If Not Us: Freedom's Children

In the names of all the places behind my feet, I go to the places before them. A template of the future was marked with my true name and no others may stencil a path with any similitude to the truth.

I relegated the warmth of home. Choosing to beat the tarmac  in the pedestrian's rhythm. I gently and willingly walked into The Long Table. A myriad of attitudes, a pantheon even. Comedians were lubricating their humour with humility after a long night of plied trade. There was no need for staged laughter anymore. A homophobe Poet claiming to be the bearer of Nguni knowledge,  slammed an axe-shaped hand into his other open palm for emphasis. This conversation was the price I had to pay for my nocturnal outings. Opinions apparently based on old African knowledge but displaying so much ignorance. My smile cloaked my shame. Outdated attitudes that hung onto the anchors of antiquity. The weight mimicking capacity but not making any incisions through the veil of ignorance. His repetitive axe-swing of the hand into hand for emphasis fooled me none.

Tell me. Just because a word does not exist for something, does that mean it does not exist? Well on this night that had surely become morning, I was not ready to be guillotined by old-fashioned new school idols. On this night, I ran into a Lumumba, who lived inside the beatboxes and claimed to be hard to fool. I did not test the limits of his intelligence shield. Respect for introductions guided my tongue’s steps.
This town, like any other I have been to, respects respect. Rewards reverence. He told me his parents were thinking ahead when they penned his name to the present. Laying tracks down for a future marked with serious purpose.

I, karma pedestrian and penitent to the kingdom of Anarchy, kept the head bowed as I listened to a short history of the Grahamstown Struggle parentage. Surely we are the bearers of the future. But between well-read homophobes and liberals of all colours, how do we shape a country fit to govern its self? We (South Africa/Azania) are still quite young. Still so shocked by accountability and the burdens of freedom. Old corruptions have bred with new ones. We of the 80s merge with the 90s children and wonder if the term “born free” is either a crock or a title for failed purpose.
In the names of all the places beneath my well-beaten shoes. By the soul of my souls, I have not only seen our newness, but have had to wash the reddest soil from my dread. I have had to shake beach sand out of my takkies. I have scratched the dried seawater itches from the beaches of this state. I have pissed the water of towns with unutterable names. And still I am not as clean as I think I should be. So I have gone out to soil my self with the denizens of whichever town’s air that I currently breathe.

John Graham was here. Etched his name. Cecil John Rhodes was here. Staked his claim. Here, surrounded by late night deadbeats pulling off late night breakbeats, still we caged birds sing of freedom. Freedom from the people Mandela left us? With Universities named after Biko and Mandela and Hani, what are those at Rhodes' university learning?  Soon, I hope to be pulled by these feet into their lecture halls and listen with a heart open to the elements. I have seen colonial Anthropologists, and post-colonial apologists of all colours. I have seen and studied what they call Political Science. I have looked at it in the eye and this small town is not so small. It is a stage for a national program of Art, for now. But the colonial brand stays. It seems like the brand has stopped itching, has healed and is now an almost welcome part of the skin.
Here, I come not to burn any Babylon. I am the observer effect. For now, it is wise to arm self with prudence and be taught by experiencing the waves of this town of Graham’s. What has he left us?

What is the legacy of years of torture, of denialists who pretend that change doesn't happen, only to be slapped in the nose-bridge by it?  Here and there, when I lift my nose to the chilly air, I smell gentrification sneaking in through the banks and property companies. Exclusive prices for exclusive performances.  I can feel it’s sticky texture in a festival I’ve never been to until now. But how do I know something is changing when I have never seen it’s original form? Simple really. Living things grow. And my not-so diligent but numerous ventures into the watering holes of this town tell me that things are not what they used to be. Exclusion and selectivism has come in, on feet not as soft as mine, and stamped its mark on the places where others used to walk. Some people don’t walk there any more. Even a Brit that I meet that night complains that he is surely not paying ZAR60  for a Hip Hop set at a venue which thrived just fine when it charged less than half the price.

But readers of economics know that profit-capitalism is a mutant ouroboros. And after so many depressions, state-wide bankruptcies and economic crashes, you’d think alternatives are the talk of the town. But mostly, frustrations and drinks lubricate the goings on. Who will we leave the change-making to?
If not us, then who? It always must be us. We are living in these spaces, drinking the dangerous waters of Makana Municipality and the pricier waters of South African Breweries. There is always a better way to handle our spaces. And between Loyiso Gola’s sober demeanor (he's around here somewhere), Saydh’s homosexual denialism (he swears terms for homosexuality in Nguni do not exist) and Lumumba’s futurist ideals, a way can be made: Erasure by education. Teaching how to learn. Teaching the rewards of learning. Entrenching the ethics of self- and hybrid-governance and accountability. There are ways. The festivities do not hide the inequalities. A cow wearing make-up is still a cow. We can see it.
I am not asking my moving finger to write backwards, or my questing feet to reverse their course. This linear time-format of this universe forces me to think about our future and the hands moulding it. The best way is to mold it our selves. So that we are to be blamed and rewarded for its outcome. Responsibility is the yoke of the wise. The onus has always been on us. Are our feet running towards our future, or someone else's?