The winds of change

Political storm on the horizon, or not

As the winds of change blow over the bare fields and cities of South Africa the poverty levels and discrimination levels rise like a baby tornado through the streets and fields Leaving debris and suffering of the population, while the government buy new cars and build Nkandla’s for all the cadres of the ANC. During the last election the twirl of the wind lifted the skirt of the ANC exposing the private parts dripping with corruption and greed to the public, but with a well-practiced sweep Matashe sweep the skirt down blaming the wind on the election procedures, while convincing the ANC members that the dripping private parts that was expose were merely an illusion from the “apartheid” era. With his glasses slipping down over his nose and his beady eyes peering at the paper on the podium, he denies that President Jacob Zuma had anything to do with the poor performance at the voting poles while stumbling over a few big words.

In the meantime the winds rip dust from the roots of weeds growing at the feet of white children in an informal settlement, obscuring their view of the real truth, while Julius Malema stands on his soapbox promising them water and electricity. The short-lived dream, of prosperity, forces the poverty-stricken white tin dwellers to break out in joy while receiving EFF T-shirt from the soapbox operator. T-shirts bought with the money that can relieve their hunger for the day, T-shirts of the same ideology that put them in these hunger circumstances through the implementation of Black empowerment and quota systems. With their hands signalling the black power fist, they dance around the oppressor, the same oppressor that removed their civil right in the first place, to the promise of civil rights in the future. This all happens minutes before he (Julius) scream from his soapbox, that, he will not fight for whites.  

The winds are now blowing over the lonely unoccupied building of a once proud farmhouse; the silence is the only whiteness to the gruesome murders of the occupants, the only whiteness to the politically driven hate crimes against the white farm populations. It is the only whiteness to the crops that will never feed the Nation again, like the power of a truck without a driver lie the fields of the farm without a farmer. This all while the government keep screaming from wooden soapboxes that they do not hate the white farmer, before they conclude the meeting singing “bring me my machine gun”, “kill the Boer kill the farmer”, and yet we are sitting in our newly jobless cocoons, praising the ANC for the peaceful transformation, a transformation with a blood trail that stains the fields of all the provinces, a blood trail with white and black blood in the name of peace.

With change as a driving force, the wind blow over a crowd of students armed with placates and matches to burn what they receive, to destroy the very institute that can eradicate their poverty status. The crowd are not sure what they screaming for but they do, they are not sure what they are burning buildings for but they do, and that all in the name of improvement, in the name of change. The dancing silhouettes of the figures edged into the white, red and orange flames, under the black cloud of their once education chance, While the minister of education is terrorising a white crèche full of toddlers for their participation of isolation.  As the flames dance through the artwork spreading with the wind of change behind it, the students scream that they want more, more of the things that they are burning, free education while they are burning the structures needed to educate them, while they are burning the things that their education money bought to improve their education and now need to be replaced. 

Like a breeze before the storm the wind of change are sweeping through the corridors of parliament, blowing dust into the eyes of the speaker, dust that blind her from recognising the members, blinding her from controlling the outcome. Winds that blow, the President from the podium, mingling the figures on his paper, making it unpronounceable, winds that came through the sails of communism, through the freedom of captivity, through the freedom of restrictions and control, and that all in the name of equality.

The winds of change blow through networks of social media, preventing a sparrow to land on a tree, preventing the monkey business to be heard, while a perpetrator of the ANC call for the killing and raping of white people through the channels of Facebook, the sparrow become an enemy of the state, while the killer caller become a suspended hero, and that all in the name of camouflaging the movement of destruction of government, the movement in the name of liberty. Like the poverty-stricken white informal settlement dwellers we welcome the winds, we welcome the winds of captivity in the name of freedom.

When will the winds of change turn into a storm? 

When will we realize that the breeze of change is not blowing to bring the rain, but to bring the storm that will swallow everything?

Who will recognise the storm and close the doors and windows to keep their houses clean?

Willie Beetge