Today’s #consciousculturefriday is a guest post from my man, KJ Bilingane – a South African writer who we are happy to feature here for the first time. I thought this was a well written article that should speak to all of you who think that Black History Month is irrelevant. Here we go…
When will people realise that we are all African? Black, White, Indian, coloured, yellow, pink or whatever racial demography or social stratification there is, we all spawn from the same ancestry. When we talk of Africanism and African consciousness, we do not mean holding on to outdated value systems of the establishment which may be irrelevant to the modern African, we do not advocate ethnocentric bigotry or tribalism but we mean a holistic and intrinsic understanding of what it means to African, what it means to be human, what it means to be a living organism and most importantly what it means to be alive not merely existing but being fully conscious of what is.
Rebuking the notion that some animals are more equal than others with the misconception that we, mankind, can do as we see fit with the Earth and its animals. The battle should not be a war against poverty and the monetary system but against elitism, this superiority complex from which we have become so engulfed in but poverty and the monetary systems are tools which have been used to keep the pawns (the masses) little-minded and not see what the real status quo is and so the eradication of them is of paramount importance in the emancipation of mankind, in the realisation of what it means to be African.
People need to realise that the earth will only take care of us if we take care of it, some might argue that the fallacy of that argument is materialism and individualism (selfishness), traits from which mankind needs to be emancipated from with the notion that mankind is naturally selfish and individualistic. This is not the case; these traits are learned and promulgated within and through communities. As Carl Marx suggests, ‘all property is theft…’ mankind needs to realise that what was of the soil, shall return to the soil.
The current system will inevitably collapse within itself, do we then sit on the sidelines saying that it is really not our problem to deal with? “We’re Neutral”, they say being so encroached in myopia that they are blinded from the truth. They do not see that they too will inevitably become victims of the system as did the Germans, who let Nazism fester, boil up and eventually explode.
‘People are astounded, they are angry. They say: “How strange that is, but then it is only Nazism, it won’t last.” And they wait, and they hope, and they hide the truth from themselves. It is savagery, the supreme savagery, it crowns, it epitomises the day to day savageries. Yes it is Nazism. But before they became victims, they were its accomplices. That Nazism they tolerated before they succumbed to it, they exonerated it, they closed their eyes to it, and they legitimated it because until then it had been employed only against non-European people. That Nazism they encouraged, they were responsible for it, and it drips, it seeps, it wells from every crack in the western Christian civilization until it engulfs that civilization in a bloody sea….’
Let us stop sucking the life out of the Earth through a balance and an understanding of what nature is and how nature works. Let the entire education, religion and value systems of mankind be torn to their very foundations and rebuilt again but this time promulgating Africanism, promulgating humility, promulgating an egalitarian discourse not only amongst humans but all that is of this celestial body. Let the monetary system be done away with as it is nothing but a farce, a tool for modern slavery feeding materialism, individualism (selfishness) and elitism.
Far too often and far too many of us live our lives not really concerning ourselves with that which does not affect us directly. We claim that we are neutral. We want to believe that our actions and non-action does not affect the Earth and “life” as we know it, we maintain that we are neutral. We want to believe that this quest that mankind has embarked on, ‘get rich by all means’ does not play a role in the bigger scheme of things.
“We’re Neutral….”
The big bankers of this world, who practice the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings and field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no one but merely limit themselves to applauding the show.
Their officials, international technocrats, rule our countries; they are neither presidents nor ministers, they have never been elected, but they decide the level of salaries and public expenditure, investments and divestments, prices, taxes. Interest rates, subsidies, when the sun shines and how frequently it rains.
However, they do not concern themselves with the prisons or torture chambers or concentration camps or extermination centres, although these house the inevitable consequences of their acts. The technocrats claim the privilege of irresponsibility: “We’re Neutral,” they say…. ‘- Eduardo Galeano
We claim the privilege of irresponsibility of mother Earth forgetting that we are because of her. When we have cut down the last tree and poisoned the last river, will we eat money? Will money quench our thirst and need for water?
People fear being seen as being different, they fear striking out and doing their own thing, they fear going against the tide but rather hide behind fence-sitting tendencies. People fear change, they claim they want it but fear it. They cling on to cults, religions, cultures and viewpoints that are centuries old for they fear that which they do not understand. They do not see that these institutions limit their line of thought, they do not want to see and so the entire thought process has thus become false, they are then limited to thinking within a box in which they find solace and comfort for they fear what they may realise in the unimaginable realms of out of the box thinking. People choose to be puppets and pawns because they then do not have to construct their own reality and understanding of what is.
People would rather not choose a side; they find safety in not answering for fear of being wrong. They pretend that they do not see when they do. They pretend that they are not there when they are. They pretend that they do not know of poverty and would rather aspire to spend that ridiculous amount of money on a party. They pretend they are not materialistic even though they are brand-conscious and are not elitist when they are, be it through tribalism, religion or any other institutions that promulgate this superiority complex.
People choose to conform and claim that they are neutral because choosing a side is just too much of a daunting task. Some might argue that one can’t fight the future and so we shouldn’t waste our lives trying but it was Malcolm X who said, “The future is for those who plan for it.”, and so let us mould it into something beautiful that our children will be proud to lay claim of…aluta!
KJ Bilingane.
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