Floating dorpies

People are sure to be offended by this piece, people who refuse to see past their prejudices and make intellectual counters, if that may be, to my ideas expressed on this piece. Therefore, the disclaimer just below is probably null, but I feel strongly that people should know that I offer this piece in the interest of emancipation for all.

Disclaimer: I aim to offend no one person with this blog, really, I don’t.

I have a potjie on the one working plate of my two-plate little stove simmering away happily as I tap on here on my keyboard trying to get an idea across that may just be the Messiah to all our cultural and racial intolerance evils and sins.

Some may argue that cooking the potjie on an electric stove and not in the conventional and traditional manner in a cast iron pot on smouldering ambers is surely blasphemous to the ideal of potjie, but really, I couldn’t give a toss. The packet of beef I bought on the weekend read potjie beef so by the Almighty what I’m cooking is traditional enough to me to call it a ‘potjie’ or maybe I’m just being disrespectful to the tradition of potjie and showing my disdain for the cultural group that claims it as its originators.

You may be lead to believe, my loyal reader, that it surely cannot be lack of respect but rather ignorance that allows me to possibly show such disdain for such a closely held tradition by our Afrikaner countrymen who may have become more frequently, and maybe against their will, our Nes’door (neighbours) in the neighbourhoods we now may choose to reside and also should be afforded all the freedoms in.

South Africa is undoubtedly the most interesting place in the world to live in right now. It has been hailed as a miracle state, with dear old Nelson being the proverbial Son of Man in this case, a new flag and a rainbow, inclusive outlook on life and freedom for all. Yet we still have some of the most astounding number of overt cultural and racial intolerance levels in the world.

I, The Sumo, have a solution that should work for almost everyone to address the apparent inability for some sectors of each culture or race group to allow full reform and to act as positively contributing members of our new society and cohabitate happily.

The solution is very simple; people should be given freedom to be who they truly are and once the choice of who they truly are has been made, these same people should be made to live by their choice for a predetermined amount of time, say ten years, before they may be allowed to rethink their choices and choose to return to South African society at large.

Humans have prejudices, it is in our nature, and the animal that we are has prejudices against others of the same species that we see as unfit to be among us or held in the same esteem as us for whatever reason – race and social standing being the fore-evils to this state of mind.

We cannot change this; forcing reform is fighting people’s nature and this, you will agree, is a battle already lost – especially in South Africa – there is just too much history, dripping with blood from all sectors of society to naively believe that true and complete reform and acceptance will ever come to pass.

I say give the people alternatives and do not judge them for it, for all they are doing is following and living who they really are and not who our new dispensation expects them to be. I say we should rather support them and if they change their minds, allow them to integrate back into the mainstream of South African society as they wish, having tried the alternative for a predetermined amount of time.

This is how this pearl of wisdom will work: I say YES, grant people Volkstaats! Or floating forms thereof, that is. Now I understand that ‘Volkstaad’ may not be the best term for my concept to emancipation of all through letting people live the way they like, with people they like, but it is the best description I have been able to come up with.

Hear me out before you go accusing me of being unrealistic, unpatriotic or spitting on the graves of those who died for the freedoms I now abuse in your judgmental opinion, such freedoms of literacy, education and free speech.

Here is a scenario for you: you may have a neighbour, your neighbour doesn’t like living next door to you because he or you think that they are a superior race than the other and the other absolutely thinks you are equally vile. Would you not be happy if the same said neighbour chose to leave your neighbourhood and move to an area with people who believe that the likes of you are as vile as his subscription? This would mean that there would be no one to scribble racial slurs on your wall in the dead of the night anymore and you wouldn’t come back from work to find piles of garbage thrown over the wall onto your beautifully manicured lawn.

I would definitely be happy that the Nutter of a fat-hater moved away from my neighbourhood to one that is full of thin people who all hate fatties. He would be happier too, don’t you think, and would even enjoy the Fat-Freak as part of their local Thin Municipality Circus, don’t you think? He would be free to call fat people names in his neighbourhood without judgment, but the fat people, in their absence, would never again hear these utterances and would be much better off for it enjoying their slow sinking into Trans fatty acid bliss.

It is the same with all other prejudices; people who hate others should be given the choice of leaving the people they cannot stand without fear of being victimised themselves. If this is not done, then people will be constantly forced to live and interact with their pet (superiority or otherwise) hates resulting in them seeing that they have little choice but to obtain their emancipation in a different, maybe more violent manner. You will agree that the latter is undesirable; no more blood need spill or hatred manifest — emancipation and freedom for all is at hand.

I imagine you sitting at your desk procrastinating and reading this thinking “well, Sumo you fat fart, where would you group such people?” I have a solution for this too, my dear faith deficient reader; you put these groups out to sea in privately funded, self sustainable Floating States, Villages and Cities – whatever the occupants like to call them, well they are free to call them whatever they want, aren’t they – they are absolutely free aren’t they?

Do not knock my idea until you have heard all the backing mechanisms of how these private states would operate. I have worked it all out and will present it to you on my next post, but for now, what I want to know is whether you think, in a perfect world where everything went as planned, this idea would work for everyone.

My potjie is about ready.

I rest for now, and await your responses

The Sumo