Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Open letter to JZ about Eugene de Kock

To the President of South Africa, President Zuma
Email:  presidentRSA@po.gov.za

Your Excellency
Re: Prisoner No 94616105 Eugene de Kock

The above prisoner was granted parole by your Minister of Justice and Correctional Services at the end of January 2015 at a media conference.
The prisoner is being held by unknown agents of the state against his will.  He is unable to make contact with family or friends and in an order of the court has only just been given right of access to his lawyer.
While your Minister of Justice and Correctional Services continually repeats that he is on parole, this is clearly nonsense – surely the Minister knows where the prisoner is?  And if he doesn’t, then you must know.
Our Constitution allows for rights of a prisoner.  It is his right to be on parole once he is given it and holding him now against his will is a violation of the rights of the prisoner.  Being held against his will by agents unknown is also a human rights violation, and could be a result of abduction or kidnapping which is clearly a criminal offence.
Please show us, your people, we South Africans…an interview with Eugene de Kock and you, on television that is not pre-recorded, so that we know that he is alive, well, happy, and is not being held against his will.
Yours truly
Dianne Lang

We are all equal before the law 

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

White People must Speak Up !!

White people must speak up and must never ignore racism. If you see a racist action or you hear a racist comment and you say nothing, it means you agree.  It's the inaction that's always destroyed other people and nations. Black people must stop blaming everything that is wrong on white people.  White people must stop being so defensive, stop rationalising and take some damned responsibility.    All people are members of the human race.  The system we now have is not geared up to empower the minorities, just as the previous system was not geared up to empower the majority.  That is the first step we can take in fixing the problem.  How can we have a non-racist society when there are still laws in place in our country that not only make it OK to be racist, but entrench it, and give it a legal foundation?  Together, all of us can change this.  We must speak up.  We must vote with some intelligence.  We must demand legislation and policies that fights against disadvantaging one group of people from others.
Let us start taking some fucking responsibility for where we are today and never, ever ignore any form of racism, not ever.   We can make a difference if we speak up, speak out and take some responsibility instead of hanging our heads in shame.  What is going on in our country today is shameful for all of us.  More than 40 years ago, Steve Biko said that the most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.  I can now say the same.    We will never be treated equal as long as we swallow the propaganda that Whites are the scum of Africa.  Speak up, speak out – stop any form of racism you witness.  We are all here in the same South African boat.  We can continue letting the rot set in, putting holes into our boat, or we can do the maintenance, we can take the responsibility and we can steer this ship in the direction it needs to go.  A ship is only as good as its captain.  Something is not right and we must speak out.  
The people will liberate themselves.   Let us all be part of the solution instead of the problem.   I want to feel that same feeling of pride in my country that I felt that day when Nelson Mandela walked onto the rugby field.  
I want to feel like that again about my land, the country of my birth – South Africa.  Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika. 

SECRETS ...

 “Tell no man”  (A secret) is a very hard task, because my mind is so full of talking thought. I call it mental diarrhoea. My mind wants to tell everything it hears; knows or even suspects. 
But the moment that I talk about my idea, my desire, it begins to lose power – just as the engine loses steam the moment when the valve is opened. Whatever I hold in secrecy within me gains momentum. It builds, creates and manifests itself in my silence. By keeping my silence, I am protecting my idea or desire from the curious unbelieving thought of others. 
Tell it only to the enlightened ones, those who have risen from the dead. Tell the enlightened ones, but keep those who are still in a dream on a need-to-know basis. Nothing more. Every time I tell my secret I am depriving myself of the manifestation of my desire. I will have to go and prepare the ground and plant the seed again. I will continue preparing the soil and planting the seed time and again, until I learn to shut my mouth...allowing the power within me to magnify and manifest that which I desire. 

Guard your Heart

If I remove my thought, nothing is built or broken down. The air inside a jar takes the shape of the jar automatically. If I remove the air completely from the jar to create a perfect vacuum, the jar would collapse. The pressure on the outside would be too great to be withstood. If I apply this illustration to My life, I will see that if I take My thought away from My fear, or My problem, or My desire, it will collapse. If I give no thought to something it disappears, it is no longer a reality for me. Why is it that I give so much thought to negativity? By giving it thought, I am empowering it, I am creating it and I am turning it into a reality. I must give negativity no thought. By worrying, I am giving the negativity power over me and my life and I am manifesting that negative thing as a reality in my life.

But when I deny something I break it down. I dissolve the existence of it. By denying something does not mean that I am putting my head in the sand like an ostrich and pretending it is not there. By denying it I merely dissolve the thing into non-existence. For example, I could say that since nothing exists that is not of God and that God is good, then the reality of the devil disappears from my mind.  It has no power over me because I have created a vacuum where the devil used to reside.   My mind can destroy and dissolve anything by denying its existence and can build anything up by affirming its presence. 

Abundant Reality


It is important to understand the connection between manifesting from the abundance of the universe and God’s perfect plan for us. Failure to manifest abundance is failure to manifest in accordance with the divine plan. I am creating without a plan, without the professional’s advice, without the knowledge of how to manifest in abundance. I know that with my thoughts I create my reality, but I create two kinds, lack and abundance. It becomes a hit and miss affirm, and more often than not, I create lack. My idea of creating abundance is good but until I create only abundance, it is not according to the divine plan. The divine plan is intricately involved with my divine purpose on earth. If I create my life with my thoughts and I do so with my divine purpose in mind, I cannot help but to create in abundance…everything in abundance. If what I want is in accordance with my life’s purpose, I will manifest it, whether it is a big home, an imported vehicle, a swimming pool, money or even patience, tolerance, compassion or anything else I wish myself to be.
Everything in the world is either in a state of construction or destruction. These two forces are essential in the building of the universe. There are only two movements, two actions, building or breaking down, affirming or denying. I either affirm with my thought or I deny with my thought. Seldom do I remove my thought from a thing or situation or person and I find that most of the time I spend affirming.  To affirm means that I acknowledge and accept the fact, whatever it may be. I affirm the perfection and beauty of the world, but at the same time, I affirm the evil of the world. By affirming I am building up, adding power and strength to the thing. If I am affirming the positive and the negative, how is the universe supposed to know what it is I actually want or are trying to manifest? On one hand I am affirming everything that is good, and the next moment, I am affirming that everything is bad. I wake up and see a beautiful sunrise and affirm that the world is goodness and perfection. I pick up the newspaper from the door, read it and then affirm that the world is an evil place to live in, that there is nothing but murders, rapes and wars. In the space of a day, an hour or even a minute, I am affirming good and bad. I affirm negative things most of the time and I experience in my reality, negative things most of the time.  It is time for changing the thought pattern.  Affirm only the positive and give no thought to the negative unless you can do something about it so that it becomes a positive.  I guess that is why I am always fighting injustice – it is a negative thing.  

Monday, April 20, 2015

Saving Mandela's Children - Naming and shaming.

SAVING MANDELA'S CHILDREN: 
The true story of South Africa's unwanted children by Dianne Lang

Available from the publisher, http://www.authorhouse.co.uk/ or from http://www.amazon.com/ It is also available on Kindle.

What readers say about the book ….

I have never read a book like this in my life. It felt as if I were experiencing what was happening myself. You have inspired me to do something worthwhile with my life. Thank you.
Reader.
I am not an emotional person but your book put me on a roller coaster of emotions and now I look at the world with different eyes.
Reader.
I now have your book. I started reading and couldn’t put it down. Well done.
Reader.
I am really enjoying reading your book - though it was hard at first, .I'm not sure that enjoying is the word! Some of it is pretty gruelling. I’ll make sure it is passed around and will treat a few people for Xmas. I am making myself get on and read it so I can pass it on.
Reader.
I've finished reading your book last night and my mom got her copy last week :) How you do what you do??? I seriously do not know...I would've gone mad ages ago and ran away. You're amazing!
Human Rights Lawyer.
I'm reading your book - not yet half way. Oh, what a sad story. It wrings the heart. Your love and battle for the children's welfare shines through.
Activist.
I received the book yesterday...started last night and could not put it down...It is exactly as it happened. Am already at page 254. You have done a great job.
Colleague
I was truly inspired by your story. I am enjoying the book. It is so powerful I can’t put it down.
Reader.
Just wanted to let you know that I received your book this afternoon and I am nearly half-way through it - I can't put it down! I am sitting here with tears streaming down my face and yet I can't stop reading. I must be so naive because I just had no idea what those kids had been through when I was in Middelburg. I so wish to be back there and give them all my love and hugs. And you too - words cannot convey the admiration and respect I have for you. I can feel your pain and frustration and wish there was something I could do to help.
Karen : UK Volunteer
Amazing! I really hope I can source this book and read it, it seems as soon as one gets out of the country, things really can be said as they should! Good luck in selling millions so the truth can be heard, and I truly admire you for your honest approach and your guts to get the job done !
SA Woman of the Year Award Winner
I am impressed and very moved by your account.
Ian Francis: Blackwell Publishing
The unfeasible lack of government support is something that needs to be brought to the attention of a wider section of the world’s press.
Jack Fogg: Fifth Estate
This is a terribly disturbing account of the abuse of children’s rights in South Africa.
Rukshana Yasmin: Telegram Books
I've started reading your book and am loving it...just engrossed.
Ruth Williams: Human Rights Lawyer
A very big congratulations to Dianne!! I'm so glad that Di had finally completed a book on rough patches in her and the children’s lives down in the Cape. Already having a lump coz I have an idea of what's in there given her not so good experiences.
Head of Social Welfare Department, Fort Hare University.
Please forward me Di's numbers. I wanna personally talk to her about the book. She means a lot to me and the community she serves for a blind government. Warm Regards,

Viwe: Ex-SABC Program Producer

OK - so now buy the book through www.authorhouse.com (cheaper) or Amazon or Kindle.  Amazon also have second hand books at a reasonable price.  
Support me and buy on line.   Thank you. 

Listen to Your Intuition - It will never let you down


How often do we hear a small voice, or have a gut feeling or have intuition to do or not to do something and we ignore it? How often do we regret not listening to our intuition and saying, “If only I had…”. 


Learning to walk in spirit takes a lot of hard work and courage. Not only do we need to remember that we walk with physical feet, but we are also spiritual beings. 

Another one of my many changes that I am going through is to be true to myself and to listen to my intuition, despite any other person’s opinion or advice. We get so side-tracked and so involved in the physical aspects of life that these other-worldly senses are no longer heard, seen or felt. If we could learn to stay in the moment…be quiet…allow the heart and soul to communicate…to slow down and be still…I know that we would make the right decisions. So often we make decisions that are disastrous, especially if we don’t stop and listen to our gut feelings. It is an interesting fact that when we get that gut feeling, the body actually secretes a specific hormone/chemical in the stomach. Let me put that the other way. When the stomach secretes that chemical in the stomach, then we get the gut feeling. But even more interesting, the pituitary gland, which was first thought to be the seat of the soul, starts the chemical process which results in your gut-feeling. I always say that men get a gut-feeling and women have intuition. 

The above is just a bit of background to the reason I did not go to have another medical procedure done today. Last night I spent time in prayer, asking if I was doing the right thing by going today and this morning I woke up with a strange feeling…I just don’t feel like going. No reason other than this intuition. 

So I have to un-do my arrangements for lifts and others phone me to wish me luck and I have to tell them I am not going today. “Why not?” everyone asks me and I tell them that I am listening to my intuition. I can just see the amazement and puzzlement on their faces and am sure that they are thinking I am crazy. Which leads me to think that I would be very happy if everyone thought I was crazy.    That would mean that I can do anything I want and no one will say a word. They will just shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, she’s crazy, after all”. 

As my children were growing up and became teenagers, I got up to all kinds of things such as sit-down demonstrations, petitions and such like things … I was always on some mission to save something or other. When they got asked about me they would always say, “That’s my mom”. It was kind of nice. But the very best compliment I ever got was from my son. He told me that I had bigger balls than any man he knew. I will always remember that. 

I don’t know when or even if I am going to go for this procedure. I have postponed it until it feels right. It may never happen, but I am not going to waste any more time or energy thinking about it. I am rather going to thank my intuition for showing me the right way. Who knows why I feel the way I do? It does not really matter what the reason is … it could be that the person giving me a lift has an accident, or it happens to us both, or the doctor is nasty to me, or I react adversely to the procedure. I just know that today is not the day and I am happy. If I was asked who I am right now, I would start by saying “I am happy”. 

Listening to my intuition is going to be part of my authentic self.

Statues and Shit

Horse Memorial - Port Elizabeth 

The recent popularity of removing statues from our country that reminds people of the apartheid era has raised feelings of anger, of disgust and of the waste of money and time that this has taken.   Students have missed classes, police have been called out unnecessarily to protect statues instead of people – and so many words have been written in the media and on social networks.
It did not take long from the destroying of the first statue, to moving onto destroying people’s lives.  The behaviour of the youth of our country, as I see it, comes from a feeling of powerlessness, frustration and displaced or mis-placed anger.  The powerlessness, frustration and anger come from the many promises made by the ANC which have not come to fruition. 
The displaced anger arises from an inability to condemn or question the freedom fighters, their parents, for the state our land is in today. They sacrificed so much for the freedom of our land, but what is freedom without bread?   They have also learned from their parents how to make a country ungovernable when you don’t get what you want. 
The anger was first poured out against ‘apartheid’ statues.  No amount of logical debate could move the mob to a more rational solution to their problem of apartheid symbols.   Once the popularity of the statues wore off, the mob had to find another place to put their anger.
Again, their anger is not directed towards the government, who has failed to provide opportunity for work and bread, they now decide that foreigners are taking away their work.  So, the anger is now directed at foreigners and they are using the weapon that was made popular by Winnie Mandela – necklacing!
In between the statues and the xenophobic attacks, there has been a continual persistence of targeting white farmers and the elderly in robberies where the violence is extreme.  The motive behind the crime is not robbery because there is, in most instances, no reason for the violence once the criminals have got what they want.  In some instances, not a single item is stolen – the motive is pure pleasure of watching a white person scream and beg for mercy.   This is rationalized by the idea that white people are to blame for all the woes in Africa.  Babies and small children are also tortured before they are killed because they will grow up and become adult whites so it is best to destroy every living person with a white skin.  
Criminals are able to withhold their conscience and compassion when dealing with the killing of other people when the ‘other’ has been labelled by a name that removes human dignity.  Foreigners and white people are given derogatory names, making it easier for criminals to behave in inhuman ways when dealing with “other” people.   Misplaced anger and frustration is the only way I can understand our disintegration of our society. 

I am not a statue and by no means am I suggesting that burning a person is the same as having shit thrown at one, but my experience at least gives me some insight into how anger can be displaced.  The burning of a person is when the mob gets into a frenzy and they spur one another on.   In the destruction of a statue, you do not need a mob.  You only need a dozen fools and the statue is defaced or destroyed. 
I have had shit thrown at me by rational thinking white adult male policemen.  The shit was not thrown at me personally, but I was the  symbol of everything that they despised; as well as a symbol of the power that now lay in the hands of black people and no longer in the hands of white people.   I brought abused, abandoned, neglected and sick children into a previously designated white town from previously designated areas for black and coloured folk. 


Imagine the amount of hate you must have, to collect packets and packets of dog shit, proceed to the offending person or object, picking the stuff up from in the bags, and then throwing it?    This was not a personal insult.   I stood for something that they could not stomach, that pricked their consciences and made them feel uncomfortable about themselves and how they saw themselves fitting into this new world.   The statues, the foreigners, and the torture and killing of people, is happening because we are lost human beings without a moral road map.  Is there a map, and a map reader,  to lead us out of this hate and violence. 
I want to once again feel proud to be called South African and I have no doubt that we can rise above all of this.  

Friday, April 17, 2015

Being Politically Correct does NOT mean that you are right!

The abbreviation of Politically Correct speech is PC.  All my life I have known what a PC is.  It is a “Piss-cat”, a term used by the older generation to describe someone who spends his life drinking or who drinks like a fish.   My parents taught me that.
I consider myself fairly fluent in the English language, including the extremely good knowledge of how to use expletives.  I have thus had to do a little research to determine exactly what PC speech actually means.  
This is what it says in the dictionary:
Politically correct. Also, PC or p.c: Showing an effort to make broad social and political changes to redress injustices caused by prejudice. It often involves changing or avoiding language that might offend anyone, especially with respect to gender, race, or ethnic background.

Wikipedia explains PC as Political correctness or political correctitude [1] (adjectivally, politically correct; both forms commonly abbreviated to PC) is an attitude or policy of being careful not to offend or upset any group of people in society who are believed to have a disadvantage.

Another strange phenomenon I came across is the number of books on the subject.  There are dozens and dozens of politically incorrect guides and dictionaries for almost every situation from politics to science on sale in book stores and on the on-line book sites.  Dozens of books are on sale to teach you how not to say something.

My introduction to the excessive use of PC was when I was in hospital in the UK and a dozen times a day, the nursing staff or doctors would come and take blood or put up drips.  In every case, without fail, they would say before the event, “This is going to be just a small scratch”.   When I questioned them on this, stating that what they were doing was not scratching but pricking me, they all told me that they have been taught in university or college (whichever) that the word “prick” is politically incorrect.  A scratch is something you do when you itch.  I was not itchy in the places they were pricking (poking is different to pricking) me with their needles.  It became a joke after a few weeks in hospital because they would come into the isolation ward and with a huge smile would say “A couple of scratches coming your way”, to which I would respond, “Why do you have Spotty Dick as a pudding on the hospital menu?”

The UK is very PC – often they are talking and you have no idea what they are saying because they are trying not to use certain words that they think may make people feel offended.  What you find yourself doing is walking on egg shells, afraid to say anything for fear of that dead pan face staring back at you or you being told with a stiff upper lip that what you have just said is politically incorrect.  At the same time, when you are asked where you were born they get so shocked that they forget all about being PC.   “I was born in South Africa” get the response, “They don’t have whites in Africa.  Africa is for Africans”.    Invariably, (let us give credit to the English since they did not do this as often as did foreign nationals) I would respond with giving them back what they were giving me.  “Well, if Africa is for Africans, then India is for Indians (Europe for Europeans, Asia for Asians and so on)  so why are you here?”

Some random thoughts:
Did you know that we no longer have black boards in the world?  They are now called chalk boards.  Who decided that?  Because a white board is still a white board!  Given some of the explanations for political correctness; it would be the whites who are afraid of offending the blacks and, that is the reason for the name change from black board to chalk board.  The black people are sure not concerned with offending white people because a white board’s name has not changed.  No one gets upset by the noun “white board”.   Imagine the controversy if we wrote with a black pen on a white board…or white chalk on a black board.

Load shedding is another politically correct term.  It does not really tell you what load is being shed for what purpose.  However, everyone would know exactly what you are talking about if you said we were experiencing numerous black-outs in our country.  Apart from anything else, to load is to add to something and to shed is to take away from something.  If this is so, then we are all talking faeces and we are being led by the nose by an original burst anus. 

In the UK, calling a person black is wrong.  They should now be called browns.  My granddaughter told me that her teacher said that there were only two kinds of people in the world…brown ones and white ones.   How long will it take for our country to follow suit and we will become brown South Africans and white South African’s and there won’t be a single black South African.

When did the word Bantu become politically incorrect?   We ARE the Abantu … every last darned one of us.   We have always been the Abantu, and we will always be the Abantu.  For those not familiar with isi-Xhosa, Abantu meas “the people”.   The Abantu will be the liberators of the Abantu.

Here is another random thought, but on the word terrorist.  How are we going to describe a terrorist?  Should we start calling them biologically regenerated terror providers?  That would be factually even more correct than saying that a terrorist is a freedom fighter.   Would you know what a lunar initiated trans-figured humanoid with deficient grammatical skills that is physically challenged in various areas of life but is willing to take responsibility for unpopular and politically incorrect causes? 

I am not certain if this is true or not, but it is alleged that H S Truman said that “Political Correctness is a doctrine, recently fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and promoted by a sick mainstream media,  which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end!”


I now know that my original view of what a PC is, is ultimately correct.  My parents taught me well. PC people behave as though they have look far too deep into a bottle and are smoking their socks. And by the way, that lunar initiated schizophrenic described above is me.  

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Does no one love us enough?

January 2015
I think that society needs to show a lot more compassion to terminally ill people who face terrible suffering before they die, by giving them the option of an assisted death before that suffering becomes unbearable.  There is no dignity in a human screaming in unbearable pain.  We have legalised abortions.  That is the murder of an unborn child.   We have places in the world where a death sentence is still legal and it is done humanely by injection.  (I never could understand how you can kill a person to teach a person not to kill a person).  When our beloved pets are suffering, we do the “kind” thing and have them euthanized.   But us, we living, breathing human beings are kept alive, irrespective of the amount of suffering we endure.  
A hundred years from now we will look back and shake our heads at the shame for allowing and preserving life almost at all costs, irrespective of the amount of suffering the person is enduring.  There can be dozens of legal hoops to go through to ensure that doctor-assisted suicide is not abused.  So if a patient is of sound mind, the condition is incurable, the pain is not manageable; the patient should have the right to choose his or her own death without anyone else getting charged with assisting the patient.  There is no sense and no purpose to suffering.  
Who decided that suicide was a sin or evil?  The Church?  
Who decided that we have to keep people going irrespective of their pain?  The Medical Profession?  
People can have a living will in which they can state that they do not want to be resuscitated, but nowhere has a person the right to decide to take his or her life.   We all have a right to life, as does the foetus, but laws say that this right does not belong to the unborn child.   The law says that the person condemned to death can choose the way he or she dies, and the lethal injection has been decided by law and society that this is the most humane thing to do.  And the animals – they also have the right to life, but when a pet owner loves his pet dearly, he has the right to take that decision for his pet and have to animal euthanized to stop unnecessary suffering.  Why can we not be helped to leave this earth in as human as possible way, with doctor assistance, so that the unbearable suffering can stop.  Does no one love us enough? 

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Jakalashe and Umvolofu - The stories we were told around the camp fire in Africa

Jakalashe and Umvolofu and the barrel of butter
Jakalashe and Umvolofo   were walking along the road when they came across a cart full of barrels of butter.  Umvolofo   asked Jakalashe if they should not perhaps pinch one.  Jakalashe said, “Why not?  You go and lie in the road and play dead.  The farmer will pick you up and put you on the cart.  Then you roll a barrel off while I hide in the grass”. 
Of Umvolofo   ran to lie in the road.  The farmer stopped next to him and climbed down from the cart.  He prodded Umvolofo   a few times with his stick and when Umvolofo   did not move, the farmer put him in the cart.  He was going to take him home and skin him and use him as a carpet in front of the fire.   After a little while, Umvolofo   got up and pushed a barrel of butter off the cart.
“Let’s eat it.  I can’t wait”, said Umvolofo  .
Jakalashe said, “We can’t eat this now.  It is not ready to be eaten.  It has to be a few days old otherwise it will make you really sick”.
They hid the barrel and went home.  On the second day, as Umvolofo   was lying in the sun, dreaming of the taste of butter, he saw Jakalashe going past.  He asked Jakalashe where he was going and that they should go and eat the butter.
“I can’t be bothered right now”, said Jakalashe. “I am in a big hurry.  My wife is giving birth to a baby boy and I have to find the midwife.  “What are you going to call him?” asked Umvolofo  .  “Just Begun”, said Jakalashe, as he ambled along, his stomach so full of butter he could hardly walk.
Umvolofo   waited a few more days and when he saw Jakalashe again he asked him about the butter.  Jakalashe was really upset.  “You won’t believe it Umvolofo  , but my wife is having another child”. 
“What is his name going to be?” Umvolofo   asked.  Umvolofo   thought that the first child had a very strange name. 
“His name will be First Half”, answered Jakalashe.
The next day when Jakalashe passed by Umvolofo  ’s door, he said that another son had been born and that they were going to call the third son, Second Half.
The following day it was the same thing all over, but the name of the next son was, All Gone.
Early the next morning Jakalashe was at Umvolofo  ’s house as he had promised and the two set out for the butter keg.  They came to the barrel, opened it and found that all the butter was gone.
“Oh, no!” groaned Jakalashe.
“Oh, no!” groaned Umvolofo  .
“You ate it!” said Jakalashe.
“No, you ate it!” said Umvolofo  .
“I’ll beat you”, said Jakalashe.
“I’ll murder you”, said Umvolofo  .
Umvolofo   was bigger and stronger than Jakalashe so if they had to fight, then Jakalashe would lose.  “Wait, my friend”, he begged.  “Let us go and lie in the sun and see whose mouth drips butter.  Then we will know for sure who ate all the butter”.  Umvolofo   agreed.
So they lay in the sun and before long, Umvolofo   was fast asleep.  Quietly Jakalashe got up, scraped the last bit of butter from the bottom of the barrel and rubbed it on Umvolofo  ’s mouth.   Then he lay down again.  When they woke up Jakalashe said, “My mouth is clean”. 
“Oh, no”, said Umvolofo  , “I’m the buttery one.”
“Then we know where the trouble lies”, said Jakalashe, picking up a stick to hit Umvolofo  . 
“I must have eaten the butter in my sleep, because I don’t remember a thing about it”, cried Umvolofo  .

Jakalashe had beaten the Umvolofo   again.

What is politically correct for the goose, must be politically correct for the gander too!

My family with volunteer 
Let us STOP immediately from calling people by names that are derogatory.  
Kaffir is a derogatory word.  Umlungu is a derogatory word.  
Mhlophe - white.        Mnyama - black.
Umlungu – scum of the sea
Kaffir – nonbeliever/heathen
Black and white people came.
Abantu abantundu nabantu abamhlophe bazile.
Where is Umlumgu in that?

Let us stop this petty name calling that is insulting.  We must show more respect toward one another.  We are all part of the same family.  We are all born in the same land.  We are our brother's keeper.  We can rise above all the challenges we currently face,  and become one united country, working towards understanding, compassion, reconciliation by uniting in love for one another.  

Heroes cry, make a choice, stand up and speak when confronted by inhumanity to man.

Monday, April 13, 2015

I am totally responsible for how I choose to live and, for who I am now.

We all choose to be the essence of who we are!

Instead of blaming my childhood for my problems and for who I am, I am grateful to my parents and caregivers for being the instruments of my learning. If I had a bad childhood, I am grateful that I learned compassion, empathy, courage and determination. If I had a good childhood, I must be grateful for the love and security I was given. 
Some of us are given all our harshest lessons early in life. Others have to learn their hardest lessons later in life. And since I am in the school of life, the lessons do not stop. There are always lessons to learn. If I do not learn a lesson, that lesson is repeated over and over again, until I do learn, until I see the love behind the lesson, until I learn to adjust and change. If my childhood was less than perfect, I am grateful that my harshest lessons came early in life. I rather drive on the gravel road filled with stones and potholes when I am younger and get the wide, open freeway when I am older, than the other way around.
“I would never do that to someone else, so how could they have done that to me”. If I have ever said these words then I live by the law of “Do unto others as I would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12) and I have been hurt by someone else. I expected someone to behave in a certain way and when they did not I was disappointed, disillusioned or had my heart broken. 
I do not expect everyone to live by my rules. I never expect anything from anyone: this way I cannot be disappointed and could very well be impressed. Not everyone lives according to the same rules. If we all lived by the same rules, there would not be strife in the world and we probably would not even get angry or cross. The only time I get angry with someone is when they break a rule that I have internalized myself. The reason I get angry when someone jumps a stop street is because I have accepted and internalized the rule that I stop at a stop street. The stop street jumper has not internalized that rule. He does not know that I have made stopping at a stop street my rule and therefore is astonished that I should be angry with him.

The rules that I have been taught, accepted, internalized and live by will be different to the rules that others live by. We have all been brought up in different environments and therefore, our learning would be different. 
Look at a game as an analogy of life. On this life field there are those who play according to soccer rules, and those who play according to rugby rules. Unless everyone plays by the same rules, there are bound to be losers and people are bound to get hurt and angry. Perhaps my mother played by the rules that her parents taught her while my father played by the rules that the boarding school taught him and I was trying to play by the rules that my Sunday school taught me. In such a situation, there is bound to be a victim or two. 
Whether I accept and play the role of victim is entirely up to me. I may not have been responsible for the situation that I found myself in as a child, but I am totally responsible for how I choose to live and, for who I am now.

”I’m not OK … you’re not OK, but that is OK”.


How fragile is the happiness we cultivate inside ourselves! One bit of news, one bad situation, one thing happening in the outside world that upsets our equilibrium and our happiness starts to leak out from our hearts. It is hard work to put that negative thought, that bad news or that sad outside event behind us and to hold onto that happiness. It is hard work to keep it from leaking out.

This was brought home to me with unbelievable clarity yesterday. I was happy, I had the walls shored up and all the leaks of my heart plugged to keep that happiness inside of me. Then I got the news that a fellow traveller on the cancer canoe got too tired of the fight. I got all shook up inside. Not only was I sad that she is no longer with us, but I got scared and started to wonder if this happiness I feel, this strength of spirit I feel is not just a defence mechanism. I wondered whether I was just kidding myself or walking around in a state of denial. So, much thought had to again go into who I really am and what I really feel. It seems that knowing who we are and what we are and how we feel is an ongoing process and there will be no destination, no one place to get to where we can say, “I have arrived”. We will always be in a state of being, a state of flexibility and movement and perhaps that is what really being alive is all about: knowing in every moment who and what we are and how we feel. Emotion is after all, just Energy in Motion so it is normal for how we feel to be in constant flux. As long as we take the middle road, we should be OK. That makes me smile because I remember Elizabeth Kubler-Ross saying…”I’m not OK … you’re not OK, but that is OK”.

While the bad news put me back a few steps, I also realize that I have gone forward in leaps and bounds in other areas of my life. I used to take a lot of things personally and I determined some time ago to stop doing that and to realize that when people are nasty or grumpy towards me, it is not my fault or even my business, but their problem. Yesterday I was driving with my mother to town and for some reason, I stalled my car at the robots. It took all of 10 seconds to re-start the vehicle and take the turn to the right. However, there was a man in a 4 x 4 who was stopped at the robots and he got so annoyed with me that he started shouting and pulling a sign at me. Without any thought and without any emotion, I smiled at him and blew him a kiss. The look on his face said it all. Complete and utter shock and puzzlement. He obviously expected me to shout back at him and when my response was so unexpected, he did not know how to react. I am really proud of myself for not taking his anger personally and for blowing him that kiss without even having to think about it. That means that I have started to internalize my desire to not take anything personally. It is all very well talking about something, but that little incident showed me that I am walking my talking. If we do what we have always done, we will always get what we have always got. 

You want to change something…change your response.