A mess, A lesson.

It might be hard to separate the destructive and the constructive but, SUCH IS LIFE.

Every single day a lesson finds it's way into our lives. Whether we are ready to acknowledge it, accept it, challenge it, take it or simply use it to the best of our abilities is another story.

I go back to some of the most painful lessons I have learned in my very short life and feel greatful. Lessons of growing-up, learning to live with others (socially and professionally), lessons of change and in the same breath lessons of re-adjusting to new arrangements, set-ups and truths, lessons of loss, lessons of love and day-to-day lessons of survival.

At the worst of moments we are way too hard on ourselves. We forget that just like the next person, we are human and mistakes only complete life.

We stumble, we fall, we betray, we break promises, we loose, we envy, we hate, we love even when we are not loved in return, we make rules only to break them, we hurt, we please, we cry, we laugh, we regret, we want things that are way out of reach, we misuse opportunities, we loathe the very things that make us unique, we forget, we win, we loose, we sink, we fly, we contemplate, we take for granted, we under and overrate, we live and then we die.

I would like to acknowledge the biggest lesson life has brought to my doorstep. I AM HUMAN.
Whether I get it right or wrong can only be determined by me and what I want. So, I just want to live life. If I take wrong turns along the way - I will have to make the best of my newly found routes and lifeways. I love myself enough to know that conforming to someone else's idea of what life should be about is so not for me.

Let me get back to LIFE.

Self Love...
...you either have it or you don't. PERIOD.

You can look at the person in the mirror and say 'I love you' as many time as you can.
You can have the fattest bank account or know how to make a million in a day.
You can have a million people call you BOSS and place yourself on a pedestal.
You can be famous and adored by many.
You can have the perfect partner or the perfect relationship.
You can be the most intelligent person in your circles.
You can turn heads every minute of every day.

But...

When you are not willing to accept and acknowledge your background, accept your skincolour and who you are. You will not have the ultimate luxury or basic need (really depends on how you look at it) I just call it self-love and from what I know and understand, genuine happiness is crazy about it.

Success is different things to different people.
It is not the hardest thing to achieve if you do not let the world determine how you should live your life. Do what pleases the person you have to spend every moment of you life with. YOU.
I think the stupidest thing one can do is go out of their way to impress another individual. All efforts go to waste when they are not impressed or miss the whole point.

As I listened to my sister struggling to find a word to describe a friend of hers who is rather shortsighted (for the lack of a better word), I realised what an important thing self-love is, actually it is the most important thing.
The friend in question needs it, could use it, has to have some of it and until she finds it I feel sorry for her.
Let us just call her 'Tracy' for now.
'Tracy' is the kind of girl that thinks buying yourself a bunch of roses is a good way of keeping a man on his toes, please do help me out if you understand. She is the kind of girl who doesn't mind to be second best, literally.
It's not that I think buying yourself roses is a sin. It's when you buy yourself roses just to get to someone else - that bothers me.
I have over the years learned from a lot of case studies that no woman can make a man's focus change.
You can't make a man spend more time with you.
You can't make a man love you.
You can't make a man see things the way you see them.
You can't make a man commit, or better yet, You can't make a man change his way.
Especially if he does not want to.
Every self loving woman should know that by now.

Not so long ago, I was sitting with friends. There were four of us and only one man among us. He asked a question. A question you've most probably heard enough times.

What do women really want?

I answered the same way I've been responding to that question for the past 4 years. All a woman want is to be showered with lots of attention. Of course I was talking about women way out of Khanyi Mbau's league. I though I was right, until Violet said or should I say asked.

Why don't you shower yourself with all the attention you want?

That made me stop and think. It brought me back to the two magic words - SELF LOVE.
It made me think! If women had enough of it (self love), we would spend a lot of time happy. If we really loved who we are, men would not be heart-breakers, ass-holes, or what-ever we call them when they are not on the same page with our sorry selves.
Just imagine what a beautiful place this world would be if there were no 'side-dishes' (those would be our sister who so guiltlessly sleep with 'taken' men).
Imagine if there were no gold-diggers and no one depended on men to survive or show-off.
Just imagine how absolutely beautiful things would be if each woman loved herself enough, just enough to allow her to love the next woman.
Why do we always have to hate on each other without even giving one another a chance. Imagine if, everytime a sister walked into a room full of women looking stunning she gets the compliments she deserves and no-one hates. Imagine if we just had enough SELF LOVE.
Maybe I'm too ambitious but at least then 'Tracy' wouldn't have to buy herself a bunch of roses.

Before I start sounding like a feminist, how about this.
Imagine if we loved ourselves so much we didn't see the need to walk, talk, live, act like others. Yes, I'm talking about black people and our associating of wealth and success to everything white. Why can't we just be ourselves. Why can't we just stop loading fake accents, twangs, hair and loads of make-up.
Why do black women (and men) in the spotlight, those who've supposedly reached their financial mark and measure of success all look like they just popped out of a fashion magazine or a clothing store window display? Why?
Does it all boil down to the two favourite words of the moment. SELF LOVE?
Why do we always sorround ourselves with ideologies and myths that just take us further and further away from what and who we really are?
If we all loved ourselves enough, not even haters or frenemies would exist.

Haters:- are the people in your life that just don’t know how to complement you without finding a fault to mention in that very sentence. They are those people who constantly put others around them down just so they can feel on top. Sadly none of these methods ever work. They always remain sour, bitter, competetive, unhappy, alone or better yet, ENVIOUS.

Frenemies:- A frenemy is your enermy posed as a friend. She'll give you a hard time about everything you do. She doesn't even know it but she is using you to make herself feel better about herself. She'll make you feel like kak until she feels good. You can't shake her off, or you see no reason to but you need to.

I'm not fighting anyone. You do what you have to, all I'm saying is, we could learn to love ourselves, Our true selves, a lot better.
It would save us from doing a million and one things that are just too unnecessary.
In closing, I'd like to pay tribute in this piece to all individuals who don't conform to anyones idea of what life should be.
People who stand for what they believe in.
People who do everything for themselves and not the lights, camera and action.
People who put themselves and loved ones first and leave the rest to follow.
To women who are comfortable in their own skins. Whether you are blinging, a hippie or walking barefoot.
To people who have so much self-respect they refuse to be second best or substitutes.
I'd like to pay tribute to every individual who has a thing, a thing called respect for SELF LOVE.

'Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.' - Janis Joplin.

'Nobody can hurt me without my permission.' - Mahatma Ghandi.

SOWETO

Let me tell you about my hood....

...and how it has made me who I am.

It has a million and one nicks. The ones that come to mind include M'sawawa, Kasi, Sotra, M'sauden.

South African HIP-HOP artist Linda Mkhize known to his fans as 'PRO-Kid', coins it in one of his ever popular tracks 'SOWETO'.

Anyone who's spent half their life inside of it either loves it or hates it.

Author Mokone Molete speaks of it exactly as I know it in his book, POSTCARDS FROM SOWETO.

A lot of successful people who have moved on and out really treat it like a relationship gone wrong. They see all its faults only after they've left it.

If you know it well enough, you should know that it has absolutely any and everything, there's nothing you can not find inside of it. A true defenition of the phrase 'Melting Pot'.

If you haven't experience it, you probably still think 'gangsters walk its streets looking for their next victim'. And, you are WRONG.

It is SOWETO, my hood, the place I call home, the place that has everything to do with the way I walk, talk and live.

Last week a friend of mine asked me, "Why do you love the hood so much"?.

I half asked, half answered, "How do you know that, I love the hood"?.

She replied, "A lot of people who've experienced half the things you've gotted to experience, move out of the hood, shake it off and write it off as a closed chapter of their lives".

When I heard all this, I though about Sunnyside - Pretoria, Sandton and Weltevreden Park,
between all three places I'd explored and tried to call home, something was always missing.

I was never able to put my finger on it and to this day, I still don't know why I'm so hooked on the hood.

If there's one thing I can tell you about SOWETO, it has to be the fact that, it is the ONE place I know where you are almost obliged to be yourself. Nothing more, nothing less and absolutely nothing fake.

In SOWETO, you get more beef and preassure for discarding your identity and blackness than you ever will for stealing something.

See, the hood is like one big yard. If you don't know enough people - you are totally lost and there's no other way to put it.

In my hood, every parent is my parent. They can tell me crap, chase me to Timbuktu and back and demand respect from me. We all believe that it takes a community/village to raise a child.

Everyone who is about 7 years or more my junior calls me Aus' Tumi. An unspoken or unsigned agreement.

In the hood, everyone is up in your business and no one ever misses a thing, so people always end up doing pretty fucked up things out in the open.

Not many people understand why SOWETANS never agree to the suggestion that SOWETO is a dangerous place, but, it really isn't. Infact, I feel much safer in SOWETO than I do in any CBD or residential surburbia.

Of course SOWETO is home to some of the most notorious criminals, it is most probably home to more criminals than any prison in the country. In the same breath, you too deserve to know that they are less likely to steal from you, harm you or violate you in SOWETO. To them, anyone in SOWETO is one of us - PERIOD.

Lack of Ambition - that's another one. One of my biggest worries about the place I love so much is how my people are so relaxed about everything. Nothing bothers the average township dweller. The thought of success, to my people is simple. Making it through the day. Abolova (uneployed young adults) wake-up just to chit-chat, share a joint (marijuana) and gossip about others.

In my hood, black diamonds, business moguls and CEOs are unheard of. Not that we've never had any, actually - we've had lots.

Irvin Khoza still stays in SOWETO, Sipho 'Hostix' Mabuse is still in SOWETO, Richard Maponya is a SOWETAN, Aggrey Klaaste was a SOWETAN, Lucas Radebe, Kaizer Motaung, Dr Nthato Motlana and lots of other prominent and successful people were raised in SOWETO.

It's just that, this kind of success is not a norm in the hood. The above mentioned people are the kind we refer to as diOne-in-a-million.
I guess all this is part and parcel of what people normally base their thoughts, definitions and ideas of SOWETO on. The dirt, the loudness, the chikitas walking the streets wearing nightgowns, PJs and nighties (they piss me off too), the high levels of alchohol consumption.

But think about it this way - SOWETO is home to a lot of hard working people. People who get-up daily to go make a difference. People who make the biggest difference to our economy, people who make the much heavier contribution to how this country looks, feels and functions and yet they sit at the bottom of the food chain.

My hood is home to people that have suffered so much, the only thing that matters to them is just making it through each day.

My kasi is made up of people who still believe they are no better than anyone whose skin is lighter than theirs.

In the SOuth WEstern TOwnships, all income groups are one. We share the hood, interests and hopes.

SOWETO, just like any township here in S.A, is home to people who've had to fight for everything they have including the right to express themselves in a language of their choice.

M'sauden is home to people who've raised and nurtured people who now take them for granted.

Msawawa is where talent exists in ocean loads but the know how or confidence to take it further exists in cup loads, hence the Maponyas and Khozas stands out.

My hood, is the one place I know, where you are allowed to be yourself. NOTHING more, NOTHING less and absolutely NOTHING fake....


I haven't said all there is to say, for now I'll leave it here. Leave a comment, let me know if all this is making any sense to you. Till then ....