By Tiro Makhudu
South Africa’s Stockholm syndrome!
As the world reels and spirals into ever more concerning, bordering on psychotic forms of volks gheist not unlike those that perpetuated or fuelled the Nazi near apocalyptic wars, should we perhaps not wonder why we, as a people (Black South Africans), appear to be rather timid? One may convincingly argue that the above example is perhaps somewhat loaded and that is a point I can, to a degree, concede to. However, the Nazi reference serves perfectly as a prefix to the epidemic I purport to propose we suffer from nationally. The Stockholm syndrome!
For purposes of perspective, we might look to the rhetoric spewed ever so passionately by candidates in France, Germany, England, America etc. Candidates who believe in the betterment of their people and a people clinging to their sense of identity, dignity and means of production with an intense aggression! The concern is hardly the impassioned political rhetoric. That is a given. An occupational hazard of sorts if you will. The real concern lies in the passion carried by the natives of the aforementioned nations and many others to a point where the mere mention of North Korea would seem tantamount to unnecessary tautology.
When nations such as Germany defend their borders and means of production with such vehement conviction when they only have +/-7% unemployment and can be said to have a well off population, why are we, a country on the opposite end of the spectrum, resting on our laurels with our posteriors down, our hands and our coffers ransacked? The answer may be simpler than you might care to admit. While a single beating does not a mutt make, a deluge of savagery meted out consistently over a sustained period of time will render even thee most ferocious of beasts toothless. This beast will quake and quiver at the sight of his now master even after it has been released from its leash. It will seek the approval of its master for a simple, gentle stroke or a toss of scraps from his master’s table. It will defend with its life that of its masters, traits not unlike those of a kidnap victim or an abuse victim who has blurred the lines of healthy societal engagement to a point where they sympathise with the victimiser.
I dare then to posit that BLACK South Africa suffers from Stockholm syndrome!
It is however, unscientific to almost idiotic to tackle this issue without a global and historic context. It is therefore, to do this argument a modicum of justice, necessary to look at the (for some reason unpopular amongst the victims) constructs that got us here in the first place:
| Almost if not all nations in the world know slavery as both master and under the whip | The African has most likely suffered the most and longest under it and its legacy plagues him today |
| Systematic and concerted efforts have been made and continue to be made to strip the African off his culture, his religion, family structure, belief systems, land and heritage | All other people (Jewish, Italian, Hindu, Chinese etc) where allowed wherever they were enslaved or indentured, to retain who and what they were and continue to be. They then erected mosques, synagogues, pizzerias etc hallmarks of their cultures and beliefs |
| Africans continue to suffer the legacy of colonialism, slavery, apartheid and economic subjugation. | Most other races were allowed systems to generate some or other type of economic engagement in a meaningful manner. |
Having suffered this tragically understated psychological damage, the African is condemned to a self-loathing existence for ions to come as he has, not only as a direct result of this trauma but also due to targeted and deliberate effort, been conditioned to this end. These are the mitigating circumstances that have reduced us to the proverbial mutt depicted above.
Enter the pseudo liberation of 1994 fame and the celestial pie of Madiba that would mesmerise the world under the banner to be known as the rainbow nation. The nation fell into a state of euphoria unlike any other seen before in recorded history as we hit the peace pipe hard. But we are jonesing now because our people accepted the gentle strokes and tossed scraps while the master enjoyed and retained the economy and land as we, in our syndromatic state, coward behind timelines and quoted a constitution that was designed for our so-called freedom but made even greater strides towards the protection of our oppressor and to compound the problem, we lack the passion, conviction, gusto and frankly the balls to not only to claim but take what is rightfully ours. As a result, we are bitter and misdirect our frustration towards each other.
But our problem is perhaps slightly bigger. After all, how do you defeat an enemy when you have been conditioned to hate what you are and cherish, covert and aspire to be what they are in speech, in culture and appearance?!
This is usually where the conditioned mind slams on the electronic brakes and becomes defensive while scratching and smacking away at the artificial hair that covers the chemically tenderised African locks above the westernised brain that has accepted that it should indeed exist primarily to serve the interests of the “far superior” Caucasian!
” We run the country now! There is no excuse now!”
They say as the tiny cogs jostle about in the otherwise empty spaces initially designed to house the human brain. Empty spaces below the 100% human hair if not dyed blond for whatever reason at some point between giving their children English names and having white wedding that are also for the same reason bigger and usually the day before the “traditional” wedding.
The truth of it is that we DON’T run the country! Not by a long shot and the raiding politicians are merely being the “House Nigger”, wearing better clothes and eating better food, occasionally allowed to swing the whip onto the backs of his kin, unaware of the extent of the damage he exerts on his people as a whole and the painful fact that he too is but a slave.
But to quote an idiot I despise…based mostly on the fact that even broken clocks get to be right: “you cannot change what you do not acknowledge!” DR Phil Mac Something. I am not proposing in shape or form that people employ violent means to retake what is theirs. I am not even seeking to sew division or hatred like the dangerous rhetoric of the Trumps of this world or other nationalist morons who threaten to spark another world war. What I do propose is that the fractured mind of the African needs the same momentum in pursuit of healing in the same targeted, deliberate and aggressive manner in which it was broken in the first place. We must be as racialistic as all others in order to progress and if one understands the concept as opposed to its narrow minded kin in the form of racism, it becomes easy to process and actually practice.
This is where the African builds his economy to ensure that only after circulation of no less than 12 to 14 times within his own people can his money hit other hands (a web economy adopted by Jewish, Indian and many other races successfully). This is where the African begins to legislate for the return of his land and demands to be recompensed by those (England and its queen) who raided and raped our lands for centuries! This is where the African comes to the realisation that success, if not shared, is in fact failure. This is where the African Stockholm towards his own without the physical, emotional or psychological trauma unjustly delivered to us almost gratuitously by the Caucasian. This is where the African finds true liberation!
By Tiro Makhudu
Tiro Makhudu is an aspiring writer who has written for several local television productions and a voice screaming the narrative that needs to be heard with no one willing it to tell it. With an unapologetic, no nonsense approach, Tiro holds no punches and purports to wake the spirit of his fellow man with the belief that that woke spirit will translate into a sharp and pro-African weapon of a mind that will deliver the African from his mind, body and soul penitentiary. An Africanist through and through and all round social commentator, Tiro seeks to plant his tiny seedlings in the landscape of the discourse that will one day give rise to the brightest Africa that the winds of change and hands of time will allow.
