Home » shades of black

Category Archives: shades of black

𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗣𝗘𝗢𝗣𝗟𝗘 𝗔𝗥𝗘

𝗧𝗥𝗨𝗠𝗣 𝗨𝗥𝗔𝗩𝗘𝗟𝗟𝗘𝗗. 𝗛𝗘 𝗜𝗦 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗛𝗘 𝗜𝗦.

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.

©Simon Chilembo 2025
©Simon 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, I’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, they’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 don’t don’t. The human knowledge database grows exponentially every day; all for the taking for free, generally. In the free world, it’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 Trump’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, it’ll be interesting to see if evidentiary material shall emerge or not to irrevocably tie Donald Trump as partaker to Jeffrey Epstein’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 one’s choices.

American podcaster Candace Owens has made relentless claims that French President Macron’s wife is a man, not a woman. The couple is suing Candace for defamation. Now, she’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 we’ve died, we’ll for eternity be destined either to heaven for moral rectitude in life, or to hell for moral corruption. In heaven, there’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 hell’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 – Norwegian citizen (Naturalized immigrant).
  • Birth place – South Africa.
  • Address – 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 Minister’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 creation’s product. Therefore, in the state of being a unique human being, a person ‘A’ may exhibit certain physical and/ or behavioural attributes like those that are manifested by another person ‘B’ of any origin, age, gender, race, religion, or creed. And, that’s as far as it goes. As individual expressions of the unique human species, persons ‘A’ and ‘B’ share equally the essence of being human as extrapolated in the human genome, the core our genetic makeup.

©Simon Chilembo 2019

Likening person ‘A’ to person ‘B’ due to identification of certain manifest shared idiosyncrasies does not, and can never make person ‘A’ into person ’B’, 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 – 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 gangster’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. That’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, “… mass layoffs at government agencies and publicly funded organizations. It also took part in an immigration crackdown and copied sensitive data from government databases.”   
  • ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)keeps breaking people’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 channel’ State of the Union programme, “He [Donald Trump] doesn’t want brown people in our country.
  • 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 latter’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 gangsters’ 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 “O sele!”, meaning “He/ she is petulant!”
    People of all ages manifesting ho sa as a characteristic social interaction trait are some of the most dangerous a community can have. They are heartless, self-centred, shameless, fear-insulated, thrill-seeker types of the worst kind. Makings of despots emerge here. Donald Trump “o sele”!
  • 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 “Trump tariffs” matter, or Trump’s assertion that “Ukraine started the Russian war in Ukraine”. 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, … just x2-tuple down until they can’t breathe no more. If they don’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 – just create enduring chaos. Were it possible, you’d disappear them at a snap of your fingers.

Your opponents shall declare you as deranged, delusional; but that doesn’t bother you at all. You are mmampodi (Sesotho)/ champion; you rule. You live above the law. You own your followers through and through. Each one of them understands that you are their life saviour – 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 “White Genocide” is carried out in South Africa.

©Simon 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 “Trump Tariffs” are. The man doesn’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, “A tariff is a tax that governments place on goods coming into their country. You might also hear them called duties or customs duties … The most immediate effect of a tariff is simple: it makes imported products more expensive for Americans to buy …  tariffs aim to alter economic behavior, discouraging imports and creating an incentive to purchase domestically produced alternatives.”

Unfortunately, Donald Trump is fighting a losing battle on his forcefully unorthodox approach to the application of tariffs contra USA’s trading partners, essentially all countries engaging with the USA in international trade.  It’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.

It’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 country’s borders. Involving himself in the internal affairs of another country, he’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 “White Genocide” 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 … 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 hasn’t lost it already. Lawrence O’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 O’Donnell laid it out on his show on MS NOW YouTube channel, “Well, Donald Trump confessed last night. Donald Trump confessed that he was lying. Donald Trump turned himself in as a pathological liar last night … It’s not news that Donald Trump is a racist … It’s not news that Donald Trump is a vile, ugly stain on American public life …”

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, it’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, it’s reported that “Despite media attention on asylum claims, dual citizenship applications, and second passport programs, the majority of South Africa’s white minority is choosing to remain in the country they call home, anchored by heritage, identity, and a commitment to national renewal.”  

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

In an earlier article of February 25, 2025, BBC.com had reported that “A 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.”

This a manifestation of bodomo / stupidity, fundamentally undelineable ignorance as raw as it gets; the stupid so stupid that they don’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:

“Abundantly 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.

“In their extreme madness stunts, some of them could self-annihilatorily nuclear-bomb the world and they wouldn’t care. Should it happen, they’d probably say, “Ooops!”, and die happily. In their heads, satisfied with themselves, thinking that they’d have shown the world the power of alpha-male masculinity. My foot!    

The USA has Donald Trump. South Africa has Jacob Zuma. In my mother tongue, Sesotho, we’d say about these two that they could have been birthed by the same woman. They could exchange countries, and they’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.

“It’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.

“At 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. It’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 I’d find myself to this day.

“Looking 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.

“These 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.

Destruction of once, or potentially functional societal services and production institutions and processes is the imminent, if not immediate, outcome of these kind of guys’ 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 …”
 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 ANC’ 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 Putin’s Ukraine war

With all the events leading up to Donald Trump’s 2.0 presidency to the present, I’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 Morgan’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 “We’re just a few months into US president Donald Trump’s second term but his rule has already been repeatedly compared to tyranny.”

Mehdi Hasan’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 it’s not coded in racial terms how we think, feel, and express ourselves, the grossly traumatized little “Kaffir Boy” residing at my nape finds it truly unfathomable that White people, speaking, yes, English, can be so “effing” 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, it’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 Trump’s horrendous American Nightmare. They’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 state’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 it’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 Trump’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, “In 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.

“Political orientations arising in the organization of society are instituted upon people’s mental dispositions influencing and expressing their value judgements. As such, Conservatives don’t like change to the extent that they rule. Whereas Liberals [or Progressives] seek to overturn the status quo inhibiting liberty, justice, and equality in society.”

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 couldn’t help but let my frustration out on my Facebook news feed.

I wrote, and I quote, “You’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. That’s it. It doesn’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.

“Read books. It never hurts to go to school, where you’ll be taught some interesting things about Critical Thinking contra myths and Conspiracy Theories.

“As 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. I’ll see you in 2024.”

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 “garbage”, saying that their country of origin, Somalia, stinks”. He went on to make it unequivocally clear that, as reported by Aljazeera, and I quote, “ I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” 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 don’t want to say it, but big-lettered “F”, I, WE “EFFING” TOLD YOU SO! I, WE, ain’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 proponents’ predictable verbal diarrhoea interrogatory debating style rhetorical question, “Are you saying that Donald Trump IS Adolf Hitler, then? Is President Donald a Nazi? Is that what you are saying?” 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 I’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. It’s idiotic to argue that Donald Trump couldn’t be a Nazi because he never committed the holocaust.

Hitler murdered the Jews between 1933-45. Trump wasn’t there. Neither was Trump there during Mussolini’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. It’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 DEI’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
Simon Chilembo Books available on Amazon.
Oslo
07.12.2025

𝗘𝗡𝗘𝗠𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗜 𝗗𝗢𝗡’𝗧 𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪

𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦 𝗜𝗡 𝗠𝗬 𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗟𝗗, 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟮

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

When as a child growing up in South Africa up to the age of 14½ years I was in various spaces hassled for my Blackness and other envied personal attributes, my mother instilled in me a fierce sense of pride and personal integrity. She constantly told me how beautiful I was, and that, as my academic performance demonstrated time after time at that time, I was the most intelligent kid around. I believed her, and, with humility and gratitude, I’ve aimed to live her words since then: beautiful, intelligent man that thrives amongst other beautiful, intelligent people.    

August month, 2023, marked the 35th anniversary of my stay in Norway. The tangible plan I had upon leaving Zambia, my fatherland, in June, 1988, was that I’d complete the 3½ years’ post-graduate business studies programme I had privately secured for myself, with a little help from my friends. Afterwards I’d then move on out to the bigger, wide, wide world.

Twelve years was the timespan that I had given myself that when subsequently big and strong with an Economics PhD degree and international big business and global technocracy experience clutched under my armpits, I’d then return to South Africa, land of my birth, and become the country’s Reserve Bank Governor. I had the earth moving under my feet; what could stop me, then? 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 I’d somehow ultimately stay in Norway for a longer period, not in the least permanently, was never even an iota of an idea in my head. Dream of America calling, Baby. In January, 1991, towards the end of the business studies programme, a bureaucratic glitch led to my ceasing to receive financial support from the scholarship fund. I was left with a huge debt in tuition fees and other costs to the school. Indefinite termination of my studies at the school became unavoidable. This was the beginning of my economic dire straits that would last at least five years in this first cycle. As fate would have it, I’d fall in love with a sweet Norwegian woman during this time.

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

I having been overwhelmed by difficult circumstances beyond my control, once unleashed, the trials and tribulations were ruthless. Under the hardships of life in Norway, I’ve seen many a lesser man from the African Diaspora spiritually buckle, fall, rise, and walk dead. All faith gone, no hope, neither mental nor physical strength left, they die. Literally. I decided that if I fall, I shall fall. But I would never die. I didn’t travel more than half the world to let problems of life kill me so far away from home. One way or another I’d find a way to rise again; just I can breathe. I could never return neither to Zambia nor South Africa poor and without a business PhD degree. Never.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been through so many personal falls and rises that I know when an opportunity for my self-reinvention is nigh. The feeling of anticipation I get in times like these is like no other. I become larger than life in my thoughts so that when the opportunity for me to rise again arrives I won’t lose control of my sensibilities.  

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

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

Working with the book from the start, and living with the variable impacts it continues to have on its readers are a constant, in real-time steep learning curve. I guess it’s a mark of a significant book when the author gets a mixed bag of strong reactions from the readers. Acquire and read the book for yourself so that you can make your own conclusions. Love or hate me as you wish; it is your prerogative in a free world. If you wish to destroy me for your hate, I won’t take you lying on my back.

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

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

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

©Simon 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 couldn’t help but dwell upon encounters with some really bad people that have always been there to hinder my climb to success in the things that I do by way of making a living in the country. The bad people were in total contrast to the loving and caring ones that I met during my short family matters visit in Lusaka, from August 20-29, 2023.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

©Simon Chilembo 11.09.2023  

Self-made
New enemies of me
People I don’t know
Lurk in dark corners
I don’t know
Wish me dead

They don’t know
I’m a free soul of the light
I don’t know how to hide
I don’t know how to die
Darkness cannot contain me

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

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

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

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

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

Delusionals don’t know
That’s the closest they’ll ever
Come to harming me
Envious fools don’t know me
Inconsequential fools’ll never see me
Repugnant fools embraced by
Darkness I don’t know
Darkness I don’t care about *

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

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

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

Here I am to see
For all eyes with love
I’m a soul of invictus
I breathe love
As a matter of course
I’m here to stay
Longevity is the name of
My dance for life
Immortality is the name
Of my end-game
Beat that
If you can
𝗘𝗡𝗗
©Simon Chilembo 11.08.2023

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

𝗢𝗡𝗘 𝗬𝗘𝗔𝗥 𝗟𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗥: 𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦 𝗜𝗡 𝗠𝗬 𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗟𝗗.
𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬 𝗜𝗦 𝗜 𝗔𝗠 𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗘, 𝗜 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗘, 𝗜 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘, 𝗜 𝗗𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘.
𝗜 𝗔𝗜𝗡’𝗧 𝗚𝗢𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗡𝗢𝗪𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗘.

SEBOPUA

CREATURE – The Thing

In my mother tongue, Sesotho, the verb ‘to mould’ (with clay) is ho bopa (ka letsopa). By extension, ho bopa describes ‘to form’, or ‘to create’ a tangible, inanimate object out of clay or any other similar malleable material. The objects made may be of functional, ornamental, or both values. They may also be aesthetically attractive or repulsive. And they may either be destructive or life-supporting, either by design or accident, or by intentional application. For purposes of this presentation, we shall work with the concept of ho bopa in terms of creation. In this case, creation producing a dysfunctional output, a thing, with a potential for destruction of the self and/ or its environment.

©Simon Chilembo 2021

Etymologically expanding ho bopa leads us to, amongst others, the adjective sebopua. The latter approximately translates as ‘a product of creation’ – a thing, an object the existence of which is acknowledged simply because it exists as a result of creation’s infinite creative potential. Creation gets it right most times; it screws up badly sometimes.

Sebopua is thus used to describe people of various degrees of physical handicaps and intellectual disabilities; often from birth. It may be due to birthing complications, illness, inherent neurological or genetic aberrations, and many more. The expression sebopua is often applied derogatively. It may also be used in exasperation as a manifestation of grief against a condition of hopelessness, extreme suffering for the afflicted, and the next of kin as well; including national social welfare authorities, where applicable.  

On the one extreme there’ll be a wholly physically disabled person of any age; drawing much sympathy from others: harmless, poor, unfortunate product of God’s creation.

On the other extreme, there’ll be a borderline, apparently normal person. But they will have all kinds of eccentricities. These render the sebopua incapable of functioning within socially conventional boundaries of human interactions. Much so in adulthood, people in this category tend to live in parallel universes contra mainstream social wisdom concerning how society is organized; from the smallest family units to the larger national entities.

Sebopua people break all the rules, either purposely or because ‘it is what it is’. They don’t know anything else but their unique ways of looking at the world. They cannot understand that others can think or act differently from them in given situations. They simply don’t know how to empathize: it’s their way or no way at all. Civility is a concept unknown here.

Some of human history’s greatest thinkers in all human endeavour the works of whom society benefits from even today can easily be drawn from the eccentrics above. These often tend not to be too much of a burden to society. It is those that are inclined to destruction that are a curse to humanity. Some of the most perilous leaders in human history have emerged from the latter category of sebopua, a freak of creation.  

The thing about sebopua is that they are just a thing. They are devoid of coherent feelings and thoughts expression. Sebopua tend to be one-way-traffic communication machines. Their language skills can often leave much to be desired. Talking to one could as well be as good as talking to a clay molded human figure.  

Sebopua are indifferent to the elements; they know no pain. The only form of pleasure that matters for sebopua is their staying alive at the expense of their perceived and real enemies, not understanding how anybody can be so stupid compared to their, sebopua’s superior intelligence. Sebopua brutality can be horrendous. Woe to the spineless that fall for sebopua’s deceptive charisma. Woe to non-stayer enemies of sebopua.

©Simon Chilembo 2020

Another thing about sebopua is that an eccentric sebopua is a sebopua. The condition knows no colour. It knows no race. The only difference is the relative extent of power exercised and access to weapons of destruction according to their location on planet earth. This here debunks racism as an ideology that claims and pushes ideas that some races are inferior to others. In a perfect world of the free, people group in cliques not always out of racial identities solidarity. Both for the good and the bad, people are drawn to and bond with one another out of shared mental constructs; shared world views.

There’s sebopua in a cul-de-sac in America today. The walls are closing in. I wonder what they’re going to do when they can’t breathe anymore. In England, another one bites the dust. The world must now learn to stop political experiments with dibopua (sebopua plural form) if we have learned anything from the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

In the old days, dibopua used to be hidden away. Or worse. Democracy is a wonderful thing in our times: everyone has the right to live. Whatever the cost. However, there’s a tipping point to everything in life. May the fair and just prevail in all holes and surfaces of the planet. May light reign supreme. Ultimately.     

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

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

AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

DIDN’T GO AMERICA 

And, so

I didn’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 America 

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 Armstrong’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 couldn’t hold a man down

I’d go to America

When grown up

I’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 didn’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

I’d be wholly

Receptive to their guidance

As to how and when

I’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 didn’t go to America

©Simon Chilembo 2021

Dejected

Faith gone

To places I couldn’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

I’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

©Simon 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 people’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

Ol’ 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

©Simon 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 people’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 don’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 don’t know at all

Founded upon slippery

Coagulated blood-paved intellectual grounds

Some gone to school

I can’t help but wonder

From which planet

The books they’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

What’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 ain’t Corona

Got

Obama talk

Got

Obama walk  

Yah, man

Bob Marley had said it before

Everything’s gonna be alright

No more cry, woman

No more cry, man

Dry your tears

Black child  

Martin Luther King’s

Dream had come true  

We had overcome

Free at last

America

Watch me

I’m coming home

Miley Cyrus

Where’s the party, babe

There’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

©Simon 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 Pence’ 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 yesteryear’s Europe

Delinquent

White America

Spoilt brats

Seek to burn San Francisco flowers

On Madame Speaker Pelosi’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 America’s

Travis McMichael

In the murder trial court of whom

The latter’s defence lawyer

Wants not to see

Men of God in

Black America personas

Outrageous     

On second thoughts  

They can keep their America

My God ain’t too bad after all

Neither are my ancestral spirits

Gonna find me

Pure white as snow

Polar bear
END
©Simon Chilembo 18/11-2021

©Simon 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 one’s lives.

©Simon Chilembo 2020

VREDE

HVA VET JEG

Hva vet jeg
Jeg, som du sier
Er en primitiv mann
Preget av afrikanske jungle kultur
Der mennesker spiser hverandre
Er jeg da her
For å kannibalisere deg
Glemm det, mann, sier du
Her i riket ditt
Er det sivilisasjon som herjer

Her finnes det lys
Noe som er gunstig
For hjerneutvikling, sier du

Som om hudfargen min
Oppsluker lys hvor jeg kommer fra
Tvert i mot, egentlig

Det er ikke tilfeldig at
Dere skriver og leser bøker
Dere som er verdens
Kulturelle elite som nasjon
Noe som jeg ikke er
I stand til å forstå
Med min mindre utviklede jungelhjerne, mener du

Hva vet jeg
Om likestilling
Jeg, som du sier
Som forakter kvinnfolk
Jeg som er ute etter
Å overta ditt liv
For å utnytte deg
Som kjæledyret mitt
Glemm det, mann, sier du

I kvinnerettighetenes navn
Forlanger du at
Jeg skal respektere deg
Egentlig, insisterer du videre at
Jeg må beundre deg
Du er min gudinne
Jeg skal være slaven din
Slaveri tendens ligger jo i afrikaneres gener
Det burde jeg vite, påpeker du

I helvete, svarte fæn
Våken opp
La deg integrere i sivilisasjonens land
Kvitt deg med
Dine primitive vaner
Hør på meg
Gjør som jeg sier
Uten meg er du ferdig
Du er ingenting
Skal du leve lenge
Og nyte det gode livet
I dette verdens beste
Hviteste hvite land
Må du oppføre deg pent

Sitt i ro og fred
Under mine vinger
Din sjel er i mine hender
Vær ydmyk og snill, slaven min
Mamma skal ta godt vare på deg
Snille lille gutten min
Kjære slaven min
Jeg bjeffer
Du hopper
Avtale
Sier du

Si noe, da
Brøler du
Ikke bare stå der og glane
Gjør noe
Vil du slå meg
Vil du pule meg
Gjør ett eller annet
Eller dra til helvete

Hva gjør du nå
Stans
Du drar intet sted
Før jeg er ferdig med deg

Mann, du er stygg og dum
Skam til den kvinnen
Som måtte føde deg
Stakkers dame

Hvor uheldig kan en kvinne være
Ved å føde deg
Så stygg og dum som du er
Og du kaller henne for mor
Fy søren, er det mulig

Ikke kom nær meg
Bare ta et steg frem
Og da skal du oppleve
Hvordan vikingenes vrede flytter fjell
Og skaper tsunamier i verdenshavene …
(Continues in the book MACHONA POETRY: Rage and Slam in Tigersburg)
©Simon Chilembo 07/05-2021

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Telephone: +4792525032
September 20, 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.

©Simon Chilembo 2020

DECOMMISSIONED – A Poem

Overkill in My World

.. Metal falls
To the ground
Glue and tape peel off and fall
To the ground
Bricks column crumbles and falls
To the ground
I stand tall
On the ground
Plastic shrinks and falls
To the ground
I can breathe …
(Continues in the book MACHONA POETRY: Rage and Slam in Tigersburg)
©Simon Chilembo 13/07-2021

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
July 19, 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.

©Simon Chilembo 2020
Project management

THE RUTHLESS RULE

Kassie Jungle Law: Only the Strong Survive

In my never-ending attempt at seeking to make sense of events in the world today, I, as a reflex, regularly look back at the first fourteen-and-half years of my life in South Africa, 1960 June – 1975 January. Growing up in the then racist apartheid state has profoundly impacted my life. Day-to-day living was ever so dramatically charged. Such that, on the one hand, one could but choose to numb oneself to the volatility of emotions, if not traumas arising, and live on disenchanted and detached from the gruesome, disenfranchised reality.

On the other hand, one could look at, hop onto the intricate traumatic feelings and thoughts bandwagon, learn survival ropes, and hope for the best; longevity being a remote idea. Wishful thinking. Although the OPEC oil crunch of the early 1970s had already begun to make its mark globally, this period could easily be seen as the golden years of the apartheid regime’s economic might. The oppressed Black population segment was subjected to extremes of state security agencies’ violence.

©Simon Chilembo 2018 Author/ Poet/ Publisher
©Simon 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 oppressors’ financial base remains sufficiently robust to sustain the oiling of the oppressive state machinery at all levels. Money talks. Money rules. As it is with South Africa, a country’s endowment with a variety of natural resources that the world is willing to pay generously for is of crucial importance. Oppressors maximize their hold by capturing the wealth of their nations, therefore. They personalize the wealth, becoming super-rich individually and along with their family members, as well as their power clique hounds: oligarchs’ fangs drooling kleptocracy and nepotism poison in everything they touch. At the same time, their nations get caught in quagmires of long-term poverty and international indebtedness

The Soweto Students’ Uprising of June 16, 1976, would not only change the liberation struggle course. It changed the political landscape of South Africa as well; further weakening the oppressive state’s capital base. Apartheid had to ultimately collapse. Not because somebody woke up one morning and suddenly discovered that the system was in fact diabolic. The fact is that it simply was no longer economically viable. And prospects of any meaningful bounce back were bleak. Added pressure from the international trade sanctions had brought the country down on its knees.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

©Simon 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 “… solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”

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

In the meantime, at the individual level in the South African kassie context, survival was and still is about ruthless “semphete ke o fete” (Sesotho: don’t overtake me, I overtake you) tendencies. Here, the strong survive. The ruthless rule; applying cruelty as their claim to prosperity and longevity.    

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

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

    For the mighty, though, mamello/ ukuqinisela means staying the course no matter what: keep on pushing; stand tall, don’t fall. Never, never, never give up! Never change the course of action once commitment to act in a certain manner is made. Here, mamello/ ukuqinisela becomes an interplay of bodomo, bokhopo, ho tella, leqhoko, and manganga in variable doses and combinations according to the circumstances prevailing at any one time and space.
  • Manganga (Sesotho)/ Inkani (isiZulu) is absolute stubbornness. Take a stand, be resolute to the very end, whatever the cost. Whether or not original intended goals are attained is not the essence. You are defiant to the extreme. Stay rock-steady as a matter of principle because you cannot be wrong, or you cannot be denied your demands. You are the truth. You are the light. If you are not the son of God, then you ARE God! Your opponents shall declare you as deranged, delusional; but that doesn’t bother you at all. You are mmampodi (Sesotho)/ champion; you rule. You live above the law. You own your followers through and through. Each one of them understands that you are their life saviour.
    A street parlance (Setsotsi) adage goes like this, “Maziwaziwe, maz’bidlikaz’bidlike! (isiZulu)/ If they (e.g. towers) fall, they fall; if they collapse, they collapse!”
    It is what it is.

    Tyrants, hard-core conspiracy theorists, and charlatans fall under this category. So, in the USA, Coronavirus is just the common flu; “… it’ll disappear just like a miracle!”
    Not forgetting The Big Lie that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the presidential elections of November, 2020. And then supporters of The Big Lie insurrect The Capitol peacefully like tourists, leaving destruction and carnage behind. Very special people that The Big Lie spinner loves.
    You can also do an egotistical, parochial, typically falls premises pushed brexshit and pull your country out of a body of international solidarity in the Western world.
     
    Neither does State Capture exist in South Africa. You know none in your family that has contracted AIDS in South Africa. Therefore, it doesn’t exist. Step aside rule in the ANC? What’s that? If you are indeed going to fall, you don’t go alone. You are vindictive. 
  • Sebete is a Sesotho word for liver.The liver is considered to be an organ of courage in my part of Black South African culture. A courageous person is said to “have a liver”/ O sebete. Courage is a common thread linking all survival, or power attributes in kassie.

Ho sa (Sesotho, noun), lumps together the attributes above into one virulent trait: petulance as gross as only an extremely spoiled brat can display. The descriptive form of ho sa is “O sele!”, meaning “He/ she is petulant!”   
People of all ages manifesting ho sa as a characteristic social interaction trait are some of the most dangerous a community can have. Makings of despots emerge here.  

Underpinning the relative kassie individual survival and ruling potential laid out above is the question: O tshepile mang (Sesotho)? Which directly translates as, “Who is it you trust?”
Who’s covering your back?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
May 29, 2021

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.

©Simon Chilembo 2020
Project management

COLOUR OF MY SKIN – A Poem

AS IS COLOUR OF MY SKIN I AM

I’m ‘y skin colour
I waste no light
You see no colour
You’re out of sight

Light shines through you
Your
Condescendence
Ignorance
Insensitivity
Superficiality
Ubiquitous

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

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

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

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

Close quote

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Immortal is
Colour of my skin
Get used to it
See colour
If only
For your longevity
Life is good
For the colourful
In a world
Tainted by
The
But me
I don’t see colour
I see people

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

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

END
©Simon Chilembo 23/ 03-2021

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

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

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

©Simon Chilembo 2020
Project management

SYSTEMIC RACISM

BLACK PEOPLE’S FIGMENT OF THE IMAGINATION?

If it is systemic it is broad based according to its time, space, and driving forces. It is enduring. It is transgenerational. It is endemic. It is prolific. It is a constant. It is predictable. It is routine. It is structured. It is devious: transparent one moment, subtle the next.

If it is systemic it is its own universe. It has its own domain of interconnectedness, its own self-preservation, self-perpetuation dynamics, its own fallacies contra conventional wisdom.

If it is systemic it is the noun system in applied form. The term system defines particular arrangements of processes, objects, and concepts designed to deliver set outcomes; precision assuming fulfilment of given pre-determined conceptual and operational parameters. A system represents methods to follow in order to achieve certain outcomes. A system may be natural or man-made.

If it is natural, a system may never fail to the extent that applicable natural laws remain constant. Man-made systems may never fail to the extent that they do not seek to defy the laws of nature.

Racism is a man-made system of thought and behaviour that promulgates and applies ideas that there is, by divine providence, a non-contestable unequal relationship amongst the diversity of ethnicities comprising the human race on earth.

Racism is a political power instrument. It’s a social control force exercised by elite classes to explain and justify their oppression of the weakened and broken for economic domination purposes. Racism as we know it in our times is an off-shoot from the growth of modern capitalism from the 16th Century onwards.

It functions on the irrational classification of human beings according to physical attributes, starting with skin colour and purported cognitive endowments differentiations in favour of dominant classes.

An arbitrary distinction was introduced to classify light-skinned people of Eurasian extraction as being of higher intelligence with the God-given right and power to dominate others of darker skin complexions.

According to racism postulates, the darker-skinned were meant to be at the permanent servitude of the light-skinned. This justified European colonial endeavours the world over, with Africa taking the brunt of it all through the ensuing slave trade that took multitudes of African people into plantation slavery in the Americas.

Racism appears in different forms all over the world. For purposes of this presentation I look at the Eurasian anti-Black racism. This is in view of the current state of global Black Lives Matter debates sparked by the horrific visuals of George Floyd’s heartless murder in Minneapolis, USA, on May 25, 2020.

Along the way to the Americas, millions of other African people perished at sea. As a total dehumanizing experience, colonialism and the Afro-American slave trade have left an indelible trauma in the psyche of African people in the continent and the Diaspora.

At the same time, the White Power movement that grew out of the Eurasian economic might class in North America continues to use the partly successful crushing of the Black African spirit as proof of their superiority.

Fragility of racism as a system starts already with the man-made divine providence principle. Devine providence has no basis in natural law precepts. It lacks consistency, therefore; opening itself to non-ending enquiry leading to infinite inconclusive findings. Doomed to failure in the long term.

Racism’ systematic application of manipulation and overt extreme violence as tools of oppression have persisted, hence systemic racism.

In the White Supremacy racism against the Black world context, systemic racism is the complete set of conceptual and practical tools devised to sustain the status quo of the racists’ unnatural dominance of the Black race in order to perpetuate the one-sided capitalistic exploitation of the subjugated.

The set of tools sustaining White Power systemic racism have long permeated the amoral fabric of Western society and its satellites the world over. Appearing in unique forms in the Middle East and Asia, the methods of subjugation of the downtrodden are the same, amongst others:

  • Part to total disenfranchisement of the oppressed
  • Limitation or total denial of access to education
  • Limited access to wealth creation opportunities
  • Sub-standard living conditions
  • Sustenance of squalor through deliberate minimal to zero provision of social amenities
  • Application of effective brutality against any real or perceived rebellion: police, military
  • Development of a powerful propaganda machinery across society: educational system, culture and sport, media, faith, family
    SYMBOLS: Monuments!
  • Devise a state machinery to ensure functionalities of all the above: bureaucracy – INSTITUTIONALIZE!
  • Teach, reward, and protect agents of state machinery: impunity

Systemic racism is a living reality. It’s not a creation of novel minds. Neither can it be explained away with rhetoric. We use fine language and sophisticated wordcraft to describe it in order to demonstrate that we know well what we are talking about.

Through our articulation, we seek to give systemic racism a face so that those with eyes to see, with brains that think can have something tangible to relate themselves to as we invite them to step into our shoes to learn about our existential realities.

Systemic racism is a well-oiled machine of bigotry and ignorance. It therefore has to be addressed with superior intellectual firepower if we are going to eliminate it from the face of the earth.

In terms of application and experience, racism is a very personal trip. As an object of racism from birth in formerly officially White Supremacist Apartheid South Africa, I know racism when I see it; I know racism when I feel it. I can smell racism from afar.

My personal sensitivity to racism transcends the active or passive practitioner’s ethnicity. Racism comes in packages as colourfully diverse as the human race is. It’s only about degrees of application, and extents of actual or potential damage caused.

Given my background, it goes without saying that I know more about Eurocentric White Supremacist racism than any other form. And, that is my personal experience, and mine alone. Nothing, and no one else compares to that.

No one can define, no one has the right to want to define for me what racism is or what it is not. Doing so is in itself symptomatic of the oppressive, imperialistic nature of racism. At the individual level, application and experience of racism are relative modalities for the aggrieved.

Systemic racism is racism collectivized. Systemic racism steps over the individual and contaminates the group for eventual total domination, if not genocide at worst. In this case, racism is applied institutionally in one-size-fits-all formats.

Meaning that, for example, in the eyes and power tools dispensation of anti-Black White Supremacists’ worlds, when you are Black you are Black. It doesn’t matter how cultured or uncultured, enlightened or non-enlightened you are with regard to integration or non-integration into these worlds.

You may be a shining star highlighting values of White Supremacist ideology with pride and pomp. But, in the end, when you are Black, you are Black: arbitrarily designated as inherently inferior, primitive, savage, divinely cursed to slave for the Whiteman. It’s just the way it is with systemic racism.

It makes sense, therefore, that, to be effective and produce lasting effects, the anti-racism struggle targets systemic racism states institutions, their functionaries, and their symbols.

Because the systemic racism state is ever so strong and intrinsically inclined to apply immediate brutal force to quell dissent, it’s not strange that carnage and destruction to property shall often accompany uprisings against the system. Contemporary and historical examples of that abound in the USA, South Africa, and several Latin American countries.

In cases of extreme indiscriminate systemic racism state violence against the people as we’ve witnessed in the USA lately, the people’s rage will be such that they’ll even target their destructive energy towards “their own innocent Black-owned businesses”.

Self-harm as a form of expressing frustration, hopelessness against overly strong, insensitive forces resistant to change is called self-flagellation in the Bible, the book of systemic racism proponents, even if they hold and read the holy book upside-down.

Manifestations of the socio-economic collapse of post-colonial, post-slavery societies cannot be understood detached from the overall destructive consequences of White Supremacist systemic racism consequences.

Apparent degeneration of moral and ethical values as evidenced through rampant corruption, sexual abuse and violence against children and women as we see across the world today has a direct link to systemic racism practices over the years.

Racism as relentlessly pushed on by White Supremacists has created monsters in its victims.

Violence begets violence. Those who live by the sword die and promote death by the sword. Is this really the kind of world we want to live in in the 21st Century?

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
June 30, 2020

FREEDOM: To Die or Not To Die For

FREEDOM
To Die or Not to Die For

When I’m dead
I’m dead

Me dead

My life
As I lived it
The joys
It gave me

The sweet life
Of
Wines and roses

The trials and tribulations
It subjected me to

The sour life
Of
Swords and sores

Don’t matter no more

Heaven and hell
Are
Illusions
For
The after life

Therefore
In the living
I worry
But little about them

I have
This vision
That
I shall die as I lived
A spirit
Hooked on freedom

Freedom taught me that
It is like the air
It is love

Love is the
Axis
Around which
The earth rotates

Without air
I can’t breathe

I can’t breathe
I die

I die
Earth axis vanishes
All love lost
Earth rotation stops
All hell breaks loose

Deprivation
Of freedom
Strangles me
Constricts my lungs
Inflames my sinuses

I can’t breathe?
I don’t die?
I panic
I go berserk

I go berserk
I feel no pain
Fear evaporates from my body
I am mad
Like a
Médecin sans frontières

Deprivation
Of freedom
Makes the
Line between life and death

Very thin
Every which way
I’m heard
I’m seen
If I die
I do so
For the living
To breathe
They’ll call my action
The ultimate sacrifice

If I live
I won’t celebrate
Until
I can shout out
Freedom
From the depth of my lungs
I’ll call that pure joy

In the name of freedom
A man defied
Military tanks in
Tiananmen Square
(Continued in the book Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories)

END
©Simon Chilembo, 07/ 06-2020

Dedicated to anti-racism protests world-wide. George Floyd murder legacy larger than life. Change has to happen. Freedom sure does not come cheap – #letusbreathe

NB: I do not trivialize the seriousness of Coronavirusdisease (COVID-19) with this piece. The pandemic deserves the highest respect: we must all follow expert advice from doctors, scientists, and relevant multilateral and state health authorities wherever we are in the world.

Simon Chilembo
Oslo
Norway
Tel.: +4792525032
June 07, 2020