AN INTROSPECT: PAST, PRESENT AND FORECAST

Youngters at the back of a bakkie

Some years back on the month of November I was born. I do not always remember my birthday, most of the time I am usually surprised by people wishing me a happy birthday on the social media networks and sometimes phone messages and calls. Such gestures often remind me that wow, it’s the 17^th today”. This year my girl friend has been so concerned on what we are going to do for my birth day celebration, she has been asking me time and again; what do you want for your special day? This has led me to serious thoughts about my life and age; trying to figure out the role that I have played and may still play in the society and in the country at large in creating a situation that gives hope and better future. 

The situation that young people  today have found themselves in calls for one not to be relaxed and watch things happening, it calls for one to take part and be involved on the day to day struggles of improving one’s and other people’s lives. For a long time young people have been shifted to the back seat and reserved to grow up a bit in order for them to start engaging in serious businesses like decision making processes, making their own choices about life and other things. I am currently feeling like I am nearing my forties because of the efforts I have contributed in engaging in shaping the environment to the one that I would be happy with. I refuse being reserved or parked at the back seat, as a young person. I see a need to strive, engage, fight and create necessary conditions for me, friends, colleagues and the entire youth of Swaziland and maybe my offspring.  

The reality that a number of young people have not yet discovered is that, the youths are the back bone and the future of the nation. They fail to contribute to the future of the society; they actually say it but fail to act as such. Then a question is what really are they lacking, is it a courageous behaviour? Unfortunately today we find the youth who are more interested in other places which are not useful to them as well as the nation. They opt to spend their daily lives doing drugs, engaging in crime and engaging in useless act; which is all a recipe for failure. The common saying that the youth is the future means in reality that young people are involved in taking their place in shaping the future. Most young men of my age group are sitting at home lamenting and have become experts in identifying challenges instead of bettering themselves or working collectively in trying to come up with lasting solutions. It is not about what you say but it is about what you do, so even if you can lament for years if you decide to do nothing, nothing will change.  They have no vision and if they do they do, they do not have the drive to pursue those dreams or vision into a reality should the time come. We must get control of this; we should not allow such behaviours to dominate and kill the potential and our vision.

Many of us are still young; we are in our twenties, which gives me hope that we still have a choice. We can allow ourselves to stay our course and engage on issues that will lead us to success. We have to show the older generation and prove to ourselves that indeed we are the future. Let them know we are intelligent and we have skills. Nothing can happen if we do not try; successes or failures something has to be done. We will not get what we want overnight either way but at least if we make an effort, then we have begun our journey to what we want. One would then take this time to urge all my colleges and the youth at large that it is not what we say but it is about what we do. Action!

Let’s do it.

RUSHING HOME TO MY KIDS

Every Friday after work we have this trend of hanging out with friends just to catch up over few drinks and to take away the stress that we experience during the week, and I usually call that act (Kuvusela emabandla). For quite some time I have been noticing that when my friend Bhuda prepares to leave, he would say “eish guys I need to hurry home to my kids”. I know Bhuda very well, he stays with his wife and their two kids, but my worry is that him rushing to his kids, does it mean that he doesn’t include his wife among the people he needs to hurry to? After consulting with other people on this statement that I find peculiar, the response was that nothing was wrong with it. So the explanation was that every man’s wife is counted among his kids; in short if you are rushing home to your kids your wife is included. Really? Is that the case? Are they our kids too?

In today’s world can we say they are our kids? After calling them our better halves, following a lot of changes that has happed in today’s society, after a lot has been said on gender equality. After noting this, it made me think on the status of women in today’s society and I discovered that we still have a role to play in accommodating as well as implementing the concept of equality. Gender is arguably the most discussed phenomenon. It is the most controversial topic causing never-ending disagreements amongst peers who might agree on other issues but gender. It is a case of gender in economics, politics, gender in religion, gender in education and gender everywhere. Its dominance in socio-political and economic forums have triggered a lot of research on it (gender) which gave birth to gender studies, a relatively intriguing field of study which have taken the education arena by storm, and undoubtedly is showing significant signs of dominance. That’s how serious the gender issue has become.

It is precisely the socio-cultural and politically constructed roles and responsibilities ascribed to women and men that change over time, context specific and are inseparable from power relations. It is an open secret that gender studies world-over were and are motivated by observable disparities in the treatment of men and women in the societies. Such disparities ended up influencing the socialization process to the extent that certain imbalances were eventually considered to be the societal norms. Religious teachings also perpetuate gender imbalances, for an example; the Muslim Q’uran teaches women to be house wives and men to be providers, such that in some instances a need for a girl to be educated is not seen as a necessity. In Yemen a number of parents were asked on why they did not allow their girls to go to school, and the response from most of them was that its wrong, its irreligious, its improper. Instead of them going to school they should stay home to prepare for their real life, their married life. An article that was published early this month (Malala Yousufzai of South Waziristan in Pakistan) also report on a young girl who was attacked for being vocal on education for girls. On the other hand men are allowed to marry up to four wives, a practice not permitted to women. The Christian bible is also used to perpetuate gender imbalances as some Christian denominations do not ordain female pastors. They base their resolve on early Jewish teachings combined with teachings of Apostle Paul who taught that women should not stand up and testify in church. Paul, in the book of Corinthians went to the extent of advising women not to even ask questions in church, but to wait until they reach home to ask their husbands.

 Traditional family and societal practices, especially African and Asian, are a serious cause for concern when it comes to gender issues. For example; in Swaziland women are particularly left out when important family or community decisions are made. They are actually considered minors more junior in status even to their male children. Politics are not spared the bruises of gender discrimination and imbalances. According to the SADC report all its member states are miles away from achieving a 50-50 representation of men and women in parliament, cabinet and other positions of power. Swaziland is reportedly struggling even to achieve a 20% parliament representation. All these have contributed to man rushing home to their kids, wife counted among the kids.

At least someone or something triggered the realization that such age-old practices may be gender imbalances, and the fact that for a long time they have been suppressing our sisters, potential and actual better halves, aunts and mother. Has the time not come for man especially the youth to stand up, role up their sleeves and begin taking the steps of promoting gender equality? It begins with a single step and it begins with you.

Eish guys it’s getting late, I better get home to my kids. lol 

THIS IS THE SWAZILAND I WANT

graduation ceremony

Just yesterday after concluding my first lecture, there goes my phone “shhhhh” and that’s a message notification. So I did as expected looked at it, it was a comment to my last blog post. So I went through it and suddenly I started smiling as I read through, it felt good seeing someone coming out to the open voicing out the Swaziland she wants. I couldn’t contain myself and felt very compelled to share it with everyone.

Lack of freedom of expression and action in Swaziland has created the scandal fatigue. We are totally afraid of victimization by government. Worse is that at least 70% of Swazi's are civil servants. So how do we revolt against this system, especially if it’s the hand that butters our daily bread? Its truly a difficult situation, particularly because the culture of sacrifice and risk is not in most of us, worse is that most of us come from Christian backgrounds which have been used indirectly by the system to doom us, thus we are passive and accept horrible situations in the name that the next world will be better & earthly things should be left the way they are. Imagine a country where every graduate was guaranteed of a job, all children had access to education, the elderly were taken care of, there was comprehensive health care at an affordable price, freedom of expression without fear of victimization, access to sexual and reproductive welfare, affordable and fair trade terms with a booming private sector and investment, easy access to and exchange of technology, good governance where accountability and performance were key performance indicators to determine the tenure of the government in office. THIS IS THE SWAZILAND I WANT...

A Swaziland where people know that they have an active responsibility to shape their futures and the powers to shape these futures would fully reside with them & not the government or the ruling system in place. People should have influence on at least 90% of what occurs in government particularly if we say Swaziland is democratic country. Radical change is important for the liberation of Swaziland and its people. Bit by Bit has run its course. Now is the time to formulate strategies and try to improve what’s on the ground. We should start now to change the lives of our people and ourselves in the communities we live in. We should start now initiating programs for a sustainable Swaziland. Good Governance should start in our communities, homes, work place, etc. Now is the time to change and shape the culture of doing things.

We young people should join hands and start doing things for ourselves so that the government that we put in place would be a way to elevate us.

HAVE WE DEVELOPED A SCANDAL FATIGUE?

Teachers in Swaziland have engaged in an indefinite strike

Few days ago I was chatting with my friend, discussing the current situation that the country is facing. The crisis that we see almost on daily basis in the country. We looked back where huge degradation happened to the citizens of Swaziland. This dates back to as far as I can remember but to pencil in up a few scandals that have happened recently, we had a judicial crisis, where we saw lawyers taking to the streets for over a month, secondly we experience an educational crisis where we also saw teachers taking to the streets boycotting classes for over three months, right now we experienced a constitutional crisis where a vote of no confidence was passed against the cabinet and the King did not uphold the Parliamentarians in this regard as required by the Constitution. All the above happened and no minds were provoked. While chatting with my friend, he then told me something, I can even recall “Colani you know what, Swazi are now used to this things, we have actually developed a scandal fatigue”.  I took some time thinking, recalling all the instances where all these disappointing things happened. Like for real, have we developed a weakness in challenging all these? For how long are we going to keep like this? What is the worst that we are awaiting to happen before we can realize that there is actually something that can be done to sort this mess? Many years of unfavourable conditions has created a culture of submission and natural passiveness reaction to issues of paramount importance, but how come as a nation seemingly we are going against nature on this? I am trying to figure out this, my way of thinking is saying by now we should at least be strong enough to stand on our feet. 

I would really hate to admit that of course we have developed a scandal fatigue. Do we lack men and women who have a clear vision of what a free Swaziland would look like? A clear vision of how a free and open society looks like? I do not want to believe that we do lack these people. One then tends to wonder how is the coming generation going to cope if we allow such conditions to happen without being challenged, is this the kind of environment that we want them to operate in? What is it that will motivate them to continue with life and keep going? 

One thing for sure is that we don’t need a prayer alone. 

Just thinking out loud...

Getting Ready for this Set

On your marks, get set for success... (and the whistle goes).   Is your engine on? (Motivation). Do you have the fuel to last the journey? (Passion). Do you know where you will arrive? (Destiny/Direction). Do you know why you are running after all (Purpose)? You will achieve more if you know what motivates you, what you are passionate about, where you are destined and the reason why you occupy space.

In one of the previous years I took some time to think of my life, focusing on the gap ever since I finished school, it was some sort of a reflection, and one question popped into my mind, ‘what have I achieved thus far?’ Looking at those past years I actually struggled to count or point at things that I can be proud of and say ‘I have achieved this and that,’ I am not sure how many of you do take time to reflect and look at their lives and ask themselves the very same question like I did. Me struggling to count my achievements during my reflection never meant that I was sitting at home or relaxing somewhere, I have been busy, moving up and down, doing different projects. 

 I noticed that most of the time we just live our lives without setting targets or goals that we want to achieve at the end of each year, so that makes a year come and go without any growth or achievement that has contributed straight into our lives. Sometimes it is not that we don’t plan at all, but we set goals that will not benefit us personally but someone else, which is totally a good thing. For example, one may set a goal of establishing a community based charity organization, and be able to achieve that goal. That person would have done it for the year, because he was able to achieve what he has set for him/herself, but what has that person benefited personally or what has he gained on his personal capacity. We too often fail to balance our personal lives with other commitments that are meant for our attention, yet in real sense these two needs to be properly balanced. Talking about that another question may pop up again, What would be the way out now?

It is never too late for planning about what you want, this is to say there is time for finding out what you are passionate about, focusing on your destiny, finding your purpose and setting what motivates you to keep going.

What have been planned mustn’t end in imaginations or in paper but should also be started, what have been started should be finished. This requires one to go beyond the goal setting to goal getting. Action gives motion to one’s ideas. It is sometimes easy to start something but fail to finish. Many projects have been started and abandoned midway, similarly to marriages have lasted until the honeymoon was over and real work began. People usually shy away from things that require perseverance. It is easy to set goals that are easy by design but difficult to achieve. Goals should be something simple and achievable. In setting goals, look at a completed building and examine what it takes to make it. Have a vision for the ultimate and desired results. Work backwards and say ‘how do I get there’. Most people do not struggle in the setting of goals; it is the requirement to get the goals to become a reality. Ever since I did that first step of reflection I have now made it my yearly formula, which has helped me in achieving a lot of things and also in having clear and smooth years

I pray that you find courage in setting your goals that will transform you and the people living around you. Let this piece be the beginning of new things not a new beginning of old habits.

Cherish your visions and your dreams, as they are the children of your soul, the blue-print of your ultimate achievements.