QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS – NOTHING BUT QUESTIONS?

QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS – NOTHING BUT QUESTIONS?

I talk to myself all the time. Mostly, I just mull around in my muddy mind.

Whenever uncles used to come and visit my grandmother, who lived with us, they always asked me, “Where are you working now? Have you finished school yet? The only way they’re going to get you out of there is if they burn the school down!” I was so embarrassed. I could never understand what they meant until I was much, much older – I don’t think anyone in our family got past standard 6, after failing almost every other year. I never failed a standard and I did get a matric, so fortunately the buildings were saved!

Do you know when you are living in paradise? Do you wake up every morning to golden sands, gently waving palms, blue skies and turquoise water and think, this is it! Or you live in a cosy wood cabin in the high mountains, difficult to find and even more so, to get to – you see bears and eagles and deer. You love the swirls of snow in a blizzard. You love the biting cold when you take your ATV out for a spin and think, man, I must be the luckiest person on earth.

When there was family scandal my wise grandmother would say, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” and leave it at that. So now the thing that I worry about, is, if President Trump has managed to commit 2 impeachable deeds, what other horrors has he managed to hide, silence, deny and subvert? Here is a man who takes to Twitter in the middle of the night on a whim and he has his other finger on nuclear weapons that could sort out global warming with one touch!

Another of her favourites was, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” I use this in my thinking of, and I do have to say, often enough, mainly Muslim families that have fled/been forced out of/chosen to immigrate to a democratic, westernized country and then demanded so many changes. No Christmas trees, Sharia law, arranged marriages and condoning their offspring leaving for war torn, radical pockets in countries that have criminal governments or none at all. The UK for instance, invites them in, with open arms and then these people want to set up what they fled from. It doesn’t make sense. In Germany, young, able bodied men arrived in battalions, were placed in shelters, fed, received medical treatment, clothing – more often than not, brand new out the box, big brand names, they are really well taken care of. However, so many have come to enjoy this treatment that even with a work permit, they would just rather remain in the shelters. Something is fundamentally wrong.

Nazi’s and the Apartheid regime, are often compared and the most asked question, is, why didn’t ordinary people do more? They knew what was going on, certainly where the Nazi’s were concerned – they could see the trains, the death camps, smell the gas, see the plumes of smoke and yet, they didn’t help the victims. Now the Apartheid government owned most newspapers and broadcasts, the armed forces and the police so they only let us know what they thought was appropriate. We did not know of the chaos and hellish conditions in townships, it was never a dinner table topic. As a conspiracy theorist, I believe our telephones were tapped. I did a lot of walking in my youth – to dentists and doctors, school and to visit friends and I lost count of how many times I saw a black car with 2 young men sitting in the front seat, just looking around. Their hair was short, they were dressed in suits, winter or summer and just looked Afrikaans speaking. As I walked passed, I would have a good look at them – and they would glare at me so fiercely, that I would look away. They were checking out the neighbourhood. Remember, that three or more black people standing together in a white suburb were considered an illegal gathering/meeting and could be arrested.

Why didn’t we do more? Fear, it was because we were terrified of being arrested, of being shamed and called horrible names, like ka***rboetie! You were doomed if that name, somehow became attached to you. But the Apartheid story is for another time.

Do we ever fully appreciate what we have? There is the most marvelous film called, “The Duff” – it’s not a blockbuster movie but it has such a wonderful message about how we all have issues, no matter what!

Why are we so easily conditioned? A human must fit in one of our boxes and if they don’t they are – weird, wrong, outcasts, evil or even dangerous. Just because you have a full tattooed sleeve, doesn’t mean you’re a sailor or a prostitute, because that was what my parents told me tattoos meant.

Why aren’t abandoned factories and warehouses repurposed? Imagine how much housing you could create!?

Visitors that arrive in a foreign country and in many ways different to theirs and they bring three months food supplies – it’s confiscated and destroyed, but just imagine if that could be packed and sent to countries in Africa? That food would keep many small towns fed for a few weeks and that’s only one day’s produce!

The burning question is why do most South Africans form little clicks and only spread bad news? People have their phones on 24/7 monitoring every bad situation all over the country. Why? It’s not like you’re going to get in your car and help a stranger five hundred miles away.

I don’t belong to many groups but I joined #IMSTAYING and the stories are so inspirational. There are still good people in this country. When you read the stories, our skin colour is like the poured art technique – we’re all in it together, like it or not. So now we need to try and make our beautiful land, even better. That’s one question I’ve found part of an answer for.