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| W-Q-T… if we took the time,
S-B-R… if we had the patience,
H-M-L… if we had the forebearance
What a different world this would be.
Al-Waqt… muda, boundless but limited;
As-Sabr… subira, with countless promises and zero guarantees;
At-Tahammul… ustahimilivu, the strength to bear burdens and the consequent knee buckling,
Would they have made such a difference?
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| Who would have thought, 30 years ago,
That we would be here today?
Nostalgia…
The words of Tabu Ley, Franco, drifting into the garden
From the LP prayer,
Carrying with them
Memories of a time
When we were us,
Conscious and comfortable in our skins.
Who would have thought
We would remember those times as good times?
It was a time before Mayi Mayi and UKIMWI,
Janjaweed and Mungiki.
I can’t lie.
It was also a time of ashes and blood.
But the hope that the phoenix would rise
Gave us hope.
We didn’t know this then.
We had no sense of what the future would bring.
We had no idea that we’d forever be turning back,
Looking on past horizons with longing.
We lived in the present then.
Now we live in the past,
While tentatively dipping our toes into the future,
Testing it out,
Hoping that it won’t burn.
The present is too heavy to experience.
So we save it up,
Burn it onto DVDs and print it out on bleached paper.
We will return 20 years hence with wisdom and insight,
Ready to analyze and to dissect,
Ready to understand.
Listening to them now,
The Congolese greats,
We forget that the past and present are separate.
We skirt around those complications, the ethnic nationalisms and the refugee camps,
The IDPs and the illicit small arms trade.
We hang suspended between the notes,
Pausing in the silence between then and now,
Taking a brief respite from the consequences of being who we are.
~Kahendi
![Creative Commons License]() This poem is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. Please feel free to use my writing for non-commercial purposes and do credit my name, Kahendi, as the writer.
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| I’ve been following the controversy surrounding Barrack Obama’s pastor, Reverend Wright with amazement. Mind you, I am not amazed at the words that Wright spoke, but at the fact that those words stirred up the amount of disbelief they did. I’ve lived in the USA a short time, but long enough to understand that conspiracy theories are the bread and butter of the average human being. Is it really surprising that several believe that HIV was designed in a laboratory and African peoples deliberately infected with it? Is it surprising that people believe the federal government was involved in facilitating the influx of drugs into inner city communities a few decades ago? It shouldn’t be surprising at all, folks. We’re living in the age of paranoia, and given the events of the past 500 years, understandably so. Just take a look at the annals of recent human history and you will see a legacy of brutality and sadism that will wrench your insides. Governments have been known to turn a blind eye as atrocities are committed. Not surprisingly, governments have also been implicated in sponsoring assassinations and forms of experimentation on civilians. Think of the Holocaust and of the racist experiments carried out by the likes of Dr Mengele. African Americans certainly can’t afford to forget the Tuskegee experiment. And who knows what happened in South Africa under the apartheid era. The indigenous societies of the Americas and Australia also have sad stories to tell. Unfortunately, we readers of history have short memories. We forget how much power we cede to religious leaders, scientists, bureaucrats and politicians to make decisions about our everyday lives, and then we are shocked when one or more of these people is able to use that power to cause irreparable damage. Victims don’t forget, though. Perhaps it is the memories of the victims that makes us uncomfortable and makes us want to turn the page when confronted with uncomfortable truths from our past and present. And yet, even when we willfully forget, there is something in us that maintains a fearful fascination with what we call evil. If you don’t believe me, pay close attention to religious and political discourse, to the types of books that top the best seller lists, and to the most popular programming on television. You will start to suspect that the American public, and humanity at large, is obsessed with the idea of dark, powerful, underground forces controlling the world. Frequently, conspiracy theories are dismissed in the media as ludicrous or absurd. Very few take the time to examine the relevant question: why do people believe in them? It’s not necessary to share a person’s beliefs in order to understand where those beliefs are coming from. So why, when faced with these theories, does the mainstream media tend to shut down any attempt to examine them or discuss them? Why do reporters and anchors spend more energy being offended that people can believe such theories, than investigating the theories and the people who subscribe to them? I suspect that conspiracy theories have such a strong hold on people because, first of all, there’s a certain amount of truth in them. For instance, the idea of a government designing viruses for specific population groups is not a far remove from the following facts: that some nations are acknowledged to possess biological weapons, that the Tuskegee experiment on African American men was allowed to proceed, unhindered. When these facts are brought together in an environment where racial injustice, prejudice and suspicion prevail, then a conspiracy theory is inevitable. Secondly, conspiracy theories manage to tie up all the loose ends and to explain the mysteries that the official narrative leaves unaddressed. Official theories explaining the origins of HIV/ AIDS and its epidemiology are often self-contradictory and convoluted while the conspiracy theory gives a clear-cut black and white explanation; no ambiguous grays are allowed to linger. The result is that people are more attracted to the version with a clear beginning, middle and end and where the good guy and the bad guy are easily distinguished from each other. Thirdly, conspiracy theories tend to fit in with the predominant Judeo-Islamic religious narrative in the community. If the community is Muslim, Christian or Jewish, then it is predisposed to believing in scenarios that end in catastrophe (the apocalypse, the end of the world, the decimation of the entire community by disease) and involve a battle between good and evil. Conspiracy theories should not be dismissed, however ludicrous they may sound. If people believe strongly in a conspiracy theory, then it is probably because they are living in fear and believe they have no power over their own destiny. These feelings are understandable among people living in extreme poverty, people battling an epidemic that has crippled their entire society or people who have been victimized time and again and continue to be victimized. Journalists are uniquely placed to identify the fears that predispose people to believing conspiracy theories. By examining those fears and asking questions about them, they could expose gross inequalities in society, thus provoking people to address those inequalities. Admittedly, that is an idealistic scenario. Media exposés don’t always lead to corrective actions being taken. However, I would like to believe that talking about our fears as a community could help us gain some kind of agency and make it possible for us to dream of surmounting the Kilimanjaros in our lives.
![Creative Commons License]() This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. Please feel free to use my writing for non-commercial purposes and do credit my name, Kahendi, as the writer.
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| “Long Night’s Journey into Day” is an optimistic name for this documentary that describes South Africa’s unique situation in coming to terms with the consequences of Apartheid, through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Throughout the film, I was struck by the strong emotions exhibited by the different sides. It managed to give me a slight peek into the complexities involved in day-to-day existence in present day South Africa. To me, the most striking aspect of the film was that it managed to convey a feeling of hope, even when it seemed that there was no room for any.
The cases profiled in the documentary were, for the most part, similar in one aspect: the racial demarcation between aggressor and victim. I think it is easy to draw lines and assign roles such as “good” or “evil” when differences between groups are clearly visible. That is, after all, human nature. Thus, with the concept of a non-white majority being oppressed by a white minority in the back of my mind, I pretty much expected that the same pattern would be revealed in the cases presented before the TRC.
Even when the violence was reversed, with the non-whites being aggressors against whites, it still fitted in with the simple idea that it was a war between races. It is for this reason that the involvement of Thapelo Mbelo, a black South African, in the deaths of fellow blacks, the Guguletu seven, stood out.Thapelo’s case was significant to me because it served as a reminder that the processes that South Africa had gone through had fractured the nation along several lines. The complexity of the situation was disheartening.
I found myself wondering what hope there was for this nation in which even the lines between foe and friend were not clear-cut. Was the long night’s journey really ending, and were the South African people emerging into the daylight? That was and still is a hard question to answer.
It was sad and somewhat ironic that Thapelo was the most unambiguous individual about the crimes that he committed. It seemed to me almost as if he was describing someone else committing the acts. At no point did he try to claim innocence or to hide behind false justifications. I have to wonder what it is like to be Thapelo, to know full well that the people you are killing could easily be your own family, and to have to deal with that reminder everyday. It obviously was not easy. As he admitted, when his conscience started acting up, he would drink to forget.
I hate to be pessimistic, but when I think about South Africa’s present situation, I see generations marked by a policy of hate. I do believe that with time, the society will return to what we tend to perceive as normal. In the meantime, however, thousands or more continue to live with burdens on their consciences, and others feel that their actions were justified.
Is it possible to un-train a person trained to hate to save his life? Is it possible to destroy all the institutions (including religions) that perpetuated this system of hate? All human society is struggling with this question in one way or another. In that way, South Africa is not unique. The long night’s journey is still continuing. In that vein, the mothers of Thapelo’s victims were able to find it in their hearts to forgive and to embrace him. That is the primary indicator that there is hope. It is true that South Africa saw humans pushed to the extremes of hate. On the other hand, the other extreme, love and forgiveness was just as important a part of the picture. It is this complexity that we should keep in mind always: the fact that human nature and life are colored by both ends of the spectrum.
![Creative Commons License]() This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. Please feel free to use my writing for non-commercial purposes and do credit my name, Kahendi, as the writer.
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| MUSTAKBALI MPYA ?Miaka nenda, miaka rudi Tumekuwa tukitaradadi. Tumeelekea mbele, tumerudi nyuma. Kuzungukazunguka desturi yetu. Ramani waliyotupa tunayo mikononi Lakini yatuelekeza jangwani. Waliahidi kutufikisha mbuga za peponi. Leo twajikuta Jehanamu. Zi wapi hekaheka za madaraka na uhuru? Ndoto zetu zimekufa. Bendera zimechakaa, zimeraruka. Tumeanguka, miguu imevunjika. Na bado twaimba nyimbo za kale. Eti twajivunia amani, uhuru na madaraka. Enzi za ukoloni zimepita, Lakini kujilisha, kujivisha tumeshindwa. Eti amani, uhuru na madaraka? Ndiyo. Amani, uhuru na madaraka; Madaraka ya vibaraka; Wanavijiji mafukara wa “Global Village”. Watoto wa bara wameamka. Urithi wetu hawautaki, mienendo yetu wanaikana. Lakini mwana wa nyoka ni nyoka. Wataujenga upya uafrika? ~Kahendi Slightly less than one year on, the words of this poem ring painfully true. I cry for Kenya.
![Creative Commons License]() This poem is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. Please feel free to use my writing for non-commercial purposes and do credit my name, Kahendi, as the writer.
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