Where’s the rainbow now?

Madam – Dream or wake up and see no rainbow?

I wrote in last week questioning to what extent we must be kind – boys, naartjies, ran away without thanking me. Well, another incident happened, affirming a strange idiosyncrasy to me. Just as ‘Silent no more’ harped in their letter, ever so subtly, I am going to vent! Brace yourself. LOL :-)

In my ‘cheap’ tracksuit at a major retail store, I stopped to peruse the notice board. In front of me, a well dressed African lady with her two young boys – about eight and 10 years old. They were in their school uniforms, from an established, prior ‘Indian’ school and seemed well to do.

The boys greeted me. I love people, smiled and greeted back smiling at the mother. Then I was beyond shocked. Both boys put their hands together and begged me for R2!

I mean really now. I’m actually an unemployed epileptic with a disabled hand, so I live on a grant. Besides, I was just in a R100 track suit. What did they see?

Yes, I am of Indian descent BUT a democratic, totalitarian, South African. Full stop! My recent ancestors came here as slave labourers just over 150 years ago. As a community, when you think of it, yes, we have in a sense prospered, even though paradoxically under an apartheid regime, where we were also discriminated against.

And what might you ask is the reason for us now being seen as prosperous? Quite simply education, respect and unity. They stuck together, formed schools, educated and became someone and helped others as well.

This is how communities build up – we stick up and help each other in need. Yet, from this instance why does a well off parent allow her children to feel the need to beg from others? This has happened quite a few times to me. Almost like a ritual in public places now, beg from South African Indians?

In all honesty, the opinion of us is that we have money and are money ‘and all and all’? sic

(Rhetorically, I just learned that adult males, of recent Bangladeshi origin are being kidnapped and held for ransom, right here in our quaint hometown.)

Upon research, one will ascertain that primarily, colonisation and the spread of the western world that we now live in, is because of the voyages of discovery, to basically trade with, or rather pillage, the East.

That is a fact yes. It WAS the past. Don’t we have one world now, where we see human as human? Ubuntu? Do I need to wake up from my dream that an amazing man spent 27 years in jail for to see the rainbow?

What must we see? It may, quite funnily, be easier IF everyone was prescribed with fixed contact lenses that see only the human skeleton, the same colour that we all share as the ‘clichéd rainbow’, does blur the vision!

Suppose, just like Martin Luther King, I dream with my contact lenses fixed and will not wake up!

Mr S. M