From the youth: drink and eat what you are giving us

In the deep rural and mountainous hinterlands of the Eastern Cape villages, there’s still a huge importance attached to tradition. Respect for tradition makes a man. In Xhosa tradition, guests are treasured even though most villagers are now largely indigent.

When serving your guests, you are the first to take pleasure in the treat, “ukhuphe (ibhekile) idliso”. This is an assurance to the guests that there is no poison in the delicacy which they will enjoy, with you, without any anxiety.

It could create a very dull impression if you were to invite people to your function and leave them unattended for your comfort of more classy single malt whiskeys and other treats.          Ideally, what you give to the people you treasure must be good enough for you too.  If you invite people and then isolate yourself, you are actually destroying the values of Ubuntu. You are not a people’s person.

A leader, following the above analogy – the host, must be visible. You must be among the people you lead so that you better understand their difficulties. You must be there so that you feel their pain. A leader is first amongst the first, the primary point of access so that whatever happens to them starts with you. You must lead from the front.

If you are a councillor in Alex, how can you stay in Sandton? How are you going to appreciate the challenges that are faced by your people? As one reggae artist says in one of his songs: “Who feels it, knows it.”

If they do not have water, sanitation, electricity, or their drains are blocked, refuse not being collected and roads riddled with potholes, how will you have a sense of urgency? You must also feel the pain; you cannot be isolated or disconnected from your people.

In South Africa the hosts do not want to taste the treat first. We are left with no choice but to ask a question, “how do we know it’s nontoxic?” If the host doesn’t want to taste first, you are left with two options: indulge or refuse. In most cases, most will put their jackets on the shoulder and leave.

They know that they have all the means to entertain themselves. There are those who have nothing, those who are desperate. In order for them to have drinks and entertain themselves someone must do such gatherings then they will come, they do not need to be invited, by the way. This group will stay even if they do not trust the beer - they have no choice.

In South Africa we have public schools and hospitals but there are government leaders who do not want to use them. Government leaders who are saying we care about people we lead. We have built good hospitals but we cannot use them as they do not meet our standards.

The rest can go and use them but as government leaders will use private hospitals with your taxes. These leaders say we care about educating and developing leaders of tomorrow because we are a concerned government. We shall provide an environment that is conducive for effective learning.

However, the conditions will not be favorable enough for our kids. Our children study in private schools as we do not trust what we have built for you.

There are those members of the society who are not desperate they just leave these public institutions and use private institutions for their health and education of their own. This group acts like those who are not desperate when the host doesn’t want to taste first.

There are those who don’t have a choice but stay and use public hospitals because they don’t have a choice; they are economically challenged. This is the group that stays even if the host doesn’t want to taste first. Even if they not going to get best services they still go because they have no choice. Even if their kids are being taught inside dangerous buildings that can collapse while they are inside they have no choice.

These are the ones who are treated with little respect, only recognized during elections. These are the voting fodders who are easily duped by food parcels and the first to go to the streets when the parcels are finished.

They vote for the same government that has failed them for years, because when there’s another group of cadres that is going to be deployed they always have hope that finally things will change and all will be well. After elections they are forgotten. That’s when they throw stones.

Even though they are poor they have eyes to see what is right and wrong. They know they have rights to basic services and they can stand up for their rights. When they are raising their grievances they are killed by police officers. They are killed by the same police officers that are supposed to protect them from criminals.

These things are happening because people who are claiming to be their leaders are disconnected from them. They do not lead from the front nor back; they are nowhere. These leaders are even scared of people who voted them into power, they are literary disconnected from their constituencies and they consider them as criminals.

They will only be their gullible poor voters when elections come around again. When they come to see them they will come in convoys of black big cars and bodyguards. This shows the disconnection and they are basically saying we are scared of you, that is why we come to you with so many cars and bodyguards, we don’t trust you, you might kill us, you are criminals.

Who is the real criminal here, who is stealing the tax payer’s money? They come and say don’t complain too much, here is the food parcel eat because you are hungry, we know you don’t have a job. Give us a vote you will get rewarded we will reward you by open toilets. Then in the last weekend prior to the elections old people will be taken to big rallies as a “display” that people can be reminded of old struggle days and vote for the failing government again and again.

It must be clear that history of this freedom that is being enjoyed by certain individuals is not going to solve the problems that we have. The problems that these leaders of our own have created, I am talking about the problems of cronyism, nepotism and maladministration. 

The same leaders that we trusted so much have become the bullets of the same gun that is killing us but we don’t see that because we are blinded by liberation history and we are blinded by songs that were sang during 70s and 80s.

We are blinded by gallantry that was shown by real leaders who are not among us today. There are real leaders that I am quiet sure that wherever they are they are not happy with that is happening today. I am sure Oliver Tambo, Govan Mbeki and others are not happy to see poor people being so marginalized. I can hear the voice of Steve Biko asking Solomon Mahlangu “Solomon is that what we died for?” Solomon replying with sadness “definitely no”.

Fellow South Africans, especially concerned young people we need to stand up and say no to wrong things and endorse plans that seek to take this country and this continent forward.

If we don’t stand up today these “problems” are going to affect generations to come after us. Today we are faced by HIV/AIDS challenge and it is affecting young people mostly.

Truly speaking we are not the ones who took it for granted; it was the generation before us that did not stand up from the very onset that is why today it’s our problem. If we don’t stand up today and say NO, tomorrow our own kids are going to stay in misery. Let us join hands and build the country of our dreams. Just like in the bible when the walls of Jerusalem were fallen an announcement/invitation was made to come and build the walls of Jerusalem. “Come let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem  and we will no longer be in disgrace”. Nehemiah 2] v- 17. “Agang” yizani sakhe, come let us build the South Africa of our dreams.

STAND UP FOR TOMORROW.

• Written by  Ayanda Ngcwabe  for YouthTube, a SowetanLIVE initiative dedicated to the youth.