Happy 20th my home Number 2

Here’s two glorious decades -my chosen home

I have the privilege of choosing where to live and call HOME. I have two homes in fact. Home number 1 is where I was born, where my mother is buried and my huge extended family lives. Zimbabwe. Home number 2 is South Africa, where my mummy's people came from, and I came back on their behalf! This the home I chose for myself. I love both my homes equally. Each one has its charms, and its dark sides. My two homes share common social, economic and political histories; the glory days of indigenous empires – from Shaka, to Munhumutapa to Mzilikazi and Mapungubwe, to colonization by the British and the Dutch, to the bloody and painful liberation struggles. Then finally freedom. Independence. Zimbabwe’s independence days is April 18^th, and a few days later, we celebrate SA’s on April 27^th. This year independent Zimbabwe turned 34. SA turns 20. The Mail & Guardian asked me to write a piece for Zimbabwe’s birthday. I came up with all sorts of excuses. The truth is I don’t remember my own or anyone else’s 34^th birthday. I do not recall my 34^th kiss. 34^th drink? Such a hugely insignificant number. It is that terribly confusing age at which one knows they are an adult, a head of household/family even and quite often a decision maker of some sort. But you kind of fluff your way through it and say, ‘ah well, I am not yet 35, and 40 is six years away so….”. And you sink back into your original malaise and confusion.

Twenty, is two decades. Now there is something to talk about. Although 21 is the big birthday that most people celebrate, 20 is actually what we should pay more attention to.  I look at you now my dear home number 2, through the same prism that I look at my son this year.  Andile turns 20 on May 4^th. Smart, confident, and very independent my young man is. At 20, he thinks he knows EVERYTHING! He behaves like he has been EVERYWHERE. Because he is the youngest of my children, he has tended to get the best, and the most attention. You could call him ‘the baby’ of the family, but he would probably kill you for that. He sees himself as a man. No, the man.  He and his cohort all walk around like they have six balls. They have a get -out of my way- I can do anything – and I am the world’s best- attitude. Sounds familiar South Africa?  

Yet ever so often, too often for his liking, the little boy will show through. The horribly unwanted acne will be scrubbed (not quite off), with the most expensive exfoliator on the market. The body is still growing, but he obsesses about his body image. Spends as much time in a gym as a new convert does in a religious institution. Gotta have the biggest, the most visible muscles. He watches documentaries and hugely meaningful movies, not cartoons. Well, when nobody is watching, he will switch to Sponge Bob or Digimon. In public, he will not hold hands, or hug me.  But when it is cold outside, or he has a headache, he will sidle up, cuddle up, sniffle like a baby and look suitably miserable.  Mummy gets ignored when times are good. No reply to emails. No smileys in response to my (lame) jokes. Just don’t let the school administrator send an important email! It gets forwarded to mumsy in two seconds flat.  Need cash now, now? Frantic long distance call at midnight. And as soon as the crisis is over, he reverts to his adult-confident self. Mummy is only instrumental to the boy’s needs. Sounds like anyone you know South Africa?  

Happy 20th birthday my grown up – yet still so young home. In human-black-African terms, you belong to that category of family members we call ‘children’. Yes, you are still a child. At weddings and funerals we don’t expect you to do much really, except show up, hang out with the big men slaughtering the cow.  Take instructions from the older women organizing the wedding. Pass the sugar, the salt, hold the other end of the steak as they ones with the skills cut it. Occasionally you might be invited to sit in decision making processes, and the adults might tolerate your word or two thrown in. But remember you are still growing. You still have a lot to learn.

Like my son, you are the baby of this continent. You and South Sudan. Your extended family, all 53 of us like you. Most, (not all, we have to honestly say), supported your journey to freedom. Some with blood, and tears. Don’t you ever forget that.  No, they don’t want to be paid, as some South Africans have often ungraciously commented. They just want public acknowledgement. Your African family admires you, and at times are jealous of your Joseph’s Technicolor coat.  Just don’t flaunt it. Be nice. In Shona we say, share your good fortune with your family. A complete stranger is very forgetful. Sometimes some of your African family wonder whether you really are part of them though? Do you really know who your family are? Because at some moments you sound and act confused. They don’t get why you like comparing your economic growth, your statistics, your - everything in fact, to that of strangers. Many of whom don’t actually belong to the same family lineage as you. Trust me, it does not matter much that you might sound like them or aspire to be like them, when the chips are down they say of you, behind your back, through clenched teeth, “Jeez! These people!” A phrase with which you are so familiar I have no doubt.

The beauty of being young is that your mistakes, missteps, and misspeaks, are easily forgiven. Do not be afraid to make mistakes. Where you don’t know just admit it. If need be, ask for help from your brothers and sisters. Nobody expects you to be the wise-all knowing- big brother that you are often forced to act as. No really. You haven’t yet attained six balls to walk like Nigeria, nor do you have the mouth born of experience to speak like Kenya. The majority of your black people have a long way to go before they can walk, talk and behave like they OWN this country, like they have a right to step confidently on Sandton soil, the gumption to look straight in the eye of that shop assistant and say, yes this is my card, I know the pin number, no I did not steal it, and yes I live in this hood, I have a right to make decisions on this apartment complex’ body corporate.

Like all teen-adults, you have terrible acne. Lots of it. And that is ok, it is a necessary part of growing up. You just need to remember that acne comes from the inside of you, not from the outside. It is deeply seated you might say? In the blood stream. In your case, you were born at a time when fast food, GMOs, fizzy drinks, and all bad things were the order of the day. Naturally the acne was going to come. So no amount of exfoliating or face creams on the outside will do the trick. Keep working at changing that deeply rooted cause of the acne. It is a lot of work. It is not comfortable. It is hard. You will many things wrong. There will be and has been resistance.  Like all things not visible to the naked eye, the causes of your acne will keep shifting and changing shape and form. Making it harder to eliminate, or even see results. The trick is not to get defeated, or expect quick results. Sadly you are growing up in the age of instant gratification. Instant change. Press a button and what you want will pop out. You are firmly a part of the ATM- Whatsapp-SMS generation. Sorry. Real life isn’t like that, as you will discover to your chagrin as you plod through your 20s and especially your 30s. In plain English; Keep working at eliminating the structural causes of injustice and inequality in your own country and globally. Apartheid is still alive and fighting back. You are doing well to fight it, to uproot it. Racism and sexism are deeply ingrained. Keep talking about them, and working to eliminate them.

One of my favorite artists, Gregory Isaacs sings about how one never knows (the use of) a good thing until they have lost it. South Africa, you have a lot going for you. Sometimes when I listen to you though, everything sounds all gloomy and doomy.  Maybe that is teenage attitude where everything has to be seen and expressed hyperbolically; It is so bad! Oh my God! The government is corrupt! The roads are in disrepair! So much poverty! All these human rights violations! It is terrible!!! Terrible!!!

Hee hee dee! Huuriii! Let me laugh as we would at the communal water-well back in my home village in Shurugwi. And we would round that off by saying, kudada kwevari mugomo, kukumbira vari pasi matohwe, (the insensitivity of those up in the mountains, disdainfully asking those on the ground for fruit). Of course I realize you are 20, very much an urban child, and will have no appreciation of mountains and wild fruits. So in a language that you will understand; don’t be ungrateful and ungracious about what you have. Be happy. Appreciate it. Celebrate it. There are those of us who would give a breast and an ovary to have what you take for granted. Freedoms of association and assembly. Sexual rights. A fantastic constitution. Running water. Electricity at the flick of a switch. Freedom of expression, (where even racists and misogynists of the worst variety get more than a word in and hog the airwaves instead of hiding under the biggest rocks, but of these, another day). Economic opportunities that have drawn so many of us in your extended family to your overflowing table, (that is what family is for, don’t grumble, haven’t you heard of the black tax?).  Your thriving arts and creative industries. your functional democratic institutions and systems. And all the wonderful support, goodwill, and love so many of us have for you and how we will keep cheering you on, and on, and on. Need I continue? 

Happy birthday my beautifully thriving, comfortable, full of hope and opportunity Home Number 2. I love you more each day. As we would say in KZN, in Bulawayo and all over this continent, khula uze ukhokhobe! Or as your generation would have it, khula uze uphile lama steroids, (grow as old as you wish or till you depend on steroids to prop you up. *Note no political inferences may be drawn from this heart-felt wish).