Love Your Child........Love your Country

One of the things that make me miss my late son, NhlakaninphoMsizi, is when I think about the things he taught me and made me do. Right now I’m thinking about how he made me get used to watching Animal Planet (DSTV Channel) and how he used to be knowledgeable when it came to animals and their behavior. Wow, what a son I had, what a blessing he was to everyone around him and what a philosopher…I guess he had taken all his qualities from his mother’s side. May his soul rest in peace!

One other episode I watched from this channel was a documentary about lions. We were shown this species taking care of their offspring right from birth and guiding the young ones through adulthood. Everything the offspring knew, it had to learn from their parents, I mean everything. Even hunting… the old lions would hunt and catch a young deer or impala or a zebra and let it live so that young ones could practice with it and learn how to catch their prey, before they had a nice dinner of it. This has been happening since the beginning of time, and it is still happening now.

Let me come back to the purpose of this Note and the reason why I saw the necessity of publishing it. I was watching with interest the results of the local government elections and noted the decline (slight as it was) in the support for the ruling party and an increase for the opposition. Being an academic that I am, I have long discarded serendipity in any attempt to explain events. I had to sit down and reflect on the build up towards the elections and look at the behavior of the electorate. I picked up a few things. People are becoming disinterested and feel that they don’t have any responsibility to vote. Secondly, this being the eighteenth year of democracy, it is now the other generation, the one that grew up in the new dispensation that forms the significant portion of the electorate and these are superficial when it comes to issues of politics. They are either less concerned with politics or they are having misgivings about the ruling party (because of its perceived behavior) and would rather distance themselves from anything to do with politics. There is no crime in all of the above; everyone is allowed to exercise their constitutional rights.

Now, let me explore the first observation further; that of people becoming disinterested in government issues. Exploring would entail looking at the causes and consequences. The most obvious thing that would cause people to lose interest from anything would be the notion that they are not deriving any benefit from it. If one is not reaping any rewards from doing anything, then why continue doing it seems to be an obvious logic. But even before this, people have always had this belief that politics is for some people and others have no place in politics. This you even pick up from friends’ profiles here on Facebook people are so quick to declare their religious orientations and their philosophical perspectives whilst explicitly submitting that they have no interest in politics. What needs to be brought to peoples’ awareness is the fact that one need not like politics, one need not be interested in politics, one need not be aware of politics…one IS politics. Everything about an individual is politics. It’s even worse with South Africans. The house you live in, the school you go to, the work you do, the church you attend, your religious views, your economic

situation…all of these are influenced by the politics of the day. If water is the habitat of fish and the jungle is that of wild animals, then the habitat of a human being is politics. Now if I ask what your political views are and you say you do not have any, then, I become seriously concerned about your faculties as a fellow human being. Whilst one can carelessly attribute this to the death of political articulation of ideas within the black ranks, which took place in the early 1960s as a result of the banning of all political organisations, the other would argue that the only reason there was a political struggle was simply because of the need to regain this freedom which was subsequently accomplished. After accomplishing it then people become disinterested…? Now talk about an incongruence of behavior. For me, the attainment of “freedom” as it were, is the actual beginning of the “struggle”. Being free means that now you have more responsibility, you are now not only in charge of your own decisions but also accountable for them as well. Now you get to decide how your future should be like, where you should live and what school your children should go to. All this needs a lot of responsibility and that’s where the real struggle is. This is politics in its barest form…and a person who makes all these decisions has the audacity to respond “not interested in politics”….puleeeeeeez!

Moving on with our discussion we now want to look at those with a newly-acquired suffrage. You see, the younger generation is actually the victims of circumstance. Most of these were born in the eighties and whilst they can claim exposure in both worlds, they cannot entirely identify with the generation from the apartheid era. These spent most of their school years in the new democracy and enjoyed most of the “rights” that came with it. They don’t share the sentiments of the older folk who actually experienced, and even personally participated in, the struggle for freedom. The latter would regard democracy like “izikhalizamaNtungwa” because they know and experienced the opposite of democracy. What does not help again in the situation of the younger folk is the time they spend with their school teachers. Most of them now attend the schools that were formerly regarded as the “model C” schools and are predominantly white. Now, the teachers are the opposite of their parents when it comes to political sentiments and guess what…they feed them ideologies that are as much opposite. During recess and lunch break, they spend time with white children who have been taught at home that white people are superior. Now, this has an impact on black kids that comes in two dimensions. The first one is that a child of African descent would begin to perceive fellow Africans as inferior and wanting of serious thought. Secondly, the very same child would undergo a complete metamorphosis in terms of disposition…speech, behavior, culture and perspective. Now, suddenly this young African child begins to wonder…together with the white children…how in heaven’s name can “our country” be led by an African president. Before you know it, a young Democratic Alliance activist is born. Before you know it, the above process is repeated a few million times in a space of five years and…even before I say it, I can see you getting worried…BOOM!....the country is back in 1980 in terms of its political dispensation.

So, our lions in the documentary actually do have a lesson for us…after all. Just when I thought we were done with this animal behavior…in fact, I was still wondering why this even formed part of the introduction of this “search your soul” excursion.

Just like the lions teach their young ones everything there is to know about life, so should the human species. Parents should not be selective in what they share with their children when it comes to political issues. Better still; parents should have their story right in terms of their political orientation. They should be clear about their political persuasions, ideologies and inclinations. These should be passed on to the young ones in an education fashion so as to put the latter in a better position to be able to take informed decisions about their political stance. My argument is, if you do not instill any political sense in your child, somebody else will and the question is, is it the content or even the perspective that you would have loved to get into your child’s head or not?It is for this reason that one would never, at any point in time, witness a lion behaving like a chicken, or a certain bird behaving like, perhaps a snake and so on and so forth. Now, why a person of certain cultural persuasion would be found at times to be adopting cultural ways foreign to their own? Sometimes the intelligence that is supposed to accord us, human beings, a superior status to the rest of the animal kingdom, works against our favour. We purport to know more than we actually do and as a result make and take decisions that are completely against our purpose of living.

All in all, if we want to prevent the looming threat of acculturation, the seemingly inevitability of political disorientation and the possible loss of identity, let us learn from the lions, the birds and all the animals that are led by intuition, not intellect, and pass on, amongst other things, our sense of worth as a nation to our children.

This will help us preserve our heritage and our country that so many people have lost their lives for in their plight to bring it back from those who have the superiority complex and believe that they are the only human beings on this earth who have the capacity to rule. Let us not be subjected to the liberal white theory of gradualism which only leaves the African Nation confused, amongst other things. For the next five years let us be driven by the campaign of MY CHILD…MY COUNTRY, whereby we will give ourselves enough time to educate and politicize our children and let them be the ones who ascertain that this country belongs with and remains in the rightful owners. Let each and every parent know that whenever they vote an organisation or a political party to power, it is because of the ideologies that organisation or that political party espouses. Do not be discouraged by individuals who are members of an organisation or a political party who drive their own campaign to achieve own selfish agendas using the platform accorded to them by the voters. Let us fight for the ideologies that attracted us to the organisation and let us vote out of office those who are acting in contradiction with ideologies.

My daughter is out at UCT and she knows very well what our political aspirations are as a family and she will be coming back home at least four times a year for the next six years, but I will make sure that each time she is back, she shares with me all the political challenges she comes across there and will devise strategies as to how she will have to deal with them. This we will do together with her Mom.

Nontuthuko is MY CHILD….and South Africa is MY COUNTRY. She is, together with her siblings, going to help me and their Mom, keep it that way.

Written By: BrownSuga Shandu