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Springtime should inspire SA to turn a new leaf

FIRST day of September, in the southern hemisphere sees winter lifting its frosty hands to bid us goodbye.

FIRST day of September, in the southern hemisphere sees winter lifting its frosty hands to bid us goodbye.

Winter's departure heralds the incoming caress of spring that brings with it the heart-warming changes that need no preaching about as they are often evident, visible, felt and believable.

The dehydrated and dead dry brown fields soon give way to spritely green landscapes that seem to touch the sky with gaiety to make living easy.

Some mark this day with a wave of tree planting festivities in remembrance of Arbor Day and to re-renew the environment by increasing its greenery.

Others choose to visit graves, where the bones of mighty giants that have left us the script of true liberation, are buried.

The loving glance they cast, upon the erected monuments of their dearly departed, is a promise that they too will leave this world a better place.

With each returning trip, from where they have laid their ancestors, the world regrettably continues to be a living hell whose fate can no longer be left in the hands of the beloved saints for redemption.

Inevitably, the choices to be made are clear. They either let things remain as they are and betray their ancestors or fight to honour their legacy. Those that take refuge in neutrality, by choosing to sit on the fence in the momentous hour of the choices to be made, prove to be as vain as the dog's sweat that goes with the wind.

Liberators never leave their destiny to the mercy of the wind.

For them, life is not a gamble to keep throwing like dice in the hope that it falls favourably.

They plant their feet firmly in the ground, in the full knowledge that they may be exposed to winds that blow and beat without fear of being uprooted.

Were public representatives capable of such rootedness, rotten apples in their midst would be spotted long before populating the corridors of power.

Witnessing winter change to spring is a transformative experience that should generally inspire us, as a country, to turn into a new leaf.

Having arrived at a new flag was one commendable, bold and great leap of faith we took to show that the image of what we hope needs more than a prayer to achieve.

Merging two anthems was a bridge-building milestone but could never be argued as a final destination of the best that there is to the epic story of liberation.

Bridges, by definition, are meant to enable travelling users get across rather than continued fixation with just being on the bridge. And being unable to rename our country typifies a people afraid to break with the past and thus unable to inaugurate a brave new beginning.

In all this we dream without sleeping and rush to declare ourselves a "rainbow nation" without demonstrable will to overcome our storms.

Because we confuse the end with means, we dream of a rainbow right in the eye of the storm. Consequently, the storms never subside and the rainbow unable to reach clear focus in the freezing mist of angry clouds.

As Maishe Maponya so often reminds us in verse, we can only know the colour of the sky when the clouds are gone.

Just once, can our politicians figure out what will bring lasting healing to society's wounded hearts in the same way that spring does when the winter is gone. Doing more and preaching less is the way to go.

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