I lay zombie-like for hours on end on a random morning, hours past my bedtime, Insomnia with a strong chokehold on the mere prospect of my sweet dreams with no intentions of letting go anytime soon. I do what any logical person under such dire circumstances would do. I think. Thoughts riddled with guilt on how black people, self included, have seemed to turn an icy shoulder to all things African.
Quotes and speeches from inspirational Africans recited over Vicky Sampson’s ‘African Dream’. I start hearing Mzwakhe Mbuli, Musa Kalenga, Nelson Mandela, Thebe Ikalafeng. WTF! This is getting way too deep. I snap out of it, opting to check what frivolous rambling my facebook friends have uttered induced by ‘nocturnal intoxication’. I might get a laugh or two, or find a status update quoting the lyrics to just the right lullaby that’ll end my sleepless misery.
The first update I spot, a young lady I shall not shame, reads: “Call Me Barbie, B!tch!” The real shock comes as I notice that well over a dozen other friends of hers like this, with even more commenting further to lay claim that they are indeed the real Barbie B!tches.
Failing to grasp the ideology behind young pretty African Princesses, with all the potential in the world to blossom into beautiful Nubian Queens, choosing rather to be referred to as Black Barbie B!tches, I simply scroll down to another profile.
A glimmer of hope as I peruse down to find a one Nandi Mngoma, an avid inspirational blogger of note, I hope for substance in her dialect. She expressed her dismay at “The shallowness of the concept of Africans referring to each other as YellowBones (light-skinned) and Brownies (darker skin-toned)”. Such raw emotion, coupled with a few opinionated comments and some healthy debate.
A song dear to me “Shades” by Wale springs to mind as I ponder on just how true it is that lighter-skinned Africans are envied by their darker siblings, as society is generally kinder to the fairer shade.
A particular line scuffles it’s way to the forefront of my thoughts: “the Blacker the berry, the sweeter the product... then I’m fruit punch concentrate, and they are water.” Wale’s expression on just how he truly felt as a black African.
The guilt-riddled African thoughts I tried to escape a few moments before are rekindled. We, as Africans, instead of adapting the various Eastern and Western ‘trends and beliefs’ that we’re exposed to, yet keeping our African roots/foundation, choose rather to ignore our roots altogether.
So let it not be our Bohemian attitudes, Brazilian weaves, Italian clothing or German sports cars, but rather our African hearts that best define us. Now in no way am I advocating reverting to a simpler life by the boycotting of our True Religion or RT jeans and Hyundai sedans for ‘amabheshu’, leotards, dashikis and horse-drawn carriages, because in the end those are not really what makes us African.
Africa, the birthplace of all mankind, a land rich with heritage and blessed with an abundance of such luxuries as platinum, coal and diamonds, now branded by the World as the home of starving Kwashiorkor-infected ‘high-jumpers’ with bones in their noses’, or the playground for child soldiers with Kalashnikovs towed in their little trigger-happy hands.
Facebook, a medium I once thought of as merely a new virtual lifeline on Wayne Brady’s “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” show, where you simply add the lyrics of the latest smash single on the Billboard Top 100 charts, and a multitude of ‘comments’ from eager ‘friends’ pour in, wanting to exhibit their cutting-edge word-for-word knowledge of that featured artist’s latest work.
A hypocrite I am though, as I proceed to quote K’naan when he is featured on the Nas and Damian Marley track ‘Tribes at War’, where he echoes Africa’s cries on just how it’s contribution has been ignored and belittled by society at large:
“I drink Poison, and then I vomit Diamonds... I gave you Mandela, black Dalai Lamas... I gave you music, you enthused in my kindness, so how dare you reduce me to Donny Imus.”
Stemming from a continent breastfed by Oppression, I realise the struggle is far from over, and the wounds although healed, left unsightly scars that can’t be “Bio-Oiled” by the promise of lucrative BEE contracts & the re-naming of Durban’s West Street to Dr Pixley ka-Seme.
I personally feel blessed and honoured to been born into ‘freedom’ and have been bread to be a post-Apartheid cosmopolitan (South) African citizen with facebook privileges.
Facebook, a weapon I now realise is as powerful as a mic in the hands of Dr Martin Luther King Jr., or as lethal as a pen in the hands of Steve Biko... Let us be wise in our use of such a catalyst of change. Before updating statuses bragging about the huge hangover we have from downing a number of beers night before, ask yourself if you would still have said the same thing if you knew that that was the status you’ll forever be remembered for.
“I am not saying that I will change the world. But I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the World.” - Tupac Amaru Shakur
Facebook is a platform that allows a young African child the ability to give wings to stanzas that lay dormant in cob-webbed dark dungeons in his mind. I am that child.
But I realise that I am not alone, for disguised in loose-fitting bemudas, micro-minis, skinny jeans, graphics Tees, dark shades, gold teeth, afros, weaves and chiskops on black, mocha, cocoa, caramel, yellow or dark chocolate coloured skin lie a multitude of other such children of
African descent, with even greater stories to tell.
So as I contemplate putting up the funniest, quirkiest, most idiosyncratic two-liner as my status update that’s sure to gather at least 20 comments and a dozen ‘likes’, reassuring me that my ‘friends’ are still fond of me, I think what would African legends likes of Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah or Patrice Lumumba would’ve had as their status updates.
Another more powerful thought clouds in my mind, second-guessing its predecessor. It is a question: “Hhaibo, who do you think you are?”......
......I sit, dumbstruck for a minute or two, before answering:
I am Siya Ngcobo. uMapholoba. uFuze. iQadi. Mashiya amahle ngath’ azoshumayela.
A young African facebooker undeterred on his quest: Chasing Success.
