I have no illusions that I speak for anybody or that I have found the magic cure for our national ills. I try to spice up my efforts weekly (weakly) with exhortations for us to find some joy in the miserable life that those in power inflict on us.
And always, there is the hope that somewhere, in some noble hidden breast, a flame of national resurgence will burst into the white heat that will relieve our plight.
This reference taps directly into a poem that I have quoted before, the magisterial Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, by Thomas Gray. He speaks to the poor and simple folk who seemed to have been passed by during their lives.
He admonishes us not to neglect “the short and simple annals of the poor”. Because, he says wistfully: “Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid/Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;/Hands, that might the rod of empire have sway’d,/Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.”
The notion is one of neglected potential that was overlooked by the powers that be. Perhaps the best intentions embedded in curricula are so driven by politics and personal enrichment that the one-size-fits-all education system run in government schools prepares the learner cohorts for mediocrity.
Perhaps the crumbling economy and the moral disintegration of our guardians have left it too late for us to nurture the future leaders, thinkers and dreamers who will lead us out of the desert of our despair to a liveable life.
I dream that we can start to dream again. A Chinese proverb says: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now. We had the dream 30 years ago.
We did not plant the tree. The tree was a symbol of togetherness, endurance, shelter, the workplace of the village schoolmaster, the tryst for lovers and the hiding place from approaching robbers.
One of my favourite poems is called Trees. The words are so beautiful that they were set to music. Look it up to find solace for your sad and neglected state, you who have been overlooked, retrenched, overworked, underpaid, exploited, debilitated and, ultimately, dehumanised in the rat race that is the human condition.
Of course, I am not speaking to the privileged minority or the traitors who exchanged our national dream of nationhood for half a pot of tar. If we acted immediately when we recognised the betrayal, we might have planted the sapling which would now be a fully grown oak.
But we adopted the ethic of temporary euphoria, short cuts, add-water-and-stir; and we neglected the truth that there are no free lunches. A nation needs busy hands and willing hearts. We are close to despair because our dream has been purloined, stolen, diluted or perhaps all three.
Because we maintain artificial barriers of race and culture, hegemony and tradition, we have discarded the basic rule of unity being strength.
We have to be told that we do not know our strength until being strong is the only option left. Let those who bay for blood, nationalisation, racial expunging and overthrowing this and changing that go on howling into the east wind. Let us start asking questions of one another. How did we get here?
Don’t we know yet that if you don’t know how to do something you are free to ask? That will show your ignorance for five minutes. After that, if those who know show, those who own unfairly share, and those who feel for others embrace, things would fall into place.
The lush habitats of the haves will always be better than the sandy wastes to which we were consigned. But we are not aspiring to a game of national musical chairs. We are just asking for fair treatment. We are not the wretched of the Earth.
* Alex Tabisher.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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