. My reaction is against appalling, out-of-tune-with-the-times, power abusive, oppressive, leadership. If the latter is fronted by Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, the heat shall be on him by default; it comes with the territory. Iโll lash out at any regressive national leader, be they Zuma, Mugabe, Putin, Trump, or whoever.
Purely from a Human Rights standpoint, I feel very, very strongly about the LGBTQ+ right to exist case. If I could have just one cause to fight for in my life, this would be it. As a matter of a deep-felt principle, persecution of LGBTQ+ people the world over touches the core of my injustices-against-humanity sensitivities in a profound way. This is a struggle for freedom. Any struggle for freedom is my struggle.
My pro-LGBTQ+ right to life is humanist, and is as solid as a rock. Those of my so-called relatives, friends, and other social relations across the board wishing to cancel me for my views on the LGBTQ+ question and other ludicrously controversial issues such as a womanโs rightto access abortion as she deems fit according to her life circumstances, may do so now. The time has come for hypocrites and cowards to stay clear. Good riddance.
It is okay to have differences of opinions on anything. In fact, it is absolutely natural that people all over the world will have certain commonly shared instinctually broadly and/ or narrowly defined proclivities according to their respective individual neuroendocrine systemsโ wirings. The latter being a function of both inheritance and infinite, known, and unknown immediate and distant environmental factors of short or lasting terms.
But it is not okay to hate. It is not okay to, by all means possible, actively work to exterminate people labelled as ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ท๐ช๐ข๐ฏ๐ต and ๐ด๐ช๐ฏ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ด by those individuals or collectives wielding societal power.
For as long as I can breathe, Iโll speak and write for justice and fairness. Iโll stand for the weak and vulnerable. Amongst other motivations, I do this for our children for them to not be afraid of the future, no matter how weird and unconventional they might be viewed to be, and treated as adults. I have this vision that, given the superior knowledge and courage we impart in our children today, theirs will be a better world for all tomorrow.
The MAGA movement bans and burns books, curtails liberatory education for enlightenment provision for American children today. I shudder to think about how primitive the future world would be would MAGA ever dominate fully the American society. That would also spell hell on earth for American LGBTQ+s. And mine will be one of the loudest resistance voices. You ainโt heard nothing yet. The biggest global freedom storms are yet to come. To the oppressed, the persecuted of the world: ๐ณ๐ง๐ค ๐ฅ๐ด๐ณ๐ด๐ฑ๐ค ๐จ๐ฒ ๐ก๐ฑ๐จ๐ฆ๐ง๐ณ. Believe me.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
July 03, 2023
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐
Reserve Husband in House of Beautiful Things
In my Tumbuka tribe in Zambia, a man is his brothersโ wivesโ 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.
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐
Separated
By the pond
Wife from another husband
My Dear Brother Ricky
Son Bolokiyoโs
๐๐ข๐ฎ๐ข ๐๐ช๐ค๐ต๐ฐ๐ณ๐ช๐ข and I
Met in the face of a book
In cyberspace
Celebrating her birthday
We took mikes and sang
We Djโd
We danced
Fell on our backs in joy and laughter
We dropped the mikes
Went our separate ways
In the perennial dollar chase
๐๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ๐ถ๐ฎ๐ฆ ๐๐ญ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ข
Blazing in my head
Yandikani Lunguโ spirit
With me in
๐๐ถ๐ป๐ถ๐ฏ๐จ๐ถ ๐๐ข๐ค๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ
In the north
From where lost souls never return
Black Diamonds
Hustling to bling
In the land of
Black gold
Got to work
Iโm so happy
I feel
Artworksโ eyes
On the walls
On me
I clear my head
I see
Artworks on the walls
Dance for me
Artworksโ subjects
Come to life in the frames
[…]
๐๐ก๐
ยฉSimon Chilembo 14/12-2022
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +92525032
April 07, 2023
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๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐?
๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐
DISCLAIMER
I do not have any academic nor professional training in art. My articulation of what art is a function of my laymanโs 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 Norwayโs Nasjonalmuseet. The institution has proved to be an awesome literary creativeโs 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: โWhat is Art?โ; creating a gotcha moment that I saw Ole revelling in.
Talking about Oleโs 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, โArt 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.โ
Ole, โI hear you. But you will have to elaborate more on all that you have just said!โ ย
Seeing as we had to attend to each of our respective duties at work then, I replied, โI shall write an essay for you, then. Deal?โ
โDeal!โ
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 โ eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose, intuition โ 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 ownerโs neuro-hormonal wiring and physical capabilities. One manโs apparent gory art may be anotherโs 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 humanityโs 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, manโs 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
๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐.๐.๐. โ ๐ ๐๐จ๐๐ฆ
REST IN POWER
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐
I never got to know AKA personally. Other than via his multimedia presence, Iโve never seen him live even at a distance. Neither do I personally know any of AKAโs family members, friends, colleagues, and others that closely connected to him. My tribute to him is unsolicited. I publicize it with only the best of intentions; in admiration of yet another gifted, inspirational artist gone too soon. Had I had blood children of my own, some of them would have been about AKAโs age. The sadness I feel about AKAโs demise is not only of a fan or from a creativeโs perspective, but of a man with much intrinsic paternal instincts sentiments also.
People die all the time under all sorts of circumstances. The thought of hundreds, if not thousands, of people dying daily in the ongoing Ukraine war, stupefies me. Starting with my mother in October, 2018, in the past four years since I returned from a five-yearโ stay in South Africa, 2013-18, there has been a significant number of deaths in my family and friends circles in both the already-mentioned, Zambia, other parts of the world, and Norway. This has been an emotionally challenging time in that regard. But no fuss.
A total stranger of a colossal socio-cultural influence at a global scale dies, and everyone near and far makes a fuss. Cynics look and rebuff, โWhat the โ๐ฆ๐งโ is this? Some famous person dies, and the whole world is out on tantrums. And yet, right within our midst, ordinary people die under the worst of human conditions every day. Some die in solitude only to be discovered years later. Nobody raises even an eyebrow. โ๐๐งโ the famous! โ๐๐งโ the rich!! โ๐๐งโ vanity worshippers!!!โ
When I fuss about AKA or some other phenomenal global socio-cultural personalityโs demise, itโs not so much about the person and their riches. Itโs more about how outcomes of their works impact, or have impacted me as a creative and one who is ever drawn towards beautiful, uplifting material and conceptual things. All the better if Rock Starsโ human values can be appreciatively compatible with mine. When people like these die, circumstances, age or time, and space regardless, I am ever reminded of my own vulnerability and mortality. It is a humbling experience.
I fuss as a means to confront and work with my fears in the face of my smallness against creation and my fate. Hoping that I shall succeed in living every day of my life as a decent human being inspired, imperfections granted, by lessons learned from the observed deeds exemplified by dearly departed. Deep felt condolences to AKAโs family, friends, colleagues, fans, and all others that value his work and humanity in South Africa and worldwide. May His Soul Rest in Eternal Power!
SC. 03/03-2023
In my books
๐๐ช๐ด๐ฉ, ๐ข๐ฃ๐ข๐ฏ๐ต๐ถ ๐ฃ๐ข๐ง๐ข ๐ฏ๐ซ๐ฆ
Like they never had meaning
No value
Thatโs ๐ฏ๐จ๐ฐ๐ฃ๐ข
My life stories
Are rooted
In the land of my birth
๐๐ป๐ข๐ฏ๐ด๐ช ๐ง๐ฐ ๐ด๐ฉ๐ฐ
Made hell on earth
Where at a
Blink of an eye
People fall and die
Daily
Like we are all
Bodies of houses of cards
Trivialized
From one game of cards
To the next
Gambling
With our lives at stake
Souls made cheap
Like we have no meaning
We have no value
When blood is ink for my pen
When each Word letter
On my computer screen
Streams blood Perfect
Sure as bullets in guns spell death perfect
People in my books
Canโt help but die
In the reality of murder
Executed perfect
As a tool for
Settling scores
Eliminating enemies
The detested
The envied
Disruptors
Troublemakers
Call them rabble-rousers
The corrupt and Rock Stars alike
Thinking that people exterminations
Solve problems in the living
Good riddance
As in books
Where people die on the one page
Forgotten in
Storylines on the next fiction page
People never learn perfect
Next chapter
Enter the police
Storylines change
Exonerated or
Guilty as charged
Closing chapter
Vengeance looms in
Urban jungle law
Last chapter open
Infinite
Another body of many
Shall bite the dust
All tomorrows ahead
Born naturally
Destined to perish
Due to
Unnatural death causes
In the hands of
Natural born killers
Hitmen dying as they lived
Life and death
Humping and bumping
On the circumference of
The circle of existence
To the extent that
We can breathe
Smell
The Rands and the Nairas
I dip my pen in blood
Blood smudges my writing papers
Sight of words
Weeping blood
On my computer screen
Hard to bear
Been too many deaths lately
๐๐ณ๐จ๐ฉ, ๐ฏ๐น๐ณ๐ฉ๐ฉ, tell me something new
In the world of the living
My new book
Says to give it a break
In the dead silence
Of my solitary work space
I breathe
Something
Finer than thin air
Oxidizes my sorrow
Slow
I feel peace
Inside
Outside
All over
If there was a time for me to get hit
This would be it
Iโd die without a pain
No complaint
No resistance
Stoicism in death
Waste of yet
Another fuckinโ life
Shoot-to-kill slain
In broad daylight
The Rands and the Nairas
Donโt matter no more now
The greenback
Going to America
With Nyovest
Leaving ๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ alone
Mahotella Queens wailing
Work for your money, son
Cease criminality
American guns shoot
Numerous folks at once
In the hands of one man
In eyes-wide-open
Prejudicial fellow humanโ slaughter
Whereas methodical knee-on-neck
Executes
One man at a time
On the street
In full world view
Under the sun
Just an aside
Dark clouds
Looming over
๐๐ป๐ข๐ฏ๐ด๐ช shall never die ๐ง๐ฐ ๐ด๐ฉ๐ฐ
Eskom the loadshedder ainโt no accident
We canโt hide even in the dark
And then
I hear a voice in a song
Do the rap lines
๐๐ฐ๐ฆ๐จ๐ฐ๐ฆ ๐ด๐ฌ๐ช๐ฆ๐ต ๐ฎ๐บ ๐ท๐ข๐ฏ ๐ข๐จ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ข๐ง
๐๐บ ๐ฅ๐ช๐ฏ๐ฌ ๐ฉ๐บ ๐ช๐ด โ๐ฏ hero
Thinks them reduced me
To worthless
House of cards fallen apart
Them donโt know
My center holds
Which is all I need
To root me
Six feet under
For me to rest in power
For my spirit to soar
Higher in the sky
Than in my living days
Check it out
Iโm on billboards
Now
Larger than life
Ever
My arms open
To the heavens
All eyes on me
As ever
Your storyโll be over soon
One way or another
No billboards for you
No smartphone screen saver pics of you
Pages of your story bookโs
Gonna burn
In every ๐๐ป๐ข๐ฏ๐ด๐ช home ๐ด๐ต๐ฐ๐ท ๐ด๐ข ๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐ฉ๐ญ๐ข ๐ง๐ฐ ๐ด๐ฉ๐ฐ
๐๐ฆ๐ญ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ ๐๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ, ๐ฃ๐ข๐ฃ๐บ
Going out of fashion
But for Eskom
From Cape Point to Beit Bridge
Ethekwini, I donโt wanna talk
All flames on you
Supa Mega is
Forever mega
Ainโt over
Till youโre over
Yโall haters
The mikeโs dropped
Peace
END
ยฉSimon Chilembo 19/02-2023
๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐
Living in the Now
I donโt 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
Donโt 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 canโt figure out
Whatโs become of me
When they expected
Iโd vaporize
In lustreless
Post-glory days life today
Them
Pathetic dimwits
Thinking they are
My redeemers
When even
Jesus ainโt my cuppa tea
I sing Hallelujah
Only โcause
It is a beautiful song
Written by a human
Out of human experience
It kindles
My glory
Which comes from within
Iโm smooth
I shine
Iโm glass
Reinforced
Animosity might rattle me
I wonโt crack
I wonโt break
Iโm black
Iโm bold
I glitter
Iโm diamond
Iโm gold fortressed
Amalgamated
Iโm steel
Stainless
Dirt donโt sit on me
Animosities bullet-proofed
Stones might hit me
They wonโt punch holes
Through my skin
They wonโt cause me harm
Hate war machines might strike me
I wonโt crack
I wonโt bend
I wonโt 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
Iโm an open book
I walk my written words
Thatโs my nature
True to my name
Writingโs on the wall
Expository
Glory days
Spill the beans
In more ways than one
Itโs only a matter of time
Bring it on
Alert
When they appear tomorrow
Them the haters
Iโll see them from afar
Fazed
They donโt know
They donโt know me
Theyโve never known me
Theyโll never know me
No love lost
Resilient
I live my life today
For future glory today
Thatโs 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
๐๐๐
ยฉSimon Chilembo 30/11-2022
๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐. ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐.
๐ก๐ข ๐๐ข๐ ๐ ๐๐ข๐ฅ ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐๐ง ๐ ๐๐ก
๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐, ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐?
Question asked by confidants, cynics, and the disdainful alike. To the extent that the current existential reality of the world, and that of myself as an individual remain unimproved, Iโll stay in Norway. I couldnโt live in Africa. Suffering from chronic post-colonialism Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Africa is a place just too messed up for me. Iโve lost all hope for the future of Africa as a progressive, equal geopolitics partner.
Acknowledging the presence of exceptional individual African minds; also, the potential of imparting good citizenry awareness to children and youth, my hope is not really totally lost. Addressing the attendant transgenerational trauma with a view to healing it is a long parallel process.
Were I to be a national political leader in Africa, Iโd become a tyrant overnight as Iโd be brutal against the corrupt, incompetent, and insolent ignoramuses. I rather prefer working at the grass-roots.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
09 September, 2022
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐
๐๐ก๐ข๐ญ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ฉ๐ซ๐๐ฆ๐๐๐ฒ ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฉ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ ๐๐๐
Look to Ukraine War 2022
To see
Ukraine people tearing
Replacement Theory apart
In practice
The last of
European fascistic scum falling apart
Replacement assumes plunder
Predicates
Displacement carnage
Genocide
The last of
European American fascistic scum
Daily murder Black descendants
Ancestors of whom
Got displaced from Africa
Got placed into slavery in the Americas
Thirteen million of them
Two million of whom
Became meals for
Sharks of the Atlantic
African prosperity halted
With the gap of the loss of
Bodies and brains
Replaced forever by
Poverty and misery
Disease scaling the cake
Dysfunctional states
A legacy
The Democratic Republic of the Congo
But one case in point
Gory Leopold of Belgium
Exterminated ten million people
As if they were flies here
Numerous others left with
Amputated limbs
Setting standard for
Sierra Leoneโs Charles Taylor
Decades later
Rwanda genocide
Shocked the world
Historically objectively viewed
Replacement Theory
In practice
Gave us colonialism
Gave me Apartheid
As welcome to earth present
In South Africa
Displaced
My motherโs people
From their land
Subjected us to
Poverty-driven subservience
Decimated us
Denied us the living
Opportunities for
Human potential maximization attainment
Replacing our human worth
With
Systemic racism oppression untold
Supremacist repressive methodologies
Blue prints perfected here
Apartheid a fascist catchphrase
These days
If you ask me
Five-hundred years later
Iโm in Europe
Begging bowl
In my hands
โ๐๐ข๐ฏ๐จ ๐๐ช๐ฌ๐ฆ ๐๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐ฆ!โ noose
Around my neck
Waiting for me
To take just one misstep
To lynch me
Survived
Have I already
Several a
Direct killer attempts
Me simply doing
What I gotta do
To be a decent human being
Everyday
Tailing after bounty
Stolen from my ancestors
Meanwhile
Hangmen-in-waiting
Scandalize my name
Already stabbed me in the back
That notwithstanding
Still standing
Stepping forth up-and-up
I can breathe
In America
Survivor posterity of my ancestral roots
Defy the highest odds
Living from day to day
Ever in search in the heavens
For reasons why
The colour of our skin
Is such an abomination
If there is a God
It is not for
People of colours
Children of the indigenous
Inhabitants of the
Americas land masses
Daily decry
Genocide of
Tens upon tens of millions of their ancestors
Fifty-six million perished
In the first one hundred years
At the hands of European scum settlers
Next time you see
The pre-match Haka
Do discern All Blacks
Souls of the Mฤori bemoaning
Replacement from their ancestral lands
In New Zealand
The Wallabies are no consolation
For the Aborigines
Replaced from their
Ancestral procreative spaces
To make room for replenishment of
Australian white supremacist
Grooming endeavours
Christchurch slaughters didnโt just happen
Beyond Peleโs legendary fecundity
On the soccer pitch
Millions more of
Survivor posterity of my ancestral roots
Languish
Displaced in
Brazilian favelas
And the hinterland
In Argentina
History just as dreadful for
Survivor posterity of my ancestral roots
Displace
Debase
Excruciate
Exclude
Incapacitate
Isolate
Replace
Discard
Eliminate
Thatโs the way of
Replacement Theory peddlers
In practice for real
Playing itself out
With impunity
With the right hand of God
Unbeknown to compassion
Jesusโ civility defiled
Today
Fleeing ravages of wars
Inseparable from
Ways of original global masters of
Replacement by murder: Imperialists
People of the world
Run to modern Europe unchanged
Steam to
United States of America the cursed un-united
Resurface in
The land down under
Traumatized
World emigrants
๐๐ฆ๐ด ๐ช๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ช๐จ๐ณรฉ๐ด ๐ฅ๐ถ ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ฆ
๐๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ด ๐ถ๐ต๐ท๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ
๐๐ข๐ต๐ด๐ข๐ฎ๐ข๐ช ๐ฃ๐ข ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ง๐ข๐ต๐ด๐ฉ๐ฆ
๐๐ฎ๐ข๐จ๐ฐ๐ฅ๐ถ๐ฌ๐ข
๐๐ฎ๐ข๐ค๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ข
Want not to kill anybody
Want not to rape anybody
Want not to plunder anybodyโs land
They only ask for
Shelter, food, and love
Hopefully
Packaged in something called
Human dignity
Ukraine War 2022 style
In our times
White Supremacists
Scared shitless of
Self-created myths
Of non-white people of the world
Wanting to eat
White people
Off the face of America
My foot
We are better than that by far
Oh, come on
If racist whites
Have failed to eliminate
People of colours
From black to magenta
For more than half a millennium
What makes
Hot-nutted
Small White American men
With guns in hands
As in
Buffalo shooting
Think that they can
Eradicate us now
We define resilience, dudes
Black donโt crack
Goes the rap
Letโs all live together in harmony
Now
Oh, by the way
In the 21st Century
And years pushing on ahead
Monoethnics are dying breeds
Multiculturalism is
The future of humanity
United in diversity today
Grow up
And
Get used to it, yโall bigots
Wash your damn bloody hands
Stay clean
For human solidarity
For love
Abound in the world
Despite the mess
You ever
So relentlessly strive
To sustain
How dum
Can a human being be
๐๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ป๐ถ๐ป๐ป๐ป
END
ยฉSimon Chilembo 22/05-2022
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
June 02, 2022
PS
The pandemic is still in our midst. Fears and factual untruths havenโt abated. In my 7th book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories, I highlight fallacies red lights and how to identify them. Order the book, read, and be inspired by my philosophical exposition on the matter. It might save yours and your loved onesโ lives.
DISCLAIMER: I neither offer nor suggest any cures or remedies. I promote fearless, independent thought and inclination towards pursuing science-based knowledge in times of, indeed, frightening, life-threatening phenomena in the world.
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Simon Chilembo 