We have become cowards

Something in the character of South Africans is dying. Something in many of us has died and it is called courage.

We have become cowards. I guess I should be speaking for myself since I have no mandate to speak for everybody, whoever that is but I insist on using the royal “we” and I am going ahead to interrogate us.

I think we need the courage to ask ourselves some serious questions as a people, especially at an individual level or should I say collective?

Well, I want us to take a critical look at ourselves in the mirror and see what we have become when we take off our masks. We have become a cowardly people. We are performing the same old routines and socio-political roles that so-called “whites” did under apartheid and colonialism.

I say so because when I look around I see that we are well-adjusted to injustice and oppression in every space of our lives.

How the hell did we come to adjust to evil when a man like Nelson Mandela, for instance, is still alive?

If we are not willing to stand up for truth, then we have nothing and are nothing. Many of us are afraid to wake up and shake off our cowardice because we are afraid to lose the nothing that we have. It was nothing but courage that brought us to where we are.

We have become complacent and thus accept injustice and oppression that parades itself as freedom and equality.

I believe that love for the truth is the first step to redeem and reclaim ourselves. It is time that true and authentic South African patriots not only stand up but speak up. We have to think for ourselves and not be afraid to speak the particular truth about the injustice and oppression that prevails in our lives.

Nothing is ever going to come right here until we think for ourselves and are not afraid to do the right thing.

It has to begin with mustering the courage to think critically and thus do things like what is going on in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and other countries on the African continent.

In fact, we must be willing to rise up against the prevalent economic injustice that protects itself by creating a false majority rule that is only a buffer zone to prop itself up.

There is just too much double-talk — where those of us who benefit are willing to sacrifice the truth just to advance our selfish interests. It’s time we apply some pressure to push us out of our complacency and even throw stones at our economic glass edifice.

I find that it is easy for many of us, especially those in the so-called middle class, to live with our self-deception and lies.

Deep down in ourselves we know that this is not really what freedom and democracy means or is about but we are willing to go along with it because we are comfortable.

I think that deep down we all know that this cannot go on. We cannot continue to live where only some people are free and too many are suffering.

Nobody can get away with this injustice.

We have to act and behave in such a way that the Bill of Rights in our Constitution is not just a paper tiger but translated into a programme of action where everyone will have dignity and respect.

No one is more equal than the other.

We have to insist on equality. It is our right. It begins by mustering the courage to demand it. Let there be equal rights for all.
Above all, let us not be afraid to listen to the truth!

This article was first published in The Daily Dispatch February 24.