Friday, October 31, 2008

Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika

Bless up all people. I just read collection of poems "The Soweto I Love" by Sipho Sepamla, published in 1977 and banned of the Apartheid regime, which is dedicated to the victims of the Soweto Riots and all of the people of South Africa. You don't need any pictures to imagine the inexpressible terror commited by the white regime when you read the words of Sepamla. As a devotee of human rights and an activist of Black Consciousness he manifests his love for his countrymen and women and his sorrow of loosing his people to death and the western world.

The Soweto Riots were depicted in the movie Cry Freedom which deals with the great, great man and anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko (Black is Beautiful and much much more; played by Denzel Washington) and his fight for the regime to stop the atrocities and oppression put on Black people (and to my annoyance, a white, liberal editor of a newspaper has a big role in the movie as well; it's like there MUST be a white actor in every movie about Africa or Black struggle or else the movie will be too black for white audience; The Last King of Scotland, Goodbye Bafana, Red Dust and so on; not that the movies aren't good because they are). It's a good movie and I like that the makers of the movie put in the names of activists killed by the government in jail and what the police wrote as 'cause of death'.
"Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.
What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops." Matthew 10:26-27

Amandla awethu!

Continue educating yourself:

http://www.processedworld.com/Issues/issue25/25violenceprocessing.html

http://www.thepatrioticvanguard.com/article.php3?id_article=1953

1 comment:

Maithri said...

Dear Sister Ras,

The road has been so long, and strewn with blood and tears of so many beautiful souls...

And yet somehow, just a whisper ago, when Obama became president...

I felt a weight lifted...

Wings of joy to you my sister,

The road is long...but we will keep the faith

That one day

we shall all be free,

Maithri


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