winston-blogs

Death Be Not Proud - Marikana Edition

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 08:59:48 +0100

I recently found myself being one of those commentators with a loss of words regarding the incidents that took place at Marikana. Being in the positions that we find ourselves in as stewards of our nation, I believe the luxury of silence is not afforded to us and we have to muster the best of our chokes and sobs with the hope that the Biblical Truths that they contain will sound louder than our fears and broken hearts.

As I read the news, I found a summary of the events:

"...the platinum mining company's rockdrill operators in Marikana embarked on a protest that saw 10 people, including two security guards and two police officers, killed.

The protests culminated in clashes with the police on Thursday, in which 34 miners were shot dead, more than 70 injured and 260 arrested."[1]

I have since followed most of the subsequent articles and the opinion pieces in the electronic media. I have noticed a disturbing trend amongst the majority of them to first condemn the incident (culminating to the offering of condolences to those who lost family and friends) and then turn gaze to find fault. The main question that seems to occupy the mind is "who is to blame for the Marikana massacre?" I believe this question although important in its own right, misses the point completely when the real culprits are not on the police lineup.

The consequent trials that have sprung up from this question have seen the usual suspects being accused and doing some accusing themselves.

Firstly, some have put the President, the ruling party and the government collectively on trial. The reasoning in the minds of the accusers is that through corruption, ineffective leadership, ineffective unemployment eradication programs, cadre deployment etc they somehow allowed such a situation to arise.

A New Zealand-based organisation has blamed President Jacob Zuma and the ANC-led government for a shootout at the Lonmin mine in Marikana, in the North West, that left 34 workers dead..."Just as we held the apartheid regime responsible for the massacres in the 70's and 80's, we now hold the ANC government responsible for the massacre of striking mineworkers." [2]

Secondly, some have put the Unions on trial. The evidence against them is claimed that they should have been more organised and more prepared. Their militancy and their rivalry is to blame. They should have given more leadership to the protest, they should have understood the economic context better. Nazmeera Moola of the Financial Mail comments

Unions are bad at understanding the economics of declining industries. The auto workers' union brought the US auto industry to bankruptcy. Promising workers a doubling in their wages is a great way to recruit workers - and inflame tensions. The upstart union, Amcu, deserves some of the blame. But they are not alone. The Sunday Times quotes Cosatu leader Zwelinzima Vavi warning that the "crises faced by working-class communities, for example in the areas of dysfunctional hospitals, the textbooks saga ... do not appear to be taken up by our unions with the same vigour as ... the problem with wages"…[4]

Thirdly, some have blamed the mining industry. The logical case for them: structured greed in the face of ignorance to the needs of their employees. It is argued that they should have taken care of their workers so that they do not get driven to this point.

The next blame candidate is the platinum mining industry. It is absurd for management to concurrently receive generous pay hikes and try to control wage increases for underground workers. Workers should also have been included in all BEE schemes. Workers and communities around the mines need to see direct benefits from the mines. Ten years ago, the platinum mines were hugely profitable. Now it's too late. [4]

Fourthly, some have blamed the police for being trigger-happy. Why did they use lethal force in a situation that may not have required it?. Why were they not better prepared to handle the protesting masses when protest action is provided for in our constitution and our history of violent protest. Why did they wait too long to set up the barb-wire parameter? why did they not disperse the crowd earlier and wait for that fatal situation to develop?…

"The post-mortem reports indicate that most of the people were fleeing from the police when they got killed," an unnamed source involved in the investigation told The Star.

"A lot of them were shot in the back and the bullets exited through their chests," said the source, adding only a few were found to have been shot from the front.

Police have said they were acting in self-defence when they opened fire with live ammunition on striking workers at the platinum giant Lonmin's Marikana mine on August 16. [5]

Fifthly, some have blamed the protesting miners themselves. why did they undergo a ceremony to be protected from police bullets if they were not planning to provoke the police to reach that point? Why were they armed in order to protest? Why did they approach the gun-carrying police forcefully?

The miners had told their wives that union organisers had requested that they pay R500 each for an inyanga to conduct intelezi . This would ensure they received the pay rise they were demanding from Lonmin bosses when they went on a wildcat strike the following day, a wife of one of the miners said yesterday.

The muthi, apparently administered by a sangoma from the Eastern Cape, would also protect them from danger and make them invincible, she told Weekend Witness.

“They told journalists this [muthi] would protect them from police and make them immune to bullets,” police spokesperson Dennis Adriao told Reuters. Police also had aerial photos of an inyanga anointing some of the miners.[6]

Sixthly, some have blamed the constitutional right to protest. Why is this right not regulated enough in the wake of a history of violent protest action? Why is there few (if any) harsh consequence faced by the institutions or unions when their organised protest action results in damage and loss of property, violence, littering and intimidation of the non-striking majority?

When the blame game is over, the sobs of every family and citizen who has lost someone in this tragedy will go on trial because our trials have not addressed the real villain. I think that the facts that I have looked at are enough for me to say that everyone involved is guilty of at least something but the verdict is not enough to console us, bring real understanding or give us hope about the future.

All current trials indicate that most of us as the accusers look to our constitution to tell us what really happened in the sense that if someone is legally found guilty, then somehow that verdict will shape the reality of the objective and legally inclined citizens. Unfortunately the constitution can only show us the one who has broken our laws but does nothing reveal the who has broken our hearts. No national constitution-issued guilty verdict will bring back any of the 44 that have died or give real justice to those affected by the deaths and protests. As of today, the National Prosecuting Authority has withdrawn the charge of murder from the the list of charges aimed at the 260 miners arrested for the protest. This leaves a gaping hole for a tsunami of ethical tongue twisters.

The NPA's pressure makes sense: how can you charge those who have lost 40 colleagues with murder? What evidence will one use to charge them? Did they all commit the murder or participate in it in some way? The injustice is also just as loud as the pressure and flurry of questions the NPA found in its basket: will no one be charged for the murder of 2 policemen and 2 security guards who died in the line of duty and are only mentioned as a byword in most media reports? If no one is charged for murder, is that an admission that either no murder was committed or we do not have the resources or heart to find those who are guilty of the murder?

This problem with the constitution is that it is inadequate to look beyond the obvious. The constitution will call a man innocent of murder even as he plots murder in his heart. The constitution will destroy a man's life when he has destroyed millions of lives, then raises its hands to wait for the applause from the masses whose hearts were shattered by that man. The real weakness is the limitation of the constitution to put to trial the real culprits of the Marikana massacre, sin and death.

It used to be easier to debate the cure for sin when everybody agreed what sin is, but now one has to define it in modern discourse. As G.K Chesterton notes:

Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin -- a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders..., not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some ... in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. [7]

However way you look at the events at Marikana, the best explanation that fits is sin. Sin as I describe it here is the disobedience to God's law.

It is sin that causes people to abandon peace in favour of violence, it is sin that causes people to abandon honesty in favour of corruption, it is sin that causes people to abandon selflessness in favour of self-interest, and it is sin that leads to a blame game which nobody really wins without loosing their own souls. When the pseudo-justice war ends, death will emerge as the last-man standing to mock all our efforts to make sense of tragedy in this lifetime, because people will continue to die unjustly in the face of our laws. Ultimately even when we die of natural causes, it will still be wrong and the constitution will not be able to prove it or give us justice.

The Biblical framework of justice is our only hope. Stories are spoken about a Nazerene who was executed so that sin and death will be executed with Him. It is said that when He rose from the dead, sin and death were destroyed and have a shadowy existence in this life. When the lights turn on at the end of the world, all shadows will be destroyed. This is true justice, the real culprits destroyed.

Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.[8]

In the meantime, we continue to offer our condolences and pray for those who have lost loved ones and were affected negatively. We continue to to weep with those who weep and look to those who are able to offer financial and other practical assistance to put their hands to the plough with agencies and institutions that are responding to side with the victims of Marikana.

Concluding Thoughts

The South African may have been given too much political freedom when he really needed a little identity. He demands economic freedom which is his constitutional right, but does not realise that golden chains are still chains nonetheless. The economic solution must be sought, but not as a saviour, it needs to be the one of the steps to unveiling truth to a nation riddled with competing ideologies about crime and justice.

Samuel Johnson once remarked that there is something wrong with someone who cannot stand his own company. I think that there is something even worse about someone who cannot even admit that he cannot stand his own company. We have truly come a long way in this country and one would do harm to our history if they did not realise that progressive steps not short of miracles have been taken to shape our nation positively. But we still have a conflict that will be resolved when we see our true face scared by sin and death and admit that we don't like what we see.

We hate to see that after 18 years of democracy, we are still without water and basic food, medical care, and education. We hate to see our women and children as abuse statistics. We hate to see that we are capable of having 44 people die in a space of a week through violent deaths. We hate to see that we are leaders who will use this tragedy to further our political careers and agendas. We hate to see that we are nation who think that the incident in Marikana is foreign enough to be left to those who are politically inclined. We hate our face because we have caught a glimpse of it.

I agree with our President that "We do not expect such incidents, particularly in a country where there is a high level of organization within the labour movement."[3} but I would like to add "we do however expect much worse from a country where the constitution ignores sin and death, indeed one can say that given the human nature that we know, we should be surprised that this tragedy was not worse.

References and Suggested Readings

[1] "http://mg.co.za/article/2012-08-21-malema-lays-murder-charge-slams-zumas-inquiry"http://mg.co.za/article/2012-08-21-malema-lays-murder-charge-slams-zumas-inquiry

[2] http://mg.co.za/article/2012-08-18-peace-organisation-blames-zuma-anc-for-marikana-killings

[3] "http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71656?oid=319919&sn=Detail&pid=71656"http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71656?oid=319919&sn=Detail&pid=71656&#160;

[4] http://www.fm.co.za/fm/2012/08/22/blame-for-marikana

[5] http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Watchdog-probes-police-abuse-in-Marikana-20120827

[6] http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global%5B_id%5D=86236

[7] G K Chesterton, Orthodoxy, (1908)

[8] Revelations 20:14

The Beggar Needs A God Too

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 18:33:56 +0100

The average city motorist will face what I call the "passive compassion vs creative/active compassion" dilemma several times in their lives. This is when you come across beggar at the traffic lights and you want to give him/her some money but you remember the police directive not to do so because they are likely to be a part of a syndicate that controls their street earnings or the social worker's woes that your contribution is helping them stay on the streets because it appears to be lucrative alternate to finding a job or staying at a shelter.

The dilemma that you find yourself in is that if you give them money, you may be supporting that syndicate or helping to keep them on the street longer. On the other hand, if you don't give them money, then you might be one of those who have the means to do something about the poverty in this country but do nothing. There are some who then call for passive-compassion, i.e if you have compassion, then do nothing so that they can leave the streets, or creative-compassion, i.e if it really bothers you that much and you want to make a change, then find other ways like buying food instead of giving them cash.

A recent warning by the Durban municipality, although troubling, adds weight to the discussion.

Durban motorists were urged on Friday not to tip "unofficial traffic controllers" at intersections where there were defective robots.
"It has come to the municipality's attention that some people deliberately tamper with traffic lights and use the direction of traffic as a business opportunity," eThekwini municipal spokesman Thabo Mofokeng said.[1]

I was embarrassed by this report because not only do I know exactly where these incidents takes place (Umgeni Road bridge), but I have also been a big advocate of giving the guys tips because they were "heroes who made an honest living by effectively solving practical problems caused by our city's inefficiencies". I am now back to passive-compassion logic: don't give them money, in case they are the ones tempering with the lights in the first place, and when it is no longer a lucrative business, they will stop tempering with the lights and look for other (honest) ways of making money.

In all this, I am reminded of a conversation I once had with a guy who made his living from robbing tourists at the Durban beachfront (pre-2010 world cup of course). When I asked him why he did it, his answer was a chilling all too familiar chorus of many South Africans: "God helps those who help themselves". He was convinced that God was with him because his intentions were noble and he was actively making a plan to reduce his poverty instead of sitting at home and doing nothing.

In the preface of his book, The Knowledge Of The Holy, AW Tozer says that "it is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate" [2}. Two ideas serve to anchor this thought, namely;that God is the logical basis for morality and that as humans, we live out our true beliefs. This could only mean that our different actions while we profess a belief in God comes from the fact that we are talking about different types of God(s). I overstate the case with the claim that almost every thief that I have come across believes in the existence of a God.

So what is the missing link? Why is the notion of God justifying another's crime while keeping others from it? I believe that without the practical revelation of God, the idea of God is the same as the idea of no God in the way it impacts society, in fact, I fear that it might even be worse. I won't speak for the many religions and anti-religions that give a notion of the revelation of God but I do know that the Christian faith asserts that only Jesus Christ is the revelation of who God is. It goes further to say that it is impossible to know, understand and approach God without knowing, understanding and approaching Jesus Christ.[4]

Although I believe that the problem of poverty in our nation is not due to a lack of resources but the inadequacy of its distribution mechanism, but this is not the problem of morality, this is specific to poverty. I believe that at the root of these hot potatoes, is the very notion of God. Morality is not reserved for a particular economic status and poor people can do right as much as many rich people can and are doing wrong. I have not been in a situation where my children are starving and look to me to feed them without a job, but I know some who have been and have seen them still not choose crime because their idea of a revealed God would not allow them to do so.

Today as I pray for my nation, I pray that those on the cold streets would find adequate shelter and assistance, that the streets kids would stay in the shelters that sometimes run empty because they prefer the streets, I pray for those in desperate situations because of poverty to be provided with practical solutions, I pray that those who are hoarding this nation's resources would abandon their selfish attitudes and make a change, I pray that those who are contributing to this problem through corruption would stop and do the opposite.....

When all discourse fails and the silence adjudicates our opinions and debates, my prayers would go unanswered if I did not pray for the thing that would answer all my prayers, that God would give my nation the true idea of who He is even as we hint at it in our national anthem. This is the God who passively allowed men to nail Him to a cross because of His compassion, having actively orchestrated that moment in order to actively hand out forgiveness and salvation to man and to restore his character as the image of God.

Reference and Suggested Reading

1] News24 Article
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Traffic-light-scammers-drivers-warned-20120824
2] The Knowledge Of The Holy, AW Tozer
http://www.full-proof.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Tozer-Knowledge-Of-The-Holy-b.pdf
3] John 14:8-12
http://niv.scripturetext.com/john/14.htm
4] John 14:6
http://bible.cc/john/14-6.htm
5] Image by unknown author, used without permission
http://vi.sualize.us/banksy_beggar_prints12_picture_hk8R.html

The Chicken, the egg or the Science Fiction?

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 18:13:11 +0100

Last night I watched X-Men: the final stand (for the 3rd time). Almost every guy I know wishes they had some powers and watching science fiction movies allows us to imagine for about two hours that you do. On the rare occasion, it raises some serious philosophical questions. I began to think about the old age question: which came first, the chicken or the egg? The evolutionary biologist thinks the fish came first. The man who believes in reincarnation, I suspect, believes that the human with a lot of bad karma came first. I have what I think is the right answer of course, but my point is that the way people answer can tell you a great deal about who they are.

I also began to enquire about a modern adaptation of this question inspired by X-Men: which came first, the science or the science fiction? While Science in this context represents actual discoveries, knowledge and inventions, Science Fiction would represent a dreamy state and wishful thinking about what we could achieve. It appears that Science Fiction is the imaginative fuel driving the real science. Long before planes, people were dreaming about flying. Long before Mach 3 was achieved, the movies were already on Quantum leaping. The fiction behind Artificial Intelligence (Robocop, Terminator) seems to be driving the furious hard work of Science to create computers that are self-aware.

Like every good story, here comes the villain. Given our history as the human race, we have gotten good at achieving our dreams. I wonder what happens when we are unable to reach them as they get more and more complex. We are no longer dreaming about flying, but flying at quantum speed across the Universe (or Multiverse if you may). We are no longer dreaming about exploring different planets, we are now obsessed about finding extra-terrestrial life on them. We are no longer dreaming about curing all diseases and defects, we are dreaming about creating whole human beings in the laboratory as substitutes to replenish our parts (save for the rumours that we are already doing this).

I don’t think that we as the human race have what is takes to realize that there are things that are impossible even to us. The twins of sin and consciousness have played a cruel trick on us; we have the ego of God, with not nearly a fraction of His power to back up our dreams. As to our question, which came first, the chicken, the egg or the science fiction? Well, whatever the answer is, it will never console our disappointment when we finally realized that we are not God. I pray that He is not our priest when we marry that epiphany on the day when our deified intellects are forcefully humanized.

Holding Our Country Ransom

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:23:26 +0100

Samuel Gompers, a leader of an American labour union, was mildly prophetic when he said “show me a country that has no strikes and I’ll show you a country in which there is no liberty”. Well Mr Gompers, if I showed you a South Africa with many strikes, would you show me a country that is so drunk on liberty that she dances and rejoices having forgotten to remove the shackles of her past bondage?

We sit on the eve of a strike threatened by public servants if their demands are not met. Government officials' salaries are in the papers and the poor are all singing a hymn conducted by a self-proclaimed modern day Robin Hood, Zwelinzima Vavi. Our country is held at ransom by those who believe that there is an injustice done by the government in refusing to distribute resources for the benefit of all and their reasons are logical and precise, but the only problem is that we are too familiar with this situation much to the cost of our school children and other taxpaying citizens.

I do not know much about strikes and in fear that I might grossly generalize, I guess the basic structure of a strike to be understood as a tension between at least two points. The first point is the management, those with power to make lawful decisions affecting others, and the second point is the people, those who carry the power of the workforce demanding that management make decisions to benefit the masses. The process of negotiation can be roughly understood as an attempt to find the reasonable centre between the points, the centre of acceptable compromise. The problem is that it is impossible to find the middle point between two points when both points are always shifting.

Our strikes happen year after year, between the same people. This is not the picture of freedom but a striking image of miscalculated and suspicious intentions by parties that influence the shifting of the points. How free are we when our strikes have found a rhythm by which we can predict future strikes? The simplicity of the cycle is straight from a grade 8 maths textbook: the management and the unions agree on a wage increase and then the masses go home happy, until they meet again in two years time to accuse the management of injustice and to demand another wage increase, citing inflation amongst many other factors. Am I the only one thinking that part of the negotiations should have put in place a system that prevents the same situation of perceived injustice? Should not the settlement be more futuristic at heart considering that school children and taxpaying citizens suffer the most when this tension grows to become a mathematical certainty? If they are, then are the poor being unreasonable?

Like I said, I do not know enough about public policy or strikes to take sides, but I do know that they are far from a picture of the liberty that Mr Gompers speaks about. They may be a powerful freedom of expressing perceived injustice, but they don’t seem to be doing much to give us justice. Perceived justice is worse than explicit injustice, to God at least.

Google Google on the wall

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:53:53 +0100

"Google, Google on the wall...who is the know-it-all of them all?
Answer: "the human race of course"

First, Google was a research programme, then a dissertation topic, then a brand. It has now evolved from being just a multi-billion dollar company to being a verb. In 2006, the word “google” was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary as meaning “to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet”.

Google in all its forms has become unto us as a people, a magic mirror through which we can know almost anything under the sun. There are not many things that you cannot google these days without colliding with an article that confounds you into calculating the odds of someone out there in the world who has written about your topic of choice.

Google of course does not create the information, they are rather the charitable distributers in accordance to their stated mission to “organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". We as the world’s community are the ones creating the information; Google just makes it available for all to see. If Google was a restaurant of information, they would serve every delicacy that you and I could imagine because some chef out there would have taken the trouble to prepare it (mostly for free).

The alarming content that we have supplied to the global pool of knowledge ranges from humour to heresy, from awareness to propaganda, but whatever the content is, our message as the human race is clear, we know things. You would imagine of course this not to be true due to the fact that many of the writings that one comes across on many topics necessarily contradict one another.

Take the topic of hell for instance, try googling that and you will lend yourself some front row seats in the schools of the best teachers our land can offer. Some say there is hell, others say there isn’t. Some say hell is the suffering that we experience in this life and yet others speak of an after-life. Google is not designed to play judge on these debates but just supplies us with the tools to gorge away at one another’s souls.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, are the prophets of our generation holding a giant mirror called Google to show us our true and marred face. Our paradox is found in the vastness of our articles . We think we know, so we write articles. Google amuses us and collects these articles for everyone to see on the wall of the wise. When you read the things that we think we know, you soon realize that information and wisdom are not the same thing... exposed by Google.

There is a proverb that says “He who knows not and knows not that he knows not: he is a fool - shun him”. We are a society that is foolishly writing articles on romance and HIV, money and corruption, politics and Rwanda, gender equality and abortion, Angels and rapists, poverty and psychology, wealth and cancers, food and heaven and God ... forbid. We think that we know things because we can google our own articles.

The proverb continues, “He who knows not and knows he knows not: he is simple – teach him. He who knows and knows not he knows: he is asleep – wake him. He who knows and knows he knows: he is wise – follow him”. I pray we can learn something from King Solomon:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (The Bible, Proverbs 9:10)

Google will only give us information but never understanding.

“God of eternity, God of eternity, are we as foolish as Google shows us to be?”...
Answer: "not even close"

I am wanted, therefore I am

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:17:02 +0100

When it comes to the question of value, it is a generally accepted economic principle that a thing in itself has no more value than the desire for it. Simply put, a diamond is only valuable because of the desire some people have for it and if no one wanted a diamond, it would be worthless. This is the reason why we have precious metals and why oil is valuable, but is this true also for our individual existence?

Is the question for our individual value ultimately answered by shrieking cries of desire? If from value I derive my validation, should someone have the desire for me to exist in order for my existence to be valuable? If this is so, then how would I calculate my value? How would I determine the people who truly desire me to be on this planet? Would I make some kind of social mathematical equation like:

My value = total number of people who desire me to exist(who like me) = 80% of my family members + 20% facebook contacts + 30% neighbours....?

These questions rush at us with the energy of ten illusive panthers because even though we do not think of them, we tie their answers around our waists and use them to build our mud houses with every transaction that we make. We extend a hand of friendship and buy goods or services believing that we are the getting the better deal or else trade would not happen. Like world-class actors we perform for those who validate our existence and pretend that we give equal value to those we associate ourselves with to receive value.

The question of our ultimate value must be answered by ultimate desire. If God made man then He desired man’s existence. Since His desire is the highest, man’s value is the highest. It is then concluded that if any man did not receive validation from God, then that man could never justify their existence apart from the dingy fabric of broken lines and weak faces that we call society.

The curtains close, no show, the music subsides, the voice calms the disappointment: “this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased”, and just before the final round of applause, a quick pause then a whisper “ you are the apple of my eye”. Standing ovation...

Beautiful Fears

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:25:36 +0100

I took a walk with my wife in the streets of a city that I will leave unnamed, and I noticed something very interesting. The picture that unfolded was that of a conundrum that's been in front of our eyes for so long, that we forgot about its obvious existence. With one eye, I saw the most beautiful fences and gates that I had ever seen before and with the other, I saw what I call “beautiful fear”.

These gates, burglar guards and fences come in different shapes, sizes, colours and designs but are there to serve the purpose of keeping out the things that we are afraid of. They are there to calm the fears we have against murderers, rapists and thieves, and the stronger and more advance these security contraptions are, the safer we feel. Tougher metal, higher fences and bigger walls were enough at first but the problem is that they kept on reminding us of our fears. So we joined hands with our commercial friends to make them beautiful. They called it innovative and it was handsome for business, while we called it decorating our fears so they don't show our true face as a society.

We sometimes fool ourselves to think that it is adaptability and is comparable to placing flowers on the gravesight of our dead and decaying loved ones, but a closer look at putting colour, shape, texture and design on these things is nothing more than just customizing our fears. We are determined that, if we are going to be afraid, we are going to do it in style. I'm not sure if we have ever stopped and lifted our Versace blindfolds to ask the question: what are we going to do with the fears that are in our hearts.

Many of our social cancers are caused by these smokescreens that are part of the way we build our country. Take for example the way we may our laws. We are afraid of the effects of dagga on the brains of our youth, so we have made a beautifully complex law that says it is not illegal to smoke dagga, it is only illegal if you are caught in possession of it. We are afraid of the effects of illegal prostitution in our society, so we propose a law to legalize, organize, give it a beautiful name like sex work and the real bonus is that we can even make it pay tax. We are more afraid of HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancy than the factors that are directly causative to them, like the decreasing moral standards that lead to the increasing extra marital sex, so we give our kids flavoured condoms at the face of relationship depression and suicide rate.....(echo FLAVOURED condoms).

We are a society that knows our sin and are afraid of being exposed for it, so we invent colourful phrases like “extra – marital affairs” to substitute “adultery”, “putting the burden of proof on the prosecution” instead of “I know I am guilty and I feel guilty, just try and prove it ”, “relational gifts” for “bribery”, and “I give tenders to the one I believe can give me the most return for my favour” for “BEE corruption”.

Our fears may be decorated, but they are not as beautiful as we think, and someday, the real mirror of eternity will show us their true form and then, for the first time, we will be really afraid.