YES, there is something beautiful about war.
It is ugly handirambe, but sometimes there is something beautiful that emerges.
In war alliances are made.
In war identity is forged in bloodshed and common ideology.
The idea of the pungwe was meant to inform the public and remind them that they were a proud people trampled upon by the whiteman.
By and large, the enemy was clear.
Tribal boundaries were erased as the Ndebele and the Shona realised they had one enemy.
That is why I say war is beautiful.
When the enemy came, he only saw the colour of our skin and shot to kill.
We in turn saw the colour of his and shot to kill.
We were clear who the enemy was although they have time and again tried to confuse us into thinking it was our brother.
These are my thoughts as everyone looks at South Africa.
There are two things happening concurrently.
First is the move to destroy all symbols of colonial power, that is the Rhodes statue.
The second is the Xenophobic attacks that are happening at the encouragement of tribal chiefs and some officials.
The South African people rightly feel that they are being left out and are not benefitting from their motherland.
They have been deprived of education which has seen less than 10 percent of them in control of their economy.
Apartheid was dismantled only on paper and there are still areas in their country that blacks have no access to.
Corruption is rife and there is no move to address their concerns especially by means of a land reform.
These are legitimate concerns.
Yet somehow the brutality is being meted on the African brother and perhaps on the stone sculptures that are mere representation of the white system.
The black South African can only rob and maim the whitemen, but they will not directly attack the institutions that allow black South Africans to be where they are today.
In fact, the South African would rather pummel, kick, maim, kill and push out his fellow African.
Yes the statue of Rhodes has been removed.
Fine, we will leave their home, but Khayelitsha will still have the raw sewer coursing through their unpaved streets.
Fine, we will leave, but the ordinary black South African will remain in the doldrums of the countries development.
We are not the enemy and the attacks in South Africa are not ‘xeno’ but afro-phobic.
It is not the ‘foreigner’ that is depriving them of jobs, it is the system.
It is the very same system that does not equip the ordinary South African with the tools and education to provide for his family.
It was us the ‘foreigners’ that bore the brunt of the Afrikaner wrath when they housed and protected activists agitating for independence.
Buildings were bombed, people died to forward the ‘democracy’ that South Africa enjoys today.
It was the Libyan citizens’ tax money that aided the nationalists in South Africa and pushed for independence only decades later for the same South Africa who voted ‘yes’ and allowed the very same system to cut off the head of Libya.
It was the idea of the pan-African forefathers that independence for some would not be enough while others still languished under colonial systems.
It was these afro-brothers that celebrated with South Africa in 1994.
The white system wanted them to forget and soon after the Mandela Rhodes Foundation was formed.
They were given aid and told to forget who the real enemy was.
So today they kick, maim, burn and beat us because we are ‘taking over’ from them.
After Manxwele Chumani threw human excrement on the Rhodes statue, in a move that has seen the final consent to remove the statue, it is said the white community simply remarked, “poor, the black worker who will have to remove that.”