You Millenium Racist, you.

It's 2014, and despite the decade and a half-or-so between now, and the offset of a time many remember sordidly and in much vain, there's a stark similarity in the way ideals are harboured, and in how we communicate our 'angst'.
Riots are the  most poignant of such features still prevalent amongst many today, especially those in said 'government' positions of labour. And then protests of educational and political significance still seem widespread, very reminiscent of the infamous, Sharpeville massacre. It's petrifying to reconcile with these realities, but it's also profoundly hard to be evasive in the face of fact and reality.

One would have anticipated a society less preoccupied with the strife, and outbursts of sporadic violence, that so much as it has damaged our social and human fabric, has simultaneously tarnished our international reputation, along with infecting us with a political amnesia- one by which ultimately, we have become oblivious about a past so many of our forefathers and relevant family members fought to abolish. A past we should presumably have learned every single lesson from.
So then, what seems to be problem? Why do such atrocities, such as; gender-based violence, rape, prejudice, discrimination in the workplace, and cultural subordination still seem to shape the way we conduct ourselves in our so-called 'democratic', post-Apartheid country. We have much to celebrate and to be proud of, but can the same be said of ourselves? what we teach our children, which stereotypes we perpetuate perpetually, and which prejudices we harbour innately, and use to live in our privatised, singular, cultural-cum-religious motivated existences? Do we feel guilty, or do we merely settle for calling ourselves victims of a traumatising past we'll never truly transcend?

Does admitting to the latter say anything about how weak or strong, moral or immoral, ethical or unethical, or about how frugal or excessive we are as human beings?

The cohort of young South African's born just after the infamous 1991 general election, in which the White Nationalist Party was ousted from parliament; abnegated from reigning supreme, that is, share a varied ideology about the nature of unification and the ramifications of segregation.
Racism is obviously not so blatant that it would surface as problematic, and it's clandestinely preserved and projected perfectly enough to go unnoticed. Amid the slew of human rights violations and the tempest of other social and anthropological iniquities we encounter and struggle against, racism which many undoubtedly shy away from even speaking about, just does it thing quietly. Is this a sort of psychological racism?
Most theorists agree that it's innate, or intuitive, and far more relative to preference, than it is motivated by reasons of political dissidence. That is to be otherwise proved nonetheless, since it's not a focal objective of this piece.


                                                              -Raeez Jacobs

Extract from Play

Extract from play: Title cannot be known at this point.


Scene III
ACT I


Zeeha is seated before a mirror, applying make up to his face while reading an article in a newspaper. 


Zeeha: The funniest thing about me, is the thing I don't like laughing at, or having other people laugh at for that matter. [Puts on eye-shadow]You know, [drags on cigarette, and blows out smoke loudly] it's very strange how just the other day I thought: Zeeha jou lekker ding, trek die pantyhose aan en maak laat hul koppe soos tornado's draai, but agh... [Applies lipstick] I guess I should stop complaining; I sound like an auntie with one breast, three children, a lazy-cheating of a husband, and a house in the kak part of Ennerdale, or some other surviving coloured state, and I say state because community is an understatement to the ways of the coloured folk; community is for the gypsies, or little groups of rats that live underneath that surviving, coloured state. It's not easy to talk this way about these people, because no matter what I say, or do, they are always going to be better, even though Uncle Sammy will most likely be sitting on that same three-legged chair, in his bargained Ackerman's trousers, when I come here in a few years...[Stops to think, and drags on cigarette] maak dit somer net sestien jaare, and you'll see, I swear on my fake boobs, gay spirit, and the blood of Barbara Streissand that even Auntie Wakie will not only look the same, but will still be wearing her blue checked overall. And then I am the worst of them, really? Nee tog, ek is glad nie so erg nie, it's just the way they were socialized, and don't tell them that because they'll say something like: "Hey don't talk nonsense man, I wasn't socialized; leave that laarnie words of you alone- I was born. And that is when I roll my eyes, and laugh at them, in my head, while still they laugh at me...out loud.


© Raeez Jacobs. 2012. All Rights Reserved.