Today is my birthday. I share it with the anniversary of Steve Biko’s death. It’s always been a bitter sweet day for me.
Of all the struggle icons Biko has always resonated with me. I think mostly because I believe the biggest challenge one can ever face is with oneself. In fact one’s mind is the biggest challenge.
A statement by the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes. “I think; therefore I am” was the end of the search Descartes conducted for a statement that could not be doubted. He found that he could not doubt that he himself existed, as he was the one doing the doubting in the first place.
Your existence is purely based on your ability to think. Without thinking you don’t exist.
The mind is the most important tool but you would be surprised to learn how many people don’t use it. In fact most people enjoy relegating thinking to someone else. When you think about it, this is why corporate hierarchy exists.
Escalation next to compound interest are the best corporate inventions of the last 1000 years. “Let me ask management”…is like saying hang on my thinking stops here and beyond this point my brain can no longer make decisions. I have often watched how people love giving the hospital passes. They relish giving the responsibility to someone else. They don’t have to think of a solution and better yet they can’t be held accountable should the solution not work.
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
Being black is not a matter of pigmentation – being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.
Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time.
Above are My three favorite quotes from Steve Biko. What I love about the quotes is that they don’t blame anyone but oneself. As human-beings we are all given brains and the ability to think. If you choose not use your brain it’s on you! If you choose to let your brain to be exploited, its on you! If we don’t think it’s important to have schools that foster our cultural narrative, it’s on us! No one else to blame. Please read vernacular schools.
Sometimes even when you are given a great opportunity you squander it. There are these two brothers who went to the same school I did. Our parents sacrificed a lot to make sure we got private school education when black kids were not allowed to go to then white schools. It was a tough going in those years.
These two brothers were given the best opportunity and they were loved by their parents. In fact the father of the brothers used to take us all to school. I didn’t get so much as a happy birthday from my father my entire life, and these guys were being taken to school by their dad! It was unheard of back in those days.
Today BOTH brothers are druggies. Both parents have since passed away, perhaps more like they ran away to the after life, than watch their sons deteriorate to drugs. Those private school educated minds now lived from fix to fix. Nyaope has dissolved what little reasoning was left.
The two brothers had everything or so I thought when I was growing up. But it seems their fight was internal. Their fight was within themselves. I can see how that could be a loosing battle. It’s tough to win a fight against your own mind. If you have any suggestions how I can help these bothers please let me know in the comments line.
Today I have the luxury to write what I like. I cannot be arrested or killed in detention for doing so. This is a right I don’t take for granted. I write about today so that tomorrow’s past is better than today’s past. I exercise my mind with these blogs in the hope that you will join me and be my consciousness sparing partners.
Let’s use the brothers as a cautionary tale of what happens when we are not conscious of our actions. Consciousness should be an attitude of the mind and a way of life.
Dear Black people, we are now the ones responsible for our own demise…it’s no longer someone else’s fault. Blame is the fastest way to stand still.
Thank you all for the birthday wishes you cheap skates! Sending emoji’s of balloons and presents is not the same as real gifts! I want real gifts please! In the interim I will settle for you forwarding this blog on…
Purely from personal experience, the brothers cannot be saved by anyone but themselves. With anything deemed difficult, you gotta want to DO IT. I did it even when i could have the help of rehab centre doctors assistance. I was speaking to a now rehabilated Nyaoperian in Tembisa some month and a half back, when I thought there was no return from chowing that stuff. He is clean today.
The only thing you can really afford is support.
“We are the ones responsible for our own demise”.
Ta
Eish so now we watch the siblings perish?
I tried calling SANCA yesterday but after 9 attempts….you know if I was druggie needing desperate help I would have probably killed myself that’s how useless it was trying to get help from SANCA.
Try Kwasizabantu mission. 032 481 5700 based in Kzn.
Not a great place for a sober person like me, but great for a drug junkie! The last time I cheked the services were free.