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𝗢𝗡 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡: 𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗧 𝗜𝗜
ɪɴꜰᴏʀᴍᴇᴅ ꜱᴛᴀɴᴅ ᴏɴ ᴡᴏᴍᴇɴ’ꜱ ꜱᴇxᴜᴀʟ ʀᴇᴘʀᴏᴅᴜᴄᴛɪᴠᴇ ʜᴇᴀʟᴛʜ ʀɪɢʜᴛꜱ
I came to the world via South Africa, where I spent the first fourteen-and-half years of my life, June 1960-January 1975. As I get older and older for each new year that comes and goes, the impact that growing up in that country has had on my fundamental views of life becomes ever more glaring. That as I strive to make sense of the multitudinous manifestations of horrendous sociological choices outcomes in the world today. In that sense, I was born at the right place, in my time.
The horrendous sociological choices outcomes I mention above arising from apparent mental derangement states in which some of our national and global political leaders thrive as they pathetically engineer society to perpetual dysfunctionality. They think out, formulate, and work to impose outrageous rules and laws that are obviously detrimental to the well-being of society. In fact, these lunatics present an existential threat to human and other life on earth. This as evidenced by national social upheavals owing to ever degenerative leadership quality across the world.
Social collapse attendant to dominant degenerate ethico-political leadership characteristically culminate in civil and international wars, ill-management of potential and actual natural catastrophes, including pandemics. The current Covid-19 pandemic is supposed to have given the world a wake-up call. Of course, this is an outlandish idea to many a national-global leader, and, not in the least, a segment of the new socio-cultural influencer class at the same scale. The latter extensively prevalent in the vast and ever so rapidly growing internet social media platforms sphere.
In the world today, Rocket Science knowledge is not a pre-requisite for the ability to pinpoint where on the globe the scum of society are all out to deprive people of the right to live free and happy in the abundance of survival resources existence provides for all. It’s all on Google. It’s all in the news. If you read and/ listen to conspiracy theories news publications, you are no different from the scum of the earth. Wretched souls beyond redemption. Shame.
Growing up in South Africa, I was from an early age mentally conditioned that I might at some point have to sacrifice my schooling opportunities for the benefit of my younger sister, Sisi. Prime assumption being that misfortune could somehow befall my parents. In that event, they would eventually fail to finance my siblings’ and I’s education, caught up in the doldrums of endemic Black South Africans’ poverty-stricken existence.
Seen from a global human perspective, parenting and all that it entails is what it is by default. It is not my intention to want to trivialize the challenges of parenting elsewhere. But parenting in the then inherently doomed, dysfunctional, systemically racist Apartheid South Africa was an arduous, unpredictable endeavour for Black people: unemployment, disease, violence, rampant sudden death. Other than the new faces on drivers’ seats of post-Apartheid South African socio-economic transformation state machinery, not much has changed for the masses of the underprivileged in the country, though.
It was never difficult for me to understand that in the event that some tragedy would befall my parents, especially my father, I’d have to stop schooling, go find work, and earn some money to continue where they’d have left to financially support the family. The idea that I’d defy the misfortune fate of my people had already been long engrained in my head. Therefore, it wasn’t accidental that my mother encouraged me to earn my own pocket money by selling oranges on the streets during school holidays. I was ten years old the first time. Three years later, 1973, I landed my first ever formal employment job as a junior waiter at a then Whites Only Italian Restaurant in my hometown, Welkom.
I’m still alive. With variable rates of success over the years, I have lived to fulfill my obligations as a supportive elder brother to my two surviving siblings from my mother. Owing to circumstances beyond my control, I haven’t been able to be there for my half-siblings from my father’s other procreative endeavours exterior to my mother, prior to or after their marriage.
Any fool ought to know by now that education is a historically powerful facilitatory tool to appreciable degrees of progressive participation in, and gain from socio-economic activities of our modern, digital age global society. Indeed, some guys with all the luck and some other special attributes will become economically and politically high and mighty without having gone far by way of academic education attainment. These may or may not be partners in crime vis-à-vis upliftment or destruction of society.
The unabashed manifestation and relentless growth of misogyny in the later years of my life boggle my mind. That’s because I grew up aware that upon having weighed the options in time, it was a trend in my neighbourhood that priority was given to pushing girls to acquire as much education as possible. The girls could be nurses and teachers when grown up. Costs of more specialized education in medicine, engineering, and other such related fields of academic or professional training were prohibitive. This fact, combined with generally demotivating Apartheid state policies towards Black education, created a major barrier for my people’s pursuit of higher education ambitions.
It made sense to empower girls because, ideally, they grew up to be mothers of the nation, starting with their respective family units. An educated girl subsequently getting married to a well-bred young man was worth gold to her family. In my then community’s perfect world within the context of the imperfect Apartheid world then, boys having sacrificed their own education for their sisters could always come back and continue schooling once their sisters had at least completed pre-university studies. If the plan didn’t succeed, the boys would simply continue working, get married, have children, and see the latter go through the same cycle of sacrifices with little prospects of sustainability in practice.
From my generation in my childhood neighbourhood in Thabong, Welkom, I don’t know of even a single girl that ever obtained at least full high school education level. Although possibly true in some instances, this is not necessarily mainly a result of family economic constraints nor personal cognitive inadequacies.
My only concern, if not fear, about the idea of me delaying my academic advancement for my younger sister’ sake was the potential of her getting pregnant whilst still at school. In that case, that’d be the end of dreams, for both of us, of a better life derived from well-paying jobs education aspiringly led to. Experience showed that once the boys entered the labour market, not many ever got the opportunity to continue with their educational ambitions later on as life progressed.
If anything, the boys would also soon make other girls pregnant and then get caught in the trap of lasting poverty as they get overwhelmed by economic hardships of their own. Paradoxically, once a young girl got pregnant, that was it: she was finished. No more school. Never. As a general observation, which to a large extent remains true to this day, early-age pregnancy totally destroyed girls’ lives. The situation would be worse if the impregnator refused to take responsibility for looking after or supporting the immature mother-to-be.
My mother-tongue, Sesotho, is the most disparaging, derisive language I know. In Sesotho, a young girl getting pregnant is described as ‘o senyehile’. It means that ‘she is destroyed’. And she’ll be treated as such by both her family and the community. She’s brought shame not only to the family but everyone around her. At worst, she’d be treated with much disrespect. Boys and men now seeing her as cheap, and, therefore, reduce her to a readily available sexual object moving forward. Consent not a concept adhered to by the male sex predators in this case. Many a girl’s life has been destroyed this way, culminating in suicides in the extreme.
‘O ntshitse mpa’ translates as ‘She has taken out the stomach’. Abortion is described as ‘Ho ntsha mpa’ in Sesotho, therefore. Graphically, ‘Ho ntsha mpa’ as a process means ‘to remove the stomach’. Consequently, I’ve since my childhood days associated abortion with excruciating physical pain for the girls concerned. As I grew older in my mid-late teens, I began to be cognizant of, and think independently on ethical and moral issues. It was at this point that I concluded lastingly that regardless of the circumstances prevailing around a pregnancy, it must be an extremely tortuous decision for a woman to choose to terminate it.
As a firmly held philosophical stand-point, I concluded that it took much resolve and courage for a woman to choose to endure the physical and emotional pain that abortion necessarily entails. This is one area in which I feel and think that women manifest magnanimity deserving the highest and unreserved admiration. To force a woman to carry to the full a pregnancy that’s uncontestably detrimental to her physical and mental health, if not life-threatening, ought to be the crime.
Abortion as a medically defensible procedure to safeguard and enhance the well-being of women in the living ought to be a right understood from a woman’s perspective. Stupid old men who have no practical idea at all about what it takes and feels to be pregnant and subsequently give birth must stay out of promulgating laws that interfere with women’s sexual reproductive health rights. Anti-abortion women dancing to the tunes of stupid conservative old and young men are traitors against their own kind. These women need help. When one woman appallingly postulates that another woman can opt for abortion at the point of actual birthing, it suggests some serious mental imbalance issues. Another one is about women aborting children already born. Jeeezzuzzz!!!
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
July 25, 2022
𝐆𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄
𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐄𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞
Please
Give me time
Walking a straight course
Is not
A given for me
Given are
Obstacles
From the first step to the last
I’ve got sores
Under my feet
I walk
Spiked metal
Carpeted roads
In my time
I’ve danced through
Landmines in my time
Bombs clapping sounds
In my ears
Don’t stop
Scars on my body
Don’t heal
I eel through
I scale
Razor wire fences
To get anywhere
My muscles are wasted
I’ve walked through fire
It’s a wonder
I can move at all
My eardrums hurt
It’s a wonder
I can hear
Birds sing
My will is intangible
It cannot be isolated
Cannot be broken
I move as I will
I get there
The elements
Give me no easy task
To set my roots in the soil
Hostility
Above and below
The ground is
A given for me
I must fight
All the time
I must fight
Absolutely
For everything
To reach the top of
The mountains
I climb
As a given
To sustain my life
Even just to serve
From a mountain top
When I’d rather
Rock and roll
Down to home base
In satisfaction
I’m ever thrust over the edge
To tumble ’n roll
Over ’n over
In pain
Hitting home base
Body twisted
A bone or two broken
I’m taken
Back in time
Back in space
More obstacles
To overcome
Another mountain climb
To the top
Where keys to
My well of joy lie waiting
If love
Blanketed the earth
I’d reach for you
My joy
Every step I take
Give me time
I cannot breathe at your pace
I carry
Weight of the world
Laden with hate
On my shoulders
I fight bigots
Hating me
For colour of my skin
They demean me
They seek to dehumanize me
Every step I take
They twist my words
Slander me
Project myths that
Colour of my skin
Facades evil in man
I get enemies for free
They muddy my paths
Spill oil over roads I walk
I slide and fall
I get up
Burn the midnight oil
Keep moving on
One step at a time
Against the clock’s
Sixty tick-tock seconds steps a minute
Sixty tick-tock minutes steps an hour
My steps have time tick-tocks
Of their own
As a given
In my precarious existence
Bigots
They seek
To break my spirits
Every step I take
I am indomitable
My spirit terrifies them
They shoot me
I die
They created Jesus’
Resurrection story
To cover their
Confoundment over
My resilience
Give me time
You’ll see in time
That I really am human too
Everything they can do
I can do better
As a given
I must work
Ten times as hard
Anytime
In my time
There are times
The agony inside
Is unbearable
My head
Wants to explode
At not only
The bigots’ cruelty
But their horrendous
Outright stupidity
When reason doesn’t work
When prayer doesn’t work
Because their God is made
In the image of them bigots’
Collective derangement
I have to stop and cry
From time to time
Please give me time
For my tears to dry
Starting from below zero
With zero privilege
Against these meanest odds
I’ll rule the world
It ain’t for nothing
I’m the oldest
Human being on earth
They created Adam
To sideline me
Doesn’t work
I’m here
As a given
On the eve of
My victory
It’s beyond haters’ imagination
But
I shall blanket
The world with love
As a given
Some day soon
Nothing can stop me
It’s only a matter of time
Brace yourself
My love
𝘈𝘪𝘨𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘬𝘪 𝘭𝘦 𝘯𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘣𝘪
This Black don’t bend
𝘈𝘪𝘹𝘩𝘦𝘬𝘦𝘻𝘦𝘬𝘪 𝘭𝘦 𝘯𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘣𝘪
This Black don’t crack
𝐄𝐍𝐃
©Simon Chilembo 06/04-2022
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
April 13, 2022
PS
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DISCLAIMER: I neither offer nor suggest any cures or remedies. I promote fearless, independent thought and inclination towards pursuing science-based knowledge in times of, indeed, frightening, life-threatening phenomena in the world.
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𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆
𝐑𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐚𝐫: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐤𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚
Abused people
Adaptive people
Admirable people
Adventurous people
Alert people
Amazing people
Ambitious people
Ancient people
Appreciated people
Assertive people
Athletic people
Attractive people
Awesome people
Beautiful people
Blessed people
Blue eyes people
Boisterous people
Bravado people
Brave people
Brazen people
Bright people
Brilliant people
Capitalist people
Change people
Cheated people
Chosen people
Civilized people
Classy people
Clean people
Close to home people
Combative people
Competitive people
Confused people
Conscious people
Conservative people
Considerate people
Co-operative people
Creative people
Credible people
𝘊𝘳è𝘮𝘦 𝘥𝘦 𝘭𝘢 𝘤𝘳è𝘮𝘦 people
Critical people
Cultured people
Curious people
Daring people
Decent people
Demanding people
Democracy people
Deprived people
Deserving people
Desperate people
Determined people
Dignified people
Dominant people
Educated people
Emotive people
English speaking people
Entitled people
Eurasian people
European people
Exemplary people
Exhausted people
Faith people
Family people
Fertile people
First World people
Fleeing people
Flexible people
Free people
Freezing people
Frustrated people
Gifted people
Graceful people
Gracious people
Grateful people
Hard-working people
Hardy people
Heroic people
High tech people
Higher people
Hilarious people
Historic people
Hopeful people
Hungry people
Imperial people
Incredible people
Independent people
Industrious people
Information age people
Informed people
Innovative people
Intelligent people
Intuitive people
Leading people
Liberal people
Liberated people
Liberty people
Life-loving people
Like you and me people
Literate people
Live next-door people
Loveable people
Loyal people
Methodical people
Middle class people
Modern people
Money people
Moving people
Non-Communist people
Non-Marxist people
Non-Socialist people
Normal people
Open people
Oppressed people
Optimistic people
Our people
Palatable people
Party people
Passionate people
Patient people
Powerful people
Productive people
Prolific people
Proud people
Realistic people
Rebellious people
Refugee people
Related people
Religious people
Resilient people
Resourceful people
Responsible people
Revolution people
Robbed people
Robust people
Sacrificial people
Same people
Savvy people
Sensitive people
Separated people
Skilled people
Slavic people
Smart people
Sophisticated people
Sovereign people
Special people
Spirited people
Splendid people
Split up people
Strong people
Strong-willed people
Suffering people
Superb people
Supportive people
Survivor people
Sweet people
Talented people
Tenacious people
Terrific people
Terrified people
Thinking people
Traumatized people
Trendy people
Ukraine people
United people
Upper class people
Urbane people
Visible people
Wanderer people
Warrior people
Wealthy people
Well-off people
Well-read people
Wise people
Wonderful people
Worn out people
White people
Africans
Afro people
Arabs
Asians
Bitches
Black people
Buddhists
Christians
Coloured people
Hindus
Jews
Junkies
Latinos
LGBTQS
Muslims
People of colour
Sikhs
Weirdos
Again
Asking for a friend
Who is better
Who is worse
Who is who
To judge
My friend wants to know
Some more
Should the fascists
Have it their way
What’ll happen to
American women
American children
American weak and vulnerable
When the second civil war
Has set
America burning
Whites scrambling for supremacy
Blacks insisting that
Their lives matter
In the inferno
Onlookers denigrating
From behind the southern border wall
America on fire
Burn motherfucker
Burn
Fat lady ain’t gonna sing
Anytime soon
Who whines
𝘕𝘺𝘸𝘦-𝘯𝘺𝘸𝘦 now
As in
𝘔𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢 𝘎𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘈𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯
𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯
𝘋𝘢𝘮𝘯 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘺 𝘑𝘰𝘦
𝘒𝘩𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘢-𝘬𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘢
𝘕𝘰𝘯-𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘗𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘦
𝘐𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵
𝘙𝘶𝘴𝘩𝘺𝘢-𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘩𝘺𝘢𝘢𝘢…
Keep God out of this
It’s about us
𝐄𝐍𝐃
©Simon Chilembo 07/03-2022
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
March 09, 2022