I am whatever I say I am!

I’m a black man who was born in the Republic of South Africa. I descend from the Zulu kingdom and I now reside in Cape Town. This is who I am, if you ignore my race, the clan I belong to or any information I give you about myself, then you are purposefully choosing to ignore my identity.

A few days ago there was an advert made by a reputable advertising agency about feeding poor kids. The communication was provocative and eye opening, but unfortunately it came off as racist.

The advertising showed a small black boy being treated like a dog, by a rich white lady.

The message reads; “The average domestic dog eats better than millions of children.”  

The message is true and this is the crisis we are facing in our country. I believe the message is correct, and it’s about time we face facts.

Alza Rautenbach the founder and CEO of feed a child was the lady in charge of signing off this advert. She was on eNCA defending this advert saying; everything was done with the intention of causing a reaction. What truly got me boiled up inside was what she had said while trying to defend the advert. She said she does not see colour or (at the very least) her organization does not see colour.

I am a black man and I’m proud to be black, I’m not ashamed of the colour that shells my skin, I’m not ashamed of the melanin that covers my entire body. If you’re white I don’t think you should be ashamed of your skin colour, the same goes if you green, pink, purple or blue. Colour is part of your identity.

The colour on your skin is part of your identity and if you don’t see the colour on my skin or anybody else’s skin colour, for that matter, then you are purposefully choosing to ignore our identities. 

I’m a black man who was born in the Republic of South Africa. I descend from the Zulu kingdom and I now reside in Cape Town. This is who I am, if you ignore my race, the clan I belong to or any information I give you about myself, then you are purposefully choosing to ignore who I am.

Here is the link to Alza’s response to the ad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAUbW5zIad8 

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery

"So we finally made it, we made if even though we had our backs up against the wall!" The best line I’ve ever heard in a song. These are the words of Chester Bennington from Linkin Park.

A few weekend ago I went home for a funeral, a family member had passed away and it was a very sad and a beautiful goodbye. We mourned and we reflected and we later spoke politics. We spoke about what the current leaders intend on doing and we spoke about ourselves as black people. Don’t worry guys, this one’s for the black folks.

We – as black people – have been dubbed as the race that consumes a lot and produces less. When we are stressed we go shopping, and when we celebrate the festive season we spend almost all that we have saved up during the year, AKA 'Stokvel.'

As a young black man I think it’s my moral duty to do my best to inform, educate and help rehabilitate the minds of black men and women. We as the youth will lead this nation in the near future but we need to know how are we going to do that. I don’t have all the answers but what I do know is that we have to start looking at our spending patterns and reduce them drastically. We have to save and invest as much capital as we can so that we, as a race, will be financial emancipated and thus we can start looking at producing more goods than consuming most of them.

We as black people have never really been a people of greed, we have African proverbs that have been in existence since the beginning of time. We have lived on the premise of collective survival, “ umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”. This is not something to be forgotten because this is how we defended our great nation many years ago against foreign nations. we have stood fast up until we decided to let greed creep into our hearts and destroy our people and what we have.

Bob Marley says it well, “emancipate yourself from mental slavery”.

Together we can build this nation; together we have a better shot at tomorrow.

Together we can all sing as one and say:
"We finally made it. We made it even though we had our backs up against the wall!"