I like to think of us as superior beings, frontal lobed to
suppress our basic limbic drive, strategist in chief and in some instances of such mutant brilliance
that we can altruistically foresee that which may be detrimental to our community at large,
rare as it may be. Mandela is a good example of the last species, that he is dying
and we have yet to find a substitute is the magnitude of the scarcity of the
raw resources.
Every now and then though, a social deviation in my job
reduces me to an animal that I am, brainstem and all in the opposite direction.
When an elderly woman brought 24 yrs old retarded epileptic and polio child to
me for review, I like a total care centre we should be asked what happened to
the two fathers of the children she bore at 14 and 16. One died of HIV which he
unfortunately passed on to the retarded 16yrs old then. The other was still at
large, 45yrs old and unemployed but every now and then bought a few groceries
from the temps that he organised here and there. A feather he added to his cap
as the granny put it was that he after 9yrs of rejecting the child has honoured
him with acceptance to a level of giving him a surname.
Charging him with a statutory rape logical as it may seem to
me, was out of question for this family. Not only was he redeemed in their
eyes, he was supporting the family. The amount that ranged in the 100 to 150
rands a month was not the issue at all. When did democracy become so cruel? Can
justice be sacrificed under the hammer of the majority view? Could the retard
be raped if the aggressor promised to buy bread for the family? Could accepting
the potential baby and giving him a surname erase the emotional hurt the retard
suffers?
I don’t know my father and if anybody rose and told me my
surname was his I would stand in the queue at home affairs for a week to become
X in the footsteps of my father Malcolm. I am an African and like the iconic
speech of my intellectually isolated president of yesteryear, Mbeki, I do hope
to smell perfume off the armpit off a Shangaan woman dismounting a motsheka
(rear view enhancer) one day. I will repeat I am an African blood and all, not
by acquisition only and hope with acceptance from my fellow justice sacrificing
majority will stay African, irrespective of my non forgiving heart (somebody
ought to think for the children) and hyperactive nose.
If biochemistry and physiology of beauty and health are the elements of every mix, then results are assured
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