who am i?

22:15 2006/09/23

who am i?
here are some of the labels i have used to identify myself: i am a human, i am an african, i am a south african, i am a muslim, i am a coloured, i am an indian, i am black, i am a man, i am a hip-hop head, i am creative, i am different, i am a rebel, i am a revolutionary, i am deep, i am concious, i am unique, i am a poet, i am whatever you say i am, i am all of these things and none of them at the same time.

we all have our own truths and they change with the circumstances we find ourselve in at any given moment.

i am




since about a month before my 24th birthday (4yrs ago, July 2002) i started having issue with my age. more specifically, issues about personal achievments related to my age. i have come to realise that those age linked goals have never been my own. they were dictated to me, subliminally, by a society that is preoccupied with material wealth and secular success. two ideals i haven't really sought to achieve, believing instead in the mastering of my core values; taught to me by my parents and extended family; and ensuring i go about my life and work living by those values.

another big issue for me has been the question of identity. around the time that i was in standard 8 (i.e. gade 10), i really got into hip-hop and with that came a whole new world of information and awareness that i just had to attack with the full force of my youthfully naive vigor. i became concious of the fact that i am black, that i am an africa, that i am among the 5% of the population who know the truth and are using it for the greater good. i became a rebel, a revolutionary! i was going to break shit down to the masses so they too could be mentally free from the bullshit we have been fed for years.
my boys warned against this, spitting the famous " you can't toss pearls to swine" quote. saying that only those hwo have proved themselves true could get access to the knowledge we possessed. and even then, they would only get it in small doses, meaning that once they were approved to get the info they had to prove their understanding of it before receiving the next level of knowledge.
as i said i was a rebel, a revolutionary, i wanted to spread the truth far and wide and as soon as possible. i wanted to free the minds of my people. i wanted to cut through all the bullshit of having to prove yourself worthy of the truth because i felt that everybody was worthy already. what made them worthy? the fact that they were ignorant.(i'm not sure that it made sence to them[my boys], or that it makes sence to you but to me the people most worthy don't know that they are worthy. all they know is the effects of their ignorants and not that they are ignorant and being suppressed because of it.)
i learned the hard way that the rewards for tossing pearls to swine came with a hefty price tag. people do not approve of being told that they are walking around deaf, dumb and blind. they do not want to hear that they are being used. they do not want to know, because ignorance is bliss (one of my earliest lessons come back to bite me in the arse). you see the minute you recognise the truth you have to act on it. it is a law of the universe that your soul must obey, but that your mind fights against, hence the rejection of the truth. we are taught to think logically and rationally, and that emotions and other things we cannot see are not real. they do not affect us.
so there i was, on a rather warm saturday morning, it was around 11:30 am. sitting in a classroom with other students and we were not up for the pepared lesson from our english tutor. Instead i suggested that we have a debate. the class was very eager and neadless to say i was fuelled and ready to go. the debate was heated, i was blowing my top and spitting truths with the ferociousness of a venomous snake on the attack. it was me against the rest of the class. actually to be more accurate it was me against the two factions the class had broken into. at the end of that class (around 12h30) during break i sat with two classmates and came to the realisation that in the space of an hour i had become mr. black conciousness, the devil, an atheist, the outcast and the wannabe. they did not understand me, they could not accept the truths i was spitting, so they labbled me. those people were not my peers, we were not on the same level.

22h39 2006/09/23