Skip to main content

IT IS THE BEATER OF THE BIGGEST DRUM WE SHOULD FIND, THEN THE MUSIC WILL STOP: URINE IS A MESSAGE

     In Sepedi there is a saying that goes, "modumo wa matikwane o latelela wa sekgokolo". This is then supplemented by "phousele e laolwa ke bothakga bja sebini". The Bapedi people would conclude this context by declaring, "sekgokolo se na le bokgoni bja go ba se homotÅ¡e mola meropa ye mengwe e sa lla. This creates a foundation of understanding the relationships in contexts where music instruments define what would ordinarily not be seen, except to react or respond to the beats and all related.

Just to provide translation for non-Sepedi persons, the saying goes, "the sound of the smallest drum follows that of the biggest drum, and the small drum is managed or led into melody by the dancer's efficiency". At all material times, the most prominent drum, which directs the main and disciplined beat that all melodies including dancing should harmonise towards, can go silent or softer whilst other drums continue with the beat that still follows. 


In this metaphor, the Stellenbosch young man would be the smallest drum that follows the most prominent drum. Whilst the smallest drum has its independent impact and role in the entire orchestra, its behaviour and contribution reflect how it has mastered following the biggest drum's guidelines. Discipline as a whole is anchored on the beat of the biggest drum. 


There are big drums that young men in this country have become the smallest drums that follow. In any society, the absence of context where role models can just naturally emerge because of structural conditions such as permanent majorities, being rebellious to the system becomes one of the ways heroes, and thus role models can be manufactured. Having been an excluded South African in mainstream politics and the economy, I understand what it means to have ambitions whose pursuit includes a concrete path through prison, if not death, just for expressing a wish to be something. I understand what it means to be good at rugby and yet know that you cannot play in the mainstream league. I understand what it means to have parents or grandparents whose entrepreneurial zeal could have been a foundation you needed to be at the higher level, yet the system seems to have truncated that. These understandings make society only to be expected when those that oppose it become heroes. 


Racism and cultural purity have in South Africa grown to be a way in which people mobilise for their relevance as leaders and heroes. The acceptance or otherwise of the current arrangements with which society has agreed to govern itself is such that minorities, in the race and other potential identity criteria, should accept the fate of being at the mercy of whatever majority, including a non-racial one. 


Such contexts create bigger drums that lead smaller drums into melodies that then perpetuate cultural purity and race-based dances whose efficiency of advocacy attracts the young therein to become a manifestation of the dangers the bigger drums are leading them into. Theuns du Toit of Stellenbosch is a smaller drum in tune with the leadership of bigger drums that control the discipline of the entire orchestra. He is a drummer who sees and follows the dancer's efficiency with the big drum as a watermarked discipline control of the dance. It would thus be unfair to map and profile the small drum independent of the big drum and the staff notations that instruct the big drum beaters in the background. The resourcing and promotion of cultural purity and race-based socialisation of the next generation of South Africans by tribes that believe they are nations that produce the urine and urinate youth who have decided to define humans of African origin as the equivalence of toilets or their urine disposal points.


Urine is, by its human nature, waste, the residue of what the body wants to be disposed of; it can be served to animals, including disposed of non-human species. Once the main body has processed what it needs from chemicals from food and other consumables, urine and other human body waste are left to fertilise the soil to produce more for consumption. If this ecosystem is applied to how the economy is seen, how opportunities are seen, and many other exclusionary aspects of South African life, where all should urinate or serve urine with food, it becomes a young and unsophisticated mind. Theuns might have been correct in what he has done had he finished without being caught. Being caught out has made what would otherwise have been normal when fed back into spaces that see it as usual as a problem. 


The big drums must be found. Purely from a necessity of history, I support the need to have all artefacts of South African history being used to teach future generations about our past, and thus aspects of the Afriforum case at the Supreme Court of Appeal. It is the heroism of the inhumanity of apartheid which is a subtext of the demands to mainstream these artefacts. The big drums behind the campaign might be in pursuit of producing litres and litres of urine to dispose of our fragile social cohesion as a nation, and yet argue the correctness of urinating as a biological process cannot be banned and restricted as a human right. 


Bothata ke dikgokolo tše llago, matikwane a latelela. Mošito wa koša o ne babini. The inhumanity of apartheid has since become illegal and yet culturally protected through systems of entrenching race-based and cultural purity lifestyles that create 'us and thems' that are given roles. In this case, there is a them whose role includes a relationship with urine; it happened in Free State University before, where urine was involved. CUT!!!


🀷🏿‍♂️Pinyana ge ere ping, e kwele ping e Kgolo.

🀷🏿‍♂️A ndziku yiiiii!!!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The DD Mabuza I know, dies a lesson to leadership succession mavericks.

When we completed our Secondary Teachers Diploma, together with two cohorts that followed us, at the Transvaal College of Education, and we later realised many other colleges, in 1986, we vowed to become force multipliers of the liberation struggle through the power of the chalk and chalkboard.   We left the college with a battle song ‘sesi bona nge sigci somoya, sesi bona nga madol’nkomo, Siyaya siyaya’. We left the college with a battle song' sesi bona nge sigci somoya, sesi bona nga madol'nkomo, Siyaya siyaya'. This song, a call to war with anyone, system, or force that sought to stop us from becoming a critical exponent and multiplier to the struggle for liberation, was a powerful symbol of our commitment. We understood the influence we were going to have on society. I was fortunate to find a teaching post in Mamelodi. Mamelodi was the bedrock of the ANC underground. At one point, it had a significantly larger number of MK operatives than several other townships. Sa...

Farewell, Comrade Bra Squire, a larger-than-life figure in our memories: LITERALLY OR OTHERWISE

It’s not the reality of Cde Squire's passing that makes us feel this way. It is the lens we are going to use to get to grips with life without him that we should contend with. A literally larger-than-life individual who had one of the most stable and rarest internal loci of control has left us. The thief that death is has struck again.  Reading the notice with his picture on it made me feel like I could ask him, "O ya kae grootman, re sa go nyaka hierso." In that moment, I also heard him say, "My Bla, mfanakithi, comrade lucky, ere ko khutsa, mmele ga o sa kgona." The dialogue with him without him, and the solace of the private conversations we had, made me agree with his unfair expectation for me to say, vaya ncah my grootman.    The news of his passing brought to bear the truism that death shows us what is buried in us, the living. In his absence, his life will be known by those who never had the privilege of simply hearing him say 'heita bla' as...

Celebrating a life..thank you Lord for the past six decades.

Standing on the threshold of my seventh decade, I am grateful for the divine guidance that has shaped my life. I am humbled by the Lord’s work through me, and I cherish the opportunity He has given me to make even the smallest impact on this world.  Celebrating His glory through my life and the lives He has allowed me to touch is the greatest lesson I have learnt. I cherish the opportunity He has given me to influence people while He led me to the following institutions and places: The Tsako-Thabo friends and classmates, the TCE friends and comrades, the MATU-SADTU friends and comrades, the Mamelodi ANCYL comrades, the ANC Mamelodi Branch Comrades, the Japhta Mahlangu colleagues and students, the Vista University students and colleagues, the Gauteng Dept of Local Government colleagues, the SAFPUM colleagues, the  SAAPAM community, the University of Pretoria colleagues, the Harvard Business School’s SEP 2000 cohort network, the Fribourg University IGR classmates, the Georg...