Searching for the rainbow with no end

Today's blog is a bit more personal and ridiculous than my previous entries, I am trying out something new please bear with me if I haven't yet found the perfect formula. Whilst I'm still on the subject thank you for your support, I now boast a grand total of three follower including myself but more interesting almost three hundred and sixty hits in the past month.

Anyway for those who happen to stumble upon my blog by accident, My name is Bongani Ncube-Zikhali, I'm 23 years old and I am currently unemployed. Yeah, sad situation no? I recently finished my studies at the University of Tlemcen in Algeria (not to be confused with Nigeria; Algeria is the one with the bombs, Nigeria is the one with the corruption), did a stint of free lance journalism with the Mail & Guardian and just generally been bouncing around from one country to the next over the past few years. My current base of operations is Johannesburg, South Africa (that's the one with the hijackings).

The thing is over the past few years I have come to realise something very unsettling about myself: I am never content. Consider this, I started my high school experience in a school located in a township called Makokoba in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe (that's the one which had a trillion dollar note at some point). Makokoba was (and unless the new mayor of Bulawayo is a genius, still is) a dilapidated and sad location. There was a river of sewage that ran just outside the school fence. There were kids who used to wait for us outside the school gates who would "borrow" our lunch monies while dangling sharp blades in our faces to encourage our zero percent interest rates. And a teacher once beat me and the rest of the boys in my class with the handle of a broom (I kid you not!) Needless to say, my first few years of high school were amongst the most miserable I've ever spent in my teenage years.

You would imagine that when it was announced that I would attend one of the most prestigious private schools in the region, if not the country I would jump up and down for joy? No I didn't. My first response to my parents was that it was too expensive (we would later sell our car to keep me in school) and that I had no intention of going. But being an African child of African parents I ended up going against my will. And was immediately miserable the whole first year. I couldn't stand the snobs, the flashy cars and cellphones and the endless school activities private school's dream up to keep you busy from Sunday to Sunday. The two year experience was spent missing my "happy haven in the township" but it was soon over and by some strange twist of fate, Zimbabwean taxpayers generosity and an aversion to power cuts I found my self in Algeria.

The story is still told of how I almost broke down on my first night there. French was as foreign to me as Greek and Arabic sounded like an extra terrestrial language. I also was not particularly taken by the idea of bathing in a bucket for the next four years (something which I did for the past four years nonetheless). Suddenly that private school and its merry gang of coconuts seemed like heaven and I spent most of my first years there pining away for Zimbabwe and the sweet comforts of home. But four years is a long time and there comes a time when you can competently order a pizza in Arabic and French, you know where all the post office branches are and suddenly the place seems like home. Someone upstairs must have thought I was getting too comfortable because once again, my life was turned upside down.

This time I was meant to go to Paris for two years, learning at the University of Paris in Paris (yeah I have a talent for stating the obvious don't I?) but somehow I ended up in the City of Gold (that's what the inhabitants of Johannesburg call their city though I think they might have mixed it up with a certain description in the Bible). And guess what? I suddenly miss Algeria with all my heart. Yet only four months ago I couldn't leave fast enough (the woman who arranged my flight had to deal with me morning and night, she must have breathed a sigh of relief when I finally left). And yet here I am sitting in the richest city on the continent and yet wishing I could leave.

It's always over the horizon for me, somewhere out there, calling to me in a language I can hardly understand but that leaves my heart unsettled. I hope I find it soon because at the rate I'm going, I might soon end up going crazy and deciding to go live in a hut in the middle of the desert in Botswana (that's the one with all the diamonds). Maybe I'm Oscar Wilde's dreamer, who can only find his way by moonlight. Here's to hoping I find my way soon enough.

*all country stereotypes are provided by CNN, BBC & SkyNews

Even Angels Fall

Before you read this entry, take the time to watch this advert which was recently banned by the Advertising Standards Authority.




The sky is falling cried Chicken Little and all the animals in the tale were swept into mass hysteria. A few weeks ago the Advertising Standards Authority Declared the same thing; the heavens are falling and an advert was banned to prevent this imminent Armageddon.

In case you have not been up to date with all the hullabaloo, which in itself testifies to your extreme luck, Axe released an ad which featured female angels falling from heaven seemingly unable to resist the charms of a man who had sprayed a new brand of Axe deodorant. A South African viewer complained that the ad featured angels behaving in a manner incompatible with his belief, ASA ruled in his favour, stating:

The problem is not so much that angels are used in the commercial, but rather that the angels are seen to forfeit, or perhaps forego their heavenly status for mortal desires…

And that was that. Or should have been that except that I took the time to watch the advert on Youtube (along with five hundred thousand other curious people) and the first thought that came to my mind was Chicken Little.

You see, there is a slight problem with the ruling given by the ASA, besides the lack of humour on their part. There is the ever slight issue that the Bible documents in detail: angels have fallen from heaven before. The beginning of Genesis chapter 6 describes angels who not only were enamoured by the beauty of the daughters of Eve, that not only did they fall from heaven, they beget children who became giants. I dare the ASA to take the issue to the Vatican and get them to remove the offending passages for being incompatible with ‘Christian’ belief. And lest we forget Lucifer, that most famous of retrenched angels, fell from heaven to earth.

And that is exactly where my problem lies, this temptation to fall into the trap of labelling every little thing in the world as good or bad, black or white, safe for work or not safe for work, ANC or DA, us or them. Two little neat categories into which we like to squeeze the world as if it fits. Osama Bin Laden was Muslim therefore Muslims are bad and must be stopped and searched at airports. Whites once colonised Africa so they must all be bad. Christianity is good therefore it is all good. This is not only an inaccurate, simplistic, small minded view but a dangerous one as well. Intolerance has roots in a lack of understanding, in a failure to appreciate the view of the other, to refuse to leave the confines of one’s comfort zone, to label every “other” as bad.

It is a dangerous mind-set that fails to appreciate the complexity, the variety, the sheer stunning range of human beings. That fails to appreciate that the everyday is rooted both in the simple and the complex, that fails to reach out to the ‘other’ and prefers to sit, solidly rooted in its ignorance, refusing to accept that even angels can fall, that the portrait of the world we choose to see is often not the whole story.

The Greatest Speech of All Time

It is honestly difficult to put into words what I thought the first time I watched this video clip and I am rarely one to be lost for words. Faced with the title, "The Greatest Speech of All Time" and the image of Charlie Chaplin I actually thought it was some sort of joke. Honestly if anyone was going to deliver a history making speech, then it would probably be Obama or Mugabe (I can hear your howls of protest but more on that later) not Charlie Chaplin but as life so often does, I was shocked; pleasantly shocked.

Anyway, enough of me putting words in Mr Chaplin's mouth, here is the man himself:

(The epic music in the background is from the soundtrack of Inception by Hans Zimmer)

The sound of our voices

When I was young, my most defining characteristic was that I was very quiet. My hand would remain in my lap in class even though I knew the answer to the question the teacher had just posed. I would look out the window of our car and watch the world roll by without letting any commentary pass through my lips. I would listen to people talk about something I found very interesting and leave the opportunity to put my two cents in.

Where did this reluctance come from? I hardly know? Most of it was rooted in fear that my thoughts weren't worth anything, afraid that maybe the answer in my mind was the wrong one and the class would laugh at me, a fear that nobody would listen. So I learned to observe the world passing by, passing my own silent judgement in my mind and quietly living with a whirlwind of thoughts caught up in my head. That is until I learnt the power of the pen.

Many do not realise that in order to be a good speaker one has to be a good listener, be able to catch the nuances of expression in the words of others, the slight gesture that betrays a carefully hidden emotion, the dramatic one that gives a grandeur to the spoken word and the tone of voice that belies depths of meaning. But beyond that, in order to be a good writer, one has to be a good reader as well. A reader of books, of people, of the world around one; an observer as it were. And thus began a life of observing, looking through the looking glass. Seeing the world sometimes as if one were not part of it. And sometimes feeling too much, as if the troubles and toils of the universe were laid at your door. I would scribble furiously in my little brown Marvo book and my classmates would wonder, or more usually laugh. My study periods at school were spent buried behind a book, transported to another time and another place, living the lives of heroes, speaking the words of kings and being lost to this world.

It is a pleasure I still enjoy immensely and in the past few years that has, to my great surprise, earned me some recognition. But beneath the escape from my prison of self imposed juvenile silence, I came to discover something else: the power of the written and spoken word. Words could change the world. Simple phrases put together could invoke feelings and passions that never existed in the heart before it was pierced by these seemingly harmless arrangement of letters. It changed my life and I began writing and speaking with a purpose beyond escapism. And as my country began its slow collapse, I found that it was the only weapon I could fight with. The reality of our situation threatened at all times to dam the spring of hope in my heart but in the written word I found an escape, a tunnel to Wonderland that no government propaganda could close off.

So reading Noviolet Bulawayo's (the winner of this years Caine Prize for African Writing) description of Bulawayo, my city of birth, as a place where...

"the purple flowers [of the Jacaranda's] argue with the cool blue of the sky. Failing to win, the flowers drop on the pavement where they are stomped to death,"

takes me back to a place beyond my present situation to a city that carries so many precious memories.

And maybe the rest of the world might be passing us by, caught up in the worries of the Arab Spring, or the Italian's latest political fiasco but it assures me that somewhere someone still remembers the rise and fall of our motherland. And if the pen really is mightier than the sword then it might rest on our shoulders as Zimbabweans to write, to read and preserve the history of our country, to transmit the burden of our legacy into the future. To know that the sound of our voices can indeed change our world.

"The drought that affects Bulawayo is a metaphor for the political drought in Zimbabwe. But even though the rain might be long on coming we know in our heart of hearts, that it is on its way. One day we will wake up to its fat drops exploding on our windows and the thunder chasing away the demons that lurk in the air, lightning flashing brightly like the eyes if God...But until then, we have only the jacaranda’s to console us and heal the wounds in our hearts. The beautiful purple blossoms floating gently to the ground, whispering so gently you might not hear it if you don’t listen hard enough, don’t open your heart to the beauty of this created world. They say, “He is there, He remembers you; always." ~ Bongani Ncube-Zikhali, Portrait of a Half Remembered City

Visit NoViolet's website here.