Care to look for Biko?

The pseudo-intellectual conversation with permanent alcoholics.

Over the last couple of years I had been contemplating taking a tour to the eastern cape not that I haven’t been to the eastern cape, I have many times before but in all this time I made a point not to go to King Williams town not only the town but Ginsberg, you see Ginsberg is where Steven Bantu Biko, first emerged for the world to marvel at.

I don’t know Biko, but I know he was brutally murdered 72 days before my first birthday, something I am still holding a grudge with no one about, I have thought long and hard, struggled to reconcile why if this man never showed aggression against anyone, never encouraged violence in his ideals, thoughts and teachings, why then he had to die such a brutal death?

A couple of months ago something changed my life, I had moment of anger and said something I should have said a long time ago, I raised my issues around the “new oppression” that creative arts workers were enduring in the hands of mostly Jewish theatre producers, something that was blown completely out of proportion and me out of a job, and at this point I questioned myself, what I was, what I wanted to be and what I want my people, my children to remember me for, and this brought me right back to Biko about why he died,  about how he died and most importantly  what his death has  given to me, yes selfish as this sounds, to me I ask myself?

And I realize that there can only be one question to answer these questions, ‘What have I done to uphold Biko’s ideals?’

The answer is simple nothing, after hard and long struggle years I have simply wanted to be part of the rainbow, I have just wanted to be a happy go clappy, over indulging, materialistic rainbow nation man. I like many, have become an addict of oppression, I thrive on it, I eat at fancy places with fancy people and reckon this is the life, I live in a rented luxurious apartment because the bank doesn’t trust me enough for me to own one and I am happy because this is the life, I work with oppressors that have kept maids and gardens boys without the comforts and benefits they enjoy from the state and I justify it by saying they are liberal?

So I finally decided to take that journey I decided that I was going to go out there and I am going to look for Biko, not the idea of him, him the spirit.

Contrary to what most might have thought about the spirit, I felt I wasn’t going to seek it from a badly crafted bust at his house number 698 Ginsberg or at the Memorial Gardens where the body or Biko lies, or the Biko Bridge in East London or the currently being built Biko’s center and am glad I didn’t find it in this human art effects commemorating his name.

I did find the spirit though, the spirit of Biko is in the people all over the world but more so in the people of Ginsberg, they own Biko, they don’t need to be reminded who he was because each day they pride themselves with being the people of BIko.  I saw a street vendor with a badly erected stall and badly written graffiti, declaring “honorable Bantu Biko” that I for the first time saw the spirit, a little later I went out for a beer and a discussion that started off as electioneering talk ended up being about how mis-informed people are about the teachings of Biko and this achieved with drunk professionals of this place and not that they are drunk for today, no, they are drunk everyday that’s how they interface with their current reality.

 You see people in this place never knew it any different, when Biko was alive in this place they thought he was a trouble maker who continuously brought the attention of the special branch to the place and now that he is gone they find themselves trapped in this pseudo-intellectual areas full of alcoholics and poverty.

I then ask myself what would Biko say? How would Biko deal with this sense of hopelessness and misfortune?  And then I realize that we haven’t done enough to change the situation, we have become passengers in of our own destiny, which I realy find as an anti-Biko like behavior.

We haven’t created a Mozart like feeling that Salzburg has created for kids growing up there or a Van Goch like feeling that Amsterdam has created for kids growing there, we haven’t created an environment that speaks of Biko the philosopher, the father, the teacher and yes dare I say it the spiritual guider espoused.

The efforts of the Biko foundation must be encouraged and supported however not at a spectator level, we need to engage young people especially of King Williams town in its entirety then later the eastern cape followed by the whole country, we need to encourage a spirit in them of independence and ideals that would ensure that we stop graduating drunks that can only talk politics at bars, that only aspire for a German sedan, a Tuscany apartment and Italian clothing, we need to aspire to encourage a belief that highlights the contributions of all our leaders and the beliefs they died for.

So what am I learning from my permanent sabbatical in this town? Nothing I didn’t know really, but this reinforced the bitterness that has grown throughout the country.  It has sought to highlight why Phillip Tatane had to die such a brutal death, why his kids have to uphold his ideals.

It reaffirmed to me that with all the service delivery protests, the gap between poor and rich growing by minute, the unemployment levels ballooning and the gravy train increasing speed with fat cats on board, that we have sought to believe in nothing, we have allowed ourselves to be led blindly by people who stand for nothing, hence to this day our history is still not being written by us, otherwise our kids would know that a world without ideals is a world not worth living in.

We need change and we need change urgently and the first step to this change would be to tell our history accurately, let us tell accurately the history of people regardless of tribe, clan or political movement let us tell our history as a people not as spectators defined by the  island off the coast of cape town, let us tell the history of Biko and and the Black Consciousness movement, let us tell the history of Sobukwe and the Pan Africanist Congress, the history of Sekhukhune and the Bapedi people, the history Tiyo Soga, Sol Platjie  and the black intellectuals in the time of colonialism, the story of the sinking of the  SS Mendi and black heroes on board and stop defining our history to 99 years of a political party because until we have ideals to live for we might as well die for nothing.

“ You are either alive or proud or you are dead, and when you dead, you cant care anyway. And your method of death can itself be a politicising thing” ‘- Biko, I write what I like.

End.

Matjamela Motloung  © 2011