Country of my Skull

This is a repost from when I first started posting on steemit. This particular post got no love, so I am posting it again.

---

"My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together." - Desmond Tutu

---

Country of my skull 2014 - @stephanus
A tribute to the book written by Antjie Krog.
Gouache resist on canvas.

---

I was born in 1985.
I was born in the city where I live.
The country of my people.
I was born in a time of oppression.
A time when white men could beat down their black brothers.
Without remorse.
Without shame.
I was born in a time when the church taught us that black men were creatures of the wild.
Animals without souls.
Propaganda fueled the moral standards that surrounds my people.
Brought about by a thirst for power.
For a need to control.
Born out of fear of the unknown.
Fear of the black man.
Fear of prosecution.

I was raised on a small farm just outside of Johannesburg. My parents were not rich. My grandparents were miners. We only got indoor plumbing when I was six. We did not live in poverty. We had food. We had water. We had land. We had religion.

Religion. The crutch that good people lean on when they do evil things.

I was raised to respect all living creatures. To respect the birds in the sky. The bugs on the ground. Respect the wild things in the night. The cattle that I eat. The monsters. The majestic. The holy and the unholy. Respect all living things. That is what I was taught.

I grew up with my people. My best friend was a black boy named Johannes. He lived in a Rondawel on the farm. He had a large family. They all slept, bundled up like sardines, in their tiny house. My house wasn’t much bigger, but at least I had my own room.

I had a kitchen. A living area. Even a porch. He had a room with a cupboard. A room that 12 people shared. This is a good analogy to explain the difference between our races. The white man has more. Always have, and always will. I do not see this changing anytime soon.

I know a lot of people who share my skin colour. Who live far away. In their high rise apartments. In their land of plenty. I see how they still have a sense of superiority over my black brothers. I hear their notions of how the savage black man has a tendency towards violence. But they don’t know anything.

They live their lives and they only see what they want to see. If a white man in Europe gets robbed by another white man, he blames the white man. If a white man in Europe gets robbed by a black man. He blames all black men.

This is made very clear by the recent Muslim uprising within western civilization. An extremist blows up a shopping center and all of a sudden the entire Islamic community becomes a violent society in the eyes of the, oh so peaceful, Christian white man.

How quickly they forget how their own, irrational, belief systems had oppressed and raped the people whom they enslaved. How a white man tortured and raped little girls in a field, for no other reason than getting information. They forget the sound of a whip as they motivate their workers to move faster. They forget and they live on.

1994 was the year when my people finally abolished the system of racist separation within my country. It was the year when people from all walks of life finally felt that they had achieved something great. I was nine years old and I can still remember the crowded streets as people with all different skin colours gathered to cast their vote.

Oh, it was a time of hope. A time of change. But change did not happen. Nothing ever changes, it just gets replaced. Where there were once white gods, there now stood black gods. One just as cruel as the other. The thirst for power just as strong. The fear of the unknown still emanating from our new rulers like the light from a helicopter just before you hear the roar of gunfire.

And, my friends, I hear that roar now. It scrapes inside my head as I see my brothers die in streets. They have no food anymore. No water. No land. But at least they are free. Free to suffer.

In the old world, they had someone to blame. Who do they blame now? It is no longer a question of race. Race have been replaced by archaic symbols of status. My country has returned to the age of nobility and peasants. Adorned with technology and late night TV shows. The truth is hidden behind cat videos. And what’s worse, is, my brothers have given up the will to fight. Who can blame them?

Who do you fight when you know that fighting won’t change a thing. Who do you turn to when all leaders become corrupt. What can we do to change this shit piled world for the better? Perhaps we deserve this. Perhaps we should all just suffer and die. Perhaps our millions of years of evolution just leads to this. Perhaps it has always been inevitable.

And as I lay here, in my own Rondawel, shared by my family of twelve. I can only watch as my country burns. As my people murder each other in the name of survival. I can listen to the radio, to the sounds of cats and dogs and birds. I can be entertained by housewives getting drunk. I can live in my country. The country of my skull.