EENDRACHT MAAKT MACHT

WE HAD A DREAM

Quite a vivid one at that.
We dreamed a dream of Luther-Kingian proportians. It was a dream akin to those one has in the thin of the morning. One we started waking up from.
We were so tired we forgot our own names. But that was okay, because we had the world to help with casting and plot.




As we dreamed restlessly, the Swiss had ‘FREE MANDELA’ t-shirts printed. They wore these to cheese and wine parties, starting promptly at eight, after hard days of working at processing cheese and fine-tuning watches. ‘Don’t buy South-African Pomograntes!’-stickers adorned their Volvos‘ bumpers. The corn-rows made their heads ache when they yodelled, but they soldiered through, bearing the pain as they thought of Stompie Sepei and Dr Myriam Makeba’s click-song.
(Is is just me, or does that title somehow rape the idea of all that should be good and pure and flowery in this world? Does she now join the ranks of Minister Vincent van Gogh (no portfolio)? Professor Buddha?)



Still we dreamed on. Not daring to wake. Knowing we don’t really have to. We have the world to help with plot-device and motive.

As we tossed and turned, Nina Simone said:
“This may be a dream, but I'll say it anyway: I was supposed to be married last year, and I bought a gown. When I meet Nelson Mandela, I shall put on this gown and have the train of it removed and put aside, and kiss the ground that he walks on and then kiss his feet.”
Nelson?
Who?

Stupid song stuck in my head…
And the seagull’s name was Nelson
Nelson who came from the sea
And the seagull’s name was Nelson
Nelson the seagull free
Shhh… Shhh… Shhh…
Fluff your pillow. Turn on your side. Dawn is far off. (Was that a Des and Dawn Lindberg hit?)
Shhh… Shhh… Shhh…

In Afrikaans (of course):
Q: Why is it called Boipatong?
A: Because ‘patong’ is the sound a bullet makes every time it hit’s a boy

Starting to wake up now.

My best friend, Conrad’s dad’s joke. How we laughed and laughed.

Vote CP.

Leave your God, there’s a new one waiting in the halls of ‘Die Afrikaanse Protestante Kerk’.

And so our dream ended.

In a cold sweat.

We now realised it was a nightmare after all.
Did the pigs in ‘Animal Farm’ know they were pigs? Could self-realisation have made them be anothing other than what they were?
But that’s okay.
We have the world to brand us.
White Supremist South-African Dutch Fascist Pig.
Previously Disadvantaged Oppressed Illeterate Babboon.
Let’s not think for ourselves, they can do it for us.
Let us let hairy-armpitted American lesbians burn their bras in our name.
Let us let foreign colonialists fuck up our relationships even further.
Let us wake up and realise we are who they say we are.

-Coffee?
-Sure.

-Now what?
-Beats me.

-I know!
-Yeah?

-No. never mind.
-No tell me.

-Nah, it’s silly. You’re not gonna like it, and less so the rest of the world.
-Who cares. I’m bored. Have no one to opress anymore. Anyway, the world stopped watching when we stopped dreaming and started getting real. Haven’t you noticed? The only ones writing songs about us now are on home soil, pleading to be recognised by them and barely getting a nod. They’re so stuck on that damn click-song! Fucking makes me puke. It wasn’t even her best song, by a long shot…

-Okay. So here’s what I was thinking…
-Uh-huh?

-In stead of changing the plot, let’s change the characters.
-Not following.

-Bare with me. In stead of more national unrest, let’s CGI a huge mother-fucker of a rainbow over this turd and pretend it smells like puppy’s breath. You sit back and relax, we’ll call you if we don’t know which button to push or lever to pull. Give us everything you ‘worked so hard for’ as you put it, and we’ll take it from here.
-Uhm. O-kay…

-Great. So it’s settled. Got to go now. My new Volkswagen/BMW/Mini Cooper is waiting. Gonna park it by Engen Saturday with all the doors open playing shit kwaito and hip-hop. Fuck the click-song.
-Yeah. Fuck the click song. As long as we can still write totally inappropriate Afrikaner songs referencing boer-heroes and hiding behind the ‘historical context’ clause, making a dumb face when asked what we thought it would ignite in the heart of the blue-blood Afrikaner…?



-Yeah. You’re starting to get it now! Caffeine kicking in, is it? Of course it goes without saying that we will, in turn, have evil murderous characters like Malema singing about killing your kin.
-Sure. Sure.



-Since you deprived us of a civil war, there is one more thing. We’re not gonna break in and go for the tv and Blue-Ray. We’re coming to saw off the soles of your mother’s feet so she can’t walk to the phone to call for help.
-Well. That goes without saying, doesn’t it? I mean, you left your own mothers (fathers/ grand-parents/ brothers/ sisters/ aunts/ uncles/ nephews/ nieces/ friends/ neighbours) in the lokasie where they belong, what did we expect you would do to ours?

-Each to his own, right?
-Each to his own.

-Amandla, and so on.
-Yup. Ayethu, and all that.

-Simunye.
-We are one. Right…

…Just one last thing though. If we’re changing characters and not plot, were we the pigs and you society at large, come to restore peace back to the manor? Or were we the farmer, and are you the pigs, come to turn the manor into animal-farm?