Sun May 26 11:42:25 SAST 2013
Sun May 26 11:42:25 SAST 2013

The fault lies with wrongdoing in high places

May 8, 2012 | Oupa Ngwenya | 1 comments

THE anxious state of affairs besetting the world and our country could well be described by the title song of Donny Hathaway's album Everything is Everything.

Picture taken from www.donnyhathaway.blogspot.com

From that album, the acclaimed empress of song Sibongile Khumalo would most likely remember the track that enjoyed more airtime than the rest,The Ghetto.

The never-ageing gentleman of the famed musical group, Beaters, later renamed Harari, Sipho Mabuse would also recall how many dance themselves out of their miseries to the beat of that song.

The song that appealed most to me is Thank you Master for my Soul. Far from engendering worship, the song has touches of liberating that is no less than singing gratitude to a higher force that most religions call God.

Being part of creation too, there is no greater gift to be thankful for to the higher force than being human. Of all the reasons to be thankful for, having a soul should be cherished the most. But in the real world, having a soul seems to be thankless. Societies are degenerating into theatres of dog-eat-dog.

The United Nations, from which international solidarity is to be forged to remake the world, is yet to find its firm footing against being seen as an instrument for the powerful to keep scrambling for a "world order" that ministers to the colonial interests of the strong at the expense of the weak.

The global village, we so fondly proclaim, has not helped to make the wealth of nations to see and treat people as one. The failure of that oneness has seen the world become hopelessly sadder.

Back home, the state of affairs is no mark of happiness. This year's 18th anniversary of the all-inclusive general elections of April 27 in 1994 brought no message to lift the spirit of the nation.

If there was one to write home about, it was lost in the heat of the government and citizens being at odds over the e-tolling of Gauteng freeways.The snakes and ladders battles bedevilling the ranks of our crime-fighting agencies are becoming too frequent a turbulence for the general safety of our country to live with.

To suggest that all is well on that front is to ask heads to be buried in the sand, in the hope that the turbulent intrigue will go away. The country can do better than that. It is high time that reason mustered some courage to prevent the quagmire from entrenching itself as the order of the day.

The depressing fault, dear citizens, lies not in the intermittent reports that the media keeps churning out, but rather in the remorseless wrongdoing in high places. One of the sins that the media readily confesses to is that it is a mirror that reflects the good and the bad in society. The options for society are clear: It either considers the image presented and make that change, or smashes the mirror to compensate for the irrationality of its guilty conscience.

Those who still have their souls do not go down that slippery road, but those that have lost theirs do. Our government has no reason to allow itself to fall in that line. This gift of being, so beautifully told by Hathaway, still lives in the song Thank you Master for my Soul.

Comments

Sun May 26 11:42:25 SAST 2013 ::
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May 9, 2012

Nsizwa

The dark forces (Capitalists,Bilderberg,Illuminati,etc) have won.People have sold their souls.Their earthly possessions define them.....such a shame.Thanks to guys like you Bra Oupa.........i still have hope
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