Desmond Tutu’s death a reminder that SA is yet to confront unhealed wounds

We are a nation in pain.

This year we have in quick succession laid to rest the last remaining Nobel Peace Prize laureates in South Africa: the last apartheid president, FW de Klerk, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

While the nation mourns, we cannot ignore that some view the men’s contributions differently. While they were hailed as heroes and game changers, many did not bat an eyelid at hearing that they are no longer with us…

This got me thinking how different history is interpreted when read from the pages of personal, lived and unlived, experiences.

Many remember Tutu as a man of the cloth, with the heart of a saint but more so a defiance at injustice and a rebel determined to see change.

But some remember a man who put reconciliation above retribution for sins committed during apartheid; they remember a man who publicly shamed an icon, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and for that he would never be forgiven… They believe he had sold out to the apartheid regime… the two coins of lived experiences were clear.

The real cost of our democracy lies in the price tag put on the political powers who are bought and sold daily as if they are cattle to settle a dowry fee.

That a whole minister would sell her conscience for obscene amounts of liquor and groceries would leave one with a sour taste.

The country is being sold, bit by bit, for lamb and whiskey?

Are we mature enough to admit that the celebrated may have traded their convictions for comfort?

The ANC screams together we can do more, let’s do it for Madiba. But then they silently turn around and sell the country, if not to the shebeen owners in Saxonworld, then the Watsons.

We are a country under siege from those we have put into power – they sold us a dream, we bought it and were left with the ruins of a failing economy, the arrogance of ill-gotten gains and a Cabinet that answers to no one.

These deaths are a stark reminder of a country that is yet to confront unhealed wounds. We are in limbo.

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