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๐—ช๐—›๐—”๐—ง ๐—ฃ๐—˜๐—ข๐—ฃ๐—Ÿ๐—˜ ๐—”๐—ฅ๐—˜

๐—ง๐—ฅ๐—จ๐— ๐—ฃ ๐—จ๐—ฅ๐—”๐—ฉ๐—˜๐—Ÿ๐—Ÿ๐—˜๐——. ๐—›๐—˜ ๐—œ๐—ฆ ๐—ช๐—›๐—”๐—ง ๐—›๐—˜ ๐—œ๐—ฆ.

Behaviour actualizes the active (external) and passive (internal, withheld, private) manifestations of attitudes. For example, upon sighting a snake on the loose, a person that has a phobia (attitude) for snakes is likely to panic (behaviour) and exhibit fear (response) in all sorts of ways: scream, run, freeze with shock, or collapse, amongst multiple other variables according to prevailing circumstances and available supportive resources.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2025
ยฉSimon Chilembo 2025

On political thought development outside academia, special credit goes to unforgettable, ever intense informal Political Education moments with some of the most inspirational then anti-Apartheid liberation struggle veterans I met in Lusaka, Zambia, 1975-88. Comrade Joseph Nwenya, nom de guerre, Iโ€™d later meet in Oslo, Norway, 1988.

Kgoshi, as Joseph and I mutually affectionately address each other, has the special mind-blowing acuity of effectively blending our South African Sesotho traditional philosophy with contemporary political thought. Although he is enduring octogenarian well-being challenges now, Kgoshi and I have remained great friends since.

During my formative years growing up and going to school in Lesotho up until early 1969, some then top Basotho National Party male personalities used to frequent the place at which I stayed. Without exception, theyโ€™d each time have these heavily charged debates on boipuso and tokoloho, self-governance and liberation, respectively. Although I never understood much of what they were talking about then, the impact the apparent significance of boipuso and tokoloho for the people had on me reverberates in my body to this day. I am passionate about freedom and self-determination.   

Any fallacies or internal logic inadequacies arising in my presentations are my responsibility alone. Bring the heat on to me. Leave my teachers alone. I write with good intentions, seeking not only to make sense of my world for myself, but to contribute to the body of knowledge that aspires to promote love and peace in the world. Those who read read; those who donโ€™t donโ€™t. The human knowledge database grows exponentially every day; all for the taking for free, generally. In the free world, itโ€™s plausible to argue that ignorance is a choice.  

People are perceived for what they are through their actions relative to how they organize their lives against their private needs, how they manage their fears, and perceived or real threats against them; their idiosyncrasies. Isolated to the snake phobia example above, the concerned person may be seen to be a coward and irrational.

Nonetheless, cowardice and irrationality are not necessarily all-encompassing traits of the individual; the person may exhibit strength, courage, and resilience in other situations otherwise thought to be dangerous by others. Additionally, people are perceived for what they are through how they apply their personal attributes towards the attainment of their goals; that in sync with, or detrimental to their obligations beyond the individual to the multiple relational segments of the wider society.

For instance, an acclaimed philanthropic ultra-wealthy businessman, say, Jeffrey Epstein, shall remain a venerable figure until he is uncontestably factually revealed to be a paedophile. Epstein died whilst serving a prison sentence after having been judicially found guilty of the crime.

USA President Donald Trumpโ€™s influence over his MAGA is slipping away over his vehement refusal to have the notorious Epstein Files released, amongst other factors, including Trump Tariffs. When finally released, itโ€™ll be interesting to see if evidentiary material shall emerge or not to irrevocably tie Donald Trump as partaker to Jeffrey Epsteinโ€™s paedophile crimes endeavours. After all, these two gentlemen were once close friends for at least a decade from the 1990s, according to Epstein himself.          

Conversely, in the absence of tangible proof, people are not always what third parties assume and conclude that the people are of a certain human attitudinal or behavioural disposition. This is a fundamental legal and philosophical observation. That notwithstanding, Conspiracy Theories are as they are called because their propagators feed on unproven claims about certain phenomena and people.

But when a young man, Connor Estelle, openly and proudly declares on a YouTube multi-million viewer platform that he is, indeed, a fascist, his words are taken at face value. A background check on him will reveal that he got fired from his job specifically for his uninhibited, self-professed extreme political views. No speculations. Case closed. Live up to consequences of oneโ€™s choices.

American podcaster Candace Owens has made relentless claims that French President Macronโ€™s wife is a man, not a woman. The couple is suing Candace for defamation. Now, sheโ€™s reportedly fearing for her life. As at December 03, 2025, her claims of French government assassination plans of her have yet to be corroborated, according to online fact-check service, factually.co.

  • Once weโ€™ve died, weโ€™ll for eternity be destined either to heaven for moral rectitude in life, or to hell for moral corruption. In heaven, thereโ€™s the temperamental but ever sweet, live-happily-after-death entity called God.
  • Hell is the fiery domain of the mean Satan who thrives on roasting human souls. If, as according to believers, the human soul corresponds to the wind, no wonder, then, that hell fire flames burn infinitely after life. Factual realities of heaven and hellโ€™s existence have yet to be confirmed and documented by the dead-returned-to-life.  

Amongst other possibilities, language is developed and applied to identify, explain, and classify objects and phenomena as we relate to them by any means in the universe. For example, sociologically, language identifies the essay writer here as a male human being; a man by the name, Mr Cee.

Explaining who, or what Mr Cee is might initially mention physical attributes such as age (65 years old), height (1.60 metres tall), skin colour (black), and, by extension, origin (African), and current abode (Oslo, Norway). According priorities, or intentions in prevailing circumstances around Mr Cee, he may be classified under the categories of:

  • Short (below 1.8 metres stature).  
  • Senior Citizen (age 60+ years old).
  • Race (Black African).
  • Nationality โ€“ Norwegian citizen (Naturalized immigrant).
  • Birth place โ€“ South Africa.
  • Address โ€“ Oslo, Norway. 
  • Mr Cee remains MR CEE regardless of where he is on the planet.
  • Short people are identified, explained, and classified as such irrespective of who, or where they are on the planet.
  • An Oslo resident is an Oslo resident independent of, for instance, social status, or origin. Mr Cee has for many years lived in the same residential address zone as that of the King of Norway and the Norwegian Prime Ministerโ€™s official residences, respectively.   

Whereas identification, explanation, and classification of a specific object or phenomenon (a human being, in this case) may be universally applicable as to the person observed, or experienced, the said person as a unique entity shall remain what they are: a once off creationโ€™s product. Therefore, in the state of being a unique human being, a person โ€˜Aโ€™ may exhibit certain physical and/ or behavioural attributes like those that are manifested by another person โ€˜Bโ€™ of any origin, age, gender, race, religion, or creed. And, thatโ€™s as far as it goes. As individual expressions of the unique human species, persons โ€˜Aโ€™ and โ€˜Bโ€™ share equally the essence of being human as extrapolated in the human genome, the core our genetic makeup.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2019

Likening person โ€˜Aโ€™ to person โ€˜Bโ€™ due to identification of certain manifest shared idiosyncrasies does not, and can never make person โ€˜Aโ€™ into person โ€™Bโ€™, or the other way around. Perhaps until human cloning is perfected and morally acceptable, each human being that has ever been procreated and, for purposes of this essay, born and lived is a unique, closed-system individual. This individual can never voluntarily morph themselves, or be in any way morphed into another person. That applies to any other person that has yet to be conceived and born, subsequently, and as far as human knowledge boundaries expand today.  

Human attributes comparisons do not, cannot regenerate the people concerned either way. Comparisons do not, cannot replicate. Comparisons are a rhetorical tool applied to help us see different perspectives around matters of discussions in the various endeavours of being human. Comparisons, metaphors, and similes enrich debate; they feed the imagination. They push boundaries of our thinking horizons. That way enhancing our reasoning capacities as we all daily strive to make sense of our existential reality on planet earth, if not the infinite universe of which we are ever such a minuscule and vulnerable part.

In the video WHITE AMERICA = BLACK AFRICA โ€“ MAGA AMERICA SAME AS DARK AFRIKA: The Black South Africa Case, published on February 2nd, 2024, I build a case for showing personality traits similarities between Donald Trump and Black gangsters as I recall them from my former township, Thabong, Welkom, South Africa. White Trump will never be Black. Township Black Tsotsies/ gangsters will never be White.

Behaviourally, though, they are very identical; differences in the material conditions of their respective operational spaces granted, of course. Real Estate multi-millionaire son, Donald Trump, was born with a silverspoon in his mouth; spoilt to the core. In extreme cases, which is often as such, many a Black township tsotsie could have been born and raised in abject poverty with non-existent Social Security safety net.    

What I know is that longevity is not a concept alive much in a South African gangsterโ€™s life. Other gangsters from elsewhere can speak for themselves. Thank goodness that, despite everything else, the law still works somewhat in the USA. As do official VIP Protection services. Eliminating the possibility of inavoidable debilitating health issues arising in the interim, Donald Trump can with good margins look forward to marking his 80th birthday in June 2026. In South Africa, the law works too. Jacob Zuma also has a high probability of celebrating his 84th birthday in April 2026.

The paradox is such that where it works well, as things stand today, USA law protects the Presidency so much that it has enabled Donald Trump to believe that he is above the law. Thatโ€™s how he, with absolute impunity, has continued to push boundaries to the extreme even more in this his second term of office. And he plays the part well for himself and his allies, much to the bewilderment of his political opponents, and the dismay of other observers, local and abroad:

  • DOGE is gone, but the damage is done. Irreparable. Desaster. Uncalled for. With DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), Trump had engaged his former friend, tech billionaire Elon Musk, to identify and eliminate wasteful government spending. But, instead, Musk, went on a spree of unjustifiable, as QUARTZ online news article of December 11, 2025, puts it, โ€œโ€ฆ mass layoffs at government agencies and publicly funded organizations. It also took part in an immigration crackdown and copied sensitive data from government databases.โ€   
  • ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)keeps breaking peopleโ€™s bones and spirits. Trump will never pure-whitify USA with hyper stringent, violent immigration control policies and application thereof. Indeed, illigal immigration breaks the law. But illegal immigrants, definite criminals included, are also humans deserving, entitled to dignified, due-process treatment as provided for in USA law.
    It seems that there is sadistic joy in seeing Black-Brown people agonize in pain, some of them American citizens caught up in the erratic ICE raids in big cities like Baltimore. Democrat Senator Mark Kelly has said it loud and clear on CNN TV/ online news channelโ€™ State of the Union programme, โ€œHe [Donald Trump] doesn’t want brown people in our country.โ€
  • In what they call “Operation Southern Spear“, The US Navy keeps bombing Caribean fishermen in the name of war against drugs. War against Venezuela is looming. According to a The Conversation online news report, Trump sees Venezuelan President Maduro as an anti-USA terrorist group leader and, thus, the latterโ€™s regime is illegitimate.

From the already mentioned video above, I bring forth two traits that, in my view, align Donald Trump with Black South African gangstersโ€™ mentality:

  • Ho sa (Sesotho, noun), lumps together the Black gangster vices into one virulent trait: petulance as gross as it can get. The descriptive form of ho sa is โ€œO sele!โ€, meaning โ€œHe/ 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. They are heartless, self-centred, shameless, fear-insulated, thrill-seeker types of the worst kind. Makings of despots emerge here. Donald Trump โ€œo seleโ€!
  • Manganga (Sesotho)/ Inkani (isiZulu) is absolute stubbornness. This is as Trumpish a trait as can be. 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. As in say, the โ€œTrump tariffsโ€ matter, or Trumpโ€™s assertion that โ€œUkraine started the Russian war in Ukraineโ€. Stay rock-steady as a matter of principle because you cannot be wrong; never, 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!

When fact-checked, double-down, triple-down, quadruple-down, quintuple-down, sextuple-down, โ€ฆ just x2-tuple down until they canโ€™t breathe no more. If they donโ€™t fall, bully them, ridicule them, insult them, threaten them; as in the cases of Letitia James and James Comey, for example, overwhelm them with arrays of indictments, flimsy or not โ€“ just create enduring chaos. Were it possible, youโ€™d disappear them at a snap of your fingers.

Your opponents shall declare you as deranged, delusional; but that doesnโ€™t bother you at all. You are mmampodi (Sesotho)/ champion; you rule. You live above the law. You own your followers through and through. Each one of them understands that you are their life saviour โ€“ the MAGA base. So, in the same fashion that he steadfastly insists that tariffs are paid by foreign countries exporting goods into the USA, Donald Trump holds his ground that โ€œWhite Genocideโ€ is carried out in South Africa.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2017

Not only USA entrepreneurs and consumers, but also top world Economists, including Nobel Prize laureateslikePaul Krugman, have shown how wrong Trump is, and how inflationary โ€œTrump Tariffsโ€ are. The man doesnโ€™t care. Trumpian tariffs theory is determined to not only disrupt but overturn conventional Economics definition of tariffs.

The non-partisan Govfacts.org defines tariffs as follows, โ€œA tariff is a tax that governments place on goods coming into their country. You might also hear them called duties or customs duties โ€ฆ The most immediate effect of a tariff is simple: it makes imported products more expensive for Americans to buy โ€ฆ  tariffs aim to alter economic behavior, discouraging imports and creating an incentive to purchase domestically produced alternatives.โ€

Unfortunately, Donald Trump is fighting a losing battle on his forcefully unorthodox approach to the application of tariffs contra USAโ€™s trading partners, essentially all countries engaging with the USA in international trade.  Itโ€™s like the man gets the kicks out of ever striving to change the unchangeable; out of ever striving to push factually false claims no matter what.

Itโ€™s like Donald Trump believes that his word is law, the absolute truth. But that will never work to the extent that wisdom and courage in the world are durable. His rigid one-track-minded denialism he even extends to far beyond his countryโ€™s borders. Involving himself in the internal affairs of another country, heโ€™ll brazenly endorse and aid push false anti-establishment narratives that align with his own political agenda, and excite his base in the USA.

For instance, regarding South Africa, he has fully embraced the debunked โ€œWhite Genocideโ€ claims in the country. Numerous prominent South African White people in politics, John Steenhuisen; business, Johann Rupert, and Afrikaner commentator Piet Croucamp have come out and spoken against these claims.

In a CBS online news article of May 21, 2025, Piet Croucamp was quoted as saying, “There’s no sign of it, never has been. In fact, Whites are economically the strongest group in South Africa โ€ฆ 64% of all boardrooms in South Africa are still White. The average incomes of White South Africans are vastly higher than Black South Africans … they have better schools, they have better education, private health care. This is the land of milk and honey if you’re White.”

And, yet, Donald Trump holds his ground. The man is surely a lost cause. The man is losing it, if he hasnโ€™t lost it already. Lawrence Oโ€™Donnell, probably his harshest journalistic critic, relentlessly argues that Donald Trump is on a cognitive decline. He emphatically describes Trump as a pathological liar and racist. That says a lot when it is manifest that, on the one hand, Trump is currently effecting an overtly brutal ICE-driven anti-immigration campaign against many non-White immigrants with or without legal issues during their stay in the USA.

On December 11, 2025, Lawrence Oโ€™Donnell laid it out on his show on MS NOW YouTube channel, โ€œWell, Donald Trump confessed last night. Donald Trump confessed that he was lying. Donald Trump turned himself in as a pathological liar last night โ€ฆ Itโ€™s not news that Donald Trump is a racist โ€ฆ Itโ€™s not news that Donald Trump is a vile, ugly stain on American public life โ€ฆโ€

Indeed, on the other hand, Trump has arbitrarily opened a political asylum window for purportedly persecuted White South Africans. A blatant racist move he carries out because he can. White Supremacy power abuse as brash as it gets.   

Who knows it better than the one who feels it? Since no societal transformation will ever satisfy everyone anywhere, itโ€™s, indeed, hardly surprising that there will be a segment of White South Africans that are bitter at their loss of White Supremacist Privilege and Power in the post-Apartheid Rainbow Nation. A minority, fortunately.

Amicus International Consulting is a Canadian global mobility and related services facilitating firm that has experience working with migratory White South Africans abroad. In an article mentioning the firm in Newstrail.comof May 26, 2025, itโ€™s reported that โ€œDespite media attention on asylum claims, dual citizenship applications, and second passport programs, the majority of South Africaโ€™s white minority is choosing to remain in the country they call home, anchored by heritage, identity, and a commitment to national renewal.โ€  

Itโ€™s mind-boggling to have Donald Trump disregard the voice of the majority of White South Africans that, rightly so, speak against the โ€œWhite Genocideโ€ and White-land grabs claims in the country. In a BBC.com article of May 23, 2025, South African Police Minister, Senzo Mchunu, says, โ€œSouth Africa crime statistics debunk ‘white genocide’โ€

In an earlier article of February 25, 2025, BBC.com had reported that โ€œA South African court has dismissed claims of a white genocide in the country as “clearly imagined” and “not real”, undermining comments made by US President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk.โ€

This a manifestation of bodomo / stupidity, fundamentally undelineable ignorance as raw as it gets; the stupid so stupid that they donโ€™t even know how profoundly dangerously stupid they are. 
It is what it is. Tyrants, hard-core conspiracy theorists, and charlatans fall under this category.

And, talking about petulance, in the video WHITE CONMAN BLACK INSIDE – The Worst Conman Scandals in Politics Revealed: Trump and Zuma Alike, I expand my Trump eccentrics narrative to zoom onto one South African political leadership face to compare with. The video was published on April 23, 2025. With some modifications to suit this presentation, an excerpt from WHITE CONMAN BLACK INSIDEtextreads as follows:

โ€œAbundantly incompetently stupid leaders are ruthless. They are petulant, lacking empathy. They are buffoons to whom civility is a concept unknown. In geopolitics affairs, as in the recent Trump-boycotted G20 summit in South Africa, they are International Relations disasters. Perpetual dumbheads with skewed views of the world.

โ€œIn their extreme madness stunts, some of them could self-annihilatorily nuclear-bomb the world and they wouldnโ€™t care. Should it happen, theyโ€™d probably say, โ€œOoops!โ€, and die happily. In their heads, satisfied with themselves, thinking that theyโ€™d have shown the world the power of alpha-male masculinity. My foot!    

โ€œThe USA has Donald Trump. South Africa has Jacob Zuma. In my mother tongue, Sesotho, weโ€™d say about these two that they could have been birthed by the same woman. They could exchange countries, and theyโ€™d be just as equally dumbfounding as individuals, and as two who share numerous common inherent personality traits. Different outside, but internally driven by significant identical idiosyncrasies in many respects.

โ€œItโ€™s not as if Trump and Zuma are collectively especially unique in this regard. The world is full of numerous others of their particular behavioural attributes. Any list of historical and contemporary tyrants you can conjure from any corner of the world to another will do. Start with Adolf Hitler, for example. Without exception, these are ever destructive, regressive elements responsible for manifestations, if not experiences, of some of the darkest moments of societal leadership dysfunctionalities the world over, all through the epochs to the present.

โ€œAt the micro level, I already lived Trump-Zuma-like tyranny through experiences and observations I derived whilst growing up in the hard, gangster-infested township street life in the then Apartheid South Africa. Itโ€™s not as if much has changed, though: take a walk in the Cape Flats.

I was born in South Africa in 1960. In late 1965, I became perceptually conscious of, and began to intentionally store memorable experiences of my life in all the environments Iโ€™d find myself to this day.

โ€œLooking back, I effortlessly see Trump and Zuma on the faces of all the meanest gangsters, including all other grown-up men that were feared and despised for their ferocity as spouses, fathers, and fellow citizens in other aspects of life.

โ€œThese kinds of guys think that they are smart. However, if smartness is judged in terms of abilities to progressively solve the never ending big and ever complex familial and/ or societal engineering challenges, they score terribly bad all the time. Blatant dysfunctional, erratic, myopic, anarchical, and other regressive leadership qualities characterize their governance capabilities, from the smallest organizational units to the largest at the national and international levels.

โ€œDestruction of once, or potentially functional societal services and production institutions and processes is the imminent, if not immediate, outcome of these kind of guysโ€™ rule. The longer they stay in power, the more destruction they cause; ultimately leading to civil unrest and possible social collapse, culminating in civil or international wars at worst. Given the unsurprisingly  egregiously disruptive  start of his second term locally, and his blatantly disdainful disregard for International Relations  protocols, Trump could ignite a third World War …โ€
 The USA is falling apart in real time, right in front of our eyes. Prove me wrong if you can.

In South Africa, Jacob Zuma is still breathing. In the national General Elections 2024, he almost broke the ruling party, the ANCโ€™ back with his newly-formed disruptive party MK (uMkhonto we Sizwe). Zuma Presidency 2.0 is improbable, though.  Just like Donald Trump, Zuma and some of his children are ever determined grifters making news headlines for the wrong reasons. Now, they dupe South African young men to go and fight in Putinโ€™s Ukraine war

With all the events leading up to Donald Trumpโ€™s 2.0 presidency to the present, Iโ€™m continually fascinated by online debates featuring MAGA and their likeminded against many a Democrat or some other USA progressive pundits. Watching these debates on platforms like Piers Morganโ€™s YouTube channel, and CNN shock me at the shallowness of thought and analysis of the MAGA people.

In written media, though, more sober analyses are presented. Referring to examples of Ancient Greece and Classical China, online publication The Conversation of July 15, 2025, explains where tyranny comes from and how it develops, to begin with. It makes the increasingly observable point that โ€œWeโ€™re just a few months into US president Donald Trumpโ€™s second term but his rule has already been repeatedly compared to tyranny.โ€

Mehdi Hasanโ€™s Zeteo YouTube channel, and the whole media house concept, is a breath of fresh air contra the overwhelmingly dumbfounding poorly structured, word salad, loud-mouthed, overbearing, condescending debating style of some MAGA debaters. Here, and on other platforms that he features in from time to time, Mehdi, with hard-hitting verifiable fact-based discourses, intellectually crushes to pulp many a MAGA pundit. Sadly, they never, never want to learn. In essence, they are uneducable; to some extent not by choice. They simply are inherently as dumb as a rock that no stone-art sculptor would want to touch. Useless.    

At times, before I recover from my perplexity and recall that itโ€™s not coded in racial terms how we think, feel, and express ourselves, the grossly traumatized little โ€œKaffir Boyโ€ residing at my nape finds it truly unfathomable that White people, speaking, yes, English, can be so โ€œeffingโ€ unashamedly dumb, pig-headed day-after-day on live global television screens.

You see, already from my formative years whilst growing up in the heat of Apartheid in South Africa until the beginning of 1975, the idea that White people were the most intelligent people in the world was brutally ingrained in my head. Of course, the English were the lords over everyone. We were taught this shit at school, at church, and even in our homes. So terrified were our people. So effective was Apartheid brutality; those who never lived the experience really have no idea.

Just like some people wonder how Black people can still be Christians and Muslims when Black people continue to be subjected to the darkest atrocities in the name of God, itโ€™s a wonder that White people continue to live happily ever after in post-Apartheid South Africa. Those that are not happy are happily allowed to tell lies and happily go away and live Donald Trumpโ€™s horrendous American Nightmare. Theyโ€™ll be welcome back home should they be disillusioned with Trumpland. Afterall, the Bible tells a story of the prodigal son that went out and got battered by the world.

The dude returned home to his wealthy father; was forgiven, got a new lease of life, and lived happily ever after. God is good. Whites Only Orania lives on; thanks to the South African stateโ€™s adherence to arguably the most tolerant constitution in the world.   

The little K-Boy in me is totally baffled. I calm him down by reminding him that intelligence, as itโ€™s played out through our human relations communication skills, is a function of how we are oiled and wired endocrine-neurologically. This, combined with a myriad of other complex physiological and physical process shall work optimally for some, expressing what will generally be normal behavioural tendencies of humaneness; without being perfect. Nobody is perfect. Who needs perfection?  

This attraction is so strong that, given Trumpโ€™s MAGA White Supremacist ideology, even those he detests will support him, regardless: Blacks for Trump, Latinos for Trump, Chinese for Trump, Muslims for Trump, Indians for Trump, Somalians for Trump, Nigerians for Trump, Women for Trump, and others. On the 11th January, 2021, I, on my private blog, Chilembo Warrior Moves.com, published an article addressing the above theme.

The article got titled CONSPIRACY THEORIES: TO BE OR NOT TO BE SUSCEPTIBLE; and I quote a passage, โ€œIn terms of human power relations contra survival imperatives fulfilment or lack [there]of, people of identical mental dispositions attract one another. This attraction cuts across all unnatural power barriers instituted to justify domination and dehumanization of others.

โ€œPolitical orientations arising in the organization of society are instituted upon peopleโ€™s mental dispositions influencing and expressing their value judgements. As such, Conservatives donโ€™t like change to the extent that they rule. Whereas Liberals [or Progressives] seek to overturn the status quo inhibiting liberty, justice, and equality in society.โ€

On the 6th November, 2020, I had already seen the hazards to which the These-and-Those for Trump special-interests-groups were exposing themselves. So, I couldnโ€™t help but let my frustration out on my Facebook news feed.

I wrote, and I quote, โ€œYouโ€™ve got to know who your friends, your brethren are when it comes to big existential questions. You see, in the psyche of White Supremacists, if you are not of 100% European extraction, you are black. Thatโ€™s it. It doesnโ€™t matter where on planet earth you originate from, least of all, yes, Africa. Needless to say. We are talking solidarity here.

Especially if you are White Supremacy object of hate in the United States of America, amongst other things, get to objective grips with what Socialism really is in the context of actual societal engineering modalities in the world.

โ€œRead books. It never hurts to go to school, where youโ€™ll be taught some interesting things about Critical Thinking contra myths and Conspiracy Theories.

โ€œAs things Rock and Roll today, America will never be a socialist state. Not in my life time, anyway. I have at least another sixty years to go. Racism is racism even if it comes coated with vanilla ice cream, wrapped in fake, psychotic The Economy greenbacks. Check what they say about hyenas and sheep skins. Iโ€™ll see you in 2024.โ€

2024 landed full speed. Shameless Donald Trump, whether texting online or spewing vitriol through his vile mouth everywhere showed up missiles blowing, both figuratively and literally; the latter in Ukraine and the Middle East wars, respectively. Now, as already stated above, Trump wants to start a war with Venezuela, starting by bombing innocent fishermen as if they were arbitrary target practice objects.

USA Somalians no longer of strategic and political currency to him hardly a year into his Presidency 2.0 term, Donald Trump has shown his true colours: not only throwing Somalians for Trump under the bus, but also publicly insulting them with impunity. Trump called the Somalians โ€œgarbageโ€, saying that their country of origin, Somalia, stinksโ€. He went on to make it unequivocally clear that, as reported by Aljazeera, and I quote, โ€œโ€ŠI donโ€™t want them in our country, Iโ€™ll be honest with you,โ€ Trump said of Somalis on Tuesday [December 02, 2025].

There we go, then, USA Somalian MAGA Trumpets, and your fellow other non-White These-and-Those for Trump, including Women for Trump, I really donโ€™t want to say it, but big-lettered โ€œFโ€, I, WE โ€œEFFINGโ€ TOLD YOU SO! I, WE, ainโ€™t Woke for nothing. Jeeezzuzzz!!!

The idea of this essay came forth whilst, a few weeks ago, I was watching yet another atrociously noisy, knowledge value addition shallow MAGA v/s Progressives panel debate online about whether Donald Trump is a fascist or not. The MAGA proponentsโ€™ predictable verbal diarrhoea interrogatory debating style rhetorical question, โ€œAre you saying that Donald Trump IS Adolf Hitler, then? Is President Donald a Nazi? Is that what you are saying?โ€ gives me such a headache it makes me wanna holler.

At some point, the panel was so noisy they reminded me of a bunch of stray cats in heat causing an all-night ruckus outside my bedroom window at a lodge I once stayed in a Greek village. At that point, my mind raced. And, in conclusion, formulating in my head how Iโ€™d present my case were I on that panel:

Comparing Donald to Hitler does not say Donald Trump is Hitler. Donald Trump can never be Hitler nor Mussolini. Not only because they are dead. Even if they were alive, Trump could never be either of the two. But he is like them in how they separately were as individuals and political leaders: fascists. Itโ€™s idiotic to argue that Donald Trump couldnโ€™t be a Nazi because he never committed the holocaust.

Hitler murdered the Jews between 1933-45. Trump wasnโ€™t there. Neither was Trump there during Mussoliniโ€™s time. Trump will never commit the same atrocities that the two fascists mentioned did for time and geographical differences, not in the least, different demographical conditions in the 21st Century. Comparative personality traits are functions of the compared, or likened, within the realities of their respective times and spaces.

Behaviourally, a Nazi in 1945 is the same as a Nazi in 2025. Itโ€™s only prevailing material conditions at their times and spaces that will determine how, and to what extent they shall play out their inhuman practices. In 2025, Nazi Trump executes mass deportations of Black and Brown people from the USA with DEIโ€™s extreme brutality. If he had the opportunity, he probably would gas and burn the people, much like his hero Hitler did with the Holocaust.

Seventy years after the holocaust, Trump has at his disposal the so-called Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Heading the most powerful army in the world today, according to Global Firepower.com, Hegseth callously bombs Caribbean fishermen without any evidence of the latter posing any drug trafficking or military danger to the USA the land or marine installations in the region.

Venice AI correctly concludes that my case is a polemical and highly charged interpretation of events. It further summarizes that my narrative is that Trump’s fascist nature is not just a matter of personality, but is being actively implemented through his cabinet. The Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, is the instrument through which Trump’s “inhuman practices” are executed, tailored to the geopolitical and technological realities of 2025.

Venice AI concludes that the inclusion of Hegseth’s role forces an engagement with the argument on its own terms: that the actions of the Trump administration, including its personnel choices and specific military policies, constitute a modern form of fascism.

Simon Chilembo
Oslo
07.12.2025

๐—›๐—ข๐—ช ๐—œ ๐—”๐—  ๐—›๐—”๐—ฃ๐—ฃ๐—ฌ ๐—”๐—Ÿ๐—Ÿ ๐—ง๐—›๐—˜ ๐—ง๐—œ๐— ๐—˜

๐—›๐—”๐—ฃ๐—ฃ๐—œ๐—ก๐—˜๐—ฆ๐—ฆ ๐—ฆ๐—”๐—ฉ๐—˜๐—ฆ ๐—Ÿ๐—œ๐—ฉ๐—˜๐—ฆ. ๐—ง๐—ฅ๐—ฌ ๐—œ๐—ง!

CHANGE VERSUS SELF-LOVE

I love me just the way I am. Thatโ€™s a given. If I could go changing, I donโ€™t know if Iโ€™d be pleased with the outcome. For as sophisticated an organism as a human being is, change as an objective and subjective process is a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon. If planned and executed with specific, predetermined elements within specific parameters, change outcomes of the changeable could be predicted.

Randomly occurring change can lead to any previously known or unknown outcomes in any direction.  A human being cannot be one thing or another, and thatโ€™s it. From the outset, human beings become the way that they are out of chance, instantaneous combinations of fixed familial heritage (i.e. genetics) and time-progressive, ever-variable socio-environmental factors (nurture).

INNER PEACE

The day I understood that I could only be what I am and that I could only do what I do at any one time because thatโ€™s whatโ€™s accessible to, doable, and fun here and now, I found inner peace; I loved myself more. I internalized the idea that I could, indeed, do anything towards the attainment of my dreams only to the extent that what is available and doable is compatible with my values. Compatibility with my physical and mental strengths, and my philosophical and spiritual equilibria, is an important determinant factor too.

THE IMPOSSIBLES

Iโ€™ll never venture to do the impossible beyond what my mind and body are not keen to pursue for lack of interest, curiosity, relevant competence, or application tools and other resources. For example, a Mt Everest Mountain climb expedition is out of the question for me. Neither do I even dream of traversing the Antarctic to reach the South Pole. I walk on the moon in my poetry only. Iโ€™m simply not cut out for these. No love lost.

Nonetheless, I do profoundly admire those people who partake and succeed in these and other related extreme effort endeavours. Attitudinally, these people inspire my will to win when I know that I do have what it takes to overcome obstacles to triumph in given contexts.

Thatโ€™s how I could, in the comfort of my creative work studio on a tropical island somewhere, exclusively sit, think and write, and write and think every day of my life until the end of time. Thatโ€™s me. My extreme sport is my far-reaching, deep-tranced, time-unbound literary creative exploits mind-games.

EXPLANATORY MODELS IMPERATIVE   

If I cannot synthesize for myself an independent, scientifically sound, humane explanatory model for some material or conceptual endeavour Iโ€™m challenged or tempted to perform or be part of for any purpose, Iโ€™m not likely to do it. This attitude has enhanced my sense of freedom in the free world. It has empowered me with the idea that I do have much greater influence as to the direction and extent of the potential of my destiny; unpredictabilities of nature, human vulnerabilities against the forces of nature, and world socio-politico conditions notwithstanding.

My finding inner peace has enabled me to better know myself, appreciating my strengths in the hustle and bustle of living. Whilst not trivializing my apparent weaknesses in given situations, I never put much thought into the former. If Iโ€™m weak at it, then itโ€™s not important for me. I care but little about it. Iโ€™ll always strive to harness all the strength I need in my efforts to realize the expected objectives of any endeavours that are of significant importance for my survival, or fulfilment of my professional and social obligations.

MY HERITAGE

Thanks to the inner peace that I enjoy, I have come to appreciate my origins more and more. I value more my parents, and I respect my lineages even more. All the glory Iโ€™ve basked in, and the hard times that Iโ€™ve had to endure in my life so far have more meaning now. The continual existential lessons owing to these life experiences form the foundation upon which my emotional-spiritual and mental-philosophical premises stand.

I have a greater sense of confidence in my perennial work to carve spaces of safety and comfort conducive to my creative work growth and consolidation. My hope for and faith in arriving at a future of light and abundance into longevity and immortality are enhanced. I have never been more optimistic about the future.

INCOMPREHENSIBLE WARS    

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 โ€˜The Greatest Love of Allโ€™. Recollections of the joyous moments this unofficial bonus show creates for all Iโ€™ll take with me to my grave, should I die.

Throughout the work days, Tuesday-Sunday, locals and international tourists of all ages and walks of life flock to my workplace of beautiful things. Interacting with all these people is a joyous privilege that invariably contributes to the fortification of my inner-peace state of being. Iโ€™m happy at work.

PERVASIVE HAPPINESS

My happiness permeates all aspects of my life: the visible to the external world, and the invisible that form the core of me, my essence, that only I can experience and fathom. The latter is so profound that I cannot explain it in words. I only know that itโ€™s there; and it plays itself out all the time in my interactions with people at all levels, be it in professional work or social settings. It plays itself out in my solitary moments also. Thatโ€™s how it is that I donโ€™t know what loneliness is as a personal experience. If I have an ever-green, loyal lifelong companion, it is my happy all the time state of being.

My jovial disposition is legendary even to me. Iโ€™ve been happy all the time for as long as I can remember. My happiness lives a life of itself inside of me. Of course, people and things will frustrate and anger me from time to time. Iโ€™m only human. I will express my frustration and anger in one way or another. The intensity or severity of my sentiments and reactions depends on the gravity of the matter as I see it there and then. But the core of my happiness has yet to crumble. Should my happiness ever crumble, then, thatโ€™ll be my demise. Goodbye, world; goodbye, beautiful people!

WHEN IT STARTED

I associate my first conscious encounter with happiness with Boxing Day morning, 1964. I was 4 ยฝ years old, then. Neighbourhood children poured into our home yelling incessantly, โ€œChristmas box, Simonโ€™s father, Christmas box โ€ฆ!!!โ€

In what Iโ€™d later understand to be Father Christmas style, Pappa came out of our house carrying a large box full of various kinds of colourful and noisy toys. There were lots of candies too. I stood there looking in amazement at these children happily pouncing upon the box, each child seeking to get as much as possible of the presents therein. Letting go of the box and stepping aside in some effusive laughter fit, my father showed the happiest moment of him the like of which I would never see again after this.

A short while later, Pappa, together with my mother and grandmother, gave me my boxed present. I never got to find out what the present was exactly because I soon lost it in the melee of happy children all around me in our yard. That Boxing Day 1964 childrenโ€™s party would be a one-time event that made a lasting impression on all the neighbourhood children and their respective families. However, Pappa would continue thrilling us children by every so often buying us ice cream from the ice cream bicycle men doing business up-and-down the streets. This would last until my family left South Africa in January 1975.

By the time we left South Africa, the happiness bug had become chronic in me. Iโ€™ve got the incurable exhilaration jungle fever. Iโ€™m ever happy by default, therefore. Even so, I know how to switch my happiness machine on and off at will according to occurrences around me at any time and space.

DEFIANCE HAPPINESS

Having taken neo-slavery to the next level of sophistication in the 20th Century, the former Apartheid system in the land continued to subject us, Black people, to deliberate, systemic, effective application of extreme violence everywhere every day. This violence was so degenerative of the human spirit that it even reproduced itself in the home. Violence remains endemic in South African society to this day. Despite all that, there were always innumerable remarkable moments of unrestrained joy in various situations every day.

There was always something about anything or anybody to laugh about. My contemporaries and I laughed at each other: friends and foes alike. We could grossly laugh at each other into fights; much as we used to do the same to stop fights and create conditions for a peaceful coexistence in a hard world, short-lived as the peace would be.

Our days on the streets consisted of ever intertwining circles of play, fight, peace, song and dance, mutual or unilateral group mobbing, arguments, fighting, and so on and on and so forth. Repeat. And repeat. All of this was threaded with humour through and through. There was never a dull moment. At the grossest levels, we used to both weep for and laugh at those that got knifed and killed on the streets. Humour as dark as it got. Chilling childhood memories.

ENTER THE MOVIES

The appearance of the bioscope in our midst from about the close of the 1960s onward introduced us to cinematic comedy shows. That took our appreciation of humour and our storytelling capacities to the next level. Unforgettable all-time favourites included The Three Stooges and, of course, the outrageously funny Charlie Chaplin. At the end of the day, we often complained of ribcage pains from profuse laughter all day long. Bodily pains from fighting blows were part of the humour drive. So, they didnโ€™t matter so much to the extent that no one sustained acute injuries.

Looking back, we were a happy lot defying the evils of oppression with humour. We learned to use humour to endure or overcome the most difficult life experiences on the streets, at school, and in the home. To this day, if itโ€™s not worth wasting my breath on, I diffuse potentially harmful human relations tension moments with a smile and laughter. It works all the time. Almost. I have yet to make a stone laugh. But then again, a stone knows nothing about human relations. When a human is as thick as a stone, I canโ€™t help them.

HAPPINESS FOR PEACE

Conditional upon neither the boundaries having been crossed, nor the swords not drawn yet, my ability to manifest my state of happiness through humour has, on many occasions in time, been a powerful diplomacy agent in the face of all kinds of hostilities in all kinds of circumstances. Some people derive and celebrate their happiness states by bombing others. Diplomacy work is explosive here.

If I can laugh about the absurdities of some overtly provocative antagonism towards me, I may be willing to resolve matters peacefully through talk if the talk is mutually tenable. I might also choose to simply walk away to deescalate the potential for violence outbreak; possibly permanently severing any further links with the antagonist. Short of eliminating extreme, unpacifiable antagonists, I opt to isolate and exclude them from my life in spaces and situations that I have control over; as in my feelings. I donโ€™t know how to accommodate detractors of my right and potential to be happy, and to not unduly repress my happiness expressions.   

When Iโ€™m happy Iโ€™m strong, Iโ€™m resilient, Iโ€™m confident, Iโ€™m dominant, Iโ€™m optimistic, Iโ€™m logical, Iโ€™m a charmer, Iโ€™m sensitive; I see beauty in all things, I am an open book; Iโ€™m discerning, Iโ€™m patient, Iโ€™m tolerant, Iโ€™m free, Iโ€™m fearless, I can be brutal; Iโ€™m 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 donโ€™t know how to be fake happy. Although my happiness is self-propelled because I am happy by nature, it doesnโ€™t mean that I go around glaring my teeth and laughing like a fool seeking attention everywhere all the time. My life is a circus. But I am not a clown.

It does happen, though, that unrestrained public expressions of my joy are calculated and intentional, spontaneous as a humorous situation I may have created, or I respond to might seem to be. This may be to create confusion and distraction in foreseen or proceeding conflict situations, pre-empting potential escalation to violence. It may also be to break the ice when meeting people for the first time for any reason, or to ease the tension in challenging inter-personal communication skills scenarios, as in negotiations at any level.  

CLEAN HAPPINESS

My happiness expressions are not dependent on any intakes of chemical or herbal central nervous system stimulatory substances. I donโ€™t consume tobacco in any way or form. I donโ€™t do any form of drugs; neither through inhalation nor intravenously. I very rarely drink alcohol.

And whenever I do drink alcohol, it is never because Iโ€™m in the chase for happiness. Iโ€™m ever so happy with or without the consumption of alcohol. I never touch alcohol when Iโ€™m upset over one thing or another. When Iโ€™m upset, alcohol tastes like horse urine. Yeuk!!! Yes, I have in my time tasted fresh horse urine from the ground. That teaches you how to fold your lips so that you can learn how to whistle, see?

HERMITISED HAPPINESS

Inner happiness doesnโ€™t have to be expressive all the time. Some of my truly happiest moments are when I feel happy inside, enjoying the happiness feelings as an exclusive, private affair of mine: solitary joy. These are the moments when Iโ€™m at my most perceptive and most creative; moments of illumination. These are the moments when solutions to pressing personal challenges of all sorts manifest themselves. In this emotional contentment state, Iโ€™m able to see through the mediocrity of thoughts and actions by power players and other thought leaders in humanityโ€™s big existential questions. I crush conspiracy theories from this domain of unlimited, ignorance-proof, pure thought possibilities.

ETHICO-MORAL AWARENESS

It is at this level that my senses of justice (good v/ bad) and fairness (right v/s wrong) get heightened in my analysis of world events. This forms the basis upon which my decisions to take particular stands on certain local and global divisive socio-politico issues are anchored. It is also at this level that my social relations are categorized as to the extent of sharing or not sharing certain critical values as active social beings.

HAPPINESS-PERFORMANCE MUTUAL DEPENDENCY

Outcomes of my happiness-induced high creativity and problem-solving capacity further fuel my happiness state. My happiness, creativity, and problem solutions form an essential functional loop for my existence and my appreciation thereof. If the loop breaks, I might as well be dead. Therefore, my happiness is my elixir of youth, my longevimmortality engine amplified by laughter. Such is the value of my happiness.

I cannot afford to be unhappy. I do not want to be unhappy. If I have an addiction, it is happiness as an expression of my being here and alive for life right now. No one can take that away from me for as long as I consciously strive to be a decent human being wishing and enjoying sharing my happiness with others who see a mutuality of value addition to each otherโ€™s lives. My happiness and my ability to sustain it are a gift Iโ€™ll treasure for life.

HAPPINESS PRIVILEGE       

Commenting on one of my Facebook feeds posts recently, a colleague and friend has said, โ€œBeing 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.    

KNOW THYSELF

A personโ€™s foundation of self-knowledge is a key prerequisite to mastering the skills of how to be happy as a conscious mental and emotional choice according to events occurring around the individual. The latter may, for example, include the attainment of certain predetermined material or conceptual goals, which, for instance, could be to reach stated production targets at work. Creating a happy and congenial work atmosphere could inspire efficiency and effectiveness in production or service for all parties involved in the work process.  

Success at work and in personal relations may result in the recognition of oneโ€™s efforts through adulations and rewards in one form or another; this way potentially compounding and prolonging the already pre-existing state of happiness. A person who thrives in happiness is likely to strive to create conditions for happiness to bloom for as long as it is possible.

ATTRACT HAPPINESS

I have learned that happiness never comes to me of its own accord. The happiness living inside of me is a given. But, whether Iโ€™m solitary or in public, I attract and receive at least as much happiness as I feel inside, or the happiness that I radiate according to prevailing circumstances and space.

REGULATE YOUR HAPPINESS

My permanent inner happiness notwithstanding, I can at will switch on and off the outward flow of my happiness as necessary. It is not always that the environment shall be positively receptive to my exuberance. And, thatโ€™s okay. Misunderstandings, insecurities, and prejudices are also prevalent everywhere people interact. These are common thwarters of happiness.        

GUARD YOUR HAPPINESS

Identify your sources and hacks of happiness. Own them for the empowerment they afford you for your overall health and wellbeing, thereby fortifying your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual resilience; opening up your mind to realms of possibilities beyond what the eye can see. This makes for your optimal performance potential in the things you do both for a living and recreation. Make longevity your goal as gratitude for your gift of happiness as your prime mode of existence choice.

EXTRAORDINARY HAPPINESS

Happiness makes for the attainment and creation of extraordinary things. The extraordinary carve permanent spaces in human memory banks. You become immortal out of your deeds claiming lasting recognition in history. Worry not. Be happy. Live forever through your mark in history inspiring others to seek and live for happiness always. Happiness is the way of love and peace, attributes that humanity so sorely needs today.

HAPPINESS FOR YOU  

Only you can define your happiness on your terms. Be happy for your own sake, first and foremost. Cause no one harm. Wish none ill. Share your happiness abundantly with those who appreciate you for being who and what you are. Conserve your energy and capacity to live and love by staying away from happiness-dampening, toxic relationships. Never let go of those that make you happy. Happiness is a mutually supportive human quality. Even animals know this. Thatโ€™s how we can keep pets.

SEE TO BE SEEN

Depending on how you organize your life as you wish to live it, take it for granted that you want to see and be seen. Therefore, allow your happiness to be an integral element of the unique brand that you are. Your brand highlights your worth as an active participant in societal development as per your skills, talents, and proclivities vis-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, youโ€™ll see. It works all the time.

HAPPINESS BRILLIANCE

Not all ever-happy people are buffoons. You are happy because you have a brilliant mind. You know yourself. You know what you want. You know your worth. You are self-assured. You own earth surfaces you step on. You are happy because the extraordinary things you do change lives for the better for others looking at you, inspiring them to want to tap into their happiness reserves for life. Although you speak faster and louder than many, your physical presence and aura take up too much space around you, you donโ€™t have to be apologetic about your happiness and its expressions according to your communicative, or creative talents.

FUTURE OF PEACE IN HAPPINESS

If you have to fight, make your deeds your first line of defence. Fight smart, choose your fights. Never give fools any fighting chance. Bring down your 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, โ€œMay 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 youโ€™ll possibly enjoy in the afterlife. We are not sure about there being an afterlife. But, for purposes of this talk, way say that it is there. The future is ever bright and hopeful for the happy. Happiness propels us into the future with confidence and fortitude. Faith knocks on the heavensโ€™ doors for the happy. When our work on Earth is done, weโ€™ll live happily ever after in the farthest spaces of the future, assuming that humanity does not erase itself from the future of the universe.  

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
22.11.-19.12.2023 
 

๐—˜๐—ก๐—˜๐— ๐—œ๐—˜๐—ฆ ๐—œ ๐——๐—ข๐—กโ€™๐—ง ๐—ž๐—ก๐—ข๐—ช

๐—œ๐—Ÿ๐—Ÿ๐—จ๐—ฆ๐—œ๐—ข๐—ก๐—ฆ ๐—œ๐—ก ๐— ๐—ฌ ๐—ช๐—ข๐—ฅ๐—Ÿ๐——, ๐—ฃ๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐˜ ๐Ÿฎ

I dedicate this presentation here to my late beloved mother, who died five years ago on October 7th, 2018. May her soul continue resting in eternal power. On Monday, October 2nd, 2023, my mother would have turned 83 years old. Happy posthumous birthday, Machona Mother โ€“ Shebeen Queen dearest!

When as a child growing up in South Africa up to the age of 14ยฝ years I was in various spaces hassled for my Blackness and other envied personal attributes, my mother instilled in me a fierce sense of pride and personal integrity. She constantly told me how beautiful I was, and that, as my academic performance demonstrated time after time at that time, I was the most intelligent kid around. I believed her, and, with humility and gratitude, Iโ€™ve aimed to live her words since then: beautiful, intelligent man that thrives amongst other beautiful, intelligent people.    

August month, 2023, marked the 35th anniversary of my stay in Norway. The tangible plan I had upon leaving Zambia, my fatherland, in June, 1988, was that Iโ€™d complete the 3ยฝ yearsโ€™ post-graduate business studies programme I had privately secured for myself, with a little help from my friends. Afterwards Iโ€™d then move on out to the bigger, wide, wide world.

Twelve years was the timespan that I had given myself that when subsequently big and strong with an Economics PhD degree and international big business and global technocracy experience clutched under my armpits, Iโ€™d then return to South Africa, land of my birth, and become the countryโ€™s Reserve Bank Governor. I had the earth moving under my feet; what could stop me, then? What could go wrong?

The accompanying supportive Norwegian State Education Loan Fund scholarship offer was the first to come my way. I accepted it without second thoughts because I just had to get out of Zambia at the earliest opportunity. This was a matter of both ambition and the nearly untenable personal living conditions in extremely hard family and national survival environments at that time.

That Iโ€™d somehow ultimately stay in Norway for a longer period, not in the least permanently, was never even an iota of an idea in my head. Dream of America calling, Baby. In January, 1991, towards the end of the business studies programme, a bureaucratic glitch led to my ceasing to receive financial support from the scholarship fund. I was left with a huge debt in tuition fees and other costs to the school. Indefinite termination of my studies at the school became unavoidable. This was the beginning of my economic dire straits that would last at least five years in this first cycle. As fate would have it, Iโ€™d fall in love with a sweet Norwegian woman during this time.

In the meantime, I had opened and had been running two Karate schools in Oslo since my arrival in 1988. Thatโ€™s how I got to stay in Norway to this day. Both love and Karate no longer rule my life in Norway. But Iโ€™m still here; largely because of the joys, trials, and tribulations that the love and Karate exposed me to in the country. I experienced the joys, I wanted more and more. Norway delivered; I got addicted to the land.

I having been overwhelmed by difficult circumstances beyond my control, once unleashed, the trials and tribulations were ruthless. Under the hardships of life in Norway, Iโ€™ve seen many a lesser man from the African Diaspora spiritually buckle, fall, rise, and walk dead. All faith gone, no hope, neither mental nor physical strength left, they die. Literally. I decided that if I fall, I shall fall. But I would never die. I didnโ€™t travel more than half the world to let problems of life kill me so far away from home. One way or another Iโ€™d find a way to rise again; just I can breathe. I could never return neither to Zambia nor South Africa poor and without a business PhD degree. Never.

Indeed, I fell once; I fell a second time. On the third fall I lost everything, including face. My people networks collapsed. For once left alone, Rockstar popularity dissipated, I got the opportunity to be better acquainted with myself as a grown-up man. I saw clearly my dreams, my potential in life. I became my bestiest bestie. Now I know myself well. Better than ever. My self-knowledge trip gets better and better and more rewarding each and every new day that comes and goes.

I got to understand that my social survival navigator skills by way of my sellable talents may be many, but the relevant shall come forth and carry me through only specific situational needs in order to respond accordingly to given conditions in different epochs and spaces. The constant steering ethos being my personal motto of change, win, adapt, or die.

Iโ€™ve learned to change perspectives, acquire new skills sets, and adopt varying modus operandi to ensure victory in the face of adversity, no matter how long it takes. This knowledge also helps me to take to the next level what I already know and works in my favour presently. Concurrent with applicable talents, the ability to adapt to, and flow with the currents of changing or changed circumstances is a powerful tool for success for me. I have yet to die. I might talk about death on the other side, should I die.

Whilst recovering from the major fall following the devastating personal economy knock that I got from the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, I had fully embraced the idea that all I had to do was to chill and wait for my next big break. I had suffered enough. I had learned more about myself and the ways of the world to know that I had to stay alert, fresh, and strong for the impending big break; whatever it would be, wherever it would take me, and whatever it would do with me.

It was a painful wait. Much reading, thinking, and writing rechannelled the emotional and mental torment to the enhancement of my creative potential as a writer. If I can read about it, I can write about it; tell a story about it in my own words.

If I can write about it, I can deconstruct it; I will better comprehend the challenges, I will see solutions. If I can write about it, I can dream. If I can dream, I can hope. My faith is shaped in the messages of my dreams. My writings tell the story that everythingโ€™s gonna be alright ahead. Keep moving.  

I have been through so many personal falls and rises that I know when an opportunity for my self-reinvention is nigh. The feeling of anticipation I get in times like these is like no other. I become larger than life in my thoughts so that when the opportunity for me to rise again arrives I wonโ€™t lose control of my sensibilities.  

Whilst I had visions of yet another multi-million-dollar international trade business venture, as the book writing inspiration suddenly revealed itself one fine morning in August, 2015, I knew that my real calling had finally come home. I got into a frenzy. Feeling like one possessed by the spirits of our greatest ever historical and contemporary world authors, I went on to write the first of my dream-of-one-thousand-plus books before I turn 100 years old.

The debut novel, When the Mighty Fall โ€“ rise again mindgames, I wrote in fourteen days. It became about the story of my first twenty-five years in Norway presented in a semi-autobiographical, or fantasy memoir format. Intense emotions and scenes arise in the book: boundaries are pushed and crossed; limitations are overcome, people reset themselves and their lives, stereotypes are crushed. All played out by at least equally intense and exceptional characters. The book has changed my life; it has made me a better person. It started the process by which I continue to learn and understand humanity and our universe better the more I write and think, and think and write.

Working with the book from the start, and living with the variable impacts it continues to have on its readers are a constant, in real-time steep learning curve. I guess itโ€™s a mark of a significant book when the author gets a mixed bag of strong reactions from the readers. Acquire and read the book for yourself so that you can make your own conclusions. Love or hate me as you wish; it is your prerogative in a free world. If you wish to destroy me for your hate, I wonโ€™t take you lying on my back.

My embracing this book writing calling of mine was with a clear awareness that my works would never be appreciated by all. Iโ€™ve in my life read more than enough books to appreciate that fact well. Iโ€™ve over the years come across numerous literary critiques on various media also. What has shocked me, though, is the gross misinterpretation of my thoughts and intentions in and with the aforementioned book. This has been especially so given that it is the least expected section of my readership that has been thoroughly brutal in their condemnation of me and the book. Perhaps this makes the point for writers knowing about their actual and potential target readers. However, as for me, to the extent that I so far write personally inspired factual and fictional narratives as opposed to formal academic, or professional literature, I in principle write for myself. I could never write if I went around thinking about who my readers are, or shall be, and how they will judge my works eventually.  

Working clandestinely, my aforementioned brutal critics, on utterly wrongful, naรฏve conjectures, have gone around tarnishing my reputation in Norway. People read my books. In their readings they come face-to-face with demons they conjure for themselves. They panic; lose it. They judge and punish me without a trial. Pathetic.

Because my conscience is clear, and because of my resolute dedication to growing and developing my creative writing talent and occupation to the 1000th book and beyond, the hurt and emotional turmoil I initially felt are gone. Iโ€™m healed. Iโ€™m strong. Iโ€™m on the rise again, destined for higher and higher heights of success than ever. Iโ€™ve written eight more books since the When the Mighty Fall publication. Iโ€™m on the roll; right on track. No one, nothing can stop me.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

Travelling from Lusaka back to Oslo with Qatar Airways two weeks ago, it was on the first leg of the trip, Lusaka-Doha, that I took time to take a deep dive into reflections of my highs and lows in Norway over the years. I couldnโ€™t help but dwell upon encounters with some really bad people that have always been there to hinder my climb to success in the things that I do by way of making a living in the country. The bad people were in total contrast to the loving and caring ones that I met during my short family matters visit in Lusaka, from August 20-29, 2023.

These bad people have striven to ever hamper my genuine efforts to work to be a decent human being with a well-intended commitment to my personal aspiration of adding value to society to the extent that Iโ€™m resourceful and productive. Some have been outright about their dislike of, and disdain for me. I can live with that.

Others have turned out to be Judases in the end. A sickening lot that once ranked high as confidants in my world. These provoke my primordial survival instincts when I consider that they are ever gathering somewhere conniving to micro-assassinate me slowly. A mission I could never allow them the pleasure of achieving. Unless I am overtly potentially or actually caused bodily harm, I am not likely to resort to violence as an immediate self-preservation recourse. However, my warrior creative spirit observes, or experiences and analyses everything.

I apply different writing styles as dictated upon by the moments when I celebrate or decry events around me, both near and distant. I do the same with uplifting or destructive actions specifically directed towards me. That way I get to vent out my frustrations and anger without spilling a drop of blood. Then I can sustain my sense of personal safety and integrity in the face of adversity; irrespective of whether the adversity is overt or discreet. My words are my armour.

The poem Iโ€™m going to read came forth during the process of thinking about the latest Judases, wolves in sheepโ€™s clothing that have emerged with their true colours in the dark in recent years. It is a self-preservation, protest poetry piece. This poem also sets my eyes on October 24th, 2023, which will mark the fifth year of my return to Norway after a five-year creative exile in South Africa.

Aware that my enemies had already drawn their swords to slay me, I felt like I had brought myself into the mythical lionsโ€™ den at my arrival in Oslo. But I knew I was blameless contra the enemiesโ€™ smear campaign against me. Iโ€™m grandson of a Daniel, father of my mother. The Biblical Daniel was โ€œโ€ฆ saved from lions by the God of Israel “because I was found blameless before him” (Daniel 6:22). So, Iโ€™m still intact; standing tall, breathing happy and free, crafting words into literary expressions in my efforts to make sense of my world.

Similar to other writings of mine addressing my personal life conditions and states of being owing to simply being who I am and the personal choices that I make all the time, Iโ€™ve written the poem not out of a need to defend, explain, or justify myself. I do not seek any validation nor accolades from some Jacks and Jills anywhere either. I listen only to my teachers, to men and women of authentic benevolence: proven mediums of global human excellence, love and peace.

I primarily write to purify my soul, ease my pains, and fortify my spirit. I write as a good-intentions, free, have-no-fear spirit with nothing to hide in a free world. I feel good about what I do; I know Iโ€™m good at it. And thatโ€™s all that matters to me. It is what it is. I am that I am. Take me, or leave me as it is your prerogative in your free world. 

I publicise my works in response to what I feel to be a higher call to share my thoughts with those that want to hear my words. This call inspires me to aspire to teach and to speak for the young, the weak and vulnerable: the afraid, the oppressed, the voiceless. That from my life experiences as lived-in moments in time. Also as learned from hearing the voices of others that are much wiser than me.

The wiser than me being my teachers across the board, including some of the most impactful historical and contemporary philosophical and spiritual wells of wisdom of the world. All from one-on-one teachings and discussions with the living, or through consumption of the wiseโ€™ thoughts through the variety of multimedia platforms available in our times: from the written word in books, to sight, sound, and motion presentations in live theatres; on cinema, television, and computer screens.

Thanks to the power of the internet, we today have the said multimedia platforms compressed and collapsed into the palms of our hands via mobile telephone technology. Knowledge acquisition and dissemination of the same, verification of facts and propagation of truths, debunking of falsities and crushing of conspiracy theories, are all at the tips of our fingers these days. Therefore, those that manage and live their lives on unchecked assumptions; uninformed, factually fallacious decision-making tendencies do so at their own peril.       

ยฉSimon Chilembo 11.09.2023  

Self-made
New enemies of me
People I donโ€™t know
Lurk in dark corners
I donโ€™t know
Wish me dead

They donโ€™t know
Iโ€™m a free soul of the light
I donโ€™t know how to hide
I donโ€™t know how to die
Darkness cannot contain me

Invincible to eyes that see
I worry but little
Of fools groping in the dark
Hoping for a lucky strike
To annihilate me

Iโ€™m not
In a state of war
I fear no drones
No stealth missiles threats to
My soul of the light
Defence system

My shield is
My words
I push back with
My voice
I sing one moment
I preach the next
I wail this moment
The moment I growl
Earth trembles under my feet

Self-made
New enemies of me
Faceless people I donโ€™t know
Fools with reasons for
Enmity I donโ€™t know
Duped in fake storytelling tales
Of witches in fright
Of demons of them
Confronting them
In the glow of light
Permeating
The darkest recesses of the universe
In fright
Fight
Shadows of themselves in the dark
Tumbling in muddy faeces
Of their own
Gathered in trenches
Of massless conspiracy constructs
Meant to implode
A free soul of the light
They cannot see

I could never collapse
Into myself
Squash me
Sprout me
As particles of
My flesh and bones
In deep waters

Delusionals donโ€™t know
Thatโ€™s the closest theyโ€™ll ever
Come to harming me
Envious fools donโ€™t know me
Inconsequential foolsโ€™ll never see me
Repugnant fools embraced by
Darkness I donโ€™t know
Darkness I donโ€™t care about *

I cannot run away from the light
I have nothing to hide
I donโ€™t know how to hide
I have nowhere to hide
Not even a tomb can contain me
I had to break the law
Drank and drove
For prison walls to hold me
If only for a while

Youโ€™ll never find
Remains of me
In pyramids of Egypt
In a thousand years
When I say catch me if you can
I play with words
No longer do I play with
Bloodsuckers
Stabbed me in the back
I could have bled to death
Had it not been for
The light stronger than
Enemiesโ€™ self-consuming malice
In the dark

Resilience is the name of
Dark-hearts-impervious
Light games I play

Here I am to see
For all eyes with love
Iโ€™m a soul of invictus
I breathe love
As a matter of course
Iโ€™m here to stay
Longevity is the name of
My dance for life
Immortality is the name
Of my end-game
Beat that
If you can
๐—˜๐—ก๐——
ยฉSimon Chilembo 11.08.2023

On the 24th of October, 2019, I wrote the following article on my private blog, chilembowarriormoves.com:

๐—ข๐—ก๐—˜ ๐—ฌ๐—˜๐—”๐—ฅ ๐—Ÿ๐—”๐—ง๐—˜๐—ฅ: ๐—œ๐—Ÿ๐—Ÿ๐—จ๐—ฆ๐—œ๐—ข๐—ก๐—ฆ ๐—œ๐—ก ๐— ๐—ฌ ๐—ช๐—ข๐—ฅ๐—Ÿ๐——.
๐—ฅ๐—˜๐—”๐—Ÿ๐—œ๐—ง๐—ฌ ๐—œ๐—ฆ ๐—œ ๐—”๐—  ๐—›๐—˜๐—ฅ๐—˜, ๐—œ ๐—Ÿ๐—œ๐—ฉ๐—˜, ๐—œ ๐—Ÿ๐—ข๐—ฉ๐—˜, ๐—œ ๐——๐—”๐—ก๐—–๐—˜.
๐—œ ๐—”๐—œ๐—กโ€™๐—ง ๐—š๐—ข๐—œ๐—ก๐—š ๐—ก๐—ข๐—ช๐—›๐—˜๐—ฅ๐—˜.

๐‘๐„๐๐‹๐€๐‚๐„๐Œ๐„๐๐“ ๐“๐‡๐„๐Ž๐‘๐˜ ๐“๐”๐‘๐๐„๐ƒ ๐€๐‘๐Ž๐”๐๐ƒ

๐–๐ก๐ข๐ญ๐ž ๐’๐ฎ๐ฉ๐ซ๐ž๐ฆ๐š๐œ๐ฒ ๐’๐ฅ๐š๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ž๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐…๐š๐œ๐ž

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

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

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 Leoneโ€™s 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 motherโ€™s 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
Iโ€™m in Europe
Begging bowl
In my hands
โ€œ๐˜๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜”๐˜ช๐˜ฌ๐˜ฆ ๐˜—๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ค๐˜ฆ!โ€ noose
Around my neck
Waiting for me
To take just one misstep
To lynch me

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

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 Mฤori 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 didnโ€™t just happen

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

Beyond Peleโ€™s 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
Thatโ€™s 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
๐˜“๐˜ฆ๐˜ด ๐˜ช๐˜ฎ๐˜ฎ๐˜ช๐˜จ๐˜ณรฉ๐˜ด ๐˜ฅ๐˜ถ ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ
๐˜๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ด ๐˜ถ๐˜ต๐˜ท๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ
๐˜‰๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ด๐˜ข๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ช ๐˜ฃ๐˜ข ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜ง๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ด๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ
๐˜ˆ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜จ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฅ๐˜ถ๐˜ฌ๐˜ข
๐˜–๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ค๐˜ฉ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ข
Want not to kill anybody
Want not to rape anybody
Want not to plunder anybodyโ€™s 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 donโ€™t crack
Goes the rap
Letโ€™s 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, yโ€™all 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
๐˜‘๐˜ฆ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฆ๐˜ป๐˜ถ๐˜ป๐˜ป๐˜ป
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 havenโ€™t 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.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2020

RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!

๐†๐ˆ๐•๐„ ๐Œ๐„ ๐“๐ˆ๐Œ๐„

๐๐ฅ๐š๐œ๐ค ๐„๐ฑ๐œ๐ž๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ž๐ง๐œ๐ž ๐‘๐ž๐ฌ๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ž๐ง๐œ๐ž

Please
Give me time
Walking a straight course
Is not
A given for me

Given are
Obstacles
From the first step to the last
Iโ€™ve got sores
Under my feet
I walk
Spiked metal
Carpeted roads
In my time

Iโ€™ve danced through
Landmines in my time
Bombs clapping sounds
In my ears
Donโ€™t stop

Scars on my body
Donโ€™t heal
I eel through
I scale
Razor wire fences
To get anywhere

My muscles are wasted
Iโ€™ve walked through fire
Itโ€™s a wonder
I can move at all

My eardrums hurt
Itโ€™s a wonder
I can hear
Birds sing
My will is intangible
It cannot be isolated
Cannot be broken
I move as I will
I get there
The elements
Give me no easy task
To set my roots in the soil

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2022

Hostility
Above and below
The ground is
A given for me

I must fight
All the time
I must fight
Absolutely
For everything
To reach the top of
The mountains
I climb
As a given
To sustain my life
Even just to serve

From a mountain top
When Iโ€™d rather
Rock and roll
Down to home base
In satisfaction
Iโ€™m ever thrust over the edge
To tumble โ€™n roll
Over โ€™n over
In pain

Hitting home base
Body twisted
A bone or two broken
Iโ€™m taken
Back in time
Back in space
More obstacles
To overcome
Another mountain climb
To the top
Where keys to
My well of joy lie waiting

If love
Blanketed the earth
Iโ€™d reach for you
My joy
Every step I take

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

Give me time
I cannot breathe at your pace
I carry
Weight of the world
Laden with hate
On my shoulders

I fight bigots
Hating me
For colour of my skin
They demean me
They seek to dehumanize me
Every step I take

They twist my words
Slander me
Project myths that
Colour of my skin
Facades evil in man
I get enemies for free

They muddy my paths
Spill oil over roads I walk
I slide and fall
I get up
Burn the midnight oil
Keep moving on
One step at a time
Against the clockโ€™s
Sixty tick-tock seconds steps a minute
Sixty tick-tock minutes steps an hour
My steps have time tick-tocks
Of their own
As a given
In my precarious existence

Bigots
They seek
To break my spirits
Every step I take
I am indomitable
My spirit terrifies them

They shoot me
I die
They created Jesusโ€™
Resurrection story
To cover their
Confoundment over
My resilience

Give me time
Youโ€™ll see in time
That I really am human too
Everything they can do
I can do better
As a given
I must work
Ten times as hard
Anytime
In my time

There are times
The agony inside
Is unbearable
My head
Wants to explode
At not only
The bigotsโ€™ cruelty
But their horrendous
Outright stupidity

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

When reason doesnโ€™t work
When prayer doesnโ€™t work
Because their God is made
In the image of them bigotsโ€™
Collective derangement
I have to stop and cry
From time to time
Please give me time
For my tears to dry

Starting from below zero
With zero privilege
Against these meanest odds
Iโ€™ll rule the world
It ainโ€™t for nothing
Iโ€™m the oldest
Human being on earth

They created Adam
To sideline me
Doesnโ€™t work
Iโ€™m here
As a given
On the eve of
My victory

Itโ€™s beyond hatersโ€™ imagination
But
I shall blanket
The world with love
As a given
Some day soon
Nothing can stop me
Itโ€™s only a matter of time
Brace yourself
My love
๐˜ˆ๐˜ช๐˜จ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฌ๐˜ช ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ด๐˜ช๐˜ฎ๐˜ฃ๐˜ช
This Black donโ€™t bend
๐˜ˆ๐˜ช๐˜น๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฌ๐˜ฆ๐˜ป๐˜ฆ๐˜ฌ๐˜ช ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ด๐˜ช๐˜ฎ๐˜ฃ๐˜ช
This Black donโ€™t crack
๐„๐๐ƒ
ยฉSimon Chilembo 06/04-2022

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
April 13, 2022

PS
The pandemic is still in our midst. Fears and factual untruths haven’t 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 one’s 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.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2020

RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!

BOOKS

To Ban or Not to Burn

At eight-to-nine-years of age, 1968-69, I was too young to see the implications of not attending school for two years. My Grade 1 year at St. Rose Primary School, Peka, Lesotho, was a long one. It lasted from age four-and-half, 1965, to six-and-half years old, 1967. I, at instant notice and under dramatic circumstances, had to leave Lesotho in the earlier part of 1969. There was no time to acquire school reports and formalized school transfer documents to enable me to continue with schooling in South Africa. Not that I knew anything about such documents at that time, though. In any case, my expectation had been that Iโ€™d return to my school in Lesotho once the situation had become normal and safe again.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2022
Author/ Storyteller/ Poet/ Publisher/ Warrior/ Machona Son

Towards the end of 1969, I had already begun to discern the bigger social dynamics around me. That applied to both in my home and with regard to the extended family relations, as well as the wider society to the extent that a nine-year-old child can make sense of their world. It hit me like a bomb, therefore, when my parents unexpectedly made it clear to me that schooling in Lesotho was over for my younger brother, Thabo, and I. Weโ€™d resume studies in my motherโ€™s hometown, Thaba Nchu, 210km to the south of my hometown, Welkom. We had been to the former to celebrate Christmas 1969 with my uncle Mosesโ€™ new and young family.

The anger and frustration I felt towards my parents at that time hurt me so much that it felt like I had river stones in my stomach. This feeling of profound disappointment and helplessness would last the entire two years that Thabo and I stayed in Thaba Nchu. That Iโ€™d have a bad relationship with my uncle Mosesโ€™ wife didnโ€™t help matters much. I became a bundle of mental and physical tension. Otherwise a generally happy-go-lucky child up to that point, I became unruly in my uncleโ€™s home.

Understanding Thabo and Iโ€™s plight regarding education access given our background, Mr Justice Mmekwa facilitated Thabo and Iโ€™s resumption of schooling in Thaba Nchu. Eldest son of my uncleโ€™s landlady, โ€˜Masang, he was a respected primary school Principal in a neighbouring town called Tweespruit.  Without this kind manโ€™s help, it would have been extremely difficult to find any school places for us in then Apartheid South Africa. As an independent, non-racial state, Lesotho represented values contrary to those of then anti-Black progress racist Apartheid South Africa.

I remain eternally grateful to Principal Justice Mmekwa for his assistance, support, and inspiration. He was a man of class; ever well-groomed. A fine family man exuding charisma that few of my adult male role models of the time had. Other than the traditional Barolong Chief, and Mr Ngophe the trader in the neighbourhood, the Principal was the only man with a car. The latterโ€™s black Mercedes Benz power machine made my fatherโ€™s then blue Opel Rekord car look like a toy beside the former. No doubt, the man is one of those lasting I wanna be like that when I grow up references in my life. I had already begun to be aware of my predisposition towards being there for the weak and vulnerable in times of need. Principal Mmekwaโ€™s gesture enhanced that attribute in me.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2022
Author/ Storyteller/ Poet/ Publisher/ Warrior/ Machona Son

A fixed image of Principal Mmekwa in my head is that of him majestically stepping out of his car each time he arrived home from work; a rolled newspaper clutched under his left armpit, with a book in the hand. On the right hand he would be carrying the most beautiful leather briefcase Iโ€™ve ever seen. In tweed outfits (never a suit), a Stetson on his head, and a smoking pipe jutting from his mouth, he was a sight to behold. His โ€œDumelang, bana! Hello, children!โ€ baritone voice resonates in my head to this day. His eyes were the suns.

In January, 1970, Thabo and I were well-received by the Principal of the then newly-opened Namanyane Primary School in Selosesha Township. The Principal, whose name Iโ€™ve forgotten, was another affable man. It was advantageous that it turned out that he was homeboy with my mother and uncle Moses from their village, Paradys, about 30km from Thaba Nchu town.

Thabo and Iโ€™s respective class teachers and others were really nice to us. That made the two years at the school very enjoyable for me indeed. Whilst at school, I could forget about the unpleasant atmosphere at home with my aunt. I had already experienced the joy of choral music singing in Lesotho. However, I got the first ever taste of inter-school choral singing competitions at the new school. In my head, it is as if there was singing every day of school during the years 1970-71. The sounds of rehearsals voices of different categories of singing according to age and song vocalization skills still buzz in my head in my moments of meditative inner silence.

I got the first taste of formal competition victory when my choir, the Junior Choir, won the regional schools choral music competition in 1970. The category song was called Mmino wa Pino/ Singing of a Song. It spoke about the universal appeal of music; how it, music, defied all the prevalent artificial discriminatory practices in society. My eyes began to open to Apartheid in a critical way at about this time. My life would never be the same again.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2022
Author/ Storyteller/ Poet/ Publisher/ Warrior/ Machona Son

It is also at this time that I began to consciously think about the big questions of life around hate, love, peace, and all other tendencies reflecting inequities around me. Inspired by the Apollo 11 moon landing in the previous year, I recall one day wondering if it were possible to relocate to another place far, far away from all the evils of mankind on earth.

At the same time, I discovered that whereas I was in Grade 3 that year, 1970, several of my agemates were two to four classes ahead of me. In no time I had figured it out that the situation was due to the fact that I had lost the two school years of 1968-69. The difference would probably had not been that much had I progressed normally from Grade 1 in 1965, I reckoned.

If I ever had a sore moment at Namanyane Primary School in Thaba Nchu, it was the illumination of how much schooling time I had previously foregone due to circumstances beyond my control. The school Principal, my class teacher and some of their colleagues also found it hard to understand how I could have academically stayed that far behind my contemporaries. This enhanced my new sense of bewilderment here. I was actually a brilliant pupil. And, ideas of what I wanted to be when grown up were already crystallizing in my head. I began to wonder some more about whether there didnโ€™t exist another place far, far away where I could get educated quickly to be a doctor without having to bother about the other kids that I felt had had an unfair lead over me. Visions of living in other worlds preoccupied my mind from then on.

Thinking about the moon was not exciting because I had already learned that normal human life was impossible out there. But the moon remained a major point of reference until in my class we began to read stories and answer questions from books. We began to read and write down our answers to the questions set in the books. This was a major leap from verbally answering questions from texts our teacher would have read to us.

I donโ€™t recall any of the stories the teacher ever read to us. But I know that listening to them induced in me a feeling of flying away like a bird during the reading sรฉances. This gave me a special inner peace that detached me from my frustrations with my derailed academic progress. In this state of mind, negative forces around me ceased to matter. The challenge, though, was that the reading sessions were ever so short. Nevertheless, that made me to ever want to look forward to going to school the following day. Truly happy memories.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2022
Author/ Storyteller/ Poet/ Publisher/ Warrior/ Machona Son

We may have read more stories when the time came for us to read our recommended class text book on our own. Thatโ€™s because the first two stories I remember, and got to make a lasting impression on me, were somewhere in the middle of the book. Both in appropriate condensed forms, the first story was about a man whose tragic life led him to unknowingly kill his father, and end up marrying and having four children with his own mother. The second story was about two men in an intense competition to reach the South Pole one before the other.   

My class teacher made it clear that the first story was not for real. It was created a long, long, long time ago by a writer and thinker from an overseas land called Greece. Although it was a story too difficult to discuss thoroughly then, she told us that its idea was that sometimes we cannot escape what destiny had in store for us. It was therefore important to aspire to be as descent a human being as possible, despite the troubles of our world. She went on to say that we were going to read even more books as we grew older and progressed with our education.

โ€œBooks are a safe store of knowledge about who we are; just like banks keep our money safe,โ€ she concluded.

As regards the second story, it was from reality, the teacher enlightened us. The story highlighted the importance of determination towards the achievement of our goals as we grew older. She said that books that tell real life stories teach us about what it takes to attain certain goals. The books help us to learn not to make the same mistakes that the writers shall highlight in their stories.

โ€œReal life story books teach us how to be human in ways we should easily relate to, even if we could never replicate events of the stories as they are narrated in the books,โ€ the teacher said. She went on to say that it was the aim of acting in the bioscope and theatre stages to seek to bring book stories close to life as much as possible. Some of us would be actors when grown up, maybe?

Two years later, Iโ€™d see for the first time a professional theatrical performance: Sikhalo, by the legendary South African playwright, Gibson Kente. This play brought home to me a clearer picture of the Black condition under Apartheid South Africa. I got a better understanding of the monster. The monster had to die, even if many of my people had to die in the process. We could cry and laugh away our troubles through the arts. Education was a crucial weapon in our struggle for freedom. If education was found in books, then Iโ€™d  read and read them all.   

It was one thing to hear the teacherโ€™s philosophical discourse on the stories and the value of books. From reading and understanding the essence of the stories, what happened with me was that my mind for the first time in my life saw the existence of other worlds on earth. I could, perhaps, escape to these new places for my peace of mind. The more I read, the more the world, life, made sense to me, for better and for worse. The more I wanted to explore human nature in order that I might better understand myself and my purpose in life.

The interesting coincidence is that I have now been living in Norway, the land of Roald Amundsen, one of the two South Pole explorers mentioned above, for nearly thirty-four years. Greece was my first encounter with Europe in 1985. Talk about fate!

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2022
Author/ Storyteller/ Poet/ Publisher/ Warrior/ Machona Son

I came to Norway via Zambia, my fatherland. Landing in Zambia in March, 1975, would turn out to be a thirteen yearsโ€™ enduring be careful what you ask for moment. Zambia took me down, took me up, tossed me mid-air in stormy weathers, took me up and up to finally thrust me even farther away to new lands in my pursuit of a suitable place for my peace of mind. Thanks to Zambia, upon my landing in Oslo in August, 1988, I was a mean physical fighting machine, a polished rising international intellectual powerhouse with, of course, a taste for the finer things in life. Zambia gave me tough lessons in how to be a man of the world. Such that, no, landing and eventually living in Norway has never been a culture shock trip for me.

The two years prior to my parents relocating the family to Zambia, 1972-74, presented me with a trove of pubertal-early-teens growing up thrills: consolidation of my sense of identity, winning respect from my peers, earning own cash, rock-and-roll with girls, street survival mentoring from older friends of both sexes, travelling, sport, and much more. At school I was a star by default. The vision of my being a doctor when grown up was becoming more and more real. That as talk about beginning to look for potential bursary/ scholarship sources for me had begun. I got inspired to want to read more and more intensely so as to maintain my top-of-the-class status at school.

Reading then involved a great deal of cramming, especially during examination seasons in June and November/ December every year. For homework assignments, I could in one sitting lasting perhaps an hour, read and memorize all the recommended texts for the day in all the subjects: English, Afrikaans, Maths, History/ Social Studies, General Science, and Bible Studies. That was the most natural thing for me to do at the time. However, it used to baffle me when some of my classmates used to complain about how difficult it was for them to either find time or concentration to read at home. I didnโ€™t know how I could help them; neither was I keen to, really, because competition for academic excellence was very stiff. Only the very best of the best got access to the extremely scarce bursaries/ scholarships provided by various private business entities and rich individuals.

Extra-curricular reading during this time mainly comprised newspapers, various weekly and monthly entertainment magazines and comics. Bible stories of Moses, Samson, Kings David and Solomon captured my imagination in a huge way. So, I read the Bible a lot. Some of the best literature-induced mental travels Iโ€™ve ever had have been during this time. Reflections over the adventures of the mentioned figures have lastingly influenced my view of life.

Moses opened my eyes to the sense of devotion. Samsonโ€™s warrior heart ceases never to give me goose bumps; his wife, Delilahโ€™s betrayal of him may just be one of the reasons Iโ€™ve yet to get hitched. I donโ€™t know. King David and his sonโ€™s lust issues gave me a special perspective about power and sex. And, then, King Solomonโ€™s proverbs in praise of his women paved the way for the lessons of love that Iโ€™d later read about in greater depth in The Perfumed Garden. I learned from the latter book that if I wanted to maximally enjoy physical intimacy with a woman, I must handle her with utmost tenderness, just like when I consume my favourite juicy fruit. This book broadened the mystery of misogyny and violence against women. Beats me.

After over three months on the rails and road, we arrived in Lusaka a tired family unit. The journey had been hard on us on many fronts. Our joy at having finally arrived home turned into acute disillusionment within a matter of days. Longstanding conflicts in my fatherโ€™s family made it difficult for us to bond. Subsequently, at different times and under different circumstances, my parents, my two surviving younger siblings and I would leave Zambia. The youngest sibling, Dintletse, died and was buried in Lusaka in 1983. I came to Norway, whilst the others returned to South Africa.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2022
Author/ Storyteller/ Poet/ Publisher/ Warrior/ Machona Son

Starting with my uncle, Mr OB Chilemboโ€™s private library at home, arrival in Zambia was an introduction to a world of books like I had never seen before. In the home library, I could mentally fly away from bitterness bordering on hate in my family situation then: Iโ€™d find myself following murder investigations in the USA, falling in love with English women in London, fighting in World Wars 1 and 2, investigating human nature as a psychologist, defending criminals in courts all over the world, singing and dancing Jazz on Broadway, playing World Cup football, getting lost in the Sahara, robbing banks in Paris and Rome, escaping from Russian labour camps in Siberia, pretending to be dead in Mao Tse Tungโ€™s Chinaโ€™s rice paddies, hiking across Australia, and much more.

The comfort I derived from reading books was like no other. I donโ€™t quite exactly remember what specific books and other publications I read especially throughout the rest of 1975, when I didnโ€™t attend school. But I know for sure that much of the reading helped me make sense of my reality. That way I could, indeed, find some peace in my inner world.

I found the reading culture in Zambia amazing both in magnitude and diversity. Even Radio Zambia had an African Literature reading hour most working day afternoons, if I recall. Zambians had no culture of displaying their book collections on shelves in living rooms. Iโ€™ve met numerous foreigners who had concluded that Zambians were not well-read for not having showy bookshelves in their houses. Quite the contrary.

Well-off Zambians like my uncle had private libraries, as Iโ€™ve already alluded to above. Otherwise, people valued their book collections so much that they kept them in their bedrooms, or such other private spaces. Others concealed the books in locked, opaque cupboards in their living spaces. Upon entering my uncleโ€™ spacious living and dining area, including a bar, there was almost never a book to see.

Uncle OB has on more than one occasion spoken in awe about how vast a collection of exclusive books two of his contemporaries had in their private libraries. Only selected individuals could enter here. If you didnโ€™t ask, or you didnโ€™t get caught up in a heated debate necessitating available literary referencing, youโ€™d not likely see your Zambian hostโ€™s book collection. Erudite or not, Zambians can be formidable debaters, if not orators, thriving on the pedantic.     

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2022
Author/ Storyteller/ Poet/ Publisher/ Warrior/ Machona Son

With time, some of my paternal cousins of my age took me to the Lusaka City Library. I donโ€™t recall ever reading or borrowing a book from there. But the picture of me walking around and around the library gazing at the books in amazement for what felt like hours on end, day after day, never leaves my mind. I had never seen that many and huge book walls anywhere.

The following year, 1976, I started schooling in Grade 7 at Lusakaโ€™s Olympia Primary School. That a mobile clinic came to the school for pupilsโ€™ periodic medical check-ups and the like wasnโ€™t such a big deal. But the first day a mobile library came over, I was positively shocked beyond words. It soon dawned upon me that, with such ample access to books, it was no wonder that Zambian Black people were not only doctors and nurses, they were pilots, train drivers, army commanders, and all sorts of things Black people of South Africa were not.

Iโ€™d eventually be member of both the British Council and American libraries in Lusaka. From the former, a book on running made the biggest impression on me. Such that when my Karate teacher and life mentor, Professor Stephen Chan, OBE, suggested that we, the then senior-most students at the University of Zambia Karate Club in 1983, take part in the maiden Lusaka Marathon run that year, I had long been mentally ready for it.

From the American library, the one book that made the biggest impression on me was on the freedom of speech concept. I recall its stand that whereas freedom of speech was indeed a fundamental human right, it was important to remember that there are moral and legal constraints as to how far we could say what we will on any subject, to anybody. Freedom of speech is not an entitlement to be malicious to others. In connection with the freedom of speech ideas, the book also touched the subject of truth telling. It argued that truth must be told always, but not necessarily at any cost. If currently telling the truth could cause more harm than good, then it may not be a bad idea to withhold it until conditions are more favourable, if ever.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2022
Author/ Storyteller/ Poet/ Publisher/ Warrior/ Machona Son

And then in 1982-86, the University of Zambia Library became my books haven. Many of us students and the academic staff did our research here. This institution consolidated the intellectual foundation upon which this my new writing career stands.

During the years preceding university studies commencement, I used to have much informal political education talks with a selection of some older South African freedom fighter veterans based in Lusaka in those days.

One of the veterans, Comrade Lerumo, once said to me, โ€œSy, when you analyse any issue, you must always look at it from both opposing sides. When you read in your research, read books, or any other relevant form of written presentation, articulated from opposing perspectives. Do the same when you listen to world news on the radio; listen to everybody, whether you agree with them or not. Thatโ€™s how we become intellectual powerhouses, able to solve problems effectively as they arise because we know how everybody thinks.โ€

Comrade Lerumo went on to say, โ€œThe sad situation is that surprisingly many of our leaders in exile donโ€™t read. If they do read at all, itโ€™ll be a book on Marxism here, Che Guevara there, and Chairman Moa there and there. Theyโ€™ll recite a stanza or two of a Shakespeare and think that they are smart. Tragic!โ€

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2020
Author/ Storyteller/ Poet/ Publisher/ Warrior/ Machona Son

The UNZA Library provided me with all the books I ever needed for a successful university  studies career. These days I have access to major world libraries in the palms of my hand, at the tips of my fingers. In principle, no one can hide from me a once formally published book. No one can absolutely hinder me from publishing a book, formally or otherwise.

From the outset I write with good intentions. I write with a pure heart, my imperfections notwithstanding. Because Iโ€™m non-cantankerous by propensity, I consciously choose to write non-offensive, uplifting books; upholding principles of freedom of speech and truth telling with responsibility. At the same time, I do not expect that my writings shall be appreciated by all. Iโ€™m not a popularity contests writer. I write as a free spirit without fear or favour, simply practicing what book reading has taught me over the years. Itโ€™s a privilege to have the opportunity to contribute to the growth of humanityโ€™s reading material data base.

Writing books has liberated my soul. The worlds I create with my books instil in me a sense of peace and love beyond words. Each publication of any writing of mine is an attempt to portray the workings of the peace and love that I feel. Although it is for the observer to judge my deeds, inside of me I feel Iโ€™ve become a better person breathing and walking as an author.  Books have outright saved my life. In more ways than one. Plain and simple.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2022
Author/ Storyteller/ Poet/ Publisher/ Warrior/ Machona Son

If we want this our world to be a better place for all, it’s symptomatic of intellectual bankruptcy to ban books that tell and expose truths about transgressions we have historically, and continue to commit over one another. That depending on the balances of power according to race, political orientation, and other artificial human discriminatory categories and practices.                     

Good or bad, truthful or malicious, once a book is written and published, itโ€™ll stand the test of time in numerous formats. Thatโ€™s why we have, amongst others, national libraries and archives. Power is in writing another book to counter or falsify a book that proliferates undesirable messages. Better yet, power is in writing another book to take already existing progressive literature to ever higher levels.

Banning of books prejudicially classified by powers that be is tantamount to running away from the truth, running away from the self. Banning of books is denialism of the existence of oneโ€™s deeds tracks in history. Banning of books fakes presentation of the present as if the present begins and ends in itself. Living the present on fake presuppositions is sure a promise of a future of ignorance and non-sustainable existential premises. As it is, it is evident that a current exercise of banning of books enshrining enlightenment and wisdom is a consequence of forces of ignorance and destruction having had the upper hand in the past, distant and near.

Truth frightens the guilty. Cowards fear for life confrontations of truths about themselves. They shall ban and burn books, they shall incarcerate and murder writers, but cowards in the form of fascists shall never ever succeed in erasing the urge for truth search and expression that is at the core of being human.

In the 21st Century of unprecedented potential for making planet earth a place called heaven for all, USA (The Ununited States of America), the most powerful nation on earth, is in an orgy of banning books. As if the Coronavirus pandemic and the January 6 insurrection werenโ€™t bad enough. Amongst others, these books lay bare the truths about one of the essential elements of the foundations upon which the economic might of the USA stands: the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This endeavour inhumanely uprooted African people to go and work in slavery the initially cotton-based American agro-industry.

Classified as inferior humans, American-enslaved Africans lived and worked under the most appalling, dehumanizing conditions. Modern day USA racism against people of African descent and others stems from the earliest days of European settlement and subsequent colonization of the north American continent. Truth as plain and undeniable as can be.

Slavery in the USA formally ended in 1865. In the Euro-USA context, though, racism as a social construct continues to seek to perpetuate artificial racial inequalities that have been developed to sustain oppression of Black and other People of Colour. This phenomenon is experienced in other parts of the world also (The Middle East, China, Eurasia), notably Australia, South Africa, and other areas of the world where Euro colonialism has had a lasting imprint. The idea being to infinitely suppress the oppressed so as to maintain them in perpetual subservience. That way forcing them, the People of Colour, to continue selling themselves cheaply for the benefit of the superior White race. Baloney, of course.

Through research and critical analysis of historical facts, books are written in order that knowledge about the truth about where the USA comes from, and what values make and break it can be disseminated as wide and durably as possible. In here is included books countering anti-Semitic literature and the anti-Jewish sentiment as a whole, both in the USA, Europe, and globally.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2022
Author/ Storyteller/ Poet/ Publisher/ Warrior/ Machona Son

Banning and burning of books is knowledge dissemination delayed and denied. I shudder to think about the future of America when literacy rates are as low as they are today. All explicable in historical terms, of course. When some of the leading books banning proponents are Ivy League universities graduates, it may be arguable that many a student enter these institutions with but half-baked academic maturity. No wonder the country is in such a socio-politico mess spearheaded by educated fools. Unversed American children raised by conspiracy theories pregnant America can only but keep the fires of American Nightmare burning in all perpetuity. Trash begets trash. In that case, they can ban me with pleasure for my broken Dream of America.

In Africa, an educated fool emerged from anti-liberation struggle imprisonment once. He had seven university degrees to his name. Obtained from studies behind prison walls with limited access to relevant research literature, the degrees could only have been half-baked. The man brought his country to its knees. He is dead now. His country is on stumps; amputation wounds chronically infected. No school books in the country. Teachers are running away before they lose their knees. Future of intellectually bankrupt America as dire as that of country balancing on stumps that wonโ€™t heal. ย ย ย ย ย ย ย 

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
February 05, 2022

ATLAS-TO-CAPE EXODUS

RAINBOW BROADBAND
Traitor Mandela
Chillax
Twenty-seven years in prison
Apartheid venom
Fails to corrode his bones
Iapartheid aithethi isiXhosa
Aiyazi ukuthi
Aigobeki le ntsimbi


Robben Island
Made the man
On the one hand
Broke the manโ€™ soul
On the other
Threw his boxing gloves
To the sea lions
Chillax ashore

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

Gather no weeds
Hammer away rocks
Abound on the island
Protective gear
A remote idea
Rock chips and dust
Mess your eyes up
You canโ€™t cry freedom
You canโ€™t see

When you couldnโ€™t care
About
Carving freedom out of stone
Rock chips and dust
Clog your nostrils up
You canโ€™t smell
Misery of the people
In the air

In as much as
Post-Mandelaโ€™s death
People canโ€™t smell Corona
That way it canโ€™t be real
And the people continue
To die like flies
In as much as
Mandelaโ€™s
Liberation of
The people of
Mzansi is fake
Fo sho
This is the land
Mandela sold away to
White manโ€™s burden
Legacy perpetrators
They call them
White Monopoly Capital buffoons
To whom
Gupta brothers
Cameโ€™n added
Colourโ€™n spice
โ€™n pocketed
Mandelaโ€™ sellout inheritors
Dazed in agarbatti smoke clouds
When you thought
Weed was bad
Eroding
Mzansi land
Left, right and centre
Fo sho
With their cupidity machines
Thinking that
Gravy train
Conspicuous consumption symbols
Ferrari and Maserati
Exhaust polenta to
The people of Mzansi for sho

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

Meanwhile
Maybach leverages mortuaries
Competing for corpses
Around Mzansi fo sho
Some corpses dappered in
Johann Rupertโ€™s
Jewellery empire vanity chains
Stones upon which studded
Wouldnโ€™t feed even
Insects and worms
As is the nature of stones
Who knows that better than
Northern desertsโ€™ pyramids

Perhaps
We should all head south
Go detox
White manโ€™s burden faeces
On Robben Island
For the illusive redemption of
Africa burning
In self-perpetuatory
White manโ€™s burden
Transgenerational trauma
Self-annihilatory black curse

Some look up to
The Pyramids of Egypt
Findings in
The bowels of which
Only confirm
Our once upon a time grandeur
Thatโ€™s all

Non-revolutionary
Static pride
In ancient times
Disconnected
With realities of our times
Just keeps us sinking
Beneath our rivers

In the age of
Global warming
Of not Mandelaโ€™s doing
The Nile shall
Swallow the pyramids
One of these days
What you gonโ€™ do
When the pyramidsโ€™re gone

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

The Congo shall
Flood the belly of Africa
Someday
Whoโ€™ll be left to say anything
Whoeverโ€™ll be looking
To find Lumumbaโ€™s bones floating around
Shall be doing so in vain

The Zambezi is coming
The Kariba Damโ€™s already
Getting weary
Listen to your basic instincts
What you gonโ€™ do
When Sharon Stoneโ€™s
King Solomonโ€™s mines are gone
Wake up
Dude
Put seventy
University
Degrees
To good us for once
For goodnessโ€™ sake
Itโ€™s okay
The Greenbackโ€™s on the streets
Mzansi Randโ€™ still
Real money fo sho
Got Mandelaโ€™s face
On it, neh
Wathi
Pamberi
ne ntontoni
Umtu
(Oh, thixo, bawo, Nkosi sikelela!)


Revolutionary Africa
Been at war
With itself from during
Anti-colonial struggle days
Civil wars continued upon
Independence attainment
Free at last to play out
White manโ€™s burden
Transgenerational trauma
Self-annihilatory black curse games
To this day

Freedom is a relative state
In all African states
Basest result of state dysfunctionality
In Africa
As elsewhere
Is a constant
Tyrants everywhere
Including America
Staying alive
Feeding on
Murder in all its execution variabilities
Survivors rot in jail
People endure suffering
In all its construction variables
People dream of life-supportive
Freedoms elsewhere

Since Mandelaโ€™s
Betrayal of
The African self-determination cause
Twenty-seven years ago
Mzansi fo sho
Has yet
To degenerate to levels
Of truly liberated
Free Mother Africa
Making a mockery of
Pan-Africanist dreams

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

When free Mother Africaโ€™s people
Give up on the miseries
Of their tyrannical
Genocidal
War-torn lands
Of once upon a time
Ancient Mega Star Warrior Kings
As accessible to today
As
The horizon of history
Choose to rather not
Get roasted walking the Sahara
Drown treading the Mediterranean
Thereโ€™s a rainbow broadband
Linking the poles of Africa
From the Atlas to the Cape
Making a joke of
Cecil Rhodeโ€™s Cape-to-Cairo
Highway dream

Following this rainbow
Many an African soul
Crushed under own meaning
Of true self-annihilatory African liberation
Land in awesome Gauteng
Cradle of Humankind grounds
City of gold
Mystical
Below and above
The ground

People begin to breathe here
People grow wings here
People reach all corners of Mzansi fo sho from here
Peopleโ€™s dreams come true here
The rest is magic

Argh, cxh
Afro-xenophobia
Comes and goes
Now and then
Mzansi fo sho
Playing out its own version of
White manโ€™s burden
Transgenerational trauma
Self-annihilatory black curses
Call it divide and rule devices

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

Iโ€™ve asked before
Whoโ€™s better
Whoโ€™s worse
Same difference
Same shit

The southern-most
Tip of the
Africa-long broadband rainbow
Touches Robben Island
In this lament here
Nelson Mandela legacy spirit infused
I lay my head
On the anvil
In this lament here
I proclaim that
Africaโ€™s futureโ€™s anchored here
Prove me wrong
If you can
Hammer my brains out
If Iโ€™m wrong

Come along
Join The Rainbow Nationโ€™s march
To go detox itself of
White manโ€™s burden faeces
On Robben Island
For the illusive redemption of
Africa burning
In self-perpetuatory
White manโ€™s burden
Transgenerational trauma
Self-annihilatory black curse
Singing
Africa unite

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is desmond_tutu_trbt_lw_2022.jpg

Desmond Tutu
Knew
May His Soul Rest
In Eternal Power of Love and Peace
Itโ€™s all in
The rainbow
Of humanityโ€™s diversity vibrancy
Embrace it
As it garrisons you
In Mzansi fo sho
Desmond Tutuโ€™s magical
Rainbow Nation
Where tyrants
Cave in under the law
Whilst
White manโ€™s burden faeces
Detox movement goes on
Bloody messy
As it gets
As it was in the beginning
END
ยฉSimon Chilembo 28/12-2021

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
January 02, 2022
Tel.: +4792525032

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ยฉSimon Chilembo 2020
Project management

AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

DIDN’T GO AMERICA 

And, so

I didnโ€™t

Go to America

I felt robbed

Yet again

God had decided

To screw

My wishes  

Yet I had prayed and prayed and prayed

Prayed since I was a  child

I saw beautiful Americaย 

In the bioscope

King Kong

Swept me off my feet

Made me believe

I could reach for the sky

Higher than him

Upon the World Trade Center

I was smarter than him  

After all

If only I could

Get into the screen  

Off the wall

All I had to do was to

Go to America

I dreamed 

Heard on the radio

As 

Neil Armstrongโ€™s first one step

On the moon

Was reported

A giant leap

For mankind

Was recorded

When other children and I

On my township streets

Enthralled

Sang about that moment

Monna wa pele

Ya hatileng ngoeling

Ke mang

Ke Armstrong  

It was clear to me that

In America

The world couldnโ€™t hold a man down

Iโ€™d go to America

When grown up

Iโ€™d be doctor in America

I believed

Science ruled in America

The day

I ate

The body of Christ  

Father Hammel had earlier

Convinced me that

I was a chosen one

Child of God

The bishop-with-no-name

Later came and

Patted my cheek

Nearer to the heart  

My entry

Into the kingdom of God was confirmed

My wishes

Would be her command

For as long as I lived

America brace yourself

But

I didnโ€™t

Go to America

At night

Year in and year out

I slept

Deep as I could

In the event that

Spirits of my ancestors

Came my way

Iโ€™d be wholly

Receptive to their guidance

As to how and when

Iโ€™d go to America

I went on to sleep

Hours on end

In daytime

Many a year in

Many a your out

To no avail

I didnโ€™t go to America

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

Dejected

Faith gone

To places I couldnโ€™t fathom

Only God

Only ancestral spirits

Knew

I felt cheated

Terrible  

First

They dropped me

Not only

In the darkest continent

Africa

But Africa

Where my blackness

Was a curse from birth

Where

I only dreamt

Blood raining on me

Everywhere

In everything I did

Every bloody day

Iโ€™d at times wake up

In a fog of blood

All around me

Hard to breathe

No wonder

Ancestral spirits

Could never reach me

Could never speak with me

In South Africa

Land of my birth

God favoured

White people compassion-deprived  

Favoured with greed

Favouring oppression of the conquered  

As they knew it in Europe

Where they had been scummed

Their previous lives

The wretched of the wretched

Reproducing the ever wretched  

Of the earth

Souls broken

Dehumanized by their own

The original landed

Self-imposed rulers of man

Creators of God

Who ruled

By the sword

Subsequently the gun

Now the drone

Not forgetting

Intercontinental ballistic missiles

No blood, no victory

No blood, no insurrection

No blood , no subversion

No blood, no suppression 

No blood, no subservience

No blood, no annihilation  

What a bloody mess

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

In Europe they had kingdoms

They had the church

In South Africa

Kingdoms morphed into Apartheid state

The church remained  

Multi-pronged

In the name of God

Of many faces

The wretched of the wretched

Propagating the ever wretched

Of the earth

The only thing they knew   

White people spilt

Black peopleโ€™s blood there

In South Africa  

People killing people

Became a way of life there

Not much has changed

So much blood everywhere there

People stabbed

People gunned

People molested

Bled and ran

Bled and fell

People died in pools of blood

When I saw blood

I knew I was alive

I got older

I knew I had to

Get out of there

America calling, baby

Olโ€™ Blue Eyes

Came out voice blazing

Singing

New York

New York

And all my doubts were squashed

I just had to go to America

New York

New York

City that never sleeps

Just perfect for me

Too much blood

In my dreams

During sleep

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

Mr Black President Mandela

Of South Africa

Came and went

As if from nowhere

Mr Black President Obama

Emerged in  America  

Went and buried

Mr Black President Mandela

Black Power

Circle of life complete

In Mzansi fo sho   

Mr Black President Obama

Of America

Charmed

All charmable people of the world

Incredulous

Angry White peopleโ€™s worlds

In disarray

Black-people-detesting cells

In their blood boiled

Resorted to the only trait they know

Violence

Lynching of Black people urge

Pervasive as porn

Diabolical must be a place in America

Where they donโ€™t know a thing

About democracy

Tyrants

Getting kicks out of

Shameless display

Of ignorance entangled in

Bungled communisocialism theories    

Heads or tails of which

They donโ€™t know at all

Founded upon slippery

Coagulated blood-paved intellectual grounds

Some gone to school

I canโ€™t help but wonder

From which planet

The books theyโ€™ve read are

Their libraries must be

Drenched in blood

They must have been taught by

Crooked professors

Fake

Blood-sucker intelligentsia

Soiling academia of the world

Ivy League universities

I gotta ask

What went wrong

With these people

Or is it you

Whatโ€™s become of you

Once upon a time

Revered seats of knowledge

Astonishing     

Black people of the world

Caught Obama fever

Chronic

Need no inoculation

Obama ainโ€™t Corona

Got

Obama talk

Got

Obama walk  

Yah, man

Bob Marley had said it before

Everythingโ€™s gonna be alright

No more cry, woman

No more cry, man

Dry your tears

Black child  

Martin Luther Kingโ€™s

Dream had come true  

We had overcome

Free at last

America

Watch me

Iโ€™m coming home

Miley Cyrus

Whereโ€™s the party, babe

Thereโ€™s

A party in the USA

The Un-United States of America

Amidst the Obama euphoria

I heard a gunshot here

KABOOM!!!

A gunshot there and there

KABOOM!!! BOOM!!!

Black man 

Ceased to breathe here

Ceased to breathe there

Die

Nigger

Die 

Reality come home  

Gruesome

Genocidal Apartheid South Africa

Upon my heels

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

White America

Not unlike

God-favoured

White South Africa

Compassion-deprived   

Favoured with greed

Favouring oppression of

Black people

People of colour

Rose

Showed its true colours

Emboldened

Raw to the extreme

No brakes

No remorse

Despicable

Mr President Doughnut Prump  

Hit the scene

Raving mad   

Apartheid lunacy

Taken to another stage

Up or down

Just as vile

If not worse

Mr Vice President Penceโ€™ gallows  

Spelt it all out in

The Capitol gardens

Obscene

Like they used to

Parade the streets with

Decapitated heads

Of their own

On stakes

In yesteryearโ€™s Europe

Delinquent

White America

Spoilt brats

Seek to burn San Francisco flowers

On Madame Speaker Pelosiโ€™s head

Shut her beak

Meanwhile

Paul Gosar

Unhinged

Animates

Ms Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Woman of colour

He could never match

In any way

Kills her

On the digital world stage

Ghastly

Appalling

Repeating history

As is customary

Killing his own

In 21st Century America of all colours

On the streets

In the name of justice

For paralysed-Kenosha-police-seven-times-shot-in-the-back-unarmed

Jacob Blake

Delinquent

White America

Spoilt brat

Kyle Rittenhouse

Just normalized

Vigilantism in America

Critical Race Theory

Comprehension bereft

Children of America

Just fallen deeper into

The abyss of hell    

Horrendous  

Out on the streets

On a

Longevity enhancing jog

Unarmed

Posing no threat to no one

Black America young man

Ahmaud Marquez Arbery

Met his demise

In the hands of

Genocidal white Americaโ€™s

Travis McMichael

In the murder trial court of whom

The latterโ€™s defence lawyer

Wants not to see

Men of God in

Black America personas

Outrageous     

On second thoughtsย ย 

They can keep their America

My God ainโ€™t too bad after all

Neither are my ancestral spirits

Gonna find me

Pure white as snow

Polar bear
END
ยฉSimon Chilembo 18/11-2021

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2021

RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!

PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my 7th book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories. It might save yours and your loved oneโ€™s lives.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2020

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 regimeโ€™s economic might. The oppressed Black population segment was subjected to extremes of state security agenciesโ€™ violence.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2018 Author/ Poet/ Publisher
ยฉSimon Chilembo 2018 Author/ Poet/ Publisher

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 countryโ€™s endowment with a variety of natural resources that the world is willing to pay generously for is of crucial importance. Oppressors maximize their hold by capturing the wealth of their nations, therefore. They personalize the wealth, becoming super-rich individually and along with their family members, as well as their power clique hounds: oligarchs’ fangs drooling kleptocracy and nepotism poison in everything they touch. At the same time, their nations get caught in quagmires of long-term poverty and international indebtedness

The Soweto 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 stateโ€™s capital base. Apartheid had to ultimately collapse. Not because somebody woke up one morning and suddenly discovered that the system was in fact diabolic. The fact is that it simply was no longer economically viable. And prospects of any meaningful bounce back were bleak. Added pressure from the international trade sanctions had brought the country down on its knees.  

The effective brutality of the apartheid regime reproduced itself across the entire Black populace by default โ€“ in the home; at absolutely all levels of social interaction. That to the extent that the nature of fundamental survival power relations dynamics cultivated then amongst Black people themselves have endured. Albeit manifest at even more sophisticated, grander scale, and more destructive levels in keeping with societal management complexities and technological advancements of the times in the 21st Century.

During the apartheid domination years, many a Black South African exile carried along with them these survival power relations dynamics into the Diaspora. Not that it helped the concerned exiles much from the point of view of applying the same survival strategies as generally functional in the township, or kassie culture in Black South Africa. Kassie is a corruption of the Afrikaans language word, lokasie; which means location. Observing, establishing, and maintaining links with fellow South African exiles has kept my fascination with the Black peopleโ€™s fundamental survival power relations dynamics alive during all these years.

Post-1994 South Africa has also been accessible to me. Itโ€™s the land of my birth, the land of my familyโ€™s maternal-side ancestry, after all. Thirty-eight-and-half years since living abroad, I returned to stay in the country for five years, 2013-18. As such, I have been in touch with the trends in the land all along. Much had changed drastically at about all levels. However, characteristic personal survival attitudinal attributes have remained constant. I shall dwell on these later on in this essay as I unravel prerequisites for the workings of the ruthlessness of kassie jungle law rule.     

Kassie is a funky catchphrase these days. But originally, it essentially implied a slum; not much unlike Brazilian favelas, for example. In practice, the meaning hasnโ€™t changed in any big way. From the colonial era, peaking during the apartheid years, and stretching into contemporary times, tens of thousands-upon-thousands-to-millions of Black South Africans were dumped here. It initially was predominantly male labourers working in the mines and the agro-industrial complex.

There would be a few state functionaries and even fewer professionals in various vocational categories here and there. Much as there would be numerous fortune hunters engaged in all kinds of illicit endeavours; from petty crimes to large-scale organized crime activities involving alcohol, drugs, precious stones and metals smuggling, human trafficking, prostitution, and more. Family units would eventually emerge as a natural human development process, of course. Children would be born, raised, become adults, lead miserable lives, and subsequently die; the indignity of poverty accompanying them to the grave. Causes of death variable, from murder to illness, if not natural causes.

Prevalent land conditions are far from prime in the townships. This makes the construction of decent domiciles a daunting challenge for impoverished people. Sustainable subsistence food production from the land is near impossible. Minimal to total lack of functional social amenities comes with the package here. If there was anything prime about the original townships, it was the potential to induce and generationally perpetuate poverty with all its attendant maladies: disease, moral decay, ignorance. All that to facilitate self-annihilation amongst Black people: kill them; let them kill themselves; create space for more European trash to come to work, settle, and add to the growth of the white population in the country.

Conditions are even worse these days, taking into consideration, since 1994, the influx of millions of refugees and fortune hunters from war-torn, dysfunctional African states to the north. Others come from other parts of the world, especially Asia. Competition for limited resources and livable spaces in the townships has spiked exponentially, apparently in favour of the new immigrants. Many of the latter come into South Africa with more by far international hustling experience: higher academic qualifications and vocational experience in both the social and natural sciences, military or guerilla warfare experience, and all that it entails โ€“ daring nature, PTSD, and other related outcomes. Also, investment capital for entrepreneurial ventures in various fields, often starting with small-scale grocery stores called spaza shops.

The latter attributes above are often accompanied by extreme manifestations of arrogance of power towards the locals, who are considered to be intellectually lacking, lazy, and fearful of White people, who still own the land, anyway. Itโ€™s hardly surprising, therefore, that strong anti-immigrant sentiments have mushroomed across the country, culminating in several outbursts of brutal xenophobia-inspired violence in recent years. Afro-xenophobia expression is ascribed to South African Black-on-African Black violence. In keeping with characteristic basal kassie culture, violence is the first instinctual option to eradicating conflict. Tragedy is ever the outcome that never brings forth solutions for a peaceful co-existence for all in the country.

The reality of the matter is that, much like the Ununited States of America, South Africa owes much of its economic might to the historical inflow of migrants from all corners of the world. As Iโ€™ve already implied above, these people bring into the country a wide diversity of creative/ intellectual/ academic, productive, and entrepreneurial skills that contribute to the robustness of the countryโ€™s vibrant economic and social advancement in the long run.

Thereโ€™ll always be a few bad apples here and there. But assuming a functional justice system prevailing in the land, relevant policing and legal institutions are there to deal with lawbreakers. South Africa is truly a multi-cultural melting pot. Bishop Desmond Tutuโ€™s broadly embraced Rainbow Nation nickname for the country supersedes discrimination neither based on race nor origin of the people that call South Africa their home, either by birth or immigration.   

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2020

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 โ€œโ€ฆ solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”

But then again, survival instincts abode in all humanity. People can remain wretched only for so long. If they are not wiped off from the face of the earth, they shall engage in all sorts of means to prolong their existence. Perhaps fate can change for someone, someday: break the bonds of subjugation, rise and liberate the people, and, ideally, live happily ever after in boundless abundance.

In the meantime, at the individual level in the South African kassie context, survival was and still is about ruthless โ€œsemphete ke o feteโ€ (Sesotho: donโ€™t overtake me, I overtake you) tendencies. Here, the strong survive. The ruthless rule; applying cruelty as their claim to prosperity and longevity.    

Brought forth, elaborated in my Black South African context, and set in alphabetical order below are personal dispositions Iโ€™ve identified as being cardinal for relative individual survival and ruling potential in the South African kassie culture of violence. That as a tool for understanding the nature of human relations power dynamics, and consequences thereof, at all levels of contemporary society, both locally and globally (In the latter, i.e., globally, the USA fits in like a glove). The respective attributes may be understood regarding the identification of the individual as to who they are, and what their social standing is concerning behavioural phenomena observed of them. In essence, this is the making of despots ekassie, a microcosm of the Dream of America nightmare:

  • Bodomo (street parlance โ€“ Setsotsi) is derived from the Afrikaans word dom. Alternatively bokwala (Sesotho), it means stupidity; downright idiocy. Amidst events, act like you donโ€™t know whatโ€™s going on. Go about your daily business indifferent as to whether or not you cause others harm in your endeavours; you lack empathy. You are not interested in reason. You are a denialist. You are a revisionist.  
  • Bokhopo (Sesotho) is cruelty. When it is deep-seated, merciless, non-benevolent, and non-repentant it is called khohlahalo in the same language. Rule by absolute iron-fisted fearsomeness. Without exception, anybody transgressing you in any way shall suffer the full ruthlessness of your wrath in line with the nature of the offence and the choice of punishment you dim fit. The line between life and death is often very thin here. This tends to elicit baffling loyalty from your cohorts. Much to the bewilderment of your detractors.
  • Ho tella (Sesotho)/ ukudelela (isiZulu) is an uninhibited show of lack of respect. Total disdain. You are brazen. You bulldoze your way through towards the attainment of your power or material acquisitions, and other egocentric ambitions. In your interpersonal and other relations in the community, itโ€™s your rules or no rules at all. 
  •  Lenyatso (Sesotho) is the root of ho tella and leqhoko, immediately above and below respectively. It means to undermine, to belittle other people. Tools applied include patronization, ridicule, insults, unjust criticism, passive aggression, isolation or exclusion, subjugation; all propelled by jealousy and/ or feelings of threat irrationally perceived or real because the victim may, indeed, be the better person in many respects. The idea is to crush the victim, cut them to size, and put them in their place of insignificance. This is pure mental and emotional abuse that often easily degenerates to physical abuse.
  • Leqhoko (Sesotho) is provocativeness. Be agitative even out of nothingness just so your presence is noticed, is not forgotten. Be relentlessly disruptive. Cause havoc; be an ass. Instigate and sustain fear. Use all means at your disposal: bully, defame, riot, vandalize, pillage, depose, fight, maim, kill. Ultimately, emerge as the leader of the pack; level-headed and solution-oriented, if only to cow and manipulate the terrorized towards aiding to secure attained dominant safe position.
  • Mamello (Sesotho)/ Qinisela (isiXhosa/ isiZulu) refers to tolerance capacity; endurance in both hard and good times, depending. Good times are generally no big deal. But in hard times, practice self-preservation by keeping to yourself and your own. Hang in there. Stay away from trouble. Be invisible. Make no noise. Cultivate hope. Keep the faith because everything is going to be alright someday. Persevere.

    For the mighty, though, mamello/ ukuqinisela means staying the course no matter what: keep on pushing; stand tall, donโ€™t fall. Never, never, never give up! Never change the course of action once commitment to act in a certain manner is made. Here, mamello/ ukuqinisela becomes an interplay of bodomo, bokhopo, ho tella, leqhoko, and manganga in variable doses and combinations according to the circumstances prevailing at any one time and space.
  • Manganga (Sesotho)/ Inkani (isiZulu) is absolute stubbornness. Take a stand, be resolute to the very end, whatever the cost. Whether or not original intended goals are attained is not the essence. You are defiant to the extreme. Stay rock-steady as a matter of principle because you cannot be wrong, or you cannot be denied your demands. You are the truth. You are the light. If you are not the son of God, then you ARE God! Your opponents shall declare you as deranged, delusional; but that doesnโ€™t bother you at all. You are mmampodi (Sesotho)/ champion; you rule. You live above the law. You own your followers through and through. Each one of them understands that you are their life saviour.
    A street parlance (Setsotsi) adage goes like this, โ€œMaziwaziwe, mazโ€™bidlikazโ€™bidlike! (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; โ€œโ€ฆ itโ€™ll 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 falls premises pushed brexshit and pull your country out of a body of international solidarity in the Western world.
     
    Neither does State Capture exist in South Africa. You know none in your family that has contracted AIDS in South Africa. Therefore, it doesnโ€™t exist. Step aside rule in the ANC? Whatโ€™s that? If you are indeed going to fall, you donโ€™t go alone. You are vindictive. 
  • Sebete is a Sesotho word for liver.The liver is considered to be an organ of courage in my part of Black South African culture. A courageous person is said to โ€œhave 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 โ€œO sele!โ€, meaning โ€œHe/ 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, โ€œWho is it you trust?โ€
Whoโ€™s covering your back?

Simple as the question might seem, it is not necessarily a daily conversation question posed in my original part of Black South Africa. The question is profound to the extent that it is asked a person directly, or others are asked about a particular individual when the latterโ€™s negative behaviour defies not only mainstream social protocols across the board, but sheer common sense as well. It is believed that there must be some extra-ordinary qualities, some mystic about these kinds of people. For example:

  • What gives them the guts? What makes them tick?
  • Whose progeny are they? What are their lineages?
  • Do they have some guardian angels, perhaps? In that case, who are the latter? Where are they?
  • What do they have that ordinary people do not have?
  • Are they working for somebody even more powerful than themselves? Who are these people?
  • Are they protected by God? Ancestral spirits? Wizards and witches?
  • Or are they just raving mad, sick in their heads? Are they bewitched?
  • Do they have magical powers themselves? If so, from where do the powers derive?
  • Are they members of some organized crime gangs? Or some secret societies? The Illuminati?
  • Is it just because they are too rich? But where does their wealth come from? 

Itโ€™s only if and when sufficient knowledge about these treacherous people is gathered that concerned individuals or the community can effectively react to get rid of them in one way or another. Itโ€™s not unusual that the former fall from glory in the most dramatic and humiliating fashions; those who lived by the sword dying exactly as they lived. Such is kassie life. The ruthless rule but momentarily.

The strong are often the smart with senses of moral and ethical awareness. They tend to survive, break out of the mould of kassie misery and ignorance, and live longer. Some in this category will in time even travel wide and see the world, permanently breaking the spell of kassie anti-life attributes. Expressing themselves through diverse media and creative and performance forms, they may also become proponents of liberty, justice, and equality as fundamental Human Rights tenets all of humanity on earth is entitled to.  

Meanwhile, South Africa has yet to cleanse itself of the kassie anti-life attributes spell, to the extent that itโ€™s possible. However, given the current display of elite kassie mentality antics in various judicial and organizational platforms in the country, it is clear that much more work remains to be done at this rate. Well, cumulatively from the onset of contemporary European colonialism in the 17th Century up to the apartheid era in the 20th Century, the mechanizations that facilitated their imposition had at least four hundred years to dehumanize my people and screw up our psyche. The Rainbow Nation is only twenty-seven years old.

Khotso is a common Sesotho name for South African males. It means peace. The female version is Mma-Khotso both as a formal name and may denote that the woman is a mother of a boychild called Khotso. The name has significant connotations. In practice and conceptually, peace is a universal prerequisite for progressive human co-existence. That making for harnessing humanityโ€™s creative potential towards a sustainable, infinitely fulfilling life for all. The South African national anthem, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika! (Nkosi Sikelela) is essentially a cry for peace, captured in the Sesotho text:

Morena boloka sechaba sa heso/ Lord Almighty, save my nation
O fedisa dintwa le matshwenyeho/ Bring an end to strife and suffering  

Were the ruthless and the smart kassie people of South Africa and beyond to realign their attitudes and heed the message of Nkosi Sikelela, the future would be bright for all. I want to be here in four hundred years to gloss in the glory of the heaven on earth that South Africa and the rest of the world will have become. I sit here in a space of relative peace. I breathe. I dream. I write. Ever conscious of the lasting impact that my kassie life background has had on me, I have every reason to want to choose to be hopeful.  


SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
May 29, 2021

RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!

PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2020
Project management

COLOUR OF MY SKIN – A Poem

AS IS COLOUR OF MY SKIN I AM

Iโ€™m โ€˜y skin colour
I waste no light
You see no colour
Youโ€™re out of sight

Light shines through you
Your
Condescendence
Ignorance
Insensitivity
Superficiality
Ubiquitous

I walk
My colour
I talk
My colour
I breathe my colour
I live my colour

You see no colour
I run over you
My voice colour laser
Pierces your eardrums

You choose not to see
You choose not to hear
Youโ€™ll never learn
Youโ€™ll stay colourless
Dumb
You might as well
Be dead
Bigot

Your words say
And I quote
Oh, dear
I am indeed white
And that is a fact
God-given
My blood is
Racism pure-red-free
White is my world
Pure and clean
I do not see
Black in the people of God
Black is the colour of shame
That notwithstanding
Black is the appearance of the colour of the skin of my lover
When we perform coitus
I shut my eyes closed
Really
I do not see colour
I feel only delight
Primal pleasures of the flesh flavour

Close quote

Clearly
Your vision
Is twisted
Your hearing
Is clogged
Even then
I invite you
To read my lips
If you can
For one last time

Vocalize my words
Inside your head
For you to hear
What I have
To say to you

Iโ€™m colour of my skin
I give meaning to light
Black defineโ€™ space
In your time
Black colours
Contours of your life
Black contrasts the universe
For creationโ€™s diversity
Ever unfolding
Inside of you
In everything
Your senses perceive
In your world
Big or small

Iโ€™m colour of my skin
I stand here
A plural faced prism
I disperse light
In all directions
In all its
Spectrum splendour
Colour possible tones
Imagination unbound

When some call me
A person of colour
Itโ€™s because
They see something
Of themselves
In me
In all corners of the world

The day you decide
To open your eyes
Come into me
Find the colour of your skin
For who you truly are

Walk with me
Your colour
If you want
As I walk mine

Walk my talk
Your ears might heal
Talk my colour
Your ears might hear
They might be
Receptive
To Black person
Dancing
In the light
Singing
You cause me harm
For colour of my skin
You harm yourself
See my colour
See yourself
Feel your pain
For the day
Light might cease
Falling on me

In the dark
Everything is possible
You created Satan
Made it
My alter ego
And yet
Satan is
The face
Of your fear of my skin
Of your hate
Of the colour of my skin

Iโ€™m shining bright
In the light
Of the smart
Come in sight
Self-knowledge is might
Sit tight
Time is right
Waste no light
Iโ€™m infinite
By right
Iโ€™ll teach you right
Colour of my skin is erudite
Just treat me right
I wish you might
Expedite
Be contrite
For your spite

Immortal is
Colour of my skin
Get used to it
See colour
If only
For your longevity
Life is good
For the colourful
In a world
Tainted by
The
But me
I donโ€™t see colour
I see people

Oh, yeah
People come in
All colours
All shapes
All sizes

You blind
To that reality
Move to the side
Stay out of sight
Moron

END
ยฉSimon Chilembo 23/ 03-2021

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
March 29, 2021
Tel.: +4792525032

RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!

PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book,ย Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.

ยฉSimon Chilembo 2020
Project management