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38 YEARS AN EXILE: XV
HOME AT LAST! Part 15
RACIST SCUMBAGS – WHITE SOUTH AFRICAN RACISTS ONLY THEMSELVES TO THANK
©Simon Chilembo, 2014
My 27 year old exile-born nephew doesn’t know, doesn’t care shit about apartheid. What he knows and cares all shit about is that he is a raw South African to the bone, and this South Africa is his land through and through. If it says anybody anything, he is a proud son of a proud Sotho–Zulu man who in his life did take a bullet or two as an active MK veteran fighting for the freedom of our land in our time. In 2076, my nephew will be 89 years old. To his great-grandchildren and their progeny, apartheid will be but a fragment of history you go into GugulazaTI+ (TrillionInfinityPlus, as Google South Africa will be called then) to find out what it was … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA AWAKENING – home in grey matter”. Order book and five others on Amazon).
Simon Chilembo
Riebeeckstad
Welkom
South Africa
Telephone: +4792525032
February 06, 2015
JE SUIS CHARLIE
In a million voices
He was heard
In all corners of the world
Immortal
Silently
I hum
My body
Shall perish
That’s the plan
My story
Shall thrive
END
©Simon Chilembo, 2015
(French language advisor: Ozzy)
Simon Chilembo
Riebeeckstad
Welkom
South Africa
Tel.: +4792525032
January 14, 2015
WOMEN’S MONTH 2014: WITCHES’ MONTH?
GLAD IT’S OVER
Thank goodness it’s over! After a traumatic last three weeks of the Women’s Month 2014, my balls feel free again. I can breath again. I want to love again.
Midmorning of August 08, I’m driving up to Gauteng with The Queen Mother. At some point between Welkom and Kroonstad, we meet one of the most intimidating road blocks I have ever seen anywhere in post-1994 South Africa. The Army, Road Traffic Police, and South African Police Service (heavily-armed, Marikana-style) made a very, very strong presence. All women. Only a fool would want to fuck around here.
First check point is by four Army officers on us. They give us some road safety info materials, wishing us a safe and enjoyable journey further ahead. Very warm, polite, and happy. I’m thoroughly charmed. Now I am in my element, I thought quietly. One of the ladies even congratulates my mother on a great catch. All laugh heartily as Queen Mother replies, “No, no, no! This one is for you. Ke letsibolo la ka/ He is my first born, and he is single. Come on ladies, Twitter, Facebook!!!” This, of course, draws a lot of attention towards us, the police looking a bit uncomfortable a few metres ahead, though.
Next check point is Road Traffic Police. The seriousness, and hard faces of the lady officers here failed to warn me of the impending nightmare I was stopping into as we are waved to park our car on the road side. Document check.
I was born by a hard, tough, and strong woman. During my formative years I was raised by a High Priestess whose followers came from all corners of South Africa and beyond: my maternal grandmother was both a spiritual healer and medium. Despite a turbulent childhood till well into her teenage years, my younger sister has grown up to be one Super Woman in her own right.
The vast majority of the women I know, or have heard of, on both sides of my family, in South Africa and Zambia, are very strong personalities whose presence is/ was noticed everywhere they are/ were. My male relatives, my closest friends and Brothers, the whole lot of them seem to fall for and marry the strongest of women. It’s no wonder, then, that strong women ever so fascinate me. I admire strong women. I respect strong women. I love strong women. I adore them … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
September 03, 2014
IJOOO…, SO YOUR CHILDREN WILL BE GAY!!!?
WHAT NOW?
I am inclined to believe that my mother was never prepared for what was to come out of her initial conjugations with my father. Compared to the overly protective manner of many mothers over their sons, I understood very early in my life that I have a very special relationship with my mother. I’ve seen her watch me fall into the deep end more than once before, without her doing anything about it. Just watching, waiting to see how I’ll deal with it.
I have never at any one point felt any sense of neglect, though. There’s something about the look in my mother’s eyes, which has always given me Samson-like strength when it seems the darkness of the deep end is about to swallow me down completely. She is my first best friend, my number one confidant.
My mother has always openly declared her love and admiration for me. She adores me. I’ve heard her many times tell other fellow mothers how proud she is of me, “… this man who felled my breasts”, because of my generousity and kindness as a son, and big brother to my two younger siblings.
Thoughts of my mother make me very strong always in this regard. She listens to me, even if she may not agree with what I have to say. I owe much of my strong sense of independence and self-reliance to her. She taught me very early to be proud of myself. Much of my need and love to excel in the things I do, and thrive in, I got from her. “O motle, ngoana’ka! O a utlwa!/ You are beautiful, my child! You hear?” She tells me she used to sing these words to me when I was a baby. Not that she’s much of a singer, though … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Oslo
Norway
April 05, 2013
Township Festive Seasons: Laissez-faire?
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013!
In a flash it felt very strange for me to be sending an Instagram Happy New Year 2013 greeting to the world from the platform of the place of my birth, Thabong Location, Welkom, South Africa. Cruising into a new year here for the first time since 1974.
For me, Festive Seasons in Zambia 1975-1984, and 1986-1987 came and went nonchalantly as did the Independence Day, Youth Day, KK’s birthday, etc. celebrations. My own birthdays 1975-1980, and 1982-1988 were but just notable events on the calendar. Festive Season 1985 I was in Greece. What a ball! 1981 I turned 21, and my parents spoilt me. What a groove!
The Norwegian Festive Season is one climatically cold, colourful, vibrant affair so full of love, where over the years the people I’ve had anything to do with have shown me humbling generousity, kindness, warmth, protection, and care. Seen only with my own eyes, processed in and by my own mind, and felt in my own heart, this time of the year in Norway gives the impression that life is here to stay, cherish and nourish it all life long.
So, every time, since 1992, I come to mark the Festive Season with my mother and my two siblings in South Africa, I come here in a Norwegian-Festive-Season-State-of-Mind. But when my parents came back from exile in Zambia, they bought a new home in Bronville, a formally Coloureds Only township in the old Apartheid South Africa. Here, the standard of housing was/ is better, with bigger yards. So were/ (are?) the provision of social amenities, and service delivery.
More yard space translates to more privacy for neighbours, thereby reducing chances of conflicts arising from occasional or regular trespasses into one another’s private domains. My mother and one of her neighbours have a cat-and-mouse relationship though. Both very beautiful and strong women are extremely jealous of each other. I think though that the essence of their mutual dislike has its core in one fundamental, very sensitive issue in South Africa vis-à-vis Black-Coloured relationship as moulded from the earlier colonial times, and fostered during the Apartheid era to this day: the one Coloured Maria lives in strong denial of ‘Black blood’ flowing in her body, “ONS IS NIE KAFFIRS NIE! MY GRANDFATHER WAS SCOTTISH!!!”
My mother Maria on her part has long lived with a painful denial of ‘White blood’ in neither herself nor her people, “RE BASOTHO, HA RE BARWA/ WE ARE BASOTHO, WE ARE NOT COLOUREDS!!!” This, however, is another long and heavy story to tell on another and different occasion.
As the Instagram Happy New Year 2013 greeting whooshed out to the world just after midnight December 31, 2012, recollections of the 1965-1974 Festive Season fun times in Thabong came to mind in a flash. Much as I recalled, there were here many, many people partying out on the streets as the mid-night hour approached. Loud music everywhere, with booze flowing everywhere. Smoke and smell of braai everywhere. Everyone looking good and sexy. Such exuberant, free spirited enjoyment of life. Wow, this IS my element. I love it!
The strange feeling came when I realized that there was also this strong, acrid smell in my nose. This special smell I hadn’t registered since New Year’s Eve 1974. What I knew from the streets as a child was that during the Festive Season everything was allowed, including murder. That another so-and-so killed one so-and-so especially on Christmas and New Year’s eves was as normal as the great anticipation for Father Christmas children will show in Norway.
At perhaps age 6-7 years old, I remember thinking to myself how nice it would be to kill certain people on one fine New Year’s Eve when I’m grown up. By then I had already seen several dead bodies on the streets on various occasions. But it wasn’t till about Easter time 1969 that I first witnessed at close range one man stabbing to death another with a knife. The murderer could have been slaughtering a cow. The dying man’s blood spewed so I could have been watching a burst running water pipe. And then the acrid smell of the man brutally breathing his last’s blood hit me. Festive Seasons were extremely violent those days.
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
Tel.: +4792525032
January 01, 2013
Simon Chilembo 