Get over it, move on to a new SA

This seems to me to be the core message of the new South Africa. From Nelson Mandela to Helen Zille to Pieter Mulder. Of course, being stuck in the past is not ayoba but forgetting is. Ok, let me put it in the language you would understand: "bodiba jo bo jeleng ngwana' mmago, o bo kekologe". I may have quoted this all wrong since I have also moved on to a new SA. What this saying means is that one should give a lake that ate one's sibbling, a wide berth. To do that, you should remember that you lost a sibling at that lake. In this case, 69 of them.

As I am writing this, the news report is showing "angry" Sharpeville residents protesting against the government's decision to commemorate Sharpeville Day (now human rights day), in Soweto. Is this decision an oversight or part of a master plan to write Sharpeville Day and all that it stands for from our history and memory. Or is it just the sheer embarrassment of the horror that is today's Sharepeville. New names and new realities, it is difficult to remember. It is difficult to remember and therefore likely that we will go frolicking in the lake that ate our siblings; 69 of them. If the anger displayed on TV is anything to go by, this lake is about to swallow even more of our sibblings.

The day, March 21, 1969 was always known and committed to memory as Sharpeville Day. In the name of reconciliation and assurance to white members of the new SA family that they will not be made to pay for the sins of their fathers; the day was renamed human rights day. An assurance to our new siblings some of whom were the very lake that ate our old siblings. That however, we are not to remember. That we are to get over and move on to a new family with new memories; forgeting the lake that ate our siblings, 69 of them.

I have gotten over a lot of things but I cannot move on. I have learned that moving on requires some measure of resolution of that which you wish to move on from that which will hold you back. How do I move on when I cannot resolve in my head why a powerful memory such as Sharpeville Day should be erased. Just the other day the ANC government decided that the voortrekker monument (a memorial of the triumph of Afrikaners) would now be a South African national heritage. This monument becomes a national heritage as the Voortrekker monument, not the Unity monument or maybe Versoening monument. The lake that ate the Afrikaner siblings will always be remembered and that way less likely to eat others. How do I resolve these two realities? One memory is said to be devisive another, just as devisive becomes a national heritage.

Reconciliation was the key consideration that drove and still drives the decisions of the ANC government. So, when it is decided that the memory of Sharpeville Day would be too stark and too real, it is resolved that Human Rights Day will be the new memory. This is done not in memory of our 69 siblings who died that day but as an assurance to our living new found siblings. The view of the ANC government is that we should move on while the Afrikaner and other communities hang on to their memories and victories; including the memory of eating our 69 siblings.

I do not want to get over this and will not move on to the new SA or anything else. I want to remember that governments are about power. That governments will use force to retain their power. Especially when the spinning and the lying can no longer work. I wish that we could all realise that those 69 people who were unarmed yet gunned down by a police force acting on behalf a government that was determined to hold on to power - were our sibblings, all of us. I don't want to move on to a government that desecrates the graves of their own to appease their new friends but old foes.

Honour the memory of our 69 murdered siblings. Be grateful for the human rights they contributed towards. Do not get over the memory of their death and do not move on and forget them. I for one will not be frolicking in the lake that seeks to wash away the memory of my murdered siblings.

MAYIBUYE!