Take me to love.

I don’t have a TV in my house anymore, one of the reasons for that is because I moved houses. Where I live now is pretty good, student life, work and parties and a heck of a lot of fun.

I love being a student, this is the stage were one progresses from being a child to becoming a grown up. This is the stage were one is aiming to be taken seriously by his/her peers, parents, boss and eventually the rest of the world. This is the stage were we morph our dreams into reality, so therefore you would like people to see you as a grown up, a human being with substance.

I don’t have a TV because I like reading; I like it when there is peace and no unnecessary discourse between house mates. More importantly why I don’t want have a TV is the ridiculous ads they show on TV were they portray black people as unsophisticated and all we can comprehend is humour or exaggerated humour.

For some of you who don’t know, I am studying copywriting and if you know what that is, you probably thinking to yourself “huh? He should understand more than anybody why the ads look like this.” well I don’t understand… shoot me.

There is one channel in particular were they show black people in a ridiculous manner, all the characters in the ads are exaggerated and come across as humorous. Sometimes these ads don’t hold back, sometimes these ads insult the black people’s intelligence and that is very messed up.

I know what you thinking, “this guy has been quiet for so long and now that his writing he’s going to use race for inspiration… pathetic.” Bear with me and let me get my message across.

I’m not going to use that ‘our past made us like this card’ no.

Our past has got nothing to do with this blog post, but I am more concerned about our future. If there is a communication tool that is used to degrade another people's potential than that group of people have no hope in tomorrow. We need to be inspired, to always aim for the best and not for what is mediocre.

I’m an advertising student and when I see ads with black people being portrayed as idiots, I get very disappointed in the industry.

We need to be inspired as young and upcoming black students. All I ask for is inspiration from an industry I would like to work in one day and not just entertainment or insults.

I'm appreciating my love

A few things stand out in my life that I appreciate. Firstly I appreciate my family; I appreciate the opportunities I’ve been blessed with and I appreciate the country I live in. YES! I am proudly South African. With all our problems I am still proud to be a South African. Of course I’m not proud of our problems but we working on it.

Our sportsmen and sportswomen are the very reason why I gloat so much and why say I’m proudly South African. They are not given much to work with but at each and every event they do their best and they surprise the world by bringing back the gold. I’m proud of heroes and heroines like Oscar Pretorius, Caster Semenye, and Chad leclos just to name a few, even our rugby team wins when needed. It’s not much but my country and these heroes and heroines make me proud to be a South African.

There is one thing though that I don’t like that we do as South Africans. We focus (sometimes) our attention on athletes that have left the country and live in a different country and have taken up a different citizenship, we praise their abilities when we mention them on the radio and then we say he/she was born in South Africa with the most disgusting joy, man can fathom. I hate that we have to feel obliged to talk about them when they excel as if they are doing us a favour when they do well in their chosen field of play, even when they are playing against us and they do well, our loss is no longer disconcerting because we lost to a team that has players who were born in South Africa.

I say forget them as they have forgotten us, let’s focus our attention and our praises on the athletes that are making us proud, and encourage those who are trying to make us proud (including Bafana Bafana) to keep trying until they win.

I don’t think I’m asking for much. All I’m asking for is a little appreciation for what we have.

Is this real life?

The other day I went to go watch a movie and I was really inspired to express my view of what I thought of the movie. The movie was well written, the filming was good, the actors were even better and everything about the movie was well done, it was the total package... at least that's what I thought.

Most of us are looking for the silver lining in life, we always look for the positive in the negative, and a few days ago I realised I was probably one of the few people in the world who always looked for the positive in the negative.

Upon watching this AMAZING movie I slowly but surely started to realise that seeing the positive in the negative is very much overrated. The world is supposed to have negatives; the shoe is always going to drop when you have a good thing going. It’s like complimenting someone on their beauty and then when they open their mouth you are met with this overwhelming whiff of decayed fish from the fish market. Yes the shoe has to drop, this is life and life does not always have happy endings. I guess what i'm saying is that the ending of the movie SUCKED because it was a happy ending.

But lets look at things differently, let me ask you this question; what if your life did not have a happy beginning and you had a rough start to life, does this mean that you are almost going to have a happy ending? When you were born in poverty will you die rich? And if you answered yes how long will you enjoy your riches? I ask this question because the character had a rough start but ended up having a happy ending. 

I know for a lot of Africans this is not always the case, if you are born in poverty the chances of getting out are very slim, but look on the bright side there is a chance non-the less… right? 

But let’s not dwell on the negative, let’s focus on the positive for a little bit. We all have a shot at true love, we all can overcome the challenges we are faced with when we are backed up against the ropes, we all have the will and the drive to live and survive, all of us were born with the ability to be übermensch… but how do we release this potential?

But back to the movie, the ending of the movie was horrible and unrealistic; this is what I call 'romantic farce'. Its annoying because the movie touched on real issues and it delivered everything as if it was real, for the duration of the movie I was lost in this ever changing world of intrigue, I even thought this was how normal people lived their lives in other countries. But the ending reminded me that this is a movie.

This piece I’m writing is supposed to be short and concise, I don’t want to bore you, and waste your Precious time, but I do want to ask you this:  Does every cloud have a silver lining? 

The forgotten

As we grow older we all forget things, we tend to have this tendency to remember things that we interact with on a more regular basis. It’s a new year and some of us have resolutions to see through.

I know what you are thinking, “this guy is going to tell us what to do in the New Year, dam Alpheus  you are such a tired cliché”. If you are thinking that well let me enlightened on a little knowledge.

In the New Year we should remember the forgotten, or at least we should try to remember the forgotten for a day… or seven… every day.

Bear with me here. Try to think back and remember what is important and you might find that some, if not all that you have forgotten is the essence of your being, or the beginning of your being.

I’ll talk about myself to put things in perspective. When I was born (like most of us) I was born into the language of IsiZulu, this was the language my mother whispered into my ears every night and every morning when I was a little baby, she did this until I could understand the words and I could speak the words. She gave me meaning through a language and she gave me a name through this beautiful language. I say IsiZulu is beautiful because my mother was beautiful, she taught me the language and the language became beautiful because of my mother.

Before my mother’s beauty interferes with you trail of thought, let’s get back to want we are talking about.

As I grew up, I was unaware that I was slowly but surely forgetting my language, or at least I was forgetting the essence of the language. I was too preoccupied with what I thought was the future, the way forward for our country. I got distracted and I forgot… I forgot my mother’s whisper … I forgot the words.

I have realised this and I now see that the language I first came to understand is dying. There is no two way about it. I have come to understand a different language so well that I have ignored my own. Because I have ignored my language it has not progressed like the language I use every day. My language (because of me) has been stagnant and if I were to continue to ignore it, it would fade away into a distant memory. Unfortunately I’m not the only one who has forgotten their language in this wonderful and divers country of ours.

I’m appealing to everyone; don’t forget your mother’s whisper. Remember the fallen.

How did we escape prison?

Believe it or not, but there are some people who enjoy living in a place that has no hope.

There are a few people in South Africa that actually enjoy living in prison. It is unfortunate that there are some people who are born in prison and thus they have to endure the unpleasant life of hopelessness, until they realise, if they ever, that there is a way out.

I speak from  a point of view that has some sort of insight when it comes to escaping prison. I myself have not really been in prison but my family has. And everyday I am reminded about where we as the Zondi family come from, what we went through and where we see ourselves in the near future.

In South Africa some of us see prison as a nostalgic achievements, that we wear with pride. For example, all of our presidents (post 1994) have escaped prison, either they inherited this freedom or they themselves had to escape. Prison is something that is synonymous with the concept of an eternal emptiness. This concept was created by mankind. and because human beings are a collective creature being ostracised is hell for anybody.

Can you imagine having to wake up in the morning not knowing where your breakfast will come from, or during the winter you ask yourself this question: Will I survive this time? Everyday you have to beg people for money so that you can feed your little sister back home who is forever picked on by the bullies at school because she is too skinny and her clothes are always dirty. Can you image being abandoned by your only parent who left when you were still young because things were too hard for him or her, and you at the age of seven had to take care of everybody and you needed to be taken care of as well.

If you can't imagine this happening to you, then take a closer look at your beautiful country, then you don't have to imagine.

I'm sure a lot of people reading this blog are familiar with the American series "Prison break", where a younger brother puts himself into prison to go and break out his older brother, who was framed and thus ended up in prison. Well for me I wish life was that easy, I wish there had always been someone to rescue the innocent who are trapped in prison and it's not even their fault being there in the first place.

Nobody deserves to be imprisoned by their circumstances, especially when they did not not have a choice in the matter. 

For all of those readers who are a bit confused and may have already started making assumptions about South Africa or the person who is writing this blog, let me put your mind at ease. I  am referring to the unfortunate and man made prison called Poverty, and because it is man made it can be eradicated by man alone.

It is not that hard to help some one escape this eternal emptiness called prison, all you have to do is give someone an opportunity to better themselves and encourage him/her to do the same for the next person. At least that's one way of doing it, what are your suggestions?

LOVE?

The love of my life? This is a question we all need to answer.

I remember when I was young, drunk and infatuation with a girl whom I thought was going to be my wife. She was perfect in every way and she kind of liked me too. I should have waited until the shoe dropped because as we started growing up, she became this rebel child and didn’t want to be told what to do by anybody. As I was growing up I was a good boy my whole life, I did what my mother told me and I always wanted to make her happy. I was a true Mamma’s boy.

As I grew up my eyes were opened and I saw that the love of my life wasn’t really the girl I thought she was, more so I realized the love of my life wasn’t a girl, and no guys it was a boy. The love of my life became something I never dreamt of nor did I even imagine my life drifting towards this way of thinking. For those of you who are still reading and wondering who or what is Alpheus talking about, all I ask is for you to give me a chance to explain.

The love of my life is my pursuit of happiness. This is the one thing all of us are not guaranteed to have, which is happiness, so therefore I have made the love of my life. The pursuit of happiness (not like the movie).

Let me explain further, I’m not looking for happiness from something or someone, I look for the pursuit itself, and therefore for me the pursuit of happiness has become the love of my life.

What is your love? What is your happiness? Truly?  

So who is voting?

Who’s next in this life time to make me want some?

So all the glorious leaders have had their turn, even the “inglorious bastards” have had their time under the sun for a quick tan. So my question is this; are we going to repeat history or call on for some change? If we are going to change our notes from animals to heroes I think we should do the same with our leadership.

Put aside your cultural ambitions and your bigotry believes for quick second, think about the country we live in and think for yourself. What would you prefer; animals running amuck in our country and fulfilling the ignorant Americans fantasies, or would you like to see the progressive intuitive started by the heroes of yesteryear? For me it’s simple, I refuse to let some pompous want to-be tyrant spend my money as a tax payer to improve his living conditions while his closest neighbour lives in a mud hut. Come on! I think you forget that you work for us and not the other way around.

With all that being said, I think it’s time for you to move on. Truth be told you did do some good for us, you did help the disadvantaged and empower those that needed it, in my eyes when you came in you were what we desperately needed but I suppose one thing is certain, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Today and for tomorrow, we need a new “Head of house” because I’m not going to play big brother if you’re still in charge.