THE COLOUR OF YOUR TAN AND THE CURL OF YOUR TONGUE

I am a South African. Natively I click my c's, q's and x's because I speak Zulu more than any other language.

I pride myself in knowing my South-Africanness.

On a good day or sweet night's dream, I will dish it out to you.

Paternal history recitation back to the 19th century by individual ancestral names.

Where names matter not anymore, I know about the stone-age royal origins of the Phiri surname in the entirety of the Zambezi Basin of Southern Africa. (There is even a good scientific basis to theorize that millions of years ago, the entire Basin was a swamp in which humans developed from their amphibian sloth-like ancestors for I think there is a reason why my paternal Zulu and my maternal Swazi together refer to themselves as Beluhlanga---Children of the Reeds)

Yes, indeed, I know my mother's people (the Swazi of Dlamini in particular), whose origins are traced back to Great Zimbabwe in particular where they are partnered with the People of Karanga (hence "EmaLangeni"), a people closely related with the Venda, the Pedi, the Shona and the Jews prior to the Diaspora.

I pride myself a lot in my knowledge.

I also pride myself a lot in the fact I live in the first Holy Land ever to be known by the name "Zion", "Azania", "Zinj" "Dzonga", "Sini" or whatever pronunciation you prefer to the connotation of the "blackness" or "pure-ness" of the populace.

On that score, there is so much confusion about the original name of South Africa today, that our nation has been left to its own devices, hanging for dear life on the shoulder in the arm of the north-pointing compass. No wonder our sisters are also coerced, just for promotion at Zuma government work, to hang on arms of lobos.

left to the mercybecause, pretty much like Scholar Sir Isaac Pitman's system of writing, 

Truth be said, too many of Africa's largely extinct (but world's oldest) systems of writing, were, (very much like Pitman's system of shorthand so much more recent in human civilization), were more interested in contextualization than vocalization wherever pen met papyrus.

As such, whether "Zion", "Azania", "Zinj" "Dzonga", "Sini" the writing on the wall would be Zn, Zn, Znj, Dzng etc.

But let's leave extinct African languages now and their scripting.  Now we've got English.  English took a lot from Latin.  Latin took a lot from what we today call Bantu Language from which the Zulus and Sothos, some of which were part and parcel of ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs.

If you don't believe this, please look closely at words that, per vowel similarity and even consonants, clearly came from what we today call South African Bantu (while they, but by no means all Bantu, were still Egyptians from whom Latin came to learn a good many of the  words found in European languages like English today.

Check these:

Pubic/ (has a close equivalent in a Sesotho I am still to sufficiently grasp)

"Beat (up)"/Beta (Swazi, Xhosa)

Sex/zeka (Swazi)

Teka/ take(Zulu/Swazi)

Nose/nusa(Swahili)

Dental/tinyo

Tell/tjela (Zulu/Swazi)

Tot/mtoto (Swahili)

Thigh/tanga(Zulu)

Tomb/thuna (Zulu)

Inamorata (Sotho equivalent available)

wEEp/bipha (Zulu)

Cise/ sika (Zulu/Swazi)

Pale/phela (Zulu/Swazi)

Pang/iPhango (Zulu)

sCale/khwela (Zulu/Swazi)

Sink/zika (Zulu)

sMile/MaMateka(Zulu)

sNeeze/thimula

Cough/khwehlela

Suitor/mSomi(Zulu)

Touch/thinta(Zulu)

(Latin/Portuguese) Cabeca/uGebhezi(Zulu)

Peek/bheka (Zulu)

Satiated/suthi(Zulu)

Grasp/bamba

Chess/cheza (Swahili)

Wake (English), Wakker (Dutch)/ vuka(Zulu/Swazi)

Yes, indeed, as you can see, I pride myself in languages with English perhaps being my best prize.

I pride myself that in South Africans Messrs Clement Magagula (1977), Mrs Spengler (1979), Mr Bowling (1980) and Canadian Mrs Walsh (1992 in Tanzania) I had good English teachers.

I pride myself greatly in my English but I hate Africans speaking English like Europeans and deliberately mispronouncing African proper nouns in order to sound European because, as I have shown above, English took a lot from Africa too via Latin.

I pride myself in the fact that for the past 36 solid years of my life I've been, and still am, fighting for the mental liberation of my fellow human beings in these shores of Africa.

I've written at length about what makes me joyous to be human.  Now I must talk about what pains/binya (Swahili) me.

I really flagellate myself, for failure to understand why in this 21st century South Africa, we still have men who succeed to occupy the highest office in the land, yet still seem to believe in racism, a.k.a. tribalism?

I mean, it is common cause now that while Eastern-Cape-born Messrs Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki were in power, any serious or crucial positions would go to somebody born in the Eastern Cape, or at least a spouse or concubine to an Eastern-Caper.

Now, that Mr Zuma is in power: any serious position will go to... you guessed write please the rest of this post...! SOMEBODY FROM KWAZULU-NATAL EITHER SPEAKING ZULU, GUJERATI, OR ANY OF THOSE NATIVE INDIAN LANGUAGES SPOKEN ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY IN MR JACOB ZUMA'S KWAZULU-NATAL'S HOME PROVINCE.

Don't get me wrong, I like ethnic Indians and I worship Zulus from whose area my paternal ancestors, the Royal Phiri Matanje came from with Zwangendaba in the 18th Century's Mfecane.  BUT I DETEST RACISM FROM AN INDIVIDUAL OCCUPYING THE HIGHEST OFFICE IN THE LAND.

Now, as a querulous address to you, Good people in the highest office of the Union Building Past, Present and Future:

Is the colour of your tan and the curl of your tongue really more important than your life?

I don't think so!

Beside the fact that the nation has paid heavily in service-delivery "that never was delivered", the ongoing practice of abusing power for unfair discrimination in senior government appointments is a clear violation of Chapter Two (The Bill of Rights) in South Africa's Constitution.

Small wonder the ANC is reported to be hastily eyeing a hazily-seen chance to  overhaul this constitution.  Anyway, it remains a constitution that, in my humble view, the aforesaid three gentlemen have never respected  beyond either lip-service or the ulterior purpose of the posterior. Yes, the saving grace and substitution for hospital toilet paper that an incumbent president's incompetent relative in government position has simply failed to deliver!

Whether the Promise to tinker with the constitution or the promise to have a "better party president" come December  with the  Mangaung Conference for the ruling party, all of this may well  be too little too late now for both the "black" and the "white" of South Africa.

We have just hit the bottom for any lingering hopes, what with Mr Jacob Zuma's initially huge promises and subsequent hoot follow-ups.

The anger in this country is simply electrifying; and while Mr Zuma still goes on to persecute us whistle-blowers against the rampant racial/tribal corruption in high places of his government, I urge him to begin every one of his nights with a revisit of those lurid videos depicting the last days of his friend, Colonel Gaddafi of Libya who seemed to want to bring his home region and his family members to run the government for him in Tripoli.

On the contrary, if Mr Zuma would today (alongside recompense and a reversal of his ongoing evil of victimizing Phiri and I am sure many others unknown too) be hit by that same  "holy lightning" that brought Saul to his senses...

...If Mr Zuma could do likewise as the Saul of the New Testament who realized the futility of persecuting those children of God who were supposed to be protected by Saint Paul, I think Zuma would earn his forgiveness.

He will know, as he should be knowing already, that Languages, inclusive of your great Zulu mother tongue Sir, are but ships on which human genes float. It is up to each man and each woman to let the genes sink with a ship or to change ships just before the the sinking.

Failing which, I am afraid, the sordid story of Tripoli may well become the sorry story of Pretoria too... there are just too many letters common between the two capitals!

She has got some tan all right, but her tongue doesn't seem to curl enough to click, a trademark at the site (Zion a.k.a South Africa) where the first modern humans developed into civilization as we know it today.  Do the litheness of her tongue and the lightness of her ethnic skin make her Zuma's super-human or his sub-human?

THE MOST PROBABLE
ANTI-CONSTITUTIONAL
PRO-XHOSA TRIBAL TALK GOING ON
DURING THIS PICTURE:
["Tina Xhosa sibapete nyani Botata?"]
["Sibapete gqiti, Sana Lwetu uXhosa!]
["Kuyaude kubuye uYesu kubusa uXhosa nge-ANC"]!

["Am I dreamin that only our Xhosa tribe's capable to rule RSA, Sirs?"]
["There is no question about that, Daughter of the Xhosa Soil]
["We'll rule through the ANC till the second coming of Christ!"]

(Two Ngunis conspiring on how to run South Africa
on Zumaphoid Nguni Tribalism?)
It has since the 1940s of the Mandelas coming to Johannesburg to from Eastern Cape to join the ANC, become a common feature
to witness the Thembufication of the  ANC pro-Mandela's
 Eastern Cape.
Common feature to see power exchanged between one
Eastern-Caper and another Eastern-Caper.
Here, Thabo Mbeki is seen exchanging notes
with one of the "fast-tracked"
Fellow Eastern Capers in matters of
South Africa's security
one Nontobeko Mpaxa

SHARING THE MAGIC OF MANDELASQUE XHOSA TRIBALISM?

People, as citizens of a constitutional democracy in  South Africa, enjoy an inalienable  right to choose association with whomsoever they so wish.  Even associating with their own race and ethnicity is not in itself racial at all, actually it is an act for celebration as the heart naturally melts when you are with your your kith and kin.


Yet the constitution expressly proscribes such associations when conducted at state expense, because the fiscal contribution to South Africa’s budget can only (even at the most) be a mere 20% stemming from one ethnic group that has been irksome to native South Africans since the 1940s.


How is it then that the same ethnic group would, per Henchman Zuma’s assistance, force itself upon the rest of us South Africans to consume 100% of such fiscus when it comes to seniority of positions in Zuma’s government just because, according to the self-same Zuma [“Xhosa-speaking Mandela the Father of the ANC and the Father of Nation South Africa is as Xhosa as these these super girls”]?

Interestingly but no more surprisingly, all three faces appearing on this magazine face are Xhosa-speaking, the creme-de-la creme of South Africa's tribal rule under the watches of Mbeki and Zuma