Into 'mbomXhosa

The time has come for you to listen to my views...These are my personal views on many issues including politics and political discours, love, societal order/dis-order, Africa, friends, life and much more...So get into my head and hear, read and engage what i have to say...

Monday, October 02, 2006

Poetry

Mila: my unborn Son

Hello me boy
I have so much to say to you
I know not were to start

Inside of me you will one day brew
And loom perfectly as a boy so precious and beautiful
That day I cannot fathom or imagine at this – my current time
The joy that shall that day feel my heart I cannot conjure
The smile in the face of your father I breathe to sight
The elation that will feel his being I live to pleasure

You may be curious as to why you already have a name
Well its simple my boy
You are already in our minds
In our thoughts and plans

We talk about you constantly
How you will bring joy to our world
How you will let live our love
We dream about your smile
Looking into your eyes

Baby this life is Rough
It’s treacherous
Perfidious
and ghastly
For your readily fragile self

I wish you could stay inside of me
That I could protect you from harms way
That I could cage you in
And look at you all day everyday

One day you will read this ode
And know how mommy felt years before you were born
Mila I am to love you for life
Mihlali Gqada



Poetry

You MAR me

Maybe I am a tad bit naïve
A little too easily trusting
Definitely too much of a love giver
And not a receiver of the same compassion

I am scarred internally
From all the lies, the hurt and pain
I am in constant somnolence
I am almost numb

Baby you have made me a cog
Motionless…deterred…stock-still
I have no more faith in your devotion to this connection
My body no longer craves your touch

I have not words to express the deadness of my heart
As it sinks deeper in misery
Trying to copulate
Trying to revive my own self worth
It’s a futile exercise at this instant
But it will get better

I took a sizeable gamble loving you
And now that I have lost all
I have me left and that counts for a life
So march on, victorious
Another victim in your bag of conquest

Shine on ke s’tandwa
Ring on me if you please
Strangle me if you so covet
If it makes you more of a man
Hurt me again
But you shunt impair my love – NEVER
I will LOVE again

Mihlali Gqada

My BLACKNESS is for SALE

My blackness sits on the porch with a loud FOR SALE sticker hanging for all to spot and muse at
No procrastination on my part, in fact it’s a first come first serve situation
For all you withies looking to colour your fraternity BLACK
I need no dexterity: my skin tone should set me free
No aptitude: my dense brownness should be enough
No need for flair: my Afro hairstyle will complete your puzzle
My circular figure will configurate and shape your business

You need me more than I need you
Surely a couple a million will dent not your cash flow
Let me decorate you commerce Mr
To satisfy you BEE obligation
To me you are indebted
But fear not I will silence my role
And let do you your run arounds
I will seat at the board meetings
Looking professional
But say very little
So fear not Master
You are still in charge
But let me eat too in your cherry berry illegally solicited rites

I will BEE your fraternity by right – Master

Mihlali Gqada

A response to Ichumile Gqada’s perspective on COSATU

by: Mihlali Gqada
The remnants of a combative union movement formed in 1973 are today a historical glare into what then was but today is not. Like all major liberation and emancipative fraternities the labour movement has since democracy lost its vigour or sold its soul to megalithic disparate power squabbles. COSATU South Africa’s trade union federation formed in 1985, with currently 21 affiliated unions is deemed as Africa’s largest and most ‘disciplined’ trade union. COSATU has in recent years moved from representation and issue based debates to hauling magnates associating with those in our midst who are clearly perplexed. The internal debates currently brewing in the trade union range from, who is to contest who in the upcoming National General Council, who is supporting Zuma and what is he to benefit, while nothing is being said about workers needs. Ironically, the CCMA was smuggled in as a necessary negotiating tool, necessitated by the Labour Relations Act, to ensure adequate redress for workers; now this CCMA is today solving the squabbles between Vavi and Modisha, the two heavy weights of COSATU.

With the recent slurs at any and every initiative by the ANC, COSATU has managed to al bait against its own ideological prescripts (doggy and unknown to me at this point in time), speak about possibilities of pulling out of the Tripartite Alliance, no doubt to join the SACP’s brewing ambitions to go it alone in 2009. Forgetting that the plus 3 million cattle’s it speaks of are in majority ANC supporters and or members, who seek mere representation at work. Seemingly we have learnt nothing from the Zimbabwean used to be a trade union movement, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), how after attaining little power, broke down due to individual power mongolism.

If anything COSATU is slowly loosing its plot as a worker union, with its soul mandate being the betterment of workers civil liberties and privileges. The current leadership has done little no justice for such worker liberties, instead like the ominous; boding evil ANC Youth League has made Zuma its soul program since the ‘conspiracy’ allegations began. We now have to contend with Vavi’s face at every turn of our media reports, chanting and slinging, raying on the saga heavily, for his own personal benefits of cause. As if that is not enough, as though the world ‘conspiracy’ is new to his vocabulary, he uses it in calamitous access, now Modisha, the elusive president of the federation is conspiring to outs him, simply because he does not support him for Sec Gen for the second term; what ever happened to the democratic rights of all citizens.

As the battle for power continues, workers are suffering, the work of the movement takes a back seat and regrettably we have to contend with listening to COSATU”s bickering…

Question: what is the real cause of the succession debate
Answer: personal desires for power, as if Vavi can really be a minister (I surely will not live to see that day)

I respite my crate
Candid Chat

Exhuming the tattered, frayed remains of a women


Thank heavens the bogus and spurious women’s sunlight hours have passed us by, I couldn’t for another minute bare the overhaul, the glorification and suspect deification of women. I refused to listen to slave inscribed vocalisations of colossal men giving advise and honorarium value to the strength of the mouth of women, or the irritating salute to the stride they made to liberation as they firmly stood behind their men. The pictures and dialogue of women icons has a façade out glare all over it, almost like a must, it is grating to say the list. Year in and year out we hear the same phoney repudiation of women’s need, summed up in the upliftment of their socio-economic status, and a call for the end of the scourging sexual enslavement of women. Women are alleged to be the eternal victims of all societal ills, the damsels in distress who knows not how to tussle for her self, hence the need for men to fight her battles for her. Like mute hogs women sit aside and nod as men march on their behalf, chanting latter day slogans which to date have never witnessed fruitation.

It’s a stomach churning thought really, how women have been made feeble by power mongles whose interest is to be politically correct. More and more women are made cranium-less and as callous as their male counterparts. The only mission being to equate them to men, an impossible rapture even of she Godzilla, as unsightly and tough as she, she is not a men and that should not in this lifetime be the parameter by which to judge the strength of a women. This musculanisation of women must at once come to an end, the undue declaration that women must be in business, sitting in dreary board meetings or breaking their nails mining crystals is absurd in the least. The acclimation that women must lead is tedious – the structural confinement of women to todays world order is unjustifiable.

Today a powerful women is the suit wearing, Q7 driving single women with no children and thus no life, she is qualified by her dull hairstyle and ability to give orders, a flourishing bank balance summarises her qualifier to power and potency. Long dreaded speeches speaking about this woman circulate the world, filling it with more hogwash than the remains of the Tsunami. While stamped behind a podium this women is expected be on fire, firmly thanking her male counterparts for heaving realised her strength and given her the opportunity to prove them right as she steps to the challenge, as fierce as it is, as demanding and challenging as it is she took the step, not with standing that for the men around her its just child’s play.

For a long time we as women have mimicked the order of the day, and rose to the men’s occasion, we have graced their world stage undoubtedly to prove that we too can. We may have succeeded in their race to prove our worth and faculty, our zest and aptitude but we have failed ourselves, as we have not defined our struggle, our strength and wisdom. We have successfully failed to cathartic our hearts and minds. We have disgraced the plight and fight of mother hen, the ferry godmother and all other women with special feminine gifts for the world, and lucratively buried ourselves on alien manor.

I am mortified at the prevalence of this disease, and how the sufferers do not know they have been infected. When if ever will women appreciate their difference in skills, physical and logic make-up, thought, emotion and love to men? When will they define their own groundbreaking rules for success and honour, their own playing field and tools, their own qualifications to stardom and bravery? Gone are the days of midwives being the doctor of all women ills, a smile the healer of all wounds and the heart the pacifier of all evil. Why aren’t we specialising in sharing the love that make us unique creatures, the joy that feels our homes, the patience that makes us astounding beings. If all women were to use their brain power to share some pleasure and remind the world that there is more to life than success we would have succeeded in bringing peace and stability to the world, as ours would be pure soul food, nourishment of humanity and the preservation of humankind.

So I pledge to exhume all those lost souls trying too hard to imitate a failing course, to be themselves and let that be a course to live and survive.

To date we have succeeded in showing off our ability to be whatever and whoever we want to be but have failed in being ourselves – women. Yes we can be leaders, and no we do not want head outs, we can be the men and head of our homes, we can preach, mine, garden, give it to us and we will do it. The one thing we cannot do is to provide the other half to reproduce so for this soul purpose we still need our male counterparts (LOL).

I respite my crateCandid Chat

Mihlali Gqada’s reflections on President Mbeki’s Nelson Mandela Lecture

The president raised a number of issues, in a seeming marathon presentation, which circulated the world and its problems in an hour. He managed to roam around critical world issues of leadership, the double decker authority of the European Ivory Towerian powers and its effect on the poor. He ambiguously, though scarred off, calling a spade a spade, warned the European forces of leading the world into temptation of a Third World War. In so doing he has undoubtedly rattled a few cages. In likening himself to the words guru, Yeats, he sees himself as an anchoret of warning on possible misfortunes, which could be avoided now rather than latter.

On the one hand it should be noted and understood that the evils of the world are not a modern day creation, therefore cannot be dissolved or halved exclusively by modern day forces or facets of those in power. In a world were capitalism ploughs its savoury seeds to ripe materialism, idealism is a mere theoretical baseless phenomenon. In a world were the market dictates camaraderie and amity there is no space for beckoning dead snakes and or sulking. In this Dog eat Dog World; the best one can do is to learn very fast how to bark as to protect his territory first and foremost. Ideally dogs should be tamed, but teaching an old dog new tricks like trying to tame a well structured and formulated bull dog is unfeasible. So be a dog and transform his bark as his companion. The sad issue is the fact that the rich gobble up the poor without fear, remorse or contemplation. All we can do as a nation is to give a hand to those willing to take it, we have seen in the case of Mugabeland (Zimbabwe) that offering aid does not automate its being appreciated and utilised by those in dire need of it, we have further witnessed that talking does not translate to action as promises do not translate to output.

The wars of the world in my observation are two fold; both deadly and evidently catastrophic; one, are those made by mere starvations, those which lead people to want to take bread out of the mouths of others, those which are driven by hunger, access to resources, famine, natural disasters which leave people destitute and not knowing what to do. This kind of war is prone to Third World countries which are on the brink of collapse, with no possible glare or peek into the future, they are circumsentual and or coincidental. These struggles are thus unavoidable, they lead to the poker game effect of betting with what a country has, natural resources; usually oil, gold, platinum, diamonds amongst many, to gain some money from the rich world, by so doing selling off a countries life line for a few a nickel to free the battered souls at a time in a countries life. This leads to never ending indebtedness, much bitter relations and a smile on the faces of the rich world as this to them equals never scourging loyalty. This is enslavement of a special kind, graver in consequence and tougher in reward. This has third world against third world, seeking assistance from first world, in the form of armament for brother to kill brother without an ounce of remorse, so that war is ridden in third world countries almost exclusive from the engine which has fuelled these wars.

The second type is that of pure arrogance and conceitedness, that which is blatant and unapologetic, that of simply declaring war on a power notably less rich and stable than yourself, like the bullying tactics of primary kids, were the bigger grouchy usually air headed kid picks on the smaller, nerdish therefore brighter kid just because he can. This we see in the case of Iraq, Lebanon and others.

Social cohesion and human solidarity has become a money making scheme of much of non – governmental organisations and associations worldwide who falsify their abilities while chanting rhetoric as spectators to the real problems of the world, these unions stand as champions of a new World Order through soliciting large sums of money which pays for their own luxurious lifestyles. They are famous for attending world functions making enough noise to attract the media, some going as far as marching, picketing and or killing themselves on behalf of this New World Order, phenomenon. They have up to now done nothing or implored any victories. They just stand outside the real issues providing colourful decoration to the real decision makers.

The legacy of poverty will only be confronted and turned back by an end to it, through the provision of basic needs like food, shelter, water, education to name a few. No amount of preaching and praying will see to this, the practicality of the situation is the need that is to be met (full stop). An end to racism will have to see through the turn in tide, from the Caucasian to the African, the material resourcefulness of the latter, the willingness of the former to apologise as Pheko puts it, he being able to share in his illegally solicited millions or rather resources. Ubuntu is not only for and amongst black people it’s a humanitarian gesture for all human beings. Nor can a starving soul be interested in humanitarian gestures, to the rich the poor is a menace, an outcast, a dim-witted fellow with no use. It is a pity that more often than not a starving man is illiterate, has not allies and is thus stuck to poverty like a flower is stuck to a stem.

Naively as a nation we scorn at the few a million in the hands of our fellow brothers, we call them gold diggers and shun at them for driving mercs and living in peaked areas. How exactly is it that we seek to ensure the development of our own yet are jealous at this same development, are we not but our own enemies, our own lethal weapons, our own slaves to copulation.

The President’s speech like testimonies of the good will, has conjured in us a tone of warning, not of destructive diminutives but of the world as is and what is brewing amidst our lives. We do not have the masculinity or the mammon to stop it; so rather let he put to us a caution, as did many before him, in world wars before his time. His outlook is prophetical of what will be.

I respite my crate