What would you die for?

What would you die for? It’s a question not many people seem to ask themselves, or at least not out loud. Most people are so concerned with the business of living that even the thought of contemplating their death seems blasphemous. But it is folly in my view; each and everyone one of us is going to die at some point or another and the manner of that death, its circumstances and its meanings should give one pause to ponder.

The Arab Spring has been an example of an entire region declaring that they would die for their countries. Men, woman and children in Egypt, refused to back down even as death stared at them in the form or tanks ranged round Tahrir square. Libyans poured into the streets even as gunshots hailed from the sky and tanks rumbled onto the horizon. Yemenites, Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians have all refused to bow down to oppression and faced even deadlier oppression with nothing but their staunch resilience. Countless people have died in the Arab Spring, dead bodies dragged off the streets into the arms of their wailing widows, mothers and children. Men, women and children who have left this coil with nothing but the assurance that their deaths had a meaning.

It seems nothing in this world came about without the determined sacrifice of ordinary humans who died for that cause. The United States of America honours Nathan Hale, the twenty one year old who is famously said to have uttered, as the British were about to execute him, that the only regret he had was that he had “but one life to give to this country”. But we know there are hundreds of thousands more who died on the fields of battle; some unknown soldiers whose names have been swept away by the sands of time but whose contributions so lifted the America that we see today to the vaulted heights it occupies.

Forty thousand people died in one year during the Reign of Terror that swept in on the coattails of the French Revolution. If you do the maths that amounts to almost a hundred and ten people per day being guillotined for their belief in the cause of freedom. Marianne, the national emblem of France is often pictured stepping over dead bodies as she leads the revolutionaries to liberty. She herself is dishevelled, her breasts exposed but nothing seems to quench the fire in her veins to free her people or die trying. Today the peoples of the French republic are symbols of liberty and equality in Western Europe even thought their ancestors were the Gauls the Romans traded as slaves.

And sometimes one does not have to die for a cause but put oneself so near death that all seems hopeless but yet refuse to budge because one believes. Belief is nothing in this world, it is has neither value, nor does it give any assurance in the face of all evidence that points to the contrary. But our history is littered with men and women who faced death rather than give up their beliefs.

A little island called the British Isles has a queen who is forever immortalized for this. Elizabeth I, after whom the current Elizabeth is named, ruled England at a time when it was a dwarf in the face of the European continental powers. Faced with imminent attack from Spain, then a naval super power, Elizabeth refused the advice of those around her to surrender and declared she would rather die than see her kingdom overtaken. She even rode to Essex to deliver what is now an immortal speech to her soldiers before they engaged in battle:

“My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people ... I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.”

Britain survived the war with Spain and went on to create an empire as had never been seen since the times of the Romans.

Five hundred years ago, a German monk named Martin Luther was appalled by teachings that were emanating from the Holy See in Rome. He decided that to stay silent was a fate worse than death and nailed ninety five theses’ that accused the Pope, at that time the most powerful man in the world, of misleading Christendom (what Europe was formely known as under the rule of the Vatican). What began as a simple pointing out of errors turned into a showdown between a simple peasant and the entire machinery of the Catholic Church. Luther was excommunicated, and the Holy See issued a bull for his excommunication, assuring anyone who killed him that they would receive eternal reward in heaven. Luther was advised time and time again to take back his accusations, and at one point was dragged to a city called Worms to face the Emperor of Germany who was under pressure from the Pope to kill the pernicious little monk. He was given the choice to recant his accusations and be set free, or face the full punishment of the Catholic Church delivered through the German Empire. He replied to the Emperor:

“…my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.”

These men and women come up time and time again throughout history, men like Luther who almost single-handedly brought the temporal reign of the Catholic Church to an end, people like Nelson Mandela who vowed they would rather be imprisoned rather than sell their souls to the oppressor. The Gandhi’s of this world who are responsible for starting the liberation movements in two different countries on two different continents. Men and women who faced against the most terrible odds, en masse or in private, and declared that to die was a better option than to live another day deprived of freedom and dignity.

Which brings me to the cause of all this reflection. A decade ago, myself and my countrymen stood by as white farmers were beaten, tortured and murdered in an orgy of violence that made international headlines. I will remember to this day that I hardly ever heard anyone willing to stand up on their behalf, to declare that an injustice was being committed in the name of justice. The politicians decried the violence, deplored the murders in statements that appeared on televisions around the country but no one stood up and said they would die to protect their fellow human beings. Farms were invaded and even some of our relatives benefited from the reform programme even as their workers wiped the blood of the previous owners of the walls of the newly occupied farm houses. Did we fail them? I tend to think that we did, and our brothers on the northern side of the continent would be ashamed on our behalf.

So in this dead of night, I ask myself what would I die for, and I pray and hope that when the time comes, I shall stand up and face the gates of death with the pride of having given my life up for a cause.

"I am proud of my son, although I am in mourning, and I am sad, but thanks to God, Mohammed lives, he didn't die," she says resolutely. "He lives on, his name lives on. I am proud of what happened in Tunis, I am proud that he is known throughout the Arab world." – The mother of Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian youth who burnt himself alive and sparked a revolution.

Redefining Patriotism

This article first appeared in the 3rd issue of the Africa Youth Human Rights Network's e-magazine; These Are Our Rights, February 2011.

It is being called the jasmine revolution and has sent shockwaves throughout the world both for its intense rapidity which not only took Tunisia but the whole continent by surprise but also its dramatic and almost fairy-tale like ending: a dictator packing his bags and making a very undignified exit to the nearest country that would take him.

Unlike the many articles that have flooded the news agencies, the blogosphere and Facebook I really do not want to debate the rights or wrongs that have been set in motion by this latest example of people power. I have my own doubts as to what the future holds but I am content to sit back and see what that is. Instead I would like to go back into the past with you. I would like to let us reflect for a moment on the name Mohamed Bouazizi. Perhaps in the frenzy of the revolution the international community may have forgotten his name but that name in Tunisia now stands for the hero who started a revolution when he gave his life for his country.

It all started with a slap and an insult, it ended with the most dramatic revolution this year and certainly one of the most dramatic in recent history. Mohamed Bouazizi is at the centre of the entire furore. A young man slapped in the face by a police officer, jobless despite the fact that completed his baccalaureate, selling vegetable to make ends meet despite the fact that his country is one of the richest in the region. No country should be allowed to sit back and watch any of its citizens in such a state but for Mohamed, not only did his motherland sit back and watch from their gleaming villas along the Mediterranean but the states representative in the form of a police officer slapped him in the face and insulted his father who died when he was three.

The rest of the story should be familiar, after taking his complaint to the local governor who would not open their offices to him; he doused himself in petrol and set himself on fire. In doing so he set on fire the regime of President of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, set on fire the spirits of his fellow countrymen who had suffered in the same conditions as he had for the last twenty three years and changed the course of Tunisian history forever. And that is the crux of all this reflection, the fact that at the very centre of this story is someone, a single person, who decided to do something, a great action, to change things. And not only did his countrymen take heed and listen to his unspoken message but they all went out and declared enough is enough.

What does one define patriotism as? Is it that feeling that courses through ones blood as one gazes at the flag fluttering in the morning breeze? Is it the pride one feels when gazing admiringly at a label that says made in your country? Or is it the undying conviction that every single square inch of your homeland is you homeland and that no one, not any one, can ever take that away from you? Is it the brave spirit that runs down the street in the face of a flood of bullets as South African school children did in Soweto, or sits silently in jail as Nelson Mandela did on Robben Island, or face a tank in the middle of Tiananmen Square and say, “I will not move!” as that famous and sadly unnamed Chinese man did twenty years ago.  Or is it defined by Mohamed Bouazizi’s final act that screamed, “I would rather die than live one more day oppressed by this regime.”

A great man once said that those who sit and allow tyranny to reign are active participants in that tyranny and as I look at the world map and see all the worlds “trouble spots” I cannot help but feel that those words ring truer now than ever before. We can blame world leaders all we want, but as the Ndebele tribe of Southern Africa say, a king is a king because of his people. Defining patriotism is a difficult thing but I can dare say that Mohamed Bouazizi came closer than a lot of people have done ever since NathanHale declared before he was executed as an American spy by the British, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” 

Algérie Mon Amour | Algeria My Love

Today the strangest thing in the world happened. Due to an unfortunate - and technically illegal - oversight, I left Algeria without completing my documents and today I was forced to make the long trek to the Algerian embassy in Pretoria to try and sort it out. I went there braced for the worst, used as I was to the Algerian system of bureaucracy, and yet lo and behold not only did the diplomat who I talked to turn out to be completely helpful, frank and friendly we actually even chatted for a few minutes.

This led me to think that for once in my life I would dedicate an entire blog to listing my top five positives about Algeria that I encountered during my stay there. My friends who still live there will have a mouthful to say about this I predict but I assure you, once you put 8000km’s between yourself and Zinedine Zidane’s country, you cannot but help put on the rose tinted glasses as you gaze at it perched snugly on the crown of the African continent. So here goes:

5. Their ridiculous prices

Get this, tuition at any of Algeria’s universities is…wait for it…two United States dollars; yes you read that right US$2.00. (I am using the exchange rate I last encountered). The University of Johannesburg is averaging around US$4000 and the University of Cape Town I am told sits comfortably above the five grand mark. Their fuel costs a measly 20 cents a litre and a public bus in the capital will set you back a measly 15 cents but if you are university student you can hop onto the universities shuttle bus service which will cost you…fifty cents per YEAR. Hold on, what about the state of the art tram system they just installed? 20 cents.  How about in the realm of telecoms? A dollar will give you almost thirteen minutes of talk-time and heck, if you charge up your phone with ten dollars at a go, they’ll throw in eight hours talk-time free. I remember I once started a phone conversation as I was cutting up the onions for my dinner and only finished it as I sat down to a plate of steaming rice and chicken which had all been cooked whilst I talked. Where else in the world do you get that?

4. Speaking of food…

The Mediterrenean palate for me was like a trip to paradise and back, except for olives which I somehow never acquired a taste for. But if you are content to suffer those little balls of concentrated posion that even Jesus used to eat then you will be well rewarded. Where do I start? There is the ‘poulet rotti’, which is a spiced and herbed chicken put on a flaming rottiserie and left to grill on the streetside. Or the ‘shwarma’, a French loaf as long as your forearm stuffed with grilled turkey, French fries, tomatoes, onions, lettuce and generously drizzled with mayonnaise. Or couscous served with spiced chicken drowning in soup. What about a glass of Orangina to quench your thirst? What is Orangina you ask? It is the perfect balance between a fruit juice and a soft drink, hell it even has its own Wikipedia page. Or their curious habit of dressing French fries with mayonnaise and salads with vinegar (the exact opposite of how it’s done in Zimbabwe). Who was I to complain? I grew up hating sadza so an entire region where it didn’t exist was bound to leave me as pleased as punch!

3. The architecture

For the most part I will admit that Algeria is left behind when compared to South Africa in contemporary architecture but there is a certain je ne sais quoi about the way they approach the art of building anything. Let us sweep aside for a moment the architectural exceptions of my native land and that of my adopted land. Let us take an ordinary building, sitting by the corner of a busy street and housing a small boutique owned by a small family. You see it? Well back in Zimbabwe that building would almost be invariably be square or rectangular and completely functional with the government approved minimum of windows, a door and a display. Now let us imagine that family is Algerian. That building is transformed almost immediately into a testament of Franco-Islamic architecture, filigreed metal adorns the balcony that serves no other function but to exist. The eaves of the building are held up by two stone male figures that seem to come up out of the building at waist level, their naked chests daring the street with their feat of strength. Corners are softened by sculptures of leaves that seem to want to drop leaf-like into the forest of cars below. Even the Algiers Post Office has a Wikipedia column to itself, it’s a building that awed me the first time I stepped into it and trust me, Post Offices rarely do that to me (or anyone else for that matter).

2. Français

There is nothing sexier than speaking in French. Seriously the language does things to the meanings of words, it wraps them up in a cloak of culture, peppers their noses with oh just a touch of expensive eau de toilette and then sends them out to the world to give French kisses to the ears of passing listeners. The ordinary gains a level of sophistication, and the sophisticated just seduces you and leaves you on your knees screaming for more. I used to love Céline Dion (don’t pretend you don’t) even before I went to the Maghreb but when I heard her singing in French, I almost cursed the bastard who taught her English. It’s a beautiful language with a thousand and one cute idiosyncrasies, for example the eau de toilette all those perfume companies proudly stamp on their bottles simply means toilet water. Or the French for ‘I miss you’ in English literally translates to, ‘I have a lack of you’. Or their method of slapping bon which means ‘good’ to everything so that they come up with bonjour (good day), bonsoir (good evening), bon appetite (enjoy your meal), bon fête (happy holiday), bon café (enjoy your coffee), bon douche (enjoy your bath; I kid you not, people actually wish each other well even for that).

1. My friends

It is never an easy thing to uproot yourself from everything you know; your family, your language, your culture and religion and plant yourself smack in the middle of someone else’s world. But when you do pray that you have friends like the ones I encountered there. Friends who came in all different shapes, sizes and with nationalities ranging from Algerian through to Ugandan and Rwandan all the way to trusty old Zimbabwean. In a country which enjoys all the benefits I have just described and which a famous poet once described as a ‘dream of sand’, you can imagine all great moments we shared. Roasted chicken shared over a brick somehow rewired to serve as a heater, racing each other  through the university residence at 3am the night before an end of year of exam (the nerves had gotten the best of us), breaking the Ramadan fast with my friends family or almost drowning at the beach when I got caught by a rip tide. Falling asleep on one of our cross country bus tours, fighting about the colour of the wallpaper in our room, walking five kilometres in the snow because the highway was closed, making out furtively in hidden corners…my friends and my enemies, my loves and my haters made Algeria the experience that it was.

Pharisees: Why Christians are sometimes so unChristian

Dear Readers, compliments of the New Year to you all and my apologies for my extended absence. I hope I was sincerely missed. Anyway I write this blog from Zimbabwe, which is also true for the previous blog – There is a Sadness, because today I met what I would like to call a Pharisee.

I will not name names, or point fingers but today I happened to be having lunch with one of my dear friends who happens to be a non-believer. He says that his mind cannot perform the leap of faith necessary to fathom the supposed existence of a God or gods. I remember when I met him two years ago, I nodded sagely and told him that I found his point of view interesting. Having lived in Algeria for four years, there is one thing I had learnt above all else, to appreciate and respect those who hold opinions different to mine. Our friendship, marked as it is by that fundamental difference is one of the few I hold dear.

We were joined by two ladies who are firm believers, of the Pentecostal persuasion. And then my cousin, who rounded up the quintet, happened to mention to the two ladies that my friend was an atheist. Dearest reader, it is not often that I almost choke on my food but today I was caught off guard and the muscles of my throat wrapped in panic on the chicken fillet I was swallowing at the time.

“I am scared of people like you”.                

“You people can do anything - you might even murder someone or rape me” .

“Hanging around people like you is going to corrupt me”.

I am glad to say my friend took it in his stride and gamely soldiered through what was a very awkward moment coloured by what constituted hate speech. 

To what must be the eternal shame of every Christian out there, he quoted quite correctly and simply: “Judge not lest you shall be judged.” Her ambiguous equation of morality to religion, the complete disregard of the opinion of the other, the assumption, basic and unassuming, that she was right so everyone else by extension must be wrong; the callous disregard of the life story that this other individual had experienced, the views and opinions that he held sacrosanct, his own belief systems; they were all thrown under the truck by the adherent of a religion that claims to be a religion of acceptance and ‘non-judgementalism.’ Hypocrisy.

And it’s sad that it is a stance that is shared by so many people around the world. So many of the failures to live together in peace and harmony in this world caused by an utter and complete failure to try to comprehend that there is someone out there who holds a belief different to yours. A few days ago as we read about the bombings of a church in Nigeria, a friend of mine felt the need to weigh in with a gem of his wisdom:

‘I hate Muslims, they are always busy killing people, they must be stopped’

I sharply pointed out that not only did the Prophet Mohammed emphasise that Muslims must live together in peace with Christians, that the Koran also described the ‘people of the book’ (Christians and Jews) as children of God who must not be harmed but that far more Muslims than Christians are killed each year by Muslim Fundamentalists and a blanketing of an entire people within the mutually abhorrent acts of a few was as contemptible as Hitler’s Nazism.

Many of my friends know that I am a sharp critic and I have also come to learn that it is easy to criticize and destroy but far more difficult to criticize and build. Let me attempt to build – here is what I think should have happened. On learning of a person who held a belief different to hers, she should have asked and understood why. Perhaps give time even learnt what caused my friend to see the world in the way he chooses to. If she so wished she could have stated her own views on belief and how it coloured her life, and then in the style of a true lady, agreed to disagree.

Because whether you like to believe it or not, your entire life’s experiences, thoughts and opinions fail to comprehend the vast vista of human existence. You have never stepped onto the steps of a temple dedicated to the snake god in Delhi, nor walked through the shadowed beauty of a mosque nor quite understood why the Japanese believe their emperor to be divine. I can hardly be expected to understand why people who are different to me act in the way that they do, but I believe it is my duty to allow them the space to do so in just the same way they allow me my space to carve out my own little corner of existence in this universe that we share.

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
-Voltaire

There is a Sadness

There is a sadness that lives on the riverbank. Calmly she sits and stares at her face in the passing flow of the river of life, sometimes losing herself in the depths of the reflection of her own eyes, hair a glorious gold, framing a face of such beauty that the heavens weep for not possessing it. In the passing current she sees the many manifestations of herself and smiles: sadly, wanly, the whiteness of her skin tinged slightly by the rush of blood, the ice in her eyes melting a bit but only for a moment. A diamond tear flows down her ivory cheek and joins the flow of the river, joining the flow of countless sorrows. 

There is the sadness of the children; born into suffering, their destinies as immutable as the stars in the heavens, they shall die before they see their tenth summer. Some born into riches beyond imagining but their loneliness a vast desert they are lost in. There are some whose parents brand them every night with broomsticks, irons and kettles; anything that comes to hand but the real pain is in their hearts, torn to shreds even before they skin is turned into a bloody mess. 

There is the sadness of love. The sadness that is wrapped in red satin, perfumed in Paris and carries a thorn that inflicts a pain greater than all the spears in Alexander’s armies. There is the pain of the rejected lover, his eyes dark pits in his face, the gleam of hope extinguished from them with that final rejection. There are the used, lying in their beds, dripping from the exertion of lovemaking, still high from the adrenalin of fucking, still clinging to that other but as alone as if they were on an island in the middle of the seventh sea. Petals dripping to the ground, tears rolling down cheeks, throats aching from the exertion of crying, a sadness that touches a primal need as basic as that which commands the breath from our nostrils.

Andrew Mason (Creative Commons Licence via Wikimedia)
"There is the sadness of the lost...their wives woman they do not remember marrying"

There is the sadness of joy. Brief moments of ecstasy, sojourns on that ninth cloud of lore but knowing that the fall comes soon enough. The higher the summit, the deeper the valley. Joys temporarily brought by the nectar of the grapes, intoxicating joy that puts sorrow to flight, only to have her return in the morning with her extended family. A game that is danced in complicated circles, joys short-lived and dying every time, sadness outlives them all and dances on their graves. 

There is the sadness of the lost. Their lives in a corner they do not remember  turning into, their wives women they do not remember marrying. Deals gone wrong, faith abandoned on an empty pulpit, a flapping rag in a breeze that threatens to blow away every last one of their convictions. Memories of days when their plans were bright beacons I the distance; calling them to future successes, glory without comparison; they would be the pride of their families, the ones who would put their names on the lips of the entire village. Instead here they are, sitting beneath the shadow of decisions that at the time seemed as insignificant as the anger of a butterfly but in hindsight was the door to doom.

There is a sadness of the rejected. The ones whose every advance is put aside like the leftover remnants of a bad meal. Whose love is branded an affront to the sensibilities of those who have appointed themselves guardians of the world’s morals. Closeted and left behind they live life under a blanket of lies that grows heavier with each passing day. Surely the weight of the grave is a relief compared to the burden forced on them by the fall of the divine dice? A whirlwind of pain, hearts torn to bits, spirits weary things that look upon the act of living as a dungeon with no key to freedom. 

There is the sadness of the old. Bodies that refuse to move to the command of instruction, hands that seem to go off in directions unwanted, eyes blurred by the vision of countless memories. But as clear as crystal are the days gone by, the opportunities lost, the wishes unfulfilled, the nostalgia for a land that was never visited, the friend that died before they could reconnect, the job you wanted to do with all your heart but today is nothing more than a hobby. The coming of every days’ sunset, a reminder of opportunities that passed like thieves in the night, felt, barely seen and robbing your each day of hope. The grave awaits packed to the brim with unfulfilled dreams. 

Her eyes glimmer, she can never be satisfied. Each day she will drag another innocent into her embrace. Kiss them slightly on the lips sending a chill through their bodies, the light in their eyes disappearing like a flame surprised by a playful breeze. It is a feeling that they do well to learn for it shall be their companion till the end of their days. She shall smile into their faces until the end of time, and they shall learn to know her name and whisper it softly in the sweet forgetfulness of their dreams.            

Silhoutte of Sadness by JiNKY Lim (Creative Commons Licence via Wikimedia)
"They shall learn to know her name and whisper it softly in the sweet forgetfulness of their dreams."