I have decided to revisit my often quoted reference to Njabulo Ndebele’s injunction for us to change our relevance. He was specifically addressing post-apartheid literature (a prodigious field of study) but I have personalised my take on his views in order to achieve my own agenda, which is revised relevance and improved literacy in all its variety.
(T)he greatest challenge of the South African revolution is in the search for ways of thinking, ways of perception, that will help to break down the closed epistemological structures of South African oppression … The challenge is to free the entire social imagination of the oppressed from the laws of perception that have characterised apartheid society … It means extending the writer’s perception of what can be written about, and the means and methods of writing. (Ndebele: Rediscovery, 65)
It is easy to assume that my piece will be an extended review of such a deceptively simple, yet profound injunction. In my book, what he is saying is that we must not assume that change is an exclusive methodology.
Accepting that the willingness to change provides higher percentages of survival is self-evident. But our present and pathetic government homed in on the word change and set about the clownish application of this concept.
They changed names of streets, cities, rivers, buildings, indeed, anything that could be changed, was. This spuriously pathetic attempt to be seen to redefine our new existence is so trite it makes me doubt my own sanity.
I am even reduced to quoting the Bard’s lame aphorism that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. What, I fondly ask, is the relevance of changing street-names or other similarly-trite changes. If people behave as badly in the newly-named city, what is the point?
Indeed, what is the point of the Prez traipsing with Putin on his home ground to discuss a war where massive bombs are flung at unprotected buildings, and exposed warm bodies of babies and old folks? Of what relevance is it to his role as leader of a sinking democracy? Or is he appeasing Putin for calling his nation’s sausages “Russians”?
No one can dispute that charity begins at home. And yet the word charity has to be redefined. It is not the self-gratifying distribution of your excess in a show of humanity.
Charity does not mean discarding excess and earning double points for generosity and humanity. And we should redefine the word define itself. As the articulate homeless street-beggar explained to a driver who had stopped at his begging/traffic light-stop: “I’m not defined by this Styrofoam container that is waiting for your spare change.”
I would, if I could, take that erudite and highly literate drop-out and employ him gainfully. But the double-bluff prevents such gregarious generosity precisely because of Ndebele’s reference to the closed epistemological structures …
Better for us if we start by dropping the categories. Call a person by another appellation. It will enable you to define a person’s worth and not his looks.
You will be better able to cope with minorities which give themselves a title of definition and then demand rights and privileges for which they have done nothing to deserve. I refer specifically to the gender issues and the dog-in-the-manger short-sighted residual social strata that will shipwreck the chance for a 26 000-slot job creation event via Amazon.
Part of our problem is the use of the over-worked “rights” that are supposedly enshrined in the Constitution, said to be the best in the world.
Bull-dust and stuff and nonsense. That Constitution was written by the very scoundrels who created the demand for a new Constitution. They merely redefined old hoary concepts, caste them as novel, and proceeded to entrench the old ways for ever and ever. Rights are not negotiated by governmental edict.
Rights are earned. We should recognise each other in mutual respect, accept and absorb differences, expand and utilise talent and take our heads out of the sand of name and blame. There is a job or redefining and restructuring to be done.
* Alex Tabisher.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Do you have something on your mind; or want to comment on the big stories of the day? We would love to hear from you. Please send your letters to [email protected].
All letters to be considered for publication, must contain full names, addresses and contact details (not for publication)