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NECROCRACY
MURDER IS MURDER
We live in necrocratic world. We, the people of the world, live at the mercy of our world leaders. We may be breathing and blinking about at this one moment. The next, we are obliterated from the face of the earth. BOOM! so fast and loud we can’t see it coming, we can’t hear it land, we can’t feel it explode. Just like that. Like with the snap of a finger.
©Simon Chilembo 2018: Author, President, ChilemboInspireInsights™
Death is death. Murder is murder, regardless of who executes it, no matter for what cause. Murder sustains necrocracy the world over.
We live so that necropots can justify their existence: “But, hey, the people of my great, the greatest country in the world, have elected me. Great people, wonderful people, smart people. God bless you! I’m gonna make you great again. Greater!”
Jeeezuzzz!!!
We die so that necropots can live: “We shall eliminate all the enemies of our great nation, the greatest nation in the world. The people of our great nation, the strongest nation of them all, by the way, say that we must follow our enemies of peace and our way of life anywhere in the world. We’ll find them. They can’t hide. The only place for them to hide is their shit-hole countries’ graves once we’ve taught them a lesson. Don’t mess with God’s greatest nation on earth. We gonna getcha!”
Lord, have mercy!!!
As a concept, an instrument of power, and process, leadership is, by default, murderous. Any person that, by any means, legitimate or otherwise, depending on the dominant existential paradigm in a given domain, assumes power over others, automatically becomes a potential murderer. The probability of necropower becoming a reality for a leader is directly proportional to the joint organic and structural complexity of the organization they lead.
We see the highest of such sociological complexity at the national leadership level. Therefore, all national leaders at the top of the decision-making hierarchy will either be directly murderous as individuals, or be directly responsible for murderous acts committed by others on their behalf. All in the name of national security, in defence of national sovereignty, territorial boundaries, and in support of allies in international solidarity treaties in times of strife in various parts of the world. In this regard, at any one time, no state leader can be seen to be better or worse than any other regarding necropower atrocities; be they locally, regionally, or globally.
Murder is murder. Death is death, regardless of who dies, no matter for what cause. Death is the food of necrocracy the world over. But all life is sacred. No matter the race, colour, creed, and all the possible permutations of the condition of being human on earth.
On the grander scale of conflicts, wars allow necropots to manifest the full range of their respective psychopathic dispositions. We die, we survive, we cry, we fight amongst ourselves, we mobilize mass anti- or pro-war protests, we run away to other lands for shelter, we are pro the one necropot contra the other/ -s, we go to the United Nations, we get peace-keeping forces, and we still die; all of us: children, women, men, combatants, cats, and dogs. Observing all this, these necropots just laugh at us. They think we are absolutely crazy. Murder is such fun. It is such profitable business.
The bigger, the more enduring the wars, the bigger the party for the necropots on either side, the more the money made by the war industrial complex, the more the blood on necropots’ hands, and the blinder the necropots get. Wiping the eyes with their bloodied hands, the necropots cease to see reality for what it is. They can only smell and taste blood money everywhere, oblivious to how they have led necrocracy onto an effectively self-destructive path, taking down humanity together with it. They seem to think that a nuclear bomb is a joke. Climate change, well, let’s not go there at this stage.
And we help them, necropots, along. We take sides. Our senses of right or wrong are clouded by our ideologies, personal ideals, identities, ambitions, psycho-social attributes, and much more. We go out and intellectually, psychologically, and spiritually kill those that do not share our views of the world, as in par with our chosen necropots.
Pro-necropot logic: It’s okay, our chosen necropots are not murderers, they only, necessarily, kill in self-defence, even if those getting killed are their very own people. The enemies of our favoured necropot carry out genocide, you see. Our favoured necropots are strong leaders; they only want to achieve the best for their people. It is irrelevant as to whether or not the people approve of our favoured necropot. People are stupid.
Only strong leaders like our favoured necropots know what is good for the people. It’s okay if some of these stupid people have to be killed in the process, you see. From time to time, a bit of ethnic cleansing never hurt anyone.
Our favoured necropot is breeding a nation of sheep people. These will abide by his rules without question, you see. Wouldn’t it be nice if people understood that good leaders, like our favoured necropot, are made and chosen by God for the people? Punishment for those defying God’s will is death. By killing his enemies, our favoured necropot is only carrying out God’s will. May the wrath of God fall upon the external enemies of our favoured necropot!
We live in an age where necrocracy shouldn’t have any space to breathe. We live in an age where it ought to be crystal clear that a war on another cannot stop war, or other wars. In this day and age, fundamental human wisdom ought to be at the general understanding that, irrespective of how we colour and name organized, systematized, militarized killings of human collectives by others, murder remains what it is: murder. Murder doesn’t change character just because it is committed for a worthy cause, as the proponents may perceive it.
We live in an age of stalemates in war. National leaders of the world shall go into their graves with our blood perpetually dripping off their hands. Eternal necropots. The whole lot of them. Ain’t nobody better. Ain’t nobody worse. All as equally guilty of mass murders as hell. The only difference being in numbers. However, even one person slain is one person too many.
There is no way anybody can ever win a war lastingly in this Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) age. Albeit in variable degrees, as shall be determined by intellectual and resources capacity, any nation, or subversive group has access to all that is available of knowledge and technology to wage a war, either or both conventional and guerrilla style. Cease fires and progressive peace and reconciliation talks ought to be the order of the day in our time.
Peace and reconciliation talks assume, before everything else, humility and mutuality of respect for one another from all the parties concerned. The same should apply on the ground, from supporters and activists on all sides. Arrogance and bullying will never lead anybody anywhere. Never. Only back to war. Guaranteed.
Nobody can ever be coerced to come to sit around a negotiation table in the absence of the recognition of their humanity, no matter how banal it might seem to third parties. Outsiders can never determine what people know and value about themselves and their place in the world. This is what is at the core of all wars of liberation across the world, both historically, and in our contemporary world.
As a warrior, I know that if somebody unjustifiably hits me, I will hit them back, if they haven’t killed me. If the situation calls for it, I’ll murder them without thinking twice about it. There is a potential necropot in all of us. Nevertheless, if I ever will have to kill, it will be in the protection of my own life there and then. It will never be out of the need to sustain my power and dominance over others, in any given situation.
As a leader, I don’t need to be told that I’m no longer relevant. More often than not, I can see potential power antagonism looming from afar. If, after weighing my options, I deem it justifiable, in view of the bigger common good threatened, I’ll nip the antagonism in the bud. Otherwise, I pack my bags and leave. I, both as a matter of principle and personal proclivity, will never impose my leadership on unwilling people with whom I’m supposed to be pursuing a common cause.
As a private person, in whom it is encapsulated my warrior spirit and leadership potential, I am conflict shy. I’m conflict shy to a point of misrepresented cowardice, up until I have to fight, if and when called upon to. Conflict gives me a headache. Especially if it is over situations that do not make sense to me, or over matters that I consider not as adding value to my existential imperatives. Such conflict disorients me. It makes my body itch.
Conflict makes me want to sneeze, but constricts my chest at the same time. I’m acutely allergic to what I consider to be nonsensical conflict pursuits founded on ignorance, parochial thinking, and poor philosophical principles, if any at all. I am conflict shy not only by choice, but also by natural disposition. Therefore, I am not prone to militant activism.
It is not about lacking the guts, or having no spine. I am simply not confrontational by nature. I am just not wired for unrestrained, militant activism. Neither am I inclined to evangelism with respect to life values I stand for, and the choices I shall want to, and actually make in my life.
I speak and shout with my writings. I also often express my life views in professional, and other social engagements endeavours I’ll find myself in from time to time. It is what it is. Take me or leave me. I am anti-necropower, regardless of the practitioner, or their cause. Murder is murder. Necrocracy has no future.
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
June 21, 2018
Tel.: +4792525032
POST-WRITER’S BLOCK POEM
I BEAT GRAVITY
I tell them always
You can’t pull me down
I beat gravity, Baby
©Simon Chilembo 2018: Author, President, ChilemboInspireInsights™
Time shall tik and tok
Tik and tok
Tik and tok
At tik and boom time
I bid farewell
To gravity
I rise again
I don’t go through space
Tik and tok
Like time
I cut through space
With the speed of light
Catch me
Stop me
Pull me
If you can
You think
You can break me
I tell them always
You don’t know me
You want
To break me
I tell them always
Aigobeki le ntsimbi
This metal here
It doesn’t bend, Baby
I stand tall
Straight up I rise
I beat gravity, Baby
Don’t touch me now
©Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
May 22, 2018
Tel.: +4792525032
STORY OF MOTHERS AND WIVES
WHAT MOTHERS AND WIVES DO
The little I know about my mother’s life inspires my forthcoming fourth novel, which will be my sixth book. As I progress with the work, I get to appreciate more and more that a wife and mother will do what they have to do for the good of their children and the honour of their husbands. At the same time, wives and mothers are also made of flesh and blood; they are human too, just like everyone else.
They shall slip and fall, gather dirt like everyone else. They shall rise, shake themselves from the dust, and fail to erase the stains; just like everyone else. If the good they did for their children, and the honour they bestowed their husbands is greater than the outcomes of their fallibilities, then, who is anybody to judge?
ODE TO WINNIE MANDELA:
Courage personified
Defiance personified
Endurance personified
Grace personified
Humanity personified
Inspiration personified
Longevity personified
Loyalty personified
Mystique personified
Resurrection personified
Motherhood dignified
Phum’la ka kuhle, Mamma
Should they seek
To blow out
The torch of your legacy
I will be there
They’ll have to first
Take me out
A luta continua
For the love of Mothers
Amandla ngawethu!!!
SIMON CHILEMBO
RIBEECKSTAD
WELKOM
SOUTH AFRICA
APRIL 13, 2018
TEL.: +4792525032
MANDELA, KAUNDA LEGACIES
Unilateral Tug of War
Just in terms of numbers, South Africa and Zambia cannot be equated. Of course. The former outstrips the latter by far: from territorial boundaries dimensions, population sizes and overall demographics, natural resources endowment, optimal economic potential and actual performance, to military power. Numbers don’t lie.
It goes without saying, therefore, that at any one time, any one variable or all highlighted above considered, South Africa will, in real terms, be a much more complex society relative to Zambia. Meaning that politics in South Africa will, correspondingly, be a more challenging enterprise for those involved in the national political leadership arena, whether in ruling power or in the opposition.
Needless to say that there are, indeed, countries smaller than even Zambia, but happen to have much more intricate political intrigues than South Africa. Another time and another place for the last observation raised.
A simple Google search will either confirm or debunk my assertions above, much as it will do with many of my postulations throughout this presentation.
Politics is the science of government. Government is the collective of institutions, including their constituent leaderships and functional personnel. They are created to enforce societal progress rules and policies that are arrived upon by the representatives of the body politic.
The government, or the state, will often reflect the interests of the dominant political parties. However, through corruption and greed, the dominant, ruling political parties may themselves be subtly steered by peripheral influential, manipulative economic forces. These may either be local or international actors, if not a combination of both. In South Africa, the concept called “State Capture” describes the collusion between the powerful economic elite and the government.
Notwithstanding the “State Capture” phenomenon, the interests of the respective political parties are often shaped and differentiated by their cardinal ideologies. An ideology is the summation of ideas based on theories and policies of political and economic engineering of society.
Ideologies are applied in varying ways to indoctrinate particular societies to address and find solutions to existential questions and challenges in certain pre-determined, and non-variable methods. Therefore, ideologies are not only critical for shaping individual countries’ internal living conditions, they also influence individual countries’ international relations premises; i.e. which countries will have mutually cordial diplomatic relations with one another, which supranational institutions the countries will be members of, which international solidarity causes countries will engage in and at what cost, etc.
In contemporary times, historical factors leading to the creation of specific nations often contribute to the kind of ideology adopted, developed, or redefined to suit local conditions. A nation’s wealth, often with particular reference to its relative strategic significance to the major economic and political nations and power blocs in the world, will also have a bearing on the nature of the dominant ideology. A subservient country’s geographical location on the globe can further add to, or reduce its strategic value.
At any one time, a quick reality check will show that relatively newer and smaller nations with both perceived and real strategic importance to the major political and economic giant nations, e.g. the industrialized Western world, have a hard time determining their own, sovereign national ideologies.
Old ties bind some of these emergent states with their former colonial masters from the Western world. Others will be held in infinite indebtedness to comrade states from the Eastern socialist, or communistic countries that helped in their liberation struggles for independence.
It is in the light of all the above that I choose to look at the comparative legacies of Nelson Mandela of South Africa, and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. Comparative because of the many critics of Nelson Mandela, who, in my view is unfairly battered in relation to the critics’ view of to whom real Southern African statesmanship ought to be accorded contra Kenneth Kaunda’s legacy too. I specifically address myself to Zambian critics.
Nelson Mandela attends the lieing in state of ANC president OR Tambo at FNB stadium, Soweto, South Africa. (Greg Marinovich)
Before I proceed, I wish to make a few salient personal points:
- I must declare that this is a non-solicited presentation. It is only an outcome of the involuntary workings of my critical thinking mind and its creative processes. It is my subjective, free world intellectual response to the foul anti-Mandela vis-à-vis Kaunda sentiments I have seen expressed in the various social media platforms, particularly Facebook, for many years. It is not my goal to want to be malicious against anybody. Neither is it my intention to seek or expect approval, favours, or rewards from anybody.
This is an honest, independent expression of my thoughts and feelings with nothing but the very best of intentions. All this is done with the utmost respect both for Mandela and Kaunda, their respective families, and their followers through their respective foundations and other fora … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
Tel.: +4792525032
February 13, 2018
INTRINSIC MOTIVATION IN A NATIONAL CONTEXT
Guiding questions:
1. What spurs a nation or a people to attain heights of development?
2. Is it a collective that is the main driver or a leader with “Intrinsic Motivation”
©Simon Chilembo 2018
NOTE
The article below is motivated by Mr Fisho Mwale. It arose from a Facebook interaction yesterday, Thursday, January 08, 2018. I was one of the respondents to his posting, “BUSINESS IDEAS”. In it, he referred to his personal family experiences to highlight some cultural impediments towards following up emergent business opportunities in our society.
Mr Fisho Mwale, summarizing his bone of contention, wrote, “Sometimes out of the box great business ideas do not work due to many factors such as timing, cultural values and lack of guts. You have to believe in your ideas and it’s important to get ‘buy in’.”
In agreement with him, I responded:
“… Great real-life entrepreneurial development case study material, …. Thanks for the insights, Sir! I wish to also add lack of what I call “Intrinsic Motivation” to the list of factors inhibiting follow-throughs to great business ideas and, indeed, opportunities arising from given circumstances.
“Intrinsic Motivation is an active killer-instinct driven desire and determination to achieve set goals, and beyond. That arising, perhaps, from chance opportunities, or those created in response to certain apparent societal, if not bigger natural conditions and/ needs. E.g. the cholera epidemic mentioned above. It works independent of external deliberate or unintended hindrances, and is often a profoundly personal journey. Seen from the outside, people in “Intrinsic Motivation” mode can appear to be selfish, reckless, one-track-minded, and defiant, amongst other negative personal attributes.
“This kind of motivation is ignited by desperate survival need circumstances too, if not a pure natural curiosity state of being. When pushed against the wall, without any possible manoeuvre or exit, fearless, “thrill-seeker”-type-people with strong wills to live will find the most ingenious ways to survive: creativity kindled to find the most unconventional solutions that could be developed into business models, subsequently.
I believe that we have to teach ourselves to be hungry enough, curious enough, and afraid enough to ignite our “Intrinsic Motivations” in order that they, pushing the continuum farther, ignite the killer-instinct guts necessary to get us to see things through, no matter the odds. It is a mind, attitude thing, really. Doable.”
The reply from Mr Fisho Mwale was gracious. He concluded by throwing me a challenge, “Thank you and I would love for you to expand more and discuss it from a National context …”
The latter got “… my Intrinsic Motivation to find, and engage with like-minded people about national development issues, plus possible solutions …” to shoot to the roof.
DEVELOPMENT: Attainment, Nurture, Sustenance.
In Social Science, the concept of Development is defined in terms of upward qualitative and quantitative transformation of society over time. Operationally, it means that from society’s observable benefits of this positive change, people will reflect higher and enduring frequencies of subjective states of contentment, hope, and belief in an ever bright future for all.
This state of affairs will be a manifestation of societies ability to provide for all the people’s basic short-term and long-term needs and wants for successful living from day-to-day, all their days: food, shelter, health, education, security, and more. Abundance is when society has a constant surplus of all the resources that are necessary to ensure that the people’s contentment levels do not dramatically spiral downwards in cases of natural calamities, wars, and, especially, population growth in time.
The objective side of Development is, therefore, operationally seen in the growth, in sheer numbers and magnitudes, of material and service values of all the tangible and intangible aspects of societal management towards lasting prosperity attainment. Herein come elements of:
- Infrastructure – water reservoirs, food production facilities (agricultural land, food processing plants, etc), housing, roads, hospitals, schools, power stations and grids, telecommunications, and others.
- Services – the entire spectrum of social amenities and necessary operational personnel across the board (health workers, engineers and other scientists, entrepreneurs, R&D, and many more), national security (police, military), including culture, i.e. the whole possibilities field of the creative arts.
- Longevity – In sustained development states, short of mortal accidents of all kinds, under variable circumstances, people tend to live into ripe old ages. Absence of private and societal want, as well as a general sense and state of well-being in society tend to have a life prolonging effect on the people: resilience against various life-threatening illnesses, and ever improving medical treatments of the same.
Because Development is about growth, and is forward-looking, it can be encapsulated in the concept of progress. This means that stages of development can be measured, and isolated in terms of space and time. Viewed in this regard, it ought to be understandable that Development entails a rise in complications of societal management and administration.
In the context of this presentation, management is about the allocation of resources in appropriate quantities to relevant material and service needs in developmental work. Administration, then, sees to it that resources are applied for their originally intended purposes, and according to stipulated rules with regard to predetermined decisive conditions.
Therefore, from the point of definitions above, for Development to succeed, it is imperative that it is spearheaded by people of at least as intellectually and culturally progressive as Development itself is inherently, and necessarily entails on its reality.
“INTRINSIC MOTIVATION” FOR DEVELOPMENT: The Collective? A Leader?
On the one hand, human beings are inherently self-centered as individuals. On the other, because human beings are, actually, also very smart, they realized a long time ago that to survive in an inherently hostile nature, they had to learn to live in collectives. We, as humans against other earthly creatures, owe our position at the top of the food chain to our ability to work together in our necessary efforts to tame aspects of nature for our, yes, Development (-al) needs … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
Tel: +27 813185271
February 09, 2018
GOD IN MAN
SCIENTIFIC MAN OF GOD
Epigenetic inheritance theory has captured my fascination in a profound way. It has cast new insight into how I now think about the nature of man. That with reference to how I relate to man in the spontaneous, continuous process of writing and playing my own story as I go through the labyrinth of life. Some call it legacy.
©Simon Chilembo 2017
But I don’t really care much about “the legacy I shall leave behind”. If I do have a legacy, it has, actually, built, and shall sustain itself for as long as time wants it alive. Nevertheless, immortality is the goal. Who wants to live forever? I do. Why not?
All I care about is the integrity of the authoring of my life story lines as I dance my way through to my exit point of the maze that far, far away.
My hope is that my life story shall be read and judged with open, scientific minds, both whilst I still walk the face of the earth, and when I’m dead.
Thanks to epigenetic inheritance theory, I have finally seen the light: yes, the human body is, indeed, a temple of God. By extension, any other creature that subscribes to, and lives according to tenets of any prescribed faith, has its physical body as the temple of God; at least in the Western world’s perception of the Deity.
Even more precisely, the philosophical duality of God and her anti-thesis, Satan, is not only a construct of the core of man’s existential questions’ thinking: their abodes, heaven and hell, respectively, are, in fact, in the DNA of man.
There is no place called heaven outside the realm of man’s existence on earth. Neither is there a place called hell in the same illusory domain. Heavenly rewards, or satanic retributions for our virtues and sins, respectively, we live them accordingly right here on earth. When we die, we are dead: our DNAs have switched off from our consciousness, and so have the ideas of God, Satan, heaven, and hell.
It is only the unenlightened that fuss about life after death for the deceased. The human soul leaving the dead is as real, as independent, and as infinite as the universe. So, leave it alone. It knows how to take care of itself. Ever heard of a buried soul? They failed to bury Jesus.
It ought to make perfect sense that life-after-death is, indeed, a reality for the living only. Life goes on. But, living in the dark, and confronted with challenges of life with nature, the survivors seek answers outside of themselves. Finding no workable solutions out there, panic grips them. Fear of the unknown rules over their lives through and through … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
Telephone: +27813185271
December 19, 2017
ZIMBABWEAN PSYCHOPATHS IN SOUTH AFRICA
HUMILITY NEVER HURTS
Because I’m, in this posting, addressing myself to psychopaths, I’m going to be linear in my thought expression. I’m going to deliberately make non-substantiated claims. I am not opening a discussion. I only need to let my frustration out. That is because I need to breathe, so that I can continue enjoying the made-to-last freedom and peace of my motherland, South Africa.
Simon Chilembo, Author/ President/ Machona-Emigrant
But, that does not mean that those strongly wishing to respond are prevented from doing so. There is one condition I demand to be fulfilled, though: substantiation and logically structured, mature presentation of opinions, agreeing with me or not. I shall not tolerate personal attacks and insults. If necessary, I’ll only engage with those whose views I regard to reflect a respectable degree of wisdom and intellectual sophistication, if not substance.
Psychopaths have no sense of right or wrong. Psychopaths have only one view of the world. Psychopaths see and interpret the universe only according to how their faultily wired perceptive and analytical senses relate to impulses emanating from their immediate and distant ecologies. Psychopaths lack empathy.
A fifty-six year old man progressively screws and holds his own country and people to ransom for thirty-seven years. Because he is a psychopath, Mugabe holds on to power even in senility. Wasted at age ninety-three, he continues clinging on to the no longer functional national presidency; totally oblivious to the real danger he personally, not to mention the almost 16.5 million people of Zimbabwe, is, are exposed to. That after a rather long overdue but, thank goodness, well-orchestrated military coup.
The Zimbabwean military intentionally chose not to assassinate Mugabe because of the non-psychopathic nature of the key generals and others involved in the coup, and his subsequent peacefully coerced resignation from power two weeks later. However, in their psychopathic minds, Mugabe and his like-minded have no comprehension of this fact.
Mugabe is finished. Mugabe is a lost cause. It is not worth wasting any more of my little breath left on him. I want to, now, address myself to the 5 million Zimbabweans who escaped from Mugabe’s tyranny to find protection in South Africa. 5 million is the whole population of a country – Norway, for example.
Other common and non-mistakable traits of psychopaths are acute arrogance, lack of respect, and ingratitude towards others, especially the generous, kind, and tolerant. (Originally) utterly desperate refugees from war torn Middle Eastern countries, and beyond, encounter rapidly growing hostilities from ordinary citizens in their Western Europe host countries.
The refugees do not understand how their religious and cultural chauvinism continually feed their hosts’ ill will. They are incapable of appreciating challenges around their own lack of willingness to change and adapt to the dynamics of their new environment. They are psychopaths. Thanks to them, the ultra-right wing wave keeps growing across Europe. Thanks to them, we now have Donald Trump as the most powerful man on earth.
In South Africa, there are Zimbabwean psychopaths who manifest exactly the same tendencies as above. Zimbabwean psychopaths in South Africa go around the country enjoying the very best freedoms and democratic rights no other African country can equal. Yet, the mentally deranged Zimbabweans behave so dishonourably towards their South African hosts it’s disgusting. And, then, naturally, they do not understand where the so-called Afro-phobia violence in the country comes from. Sickening to the core … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
Telephone: +4792525032
November 26, 2017
FARM MURDERS
SOUTH AFRICAN FARM KILLINGS: Another Perspective
©Simon Chilembo 2017
I do not condone murder of any kind. Murder is murder, regardless of how it is classified on various platforms. No murder is worse or better than another. In the free world, we are all humans with infinite variable attributes, but equal in the face of the law of the land.
In the purest manifestation of God, we are all supposed to be equal because she created us that way, in her own perfect image.
Whilst I do not condone murder, left with no alternatives against any real, particularly unjustifiable, threat upon my life, or that of my beloved ones, including my lands, I could kill without thinking twice about it. In my world, there is no “turn the other cheek” contra injustice and evil intentions, or practices. If evil plucks out one of my eyes, I’ll pluck both of theirs, and more. It is what it is.
If I am a racist, it is more a circumstantially reactive tendency on my part, rather than it being an inherent disposition of mine. I hate racism with such passion I cannot help but want to give racists a taste of their own medicine whenever I encounter them in South Africa, and anywhere else in the world I find myself at any time; two eyes for an eye. Reconciliation modern South Africa style has its limits for me.
In characteristic, yet another demonstration of arrogance of power and privilege, a section of the white South African populace sensationalizes the killings of South African white farmers. As if these killings are a calculated, lopsided affair sponsored by the South African state, or some other organized, black peoples special interest entities.
As a humanist, whenever death strikes anywhere in the world, my heart ever goes out to the deceased and their bereaved families. The killing of a white South African farmer is no different from any other killing in the country, or anywhere else in the world. Therefore, I cannot feel relatively any more, or less empathy for the white South African farmer victims and their own … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Riebeeckstad
Welkom
South Africa
November 08, 2017
A FATHER IS GONE
REMEMBERING A SENIOR WARRIOR:
SVEIN SØRLIE
It is almost two weeks since Svein Sørlie died on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 in Norway. He shall be buried on Tuesday, August 29, 2017. I believe that wherever his soul is in the grander universe, it is thriving in the best conditions of the afterlife; resting in peace, hopefully. There is no rest for the hearts of gold. Gold is forever; larger than life. Such was Svein Sørlie as I knew him, feeling as if it had been all my life.
©Toril Sørlie 2017
Svein Sørlie: my student, my friend, my mentor, my protector. In time, he grew to represent a formidable father figure for me as I strove to curve a space of my own in a land that is not of my forefathers, Norway. With his death, it feels like a large chunk of Norway has just been ripped off my heart. The hurt I feel is profound.
I have known Svein, since March, 1989. During much of this time, I’ve watched with awe how he would ever so elegantly balance, sometimes in one and the same space, the role of a father, grandfather, brother, uncle, lover, in-law, friend, teacher, student, colleague, citizen, and community member. I could never get enough of the warmth and love that, on the one hand, Svein exuded, and received, on the other.
©Toril Sørlie 2017
It did not matter whether we were in Norway, or travelling in Greece or the UK; he was ever so easy to get along with. I guess it had to do with the aura of humility and compassion he radiated, long before he would open his mouth to greet people, and introduce himself to strangers.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall; dojo, camping, competitions, seminars, party, home, city centre, beach, everywhere: Svein Sørlie was the ever green, the ever wonderful. An IT expert, a former naval officer, and Judo adept, he was a knowledgeable and wise man; a man of the world. His terrific sense of humour made it a joy to talk with him about many subjects of common interest, any time.
On Wednesday, March 29, 1989, Anne-Britt Nilsen helped me arrange and host a public meeting to introduce Karate in the local community of Blåbærstien, Nesoddtangen. I was accompanied by my first ever Norwegian Karate student, Knut Arild Midtbø, who I had already started to train in Oslo since October, 1988. He would translate my message, since I hardly spoke a word of Norwegian, then.
In a packed, rather small community hall, the reception we received was mixture of curiosity, enthusiasm, scepticism, and outright hostility. During an altercation between my assistant, Knut, and a man who was totally against our mission in his neighbourhood, my eyes fell on a bespectacled older man. A little girl was sitting and playing at his feet. As our eyes met, the man gave me a gentle, reassuring smile; I thought the look on his face told me something like, “Never mind him!”
The friendly man was Svein Sørlie, and the little girl was his youngest child and daughter, Toril. For the next ten years or so, the Svein-Toril family duo would be the heart-beat of Blåbærstien Karate Klubb, now Nesodden Karateklubb. It was such that at a time when I had to make one of the most decisive choices in my life, I weighed my options against, amongst others, the joint pillar of strength Svein and Toril jointly represented for me in the club, if not the country Norway … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
Telephone: +4792525032
August 28, 2017
A DECADE LATER
GROWING UP IN TEN YEARS
It is not as if much has changed since I entered the afternoon phase of my life. In my younger, less restrained rock and roll days, going out to a party meant, amongst others, getting told that I talked too much, too loud. Getting laid would also come as a matter of course, although not necessarily as a must; just a cool endeavour to engage in to seal yet another successful party night out.
©Simon Chilembo, Author, President 2017
On the afternoon of Friday, July 27, 2007, I embarked on a cross-border trip from Oslo, Norway, into Sweden. The destination was a recreational cottage village on the outskirts of the south-western city of Gothenburg. I know now that I really had not been keen on doing that trip. But I had to: duty called; business. I was exhausted after a hectic two weeks’ business tour across much of South Africa, from which I had arrived in Oslo the previous day.
There was also a distant, yet distinct enough, uneasy feeling about the double-events calling for the visit: a business partner’s birthday celebration on the day. The following day, July 28, it was scheduled the inaugural shareholders’ meeting for our newly-registered trading company.
I had had a theoretically substantiated notion that, despite the negative vibe I felt, everything would end up well. I couldn’t help but see the millions of dollars we were going to make as we went on to transform and dominate the Scandinavian health foods market.
On my part, I already saw how I’d use my share of the millions to help even more of my needy South African relatives’ children acquire decent education. The poverty levels of some of these people sear my heart ever so too much for comfort on any day.
Apart from a few new dark suits, a new Mercedes, and a new apartment in Oslo, I really had no reason to blow the monies on any more of my vanity needs. I already had my gold Rolex. So, I was cool.
As, on the morning of Saturday, July 28, 2007, I found myself driving my former business partner’s car on some unfamiliar country road, I immediately understood that something terribly wrong had happened. I wanted to believe that I was seeing myself in a nightmare, up until an almost frontal collision with an oncoming vehicle. Things had terribly gone wrong, alright. But, how? … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
July 24, 2017
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Simon Chilembo 