A classic song by Midnight Oil released in the late 80s spoke of a generation. The lyrics hauntingly call for social justice.
The time has come
To say fair’s fair
To pay the rent
To pay our share
The time has come
A fact’s a fact
It belongs to them
Let’s give it back
We all know grumpy old men in power do not listen to young whippersnappers and there will be a point when they say “enough is enough” and unleash the dogs of war.
Ironically, anyone in a university right now forms part of the privileged elite. It is a national tragedy that they believe they are fighting for “everyone”. But for the masses or the poor, they are as fake as their slogans. They would not know what poor was if it slapped them in their faces and said “hello, look at me”.
They are the byproduct of moms and dads driving the latest SUV, with homes in posh suburbs, all of them born with a sense of entitlement.
To illustrate poverty you need to see it, you need to eat, sleep and breathe it.
Because how do you sleep when your bed is burning? As true today as it was back then…
This is not a sermon but a story, about a girl who loved a man. An ordinary couple with two children and a day that opened the girl’s eyes.
I followed a plume of dark black smoke that could be seen for miles in the sky above Ladysmith yesterday. My wife was in the car. We had just dropped our kids off at home after picking them up from school.
As I chased the source of the smoke, we left our comfortable suburb, passed through our modern safe CBD and about 10 minutes later in the smoke chase, I swear I visibly saw and heard my wife gulp as we passed a signboard saying “Welcome to Ezakheni”.
In our 18 years of marriage, I honestly think for the first time in her life, she was actually in a township. Her eyes gawked as the Facebook-like social media stream of the real world scrolled past our car windows.
In full 3-D, smells and all, I took my wife into a world no school book prepared her for and no sociology or political science major can teach in years of study.
And as fear slowly etched itself across her face in a pale hue of ghostly white, she realised we were going in. I knew there was still hope for this country.
Up and down side roads we went, past brick, mud and tin homes – a blur of poverty, the true South Africa if you will.
The smoke traced to its source was nothing more than a dump yard fire.
Almost fitting in a way, as societies downtrodden and neglected, the so-called ‘poorest of the poor’ had for a brief few minutes etched itself onto my wife’s social conscience, ending in a plume of putrid smoke and rising flames, flickering and billowing skyward, consuming all.
You can recall 1976 in a clever photo and catchy headline #ShutItDown, but in one car trip, my wife learnt more than if she had joined a thousand student protests.
While it may be popular or the in thing to support the call for change and chant, tag or like the #FeesMustFall campaign, real change starts and ends with us, in our hearts, minds and beliefs and what I saw in my wife’s eyes as we left was hope. She had survived something she feared more than anything else.
When you kill the bogeyman, you are entitled to have hope! And in that hour-long township adventure, my wife had slain a bogeyman that had haunted her for a lifetime!
