Submitted by: Naadia BE
Can you feel it? I can feel it.
In 1994 it was penned in calligraphy with a Parker fountain pen, scrolled and pushed into an iJuba two-liter carton, sealed with brown packing tape and thrown into South Africa’s oceans.
The sharp, barbed wire fences that put us, and our fathers, and their fathers into camps called ‘White, Coloured, Indian, and Black Areas’ were physically torn down.
But the indent on that soil from years of the pressure of being like that, just like a wedding ring never taken off and after years of being there, once divorced and taken off will leave that indent on the finger for years after, until finally, one day, the mark on that finger is gone.
It is us, the common people on the ground, who are the only ones who can not only make that decision, but can live out that decision.
The toxic union, the anger, the tears, the laments, are all gone. Their invisible yet tangible legacy of repression is gone. Grass grows where the sand was; the skin, white with the weight of the ring, is brown and healthy again.
The sun shone on that skin, on that piece of dented ground that bore the barbed wire that scraped, and cut, and oozed red blood onto anyone who dared to ask, “Can I borrow a cup of sugar?”, or “Hey! Howzit, broer?” just because he was black and she was white, or she was brown and he was not.
I have learned that the ‘gods’ in Parliament can make the rulings of dismantling apartheid, but it is us, the common people on the ground, who are the only ones who can not only make that decision, but can live out that decision. The uprising towards a healed and united South Africa will stem from the red soil upwards. Normal people, extending that hand to other normal people. It’s the start of a tidal wave of hope.
“Hey! Howzit, broer?” I hear my son say to his friend Thabo who lives in Sandton, and who teaches dance classes. He joined us on Eid and gave us a stellar performance.
Yes! #ImStaying . Are you?
