The Internet made us forget that we are homeless.
My people who live stories of old emerge when a shanty town folds its sleeves to wash its hands off of their existence. But they are persistent. I know them.
They built their shacks on freedom.
They built them with rubble from the aftermath of apartheid.
How many Freedom Day’s will the stench of faeces still live too close to their kitchens?
Electricity has been evading them and those communal taps are too far from their bathrooms.
Well, they are actually next to them, but those bathrooms are too far from their shacks.
I know them. And they know that much has not changed.
Much like the Unicorn of new regulations for data bundles but no prices falling.
Thank you Icasa for telling mobile networks to let us know in time when our data is almost depleted. But that doesn’t mean we can afford it now.
Do you remember the Pegasus of varsity fees falling?
How quick we have forgotten about Mcebo Dlamini.
Thank you Department of Higher Education for increasing student funding to support close to half a million students in the current financial year.
But this is nothing to pat yourselves on the back for.
It’s something you should have done in 1994.
The same varsity students have survived deaths from pit toilets at schools with classes under trees. Mud brick walls if they were lucky at all.
We are still waiting to answer the chimera from the land expropriation call.
Herding the centaur of inequality since South Africa’s first post-apartheid elections in 1994.
We have been farming mythical creatures.
What good is attempting to mend walls but ignoring the foundation?
First world problems are not designed to be fixed with a third world anecdote.
Hundreds of millions of rands spent on wi-fi because the internet made us forget that we are hungry.
Connectivity will never be a basic need as long as my people still burn tyres for electricity.
As long as a brother quenches his thirst with the blood of another because taps are empty, connectivity will never be a basic need.
While varsity students still sleep in libraries, toilets and sometimes squat in other students’ rooms at night, connectivity will never be a basic need.
My people who live stories of old are fiends for survival.
But memes aren’t a drug of their choice. I know them.
Facebook likes won’t sit well in their stomachs.
They know that binge watching Netflix doesn’t taste better than an open fire cooked meal.
How could it if mealie meal is a luxury to them.
An entire loaf of bread is a miracle; you are even able to feed all the roaches in your shack.
Fire - it keeps you warm now, but lingers until you close your eyes going to that place where your burden follows you, and then it swallows you.
Water - is a 50m walk with a bucket on your.
It is so designed that when you leave the burning ruins of your abode with that bucket, upon your return it is all in ashes.
Wind - will make sure the flames have visited your neighbours.
Earth - how many gigabytes on out-of-bundle rates does it take to erect a shack on your forefathers land without Red Ants demolition it when your data is depleted?
@Rabbie_Wrote