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Revelaeons Mongane Wally Serote Revelaons Mongane Wally Serote Chapters 9‐‐13 “Whether there’s any room for what we call African instuons in the twenty‐first century.” … … … … “So can we locate these instuons in the present so that they become catalysts not just resistance or protest structure? Can we recreate extended families, polygamy, bongaka and magosi, iniaon and lekgotla? Do they have any relevance now?” (125) “It’s asking us as African intellectuals whether we’re relevant to our own lives … … ” “So are we relevant? There’s too much TV, Harvard and Oxford in our spirit, we hallucinate about our lives.” (126) “The UK and the US must give the money they promised in Lancaster to compensate the farmers whose English ancestors stole the land from the Zimbabweans,. How’s that?” Bra Shope said. “And paid the money to whom? To a corrupt government?” (128) “I’m not presiding, I’m making an observaon that there’s lawlessness; there’s corrupon in government. Rogues are roaming the land, killing and destroying property, that’s what.” “I hope you’d see things differently from your ancestors, who not only thought Africans were rogues, but also believed we were primive, pagan and uncivilized, and therefore behaved like rogues towards us. They pillages, they appropriated land, they dehumanized, enslaved and subjugated us.” (129) What would the world be like without Bra Shope? (140) I realized then that his life and mine had become so intertwined… (142) Why was this man’s passing so catastrophic? (144) Anger is not only a reflecon of helplessness, it is also reckless, and therefore dangerous. (145) An elephant never complains its trunk too heavy; it carries it and uses it, at mes even to amuse itself. (145) Fear can make one very stupid, especially when it’s born of ignorance. (183) Lepane had risen in the ranks of mephato, and was then sent to meet other generals among the Barolong who were fighng the Brish, the Boers, the Matabele, and even the Griqua. He had fieen wives. I was a tributary of that past. As I sat face to face with Ngaka and Dikeledi, it was like a film rolling before me as they related my past and linked me to my ancestors. … These were the instuons my people had founded to run the estates they had created. … they were all linked to cale, land and communal family on which communies were built. And all of these were threaded together by polygamy and by various instuons. (150) They were instuons with responsibility to the family and the community. It was through this, and through their standing the the community, that they became bagolo or elders, and were therefore always in council. These were the instuons that Western civilizaons had destroyed with their colonial offensive of pillage and destrucon, and their numbing religion preached as if they were the Almighty himself. But worst of all was that we had believed them, and come to despise all our own spirituality. (150‐151) A person is only a person because of other people. (151) The human spirit, wherever it was, was the basis of our humanity. (151) We walked into other people’s lives with a mixture of knowledge and ignorance. (151) A journey began. We adjusted. Two people, three people or more made contact, bringing to each other our knowledge and our ignorance. We entered into each other’s lives. We saw and heard each other; we would speak, respond and interact; do things together and also apart. Our interacons created a spirit among us. As our senses acvated our minds, we began to know. For knowledge comes from the spirit of things, from the minds and physical interacons of people. But knowledge is only knowledge when it is dynamic; it is always relave. (152) It develops a history. Its present, past and future combine to create a culture; and as a current this knowledge creates the polics of the present. As Ngaka used the word polics, he was quick to add that he did not use it to mean conflict and strife, but the judgment of who we were and what we would be. (152) And now we were here we had to ask, what is change? For this change has been very costly to some. For others, it posed a threat, a danger, something unacceptable that had to be stopped. Yet it had happened. But something was not yet right. It was as if we were standing on an unsteady plaorm that shook and shied beneath our feet. Something was strange also, as if night had suddenly changed and became day. It was that drasc. (153) Change had taken place. Everyone was affected, even thieves, killers, hobos, the homeless, the poor. Everyone, black or white, [all are bearers of change] knew something had happened. They too aempted to be mulracial, mullingual and mulcultural. But what is change? Change means a break in what is known, and a shi to the new, the unknown. This is a way of siing and seeking what must make up the future. The future is a new crop full of new leaves. (153) Besides teaching us the secrets of our community, our society and our naon, we know that in our very being we had become instruments of our naon. The elders had taken control of our very being. (156) The sense of belonging we always seek is really that seeking of our own essence. (157) Without my MK experience and the fight for our country, it would have been very difficult to know, as I sat there in that ndumba, the value of that iniaon experience. But iniaon had not only prepared me for the tough journey of MK by accepng that life was hard, that maers were always difficult and that paence was a treasure. It had also located me among my people, within my community, my society and my naon. I know that I was of the people, but also that I was an individual. Many of my iniaon peers later told me how, during severe interrogaon, their iniaon perseverance had embraced them and seen them through their pain and humiliaon at the hands of the secret police. And during prolonged periods of detenon without trial, they found they had an in‐built strength. Engraved as if by fire into the hearts of iniates was the knowledge of how to survive, yet to succumb to discipline and control when necessary. And this had also played a role during the cruel oppressive apartheid system. When I watched African men undergo severe whipping and humiliaon, somemes looking so broken, I knew that, even as they seemed so servile, those from iniaon harbored a hidden and untouchable resistance, silent and waing. I knew it. (156) Being socialized is receiving love. Believing is seeking love. This love resides in the spirit, which can drive us to killing, sacrifice, passion and compassion. As the African story of creaon tells, aer our creaon we were given the power of creavity that belonged to the creator and the diviner, and the power to be merciful to all living things. (157) There is no such thing as coincidence; everything serves to nurture the fullness, depth and quality of our spirit. (157) I was in constant transion from moment to moment. (157) We must tell the iniates that we are making them men for the life‐and‐death bale of this land. (158) I had imagined that my first visit to the first democrac Parliament in my country would be a celebraon of victory over evil. Instead I was listening to all these shoung voices. I didn’t follow what was being said, but I sensed the racial undertones. We, the black people, had brought the apartheid system to its knees, and scaered its proponents helter skelter. We’d created a home for all, black and white. Yet the white opposion members were aggressive and arrogant, and seemed not to hear the heavy vocabulary of racism in their own words. (164) Why had black people, Africans, allowed the Europeans to carve up Africa? Why were they so trusng, so foolish, to exchange land and gold and diamonds for cloth, beads, spoons and other trash? Eventually we’d given up everything, even our minds. Looking back, it was as if the African connent had been through a nuclear war. We were not only slaves but professional students. Everyone who was not African believed we should listen to them, learn from them, take their faith. They found ways to take sll more from us, to tell us what the twenty‐first century was and where we fied into it. We’d le poor and vulnerable to disease; our children thought they should become prostutes rather than die, or be the garbage collectors of others. Some had le the connent to do this work in distant countries and cies we could otherwise not name, and hardly thought of coming back. If they did, they came back like the gold that was stolen from our soil: changed, expensive, no longer our own, like those who used our gold to give themselves status to lord over us. (164‐165) Only Molefe could say such things. It was an absolute joy to meet up with him again. In a sense, we were the only survivors from our unit of comrades who’d arrived in Botswana just before June 6th, 1976. The comradeship between Molefe and I ran very deep. We’d been on the front together. (167) It was through learning to watch by sniffing, feeling, sensing and touching that Molefe had become my comrade.
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