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Mar 28 2008 11:11:12:313AM
Siki Dlanga wonders if the violent insanity we're seeing in SA is a sign the euphoria of 1994 is over.
When I look around Knysna it is hard not to notice that black people do not own the best parts of South Africa. Being there almost feels like someone's rubbing it in your face that it is still happening - the rich arrive from Europe, purchase our best land, live here for six months and go again. Something about it just feels wrong.
Mugabe's way is not the way but I wonder if the violent insanity in the street is half caused by this great disempowering sense of injustice felt by the ordinary man. How do you fix centuries of injustice in 15 years?
Maybe the madness happening outside - because none of the crime that's happening is normal - is an extreme cry for help of the first generation allowed to express the damage that has been caused by centuries of injustice.
When I look deep within the soul of my black person I see an overwhelming injustice. I feel, when I look around, the part that screams: "No! Things are wrong, they are not meant to be this way".
Perhaps we do not need BEE, as helpful as it is for the black psyche. Perhaps what we need is something far deeper than material possessions to restore our dignity and our humanity to better than what it was before Jan van Riebeek ever set foot here.
If we saw the future maybe we could have better negotiated with the man and freely given him some land; we're generous people, I am sure we would've been hospitable.
However, it is his descendants who are now worried, feeling like now they are the victims struggling to take ownership of the past and hating the present. We have all been time's fool. Jan Van Riebeek and those who followed him thought they would always be the masters.
The magic is lost
For a time Mandela seemed to cool us down. Perhaps we were drugged by the sight of the impossible vision of freedom and a more inconceivable image of a black president. For a time the unimaginable happened and our wounds were numbed by the drug of ecstasy. We knew we were wounded before but to acknowledge it would be a risk to our lives and so we silently suffered and concentrated on survival.
We stood in awe of the black president. We worshiped him. We thought we were free but we began to feel the pangs of the pain we had kept together for so long. First it was "one bullet one settler" then it was "kill the farmer, kill the boer" then it was about killing everyone and stealing from everyone.
At first it seemed like struggle songs were justified. When respected people were still asking for their machine guns 14 years later, we started asking questions about the relevance of all these songs.
The magic of that great moment is lost, we have fallen from the cloud of elation; we have crashed and we are mad at everyone because our pain is excruciating and we did not know it. The worst is not that we feel it - it is that we do not know how to manage it. We are out of control, pretending we are in control.
Who are we fooling? We are without a solution, yet still scratching our heads for answers but the longer we take the mad man running loose will destroy more and more. Those who have not gone mad are prisoners of those who have.
Stop pointing fingers
I hope we will be bold enough to admit it. I hope we will be humble and say we do not have solutions, we have tried really hard, we have done the best we can but now we need a real solution that will heal the very soul of this nation.
We need someone who has been in this land before and since 1652; someone who knows what went wrong and how it can be rectified. We need to remember how to be human again. We must come out of hiding and get rid of those ridiculous fig leaves we have made for ourselves to try and cover our shame. We need to stop pointing fingers.
I know I am dreaming but doesn't Obama look like something from Martin Luther King Jnr's dream? I will dream and I will say, "South Africa, I implore you to be reconciled".
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