Christianity and judgement…

There is a distinctive strain of writing in the bible that more or less specializes in dealing with human experiences. One thing that I don’t understand at the moment is people, who “claim” to be Christians; instead of finding the inner peace for themselves they judge others by using the bible. Don’t get me wrong, I do go to church any chance I get, not a born again though, but I get devastated by how most of preachers or bible teachers interpret the word or a scripture lesson. It is fairly common among people who get interested in religion to get proportionately disinterested in their jobs and families and other things that matters to a human being, the more of God the less of the human. What I meant is that when a so called born again is at work, they tend to question every system that is in place at work especially if it does not fit into their godly world. Thereafter, the interest in doing a proper job or being happy in a work place diminishes slowly.

Yes, we do believe in God but we also have to put ourselves in others shoes, remembering that we are not all equal. If you are sitting there and get pissed off because a fellow human being is worried about the increment of food prices instead of fixing a path with God then you better get off you high horse and stop judging. Who are you to say that someone else’s way of living is wrong? Are there ways you live the right way? We are all different and we are here in this world to serve a purpose and if that purpose is to live our live in sin according to you so let it be. If you think God is a God of a second chance then you got nothing to worry about. I am not trying to ease a guilty conscious mind you nor condone the wrong doers out there, all I am saying is let us stop pointing fingers. We are all God’s children and he created us in his image. All you have to remember or ask yourself is, is this the way God want things to be?

Christians are too judgmental, and that tend to make their lives a living hell; not all of them though. Can we all be left to live our lives? Does Christianity really have to clash with our inner being? What about our cultures? Missionaries came later but our culture and the way we used to express ourselves has always been there for ages.

Surburbs life for a black man?

Ever since I came to Cape Town, I have been staying in white areas... well, areas that belonged to white people during the oppression times. I mean Muizenberg, Rondebosch, Claremont etc. At the moment I am staying in Pinelands, which is still dominated by white people.

What bothers me most is the fact that I pay thousands of rands to stay there but when ever I pass white folks on the streets, I can see that the "poor people" are scared of me. We have been in a democratic country for the past 14 years but still we blacks we are seen as thugs. The other day, I came late from work and I was walking slowly to my place and one old white lady was waiting for her kids to come out of the house and she parked the car outside the yard. You wont believe what she did, as soon as she saw me she came out of her car, pressed the immobilizer then jumped at the gate and while she was doing this, she was looking at me and I could see she was terrified.

As if that is not enough, when I was unpacking my stuff after moving in the complex, I was in the kitchen putting cutleries away. I was listening to my favorite radio station MetroFM.
All of a sudden I hear a knock, me thinking well, here comes this nice white lady to welcome me, then without greeting me she claims that I am disturbing the area with my loud music, mind you my radio was not loud. Ga ke motho wa diploto gore ke tshamikise Radio ka volume e kogodimo, unless if I was half deaf. I switched it off completely. Before she left she ogled the flat. I think she wanted to see if I have something illegal so that she can call the cops on me.

Later that day, her neighbor was watching Cricket and the racket he caused was not objected. Then I said to myself, it is a white thing. The next day, I am going to the shopping center to buy bread then I meet up with the white guy staying opposite to my duplex. He greeted me and I was saying to myself, wow, I got greeted by a white dude, to spoil my mood he said,"...so you are the person who will be staying here? How many of you will be occupying the duplex?". I nearly punched him, I calmed myself and told him I will be sharing with one of my colleague, then he left. Ooh by the way, my flat mate is white, and he came late that day. Remember we are new in the area, then he goes and do the washing at night and he hanged them in his room on a curtain rail. How stupid is that?

The following day coming back from work, we get a 70 pages document full of rules and regulations and a note that said, do not hang your clothes on your curtain rails otherwise you will have to deal with the board of trustee. Since my neighbors didn't notice that I was staying with a white lad, they thought I am turning their beautiful area into a township.

Well, the white people aren't to be blamed for their behavior. All I can say is gaaah sis for the Darkies, thinking their all that. Well, the black guys staying tin the area they will look at you as if you are trying to steal the 15 minutes of fame away from them. If they can afford to stay in that area so can I, and so can you motho o montsho. I get to be looked like I stole something or I stink like hell, after all the barbecue happening at Daddy Satan's place.

When I do my washing, I am mostly helped by white folks in the area, I don't know if they are being polite or just scared of me, when I have a R5 change and need a single R5 coin, they are happy to help, but ask your fellow black lady or monna, they reply with this fake American accent. They don't even greet when they find you at the laundromat.

As if that is all, staying in the suburbs is a curse in disguise, when I am with my white friends, I get to be looked at strangely by my black brothers and sisters, in a way of making me feel like a sell out. I get to be looked from head to toe, and I end up felling out of place.

Just for that, a rainbow nation to me in order to be experienced we still have a long way to go, I mean even at work, most of your white counterparts become nice to you just to avoid being labeled racists or whatever, unfriendly maybe.

Just imaging what are white people saying when they see a black man like me joking on what used to be their territory? That is worse I tell you. I am not going to get to it anyway. All I can say is that, we have to try to live with one another without looking t our skin color nor hair textures, in that way, we will have peace of mind.

All good things in life are either illegal, immoral, fattening, expensive or carcinogenic.

What happened to the times when people lived normally without being judged or punished for having fun? I mean if you want your life to have a meaning at least you got to have done something illegal. Just to live a little. You don't want to look back in 60 years time and find out that you lived a dull life.
Take for instance:

• You get to have a weird kinda good feeling when you are drunk, but if you want to have the feeling everyday, the probability of you being an alcoholic get fatter by the day.
• I remember the first time I smoked weed I was so high and full of energy that I would have had sex the whole night, round after round but if you do that you will eventually become a junky.
• Ooh the chocolates, eating them relieve or reduce your stress level but the impact, ask me I have a belly to show for that, I keep on asking myself, what the fuck happened to my six pack? Shit, the answer chocolate and KFC, ooooooh not to mention Coke.
• If you are homosexual in all aspects, I mean gay, lesbian, tranny you get to be told that God does not allow that, it is not written in the bible. You don't get to be free, you live your life by pleasing others. No wonder we have married men and women who have partners outside their marriage a.k.a AmaAfter Nine.
• To have a middle class life you need money, but with the interest rating being incremented like this, well the poorer become more poorer. You get to ask yourself now, will I ever get a chance to buy a brand new car, live in a luxury house and have two kids and be married to a very beautiful partner. Those partners they are expensive. Everything is now expensive, I mean you used to enjoy a gum that cost you 0,05 cents not it is worth 0,30 cents. How crappy is that.
• Cigarettes? men those things help you deal with a tough situation, but they have this weird messages on the boxes that say "... Smoking can kill you...". Do you really want to die? Well, I had a cigarette this morning and I felt awesome since I don't smoke religiously, I had to try some today, oooh what a feeling I tell you.
• Wine, ooh man, they have discovered that, if a man drinks three glasses of wine a week, the chances of testosterone to be high is good, remember there is always a but, but if you do have more than that your are increasing a chance to have diabetes.

Now, what is good, I mean even driving 270km/h is illegal, even though it is illegal, you get this exciting rush, your adrenalin tells you something hey. Well, I think we should just accept things the way they are, and live to take into considerations other fellow human beings.

Am I insensitive?

I had a heart heated discussion with my flat mate the other day, regarding this rampaging epidemic that is claiming our lives. The discussion started after hearing a lady who called MetroFM at that time during Criselda Kananda's talk show and confessed that she is scared and worried to a point that her stress is causing her CD4 count to go down. My flat mate is white and he was distraught, and he went on about the Government not doing much to help, and since I come from the Bundus, you can say the farms... ko magaeng kwa. I had to voice my opinion and he was not impressed with what I said.

The thing that I said that night, you might not agree with me like he did and end up saying I am full of shit. This is what I said:

• The lady who called, her English was properly articulated i.e she is an educated lady.
• She must have read at least one pamphlet that warned against unsafe sex.
• Did she let few seconds heated emotions blindfold her to a point that she couldn't tell her boyfriend to put on a condom.
• Since I was convinced that she knows the danger associated with unprotected sexual intercourse, how do you compare her to a girl who is living in a rural areas where topic like this don't get to be discussed freely.
• Should I feel sorry for her? Well, I was two sided.
• If the Government do have awareness campaign now and then about HIV and AIDS but still people who are supposed to be intellectuals aren't taking the message seriously, what is the point of wasting all this money for.
• We do get infected every second from the virus and there is an uproar about it all the time.
• Is HIV virus better that other pandemics?
• I mean people do have pains every night due to different kinds of cancers, but an HIV infected person sleep like an angel while the CD4 count is high, should we level all this diseases and not make an issue out of just one.

The bottom line is I myself, I am scared, and I don't want to hear my Doctor telling me that I do have the virus. I think we need to take extra good care of ourselves, not just to avoid getting infected by the HI Virus. Acquiring information and staying well educated and informed about all the things that might affect our healthy life is essential, we need to start taking note of what is happening around us and asking your partner to go for a test of any kind is the first step you can learn a lot from.

Too Black to be a South African?

There is always an uproar when a white person in so called the new South Africa do something that is seen as demoralizing. I am saying this with regards to what happened about a month ago in Bloemfontein, University of Free State. I am not condoning what those students did, it is so wrong what they did. Now tell me, do you think those black workers would have been keen to partake in a scene like that if they were asked by a bunch of black students? I doubt that, the students would have been labeled as being disrespectful and all. The thing I know about us darkies in South Africa is that, we are still on the impressing route. What are we doing as "Black South Africa" to make sure that we don't see matters like this surfacing, giving other people of color to practice what their forefather did to our grandparents? We can't possibly stand for ourself and believe in what put Nelson Mandela in prison. Is being black give us an excuse not to take charge of what is right, do we always have to follow trends started by mogos, who get paid to make us look like fools. If you think I am being unreasonable and uninformed, tell me, what do you think about the Noord Taxi drivers and a mini skirt saga, the ANC youth league, Zuma suggesting indirectly that Thabo Mbeki be released from being a mediator in the Zimbabwe voting issues.

Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve to be black, what happened to our pride. If you go around, you get to see people spitting on the concrete floor, urinating anywhere, dropping anywhere. What are we doing to our environment, Haai Darkies please, you guys are going to far now, haaibo.