Live and Die on this Day

I am sitting here thinking about the Oscar Pistorius saga and I realise that so much has been said about him, but everybody already knows who Oscar is.

Who can forget the legendary fight he had with authorities just to be granted the right to compete with athletes with no disabilities? Who would forget his sweeping victories at the London Olympics? We all know him and we've all witness his glory.

However, there's an expression that goes a little something like this: "Give people roses while they can still smell them", and this speaks to the person that was Reeva Steenkamp. Many people that I have spoken to have admitted that they never knew Reeva until the day of her killing. Because In did not know her myself, I could almost understand why so many people and media outlets spoke of Oscar in many of their pronouncements.

I raised this question of why so much attention had been given to Oscar, as though he were the only person affected by the death of this lady, to a group of students I was photographing, many respondent interestingly. Some said it's because Oscar is a well-known person, and others said one could not talk or write about that case without putting Oscar right at the centre. But I said to them we already know Oscar's role in the case and we know who he is, so why are we not talking about the lady that Reeva?

I feel, having spoken to those who have said they did not know who Reeva was, that even I did not know her. I did not even know she was on the Tropika Island of Treasure game show (partly because I don't have a DSTV compact). We then learn of how passionate she was of community-building projects and how much of her time she had dedicated to community work. It is truly sad that many did not have a chance to know her before she was killed.

History blesses us with many examples of people whose work touched many, yet they were never known to the public only until their death. What good does it serve the world if we only celebrate people and their work when they die?

Doménikos Theotokópoulos, better known as El Greco due to his Greek background, was a painter, architect, and sculptor during the Spanish Renaissance who was born in 1541. He also studied the Classics and created his own library of 130 books. He moved to Rome in 1570 and opened a workshop in hopes of allowing his artistic career to flourish and lived within the artistic community. He eventually moved to Venice and began painting religious subjects, often focusing on elongated features and figures. He did this in hopes of leaving his own mark in history, using a new and original style for himself. El Greco continued to travel and create, but soon lost his place in society after lacking the king’s favor. In 1614 he died after falling ill.

Read more: http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-people-who-became-famous-after-death.php#ixzz2MC6OodKP

Galileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564 was a scientist, mathematician, and astronomer who contributed valuable information and astrological tools to the scientific world. He created a telescope that allowed him to look at the planets, including Jupiter and Saturn, in which he was able to discover the moons orbiting these planets. Though he didn’t discover the theory himself, he proved that Copernicus was correct in his heliocentric theory of our solar system. He was also one of the first to discover sunspots, moon craters, and even lunar mountains. While his discoveries and theories were correct, he was often criticized by those heavily involved in religion, which was a way of life during his time, as they believed that the world was geocentric and was in one fixated place and did not move to revolve around the sun. He was accused of heresy by Pope Urban VIII and was put on house arrest until his death.

Read more: http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-people-who-became-famous-after-death.php#ixzz2MC6YoI2i

Emily Dickinson’s poetry is some of the best written by a female in the English language. She has become widely acknowledged as an innovative, pre-modernist poet. Born on December 10, 1830, Dickinson lived the life of a recluse, due to the fact that she was extremely shy and introverted. She was seen as eccentric in her Massachusetts town, which made her even more isolated from the town commoners. Many believe a love affair she had sparked some sort of psychotic episode, which then focused her writing style on being highly personal and related to her own life events. During the 1880s, many of Dickinson’s family members began to die one after the other, and she soon after died as well in 1886 from Bright’s disease.

Read more: http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-people-who-became-famous-after-death.php#ixzz2MC6k1uFU

The moral here is that although many of us would like to be remembered for a thousand thousand years to come, it is imperative that we celebrated and recognised people while they yet walk the earth. Reeva might be taken from the grasp of this realm but her name and her work will forever live. And as for Oscar, I hope he regains his strength, proves his innocence on what he's charged on, pays his dues and returns to the track where we all enjoyed him.

Give people their roses while they can still smell them!

State Of Our Nation

As as tradition in the South African political landscape, the eyes of the masses will be fixed on TV sets and many people will be closer to the radio sets for this year's State of the Nation Address by President Jacob "Msholozi ka Nxamalala" Zuma.

Many people will look to the President for some comfort as they struggle with the everyday issues of life, politically and economically. The poor will pray to all their gods that the President's plans for the next year will reflect and take into account their state of lively-hood.

Therefore it is proper that I first present the State of the Nation as I and many others view it.

This picture shows you that, even as the ruling party and it allies pronounce on their achievements, the people of this area are yet to feel the change.

Barren a land as it seems, people here go to the polls when called to. They put their faith in the hands of the likes of President Zuma (and his ruling group) and they are met with the silence so loud it is deafening. The people who live here have learnt to fend for themselves and unlike those in townships, these people reject the  systems of protesting on the roads, for they have none and the media does not necessarily react to their screams due to the fact that is it almost impossible to get to this part of the nation.

The State of the Nation Address, in some parts,  is nothing more than an event for politicians to "hook-up" with old friends and comrades for a night of whiskey and expensive cigars.

The Nation's outlook, save for the cities and towns we front with, is reflected well in this picture. Millions of people live in such conditions and no talk from Tata Gwede Mantashe or Ntate Kgalema Mothlante will change things. The talking has had a lot of time allocated to it rather than the doing.

A disturbing and frustrating reality, often leading to unrest and violent protest, is that a minority of the Nation's population lives smoothly in the lofty places such as in the picture above. The haves have been desensitized to the reality that their wealth, even as many will deny they are wealthy, could change the attitudes and the lives of many, and the change they could effect would last for a lifetime. How is it possible that a man whose net worth reaches millions of Rand every year could fail to build a house for a single family in need?

How is it that the government fails to prioritize the well-being of those living in the most dire of situations? When politicians visit man, it is always in the company of heavily armed (with cameras and note-pads) journalists?

The true state of our nation is reflected in these pictures and whether the government agrees with me on this one or not is irrelevant because many people in the streets acknowledge that the gap between the poor and the poorest has widened dramatically and the gap between the rich and the poor is also widening.

The end result or the end point of all the frustration, the anger, the humiliation and the indignity is evident in the image above. There shall be no end to this.

This is the State Of Our Nation.

The South African black people are apathetic to the rising levels of corruption and the unstoppable gravy train of white-collar crime in the country.

I know many will say this statement has no truth in it whatsoever but I stand by it. Not a single week passes by without having heard any talk of either a government official being accused of this or that, or a politician's name being brandied about in talks of mismanagement of funds or foul conduct.

I read on a Sunday paper about how the Minister of Communications has allegedly had her boyfriend paid money to the tune of R6 million. That was after allegations were leveled against Minister Joemat-Petersen and before that we had former minister Shiceka who took to the vacation to see his jailed woman, and if that is not enough, we also had General Cele. Now it is the president with his "New York".

I find it difficult to understand that these people are in the forefront of the movement of the people. The National democratic Revolution has been betrayed and abandoned by those who claim to have sacrifice their lives for it. They walk around with the expensive watches and driving their big wheels and drinking expensive whiskey at the expense of the very mass of people they claim to have fought for.

I am not saying that our government officials must look like they are not getting paid, but what I am saying is that it is crazy that they get paid so much. Public servants should not get paid anything more than R200 000 per annum. I say this because I think politicians feel the need to give each other so much money as they do because of a deeply-conditioned belief that only they can do the jobs they do. They are arrogant about serving the people and they spend millions and billions (may be trillions too) walking the best shopping malls of the world.

Upon the success of his revolution, Thomas Sankara ensured that government officials' salaries were halved and brought down to HUMBLE numbers. Try suggesting that to the ANC and the DA led governments and you will hear all sorts of things. They would say that is not realistic. They want to keep the status quo as it is so that we, the poor, shall remain poor.

They have now endorsed the R105 a day wages for the farm-workers to please those who already enjoy all the wealth of the nation. They refuse us only R45 and threaten our brothers in the platinum mines, of retrenchments because they saw the poor held by the masses during the Marikana slaughter.
Would President Zuma go on national TV to announce his intention to halve his salary? Would the CEOs of all government parastatals do the same? What about Premier Helen Zille? None of these people would ever do this but it is them who go around the country telling the poor people, like me, that they wish to better our lives.

I mean, if we are the government, then the employees there are our employees, then we should consulted when their salaries are being negotiated but that never happens. How is it possible that a servant earns more than a master? This shows the truth in what Muammar El Gadaffi said when charged that the model of democracy employed by the western countries ( and South Africa) are practically dictatorships. People are forced, systematically, to endorse ideals and decisions they would have otherwise rejected because the "majority" agrees. Usually, in these cases the "Majority" refers to the few urban people they call in for those "public consultation" meetings.

It is unfair that those who claim to be sympathetic to us, the poor, continue to live like ancient kings of Egypt with gold and silver aplenty. It is criminal that government officials must earn so much money when those who give the mandate are as poor as the poorest. Yet, in all of this, our people are quiet. They sit in their little RDP houses, shacks (if one is lucky) and the streets where they sleep. The poor man was subjected to so much suffering at the hands of the fascist white minority which unlawfully ruled our land, yet at the very height of our national democratic revolution, it is still the poor man who faces hunger, strive and extinction in the case of the indigenous Bushmen, the Khomani, the Nama, the Griqua and the many other peoples of this beautiful land of ours.

We are being robbed, our women are being raped and our children are being raised in a politically savage and brutal society where all sorts of corruption and theft are the order of the day. Minister Thulas Nxesi came on TV the other day to try and justify why his department spent so much money in Zumaville but all that fell from his lips was nothing short of a blame-game.

To this effect, I have declared myself ungovernable by the individuals mentioned in this post, and I am, as of now, declaring that to me, until someone in government has the guts to halve their salary for the gain of the poor, certain laws of this government are inapplicable. Let them bring their forces of destruction in blue (Police), the soldiers and the grudges (not judges for none has that right over me except Jah the Almighty) to me, I have no fear.

Those who were gods shall become dogs and those who were dogs shall become gods.