THEKISO LEFIFI
So in reality, how conscious is an intoxicated brother? How does a person who can’t communicate, educate a nation? In my humble trotting across the landscape of the motherland, I come across conscious people, and “conscious people” you know – The “keep it Real”, The “Mo Faya mon!”. The types that would stop at nothing to equate themselves with the Messiah. The types that think they doing us a favour by walking the same earth as us. The types that discovered the herb before they knew about the movement. The types that would convince that every morning they share a bathtub with the son of Mary.
These are my Rastafarian brothers. Some prefer just to be called “conscious cats”. Funny it is that some of them can’t even spell the word “conscious”. Don’t get me wrong I love my brothers. I love the movement. But I hate how the self-proclaimed disciples or prophets cloud the rasta and conscious movements with Babylon infested their ills.
They are know-all and the loudest. You always find them in heated debates that lack content. They perfected the art of making the rest us look like nincompoops thus perpetuating the ideology that Rastafarians are intoxicated misguided souls spat out by the Bermuda Triangle. I’m not hating, I do love my upraising brothers – I believe we all upraising – we all human beings – human beings striving to be better, upraising.
These closet Danny K and Patrick Zwayze fans are degrading and crippling the movement and all that it stands for. They can’t even differentiate between Rastafarianism, reggae, ragga or between, Marcus Garvey and Marvin Gaye. They think reggae was started and ended with Robert Marley. All said and done, I have to hand it out to them for knowing the chronicles of the herb. They know all the benefits and uses marijuana.
Amazingly these false prophets want to go to their spiritual home, you’ve guised it -Jamaica. They long for it so much that they even perfected Caribbean accent to point it would make Mutabaruka’s eyes pop out like the gay Jack in the box. While it’s certainly common sense that the Afrikan man’s home is right here in Afrika. Afrika is the birth of man.
It baffles the day lights out of me; when my fellow brethren shrivel up his Zulu or Tswana language and accents and throw it out the window. They cloak themselves with fake accents believing it makes them more Rastafarian. I’m always unwillingly dragged into childish battles with some of my brethren because I refuse to put a foreign accent when I converse with them.
An accent that seems to have its origin in slavery. Our forefathers were removed from Afrika and due to the environment and mixing of different brothers and sisters from parts of Afrika in a foreign land, a new language was formed. I see them watching Jamaican movies then practicing their newly discovered words. It always make me wanna spit curse words that will disgrace and put Lucifer to shame.
Just imagine if Fanakalo (mixing of nguni, tswana, Afrikaans shangan languages during the gold rush in Southern Africa) had persisted and won over our mother tongues in Afrika, arrrgg sies man. Imagine if some idiot close to Verwoerd had suggested that it be in the Bantu Education curriculum. I bet they think hey will get a special badge or seat near Haile Selassie I once they reach Mt Zion. They despise the slave ships yet their eyes are filled with unmistakable glint and hope of boarding some or planes to Jamaica. Oh Afrika wadada!
Lack of knowledge has them bamboozled that our fellow brothers and sisters in Jamaica are all Rastafarians. That all they do is smoke the herb night and day. Oh Wadada Afrika!
These know-it-alls always preaching the pleasures of being a proud black African and in the same breath glorify the ills of being a victim bowls me over all the time. They glorify victims as if we have to be pitied by other nations all the time. Almost symbolising that to a “True Black African” you should suffer for eternity or Jah will look at you with scorn.
My fellow brothers stop at nothing when it comes to shoving their beliefs down the throats of others, forgetting that a man is not one-dimensional. Forgetting I and I travel different routes with one final destination in mind. Forgetting that for the positive to exists there must be the negative, for the light to shine there must have been darkness; for the conscious to exists there must be the unconscious. They are perpetuating the notion that a black man can be defined with one word or sentence. Some of the notions are, Rastafarians : are dirty, don’t eat meat, are always high, never talk sense and peaceful (ever head of the rude-boys? Your icon, Bob Marley was one of them).
These are some of the propaganda statements fed to the world by the white supremacy when the rasta movement spoke out against slavery and injustice against the black man. What I am trying to say that we are one-dimensional.
How can an alliterate person educate a nation? That is as silly as poets that doesn’t read. For one to dispense knowledge one must seek knowledge first. Know your subject first before you scream, “let I and I will skul ya…” Silly bambaclot caught in the fashionable “mo faya!” slogans as advertised on TV.
I always get cold stares or eyebrows raised when I reply “no I am not Rastafarian” when I get the “are you Rastafarian?” question thrown at me. Most of the people see dreadlocks, rasta colours, clothing, cd collection and conclude that one must be a rasta, again, as advertised on the TellieVision. If it was that easy to be Rastafarian, wouldn’t it be all possible for the whole world to wake up one morning and say, from now on we are Rastafarian, a kere we all have the Rastafarian elements/ requirements.
I always have to give fifteen minutes lectures of why I do not consider myself a Rastafarian (yet). Over the years it came to be a monologue that I can recite even in my drunken state in wee hours of the morning.
My best friend knows so well that at times I let him sing it to people. It goes, I was raised by Tswana Christian family, so I am of Christian orthodox like most of you. I happen to be in the Rastafarian upraising. I’m still learning about the movement…blah, blah, blah, my clothes don’t make rasta just as much as your attire does not make you more European or a clown or whatevah you intended to be when your left your house in that (I remember, I once got a farting-smack from some xhosa chick when I replaced clown with whore in that statement) so I tend use it with caution.
Anyhow I would ramble on and on about how reggae and rasta are associated but not the same, I go into detail about the prophet, Marcus Messiah Garvey, Ras Tafari, how I do not long of going “home” to the motherland because I am already here, my adamant refusal to have 30 minutes discussion in a foreign accent with my fellow Tswana brother. I moes know him. We went to primary school together and his name is not Bobo Kajamala it’s Sipho Mokoena! And he has the nerve to tell me, “no mon, me no use slaive naimes, mon. I an I hav seen de light, seen?”
I’d respond “O s’tlaela sani”. You give us a bad name and at any rate both your names are of African decent. Jy is dom ore o batla kere bambaclot? (laugh) sataman, seen?” Of coz he chose not to listen to me but ask me what sataman means.
My point is people who do not read or seek knowledge cripple the movement. Its scary but true that an empty tin makes the loudest noise. I pray that soon will stop making being conscious a fad.
