1. We are black and proud (okay, not all of us are black but we’re still proud of them too).
2. We are African and proud (okay, we are not all African but we’re proud of them too).
3. We are resoundingly leftist.
4. Except when we unashamedly accept sponsorship.
5. We love the South (and everything laterally and vertically South)
6. …which strangely manages to all be poor
7. … except for the Aussies?
8. The SAfrican art scene has pissed us of.
9. So has Bush.
10. And the Israeli government.
11. Bob is a bastard.
12. …even if it is the syphilis.
13. We like to think Che and Biko should be more than just cool T-shirt designs.
14. We might be throwing in cool quotes from Lumumba, Nkrumah, Luther King, Marley, hooks, Morrison, Kapur, Mama and other famous black dudes and dudettes.
15. Yes, we’re allowed to say the word ‘black’ (and ‘dudes’ and ‘dudettes’).
16. We like to think we’re cool (although all of our friends have told us 'no'…).
17. We know we’re smart… and we’re not afraid to show it
18. … especially in some articles that contain many three syllable words like postcolonial, coloniality, postmodernism, neo-colonialism, appropriation, kiss-ass, sell-out (ok, so not all of these are 3 syllable).
19. We feel comfortable enough in our authoritative positions to ask completely unknown novices to give their expert opinions on a range of issues (yes, we will tackle the spit or swallow debate).
20. We will shamelessly promote friends, family or potential sex partners on our platform (unless someone tries to take a family member as a sex partner – not cool dude!).
21. In spite of Njami’s theory of African voicelessness, we will scream…
22. …that his name sounds like a SAfrican cheese!
23. Our white friends will not try to pull a Heart of Darkness on us – “phansi White saviours phansi!”
24. If you are our friend and white, you will not be offended or stand in our way to change the continued apartheidness of South Africa. You will join us in the quest to have this country reflect its true demographics. And you will like it!
25. If you slap us on one cheek, we will turn the other cheek. If you slap us on that cheek, we will turn the other. But you’d better keep both eyes open as you approach your car when it’s dark. They say crime is quite bad in Johannesburg.

‘I had two heroes, Karl Marx and Al Capone. Al Capone said if you’re gonna steal, steal big. But Karl Marx said all property is theft. I think they’d both be proud of me.’

‘The beginning. Soweto. 1994. Freedom. The New South Africa. A new dawn. A new day. A fresh start, a clean page. A new beginning. And I had dreams.’

‘You eventually decided to join the terrorists ‘cause you couldn’t catch them?’

‘We’re in the procurement industry. You seen comrade thug is a carjacker.’

‘Hijack is a dirty word. It’s called affirmative repossession.’

‘I may be a communist, but I believe God helps those who help themselves.’

‘Don’t worry, great things have small beginnings.’

‘I guess I’ll attend the university of life.’

‘Whoever made this flick is a criminal genius.’

‘If mother Russia had taught him Sentex and strategy, Uncle Sam completed that education via correspondence.’

‘In the new South Africa, everyone deserves their entitlement, preferably in this lifetime.’

‘I decided to quit before I was forced into early retirement.’

‘What you gonna eat? Books?’

‘She’d learnt what we all knew, if you want to get by, take a job where there’s something to steal.’

‘Johannesburg, a city fathered by gold, mothered by money and commandeered by white cruelty and greed.’

‘Al Capone said you can go a long way with a smile. You can go much further with a smile and gun.’

‘This is the New South Africa. Everybody pays their way.’

‘This is the only country in the world where you have to take shit in 11 official languages.’

‘I think we’ve had enough violence here to last a lifetime.’

‘I guess when you’re rich, poverty seems glamourous. It’s got a certain charm.’

‘A clever is a person who doesn’t use drugs. A clever is a person who sells drugs to you. Drugs make you think that that you are the clever one. If that’s a clever, it’s too clever for me.’

‘It’s fine to hate us while you sit there on your arses waiting for your entitlement from Mandela. If you think he’s going to come and part the dead sea and lead you to a promised land, you are wrong.’

‘Just because I’m a darkie, doesn’t mean I have to live in the slums. I’ll live as I choose to live and I fuck who I want to fuck.’

‘All I wanted was a house in Sandton and a Mercedes convertible.’

‘I want to lay charges. It’s my democratic rights.’

‘We can work it out darkie style.’

‘Behind every fortune is a great crime. The greater the fortune, the greater crime. But I don’t know about that. It seems the only people who say that probably never made one.’

‘After a revolution, comes a new order, but before that, opportunity. After all, wasn’t it PW Botha who said “adapt or die”?’

From: Jerusalema, Ralph Ziman (2008)

I do not seem to understand the competing thoughts that have been part of my mental visions, that are recreating my reality, prone to fight changes that govern my choices.
Am I to move away from the positive vibrations that bring smiles to those I believe I love, to disown the I in my speech and thought.
In we there is strength needing constant negotiation, thus the I in the us becomes an issue of constant contestation.
The mental space of I is relentless work of compromise and surrender of the ego.
In times when social interactions are monologues of self-gratification, this might seem like a daunting task.
Common sense was never common and will we never be as the truth comes in multiple experiences.

‘Don’t take me to no hospital please. Fuckin’ emergency rooms don’t save nobody.’
‘Don’t worry. My heart, it don’t ever quit.’
‘I was already a mean little bastard, while my mother was still alive, and I know it.’
‘Favour gonna kill you faster than a bullet.’
‘I know a lot about cars. I’ve been stealing them since I was 14.’
‘After you see this shot, you’re gonna give up your religious beliefs.’

‘You think you’re big time? You’re gonna die big time!’
‘Here comes the pain.’
‘Ain’t no more rackets out here, just a bunch of cowboys ripping each other off.’
‘What a man gotta come to when he loses five years.’
‘I swore I’d never break her heart, but I guess, things happen.’
‘When you’re in the joint, you dope out on who you’re gonna see the first day you’re out. The second. The third. When you’re out....’
‘You don’ get reformed, you just run out of wind.’
‘Maybe I don’t remember the last time I blew my nose.’
‘Dumb move man. Dumb move. But it’s like the old reflexes they keep coming back.’
‘The street is watchin, she is watchin all the time.’
‘Don’t want to burn nobody. Even when I know it should.’
‘You killed us Dave. You killed us.’
‘There’s a line you cross, you don’t ever come back from.’
‘I gotta keep movin.’
‘You get old enough you remember a reason why everybody wants to whack you. You believe ‘em all but you know somebody’s gotta be lyin’. Or mayber they’re all lyin.’
‘When you can’t see all the angles no more, you’re in trouble, baby. You’re in trouble baby.’
‘Never give up your friends, no matter what.’
‘Sorry, boys, all the stitches in the world can’t sew me back together.’
‘Sorry baby, I tried the best I could. Honest.’
‘Don’t worry. My heart, it don’t ever quit.’

From Carlito's Way, Brian de Palma (1993)

Don’t know what to do, but must to do something. So, while doing somehow I get an idea what it is that I am doing. Use writing as an escape-hatch in a world that is not so much interested in questions but answers. Searching for and inventing new and more questions, never settling for answers. To write a text then is like drawing an image of another world, of ways to how things could be done in a different way. And to work on the next possibility already. Or like throwing the wish for utopia against a fundamentally anti-utopian world. And to have a good time while doing it.

MY SAVAGE PAST

I embrace the cannibals and the savages. I embrace the child soldiers and the dictators. I embrace rapist and survivor alike. I celebrate the past and the present. I embrace torturer and the tortured because Steve Biko is dead and he won't be coming back.

I despise both white and black because Malcom X is dead and he wont have a second coming. Fela Kuti and Bob Marley are dead, Martin Luther King is dead. Patrice Lumumba will not be coming back to judge the living and the dead Mobutus. Samora Machel, Sankara, Ken Saro Wiwa, Nyerere, Nkruma, Haile Sellase, Marcus Garvey, Senghor are dead, Fanon is dead. We have no more need for messiahs there will be no more messiahs the only messiah is you.

I embrace the dope fiends, bandit queens, drag queens and shebeen queens because the Rain queen is dead and she has no heir.

I denounce the patriarch and the matriarch alike. None of the sheroic deeds of warrior queens dead or alive can save your sorry ass. Not the brilliance of Josephine Baker, not the majesty of Sojourner Truth, Nawaal al Sadawi, not the courage of Queen Nzinga and Sarawuti.

And how can we forget those self-destructive warriors from Huey P Newton to Winnie Mandela and all those saviours turned despots who despite their intellect, charm, and courage betrayed themselves and the hopes of all wretched generations to come.

Africa is somehow always in need of saving. Out of this a whole range of machines and factories have sprung up. The Hope industry, the Future Factory. If Africa was not such a basket case what would we write about, hold conferences over, make exhibitions to highlight, make art to challenge and rock concerts to fight.

This is my Manifesto. Not that I always live by it but a manifesto in any case.

Simba Sambo