On Monday night, while watching the descent of doom on Kingsmead and witnessing the collective South African psyche sink into the quagmire of the deep, dark abyss, I could not help but recall the words of Bob Marley, who sang: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery for none but ourselves can free our mind … don’t be afraid of atomic energy, because none of them can stop Jah [God’s] time.”
While the cameras trawled and panned the ocean of depression as manifested in the noticeably dejected body language, I saw, in the drenching, salivating and drooling rain the marked face of an utterly amused Fate/ Providence/Reality, who relished pissing on the grand parade of mediocrity, madness and false hope embodied by the International Cricket Council month of mental mayhem.
It was far from the emancipation spoken of by Marley. It was also the months of Lotto mayhem with queues snaking around the country as we submerged our minds, pockets and hopes in the possibility of becoming an instantly gratified son of capitalism with lots of capital to, forever, change our lives.
This time the Lotto was called cricket and we were all hoping, again, to be salvaged by our gladiators. I could not help but reminisce about the gladiatorial arena while watching our ovals fill to the brim with the savagely false hope that would/should/could cut us loose from the feeling of despair, despondency, hankering and lamenting for all that we want while doing little to achieve our desires.
Instant gratification. The McDonald’s of our dreams, the Wimpys of our desires and the Kentuckys of our hopes. Fast foods, fast solutions and a fast life to nowhere.
African renaissance? Upliftment of the people through the power of balls flung, hit, thrashed, thrown or kicked? Twenty-seven years of incarceration and our New Messiah, Madiba and his thousand-and-one cohorts, feeding the people the false hope of salvation while the Middle East and her messiahs have kept us hoping since time immemorial with no arrival time for the saviour.
The Lion called Fate intervened in our collective madness and devoured our gladiators, role models and mediocre flingers and batterers of balls into submission as they sat stunned by the awesome reality of their loss. How I wished we could feel that depressed and awed by the reality of Aids. I hoped, quietly, that our business community and economic saviours could plunge so much money into poverty relief. I wished that we could become that stunned by the interminable abuse of our children, women and old people. I wondered if we could ever feel that devastated by the continuing existence of racism in our midst.
I wrapped myself in the hope that we could feel that exhausted by the absolute environmental vilification by our brothers and sisters. I wanted to think we had enough regard for each other’s humanity to weep together at the cataclysms of war, famine and drought that assail our brothers and sisters universally. It was not to be.
Following the success of the “holy cow protectors”, India, against the “unholy cow eaters”, Pakistan, cities from Allahabad to Delhi and Bombay were embroiled in the goading of Muslims by dint of the prowess of one Tendulkar against one Waqar. A few cars were burnt, some people were stabbed and many cowered in their homes, hoping the madness would end.
The power of the little ball even had the whole of India stumped for a public holiday with schools closed for this epic battle against the arch-enemy. The scenes of jubilation were indicative of the resentment residing in the deeper recesses of India for their neighbour. Do I see Ali Bacher smile and spin his way out of it by dint of the incredible exposure, success and prominence the tournament has brought for all of our benefit? Do we hear the grandiose arguments again and again for the value of tourism? Are we again to hear the bullshit delivered from the political domain, with its minimal successes, as to the absolute importance of this orgy of balls so that the nation can feel proud? Blah, blah, fucken blah!
As for India and her little ball throwers and batterers, the tournament is already won by that significant defeat and all other failures are momentarily forgotten in the groundswell of patriotic pride that has given politicians new fervour to their speeches as the crumpled lives mired in the darkness of poverty from Calcutta to Bombay are forgotten in this great conquest. Who said sport is not political?
I return to Ncgonde Balfour’s question: “Who is Jacques Kallis?” and ask, indeed, who are our cricketers? Who are these gladiators whom we have sacrificed in the international arena to salvage our national pride? Who are these young pups whom we have thrown in front of the hurricane from down under who continually drench us in shame, scorn and derision? Who, indeed, is Shaun Pollock? What is his value to this renaissance, this good Christian with his goodly Christian values? How will he and the rest save us from ourselves? Is his ball battering and bowling to be our new Messiah? Or is it young Paul Adams, Mr Zondeki or even Mr Ntini?
Has everyone forgotten this is simply a bloody fucken stupid little sport played by mundane, middle-class, often mediocre, individuals whose only worth is that they are good batterers or bowlers of a little ball flung between six sticks from one end of the field to another? Have we forgotten this “sport”, of very little real value, would be nothing of prominence if not for the excessive spending of advertising-hungry corporates who sit and wait for opportunities to increasingly colonise our consumerist tendencies and who gratifyingly add to this nonsensical hype with their only real raison d’être being the possibility of our becoming their usable slaves?
Think, for a moment, of what, apart from all the S’effricans, cricket, kangaroos and abused Aborigines, you consider worthy of remembering about Australia? Feeling vacuous? The blandness of Australia is epidemic and, without sport, specifically cricket, they’ve got little to cheer about, mate, hence their exuberant enjoyment of conquering everyone with little balls and their infantile behaviour when doing so.
This is what we must emulate? This boisterous, boyish world of wanking sport! Nemesis or Messiah? It’s been in our homes, our minds and our consciousness for quite some time and we’ve experienced a barrage of assault from the media who, in the absence of the intelligence needed to tackle many of the real issues at hand, have gorged themselves on tiresome speculations with regard to all that is and will be the cricket World Cup.
We’ve been fed such a diet of opinions ranging from trite to banal, repetitive and sometimes incredibly inane, that a wholesome relieving diarrhoea could not make us feel better had we managed to defecate from our bowels the whole caboodle, and yet none has been able to answer a simple question, which is whether our players are good enough to wrest this munificent, magnificent and stultifyingly obscene trophy from the Great Kangaroos who came here with their yellow train, kangaroo jumps — watch Brett Lee after taking a wicket — and amusing confidence, which, if truth be told, is much more than any of our local wimps could muster.
The answer is no! No, you cretinous mass of self-deluded hysteria desperate for some mental time-out to make yourselves feel better. No. They were never good enough. If you wish to play these inane games in the inane international arena where it is mostly advertising revenue that gives any of them any semblance of self-worth, you have to be brutal, self-confident and irritatingly egotistical so that you do not choke when it counts. It is not the arena of prayers to messianic saviours, but the domain of devils who love nothing more than winning for the sheer sake of winning. Just ask Australia if they pray before a game!
Throughout this miserable wretch of legal international money laundering we could see their bowling, batting, mental fitness and just plain ability was lacking and that the mass hysteria created by the media is largely to blame for this “catastrophe”. They were placed on pedestals they didn’t earn or deserve and expectations were demanded of them that they were not ready for.
It is time to become a nation of honesty and show pride in our developmental achievements by nurturing the vast scope of talents possessed by our beloved country so that we emancipate our arts, sport, economy — big and small — to levels where one form of entertainment is not blown out of proportion so as to present us with the cascading waterfall of false hope that we see evident in so many layers of our society.
Remember the soccer World Cup? The rugby World Cup? The mass of expectations? Speaking to an acquaintance, Doctor Peter Ashman, a community health psychiatrist, we mused on this state of limbo and the concomitant level of expectation created out of the decrepit idea that something must save us.
He, learned doctor that he is, was amazed and questioned himself regularly as to why he was wasting time watching this useless crap knowing it was a ripe recipe for depression. Another set-up within the domicile of false hopes. We shared the feeling of amusement at the excruciating level of despair that filled the stadium in those last moments. Laughed at the many ifs and buts flung around by commentators paid to flirt with speculation while the heavens were merciless with their wet vomit.
I have learnt one valuable lesson from this monstrosity and that is that we are still a nation of liars, pretenders to the throne and easily deluded by those with agendas not worthy of human exploration. I have seen that we think nothing of wasting millions of rands in the pursuit of our vainglorious ideals while procrastinating on the simple issues of providing our sick and dying with basic care.
I have seen that we still have our heads so far up the anus of the United States and Europe that we think these arenas, where our gladiators do battle in the games of the “colonisers”, will give us the power to lift our finger in a collective up-yours, stimulate our consciousness or give us the strength to carry on.
I have seen that our high-flying president, Citizen Number One, proliferates this madness in his personal pursuit to find acceptance for his intellect, ideas and diplomacy while being unable to find even a simple solution or conclusion to a simple disease, while all we, the people and owners of him and his gorgeous aircraft, want him to do is deal with the absolute responsibility of truly rebuilding this wasteland left to us by the legacy of madness that was apartheid, thus helping us to find the wings which are waiting in the deeper recesses of the heart where true love dwells, waiting to be mined for our eternal evolution. Love of each as we should love ourselves. True healing not through slogans and hype, but through endeavour and real assistance that will bring everyone into the framework of humanity without shame.
Sport is really a minute and pissy inconsequential part of this evolution. The reality of the African renaissance is that we must all start engaging in the “sport” of friendship, trust, love, compassion, nurturing and true African ubuntu. I am amused and wonder who is batting the ball that is Thabo being flung hither and thither.
Hau! Ma Afrika! Aluta Continua!