Excuse me, I’m a little drunk today… drunk with ANGER. I have tried to suppress it, to be reasonable. There’s not need to be nice about it. I care. I am not afraid.
I think that perhaps it is time that we all sobered up – for REAL. I have been ‘sober’ now for close on two years – but really I am not counting the days because it doesn’t matter to me.
But when wine drinking was my daily hobby I would wonder sometimes why it is that the wine I so enjoyed would sometimes knock me out with just one glass – as if out of nowhere – like a Mohammed Ali Blow – It would be lights out, I’d wonder what happened. Other times it would take two or three or more bottles of red wine before the knock-out effect happened. Sometimes the knock-out happened while I was drinking – to those with me I was there – but I know that I was not there because I would not remember any of the things I was told the next day or morning that I had done – and I am not pretending. I would remember events only from the time I began drinking the first glass. I will listen with interest, and try to probe more and more, as friends and family told me heart-wrenching stories about the previous night – but it was often a painful exercise as if coming from a coma, from the dead. I would have to ask again and again, Konje? Kana? I did that? really why? and invariably those who were the witnesses to my out-of-body experiences did not believe and frankly were annoyed and had no patience for my very sincere inquires that said I could not have been present when I said or did what I did – because they saw me do it, heard the words coming out of my own mouth. I cannot dispute what they say because I have no basis for it, no memory what’s so ever of the conversation and actions they were alluding or more often than not, were angered, hurt or saddened by.
I realized that it was a dangerous state of affairs, I could not afford it. I needed to remember, what I said, to whom when and how and why.
Now I understand why wine can be to toxic, why it can knock you out, make you so angry, so sick, so quickly.
Imagine working everyday, hard physical labour everyday, and getting paid a +- 50 ZAR a day, which is about +- 8 USDollars. What kind of wine would you produce. Plotting, tiling , your ancestral land which was stolen from you, on which you have no claim whats so ever, living in a tin home crunched up on top of your hungry starving – children? You Live spend your life bending over, YES Bass, your fingers digging into the soil, your blood, sweat, and emotions mixing up with the soil mixing with the rain, your tears…. your screams your anguish – no matter how loud, or hard or painfully you scream – on one listens, no one hears – they just pour toxic wine down your throat to shut you up, put you in a coma. What fruit – strange fruit will you produce?
What can you buy for 50 rands a day, for your family? for 70 bucks? Oh no let’s be generous 150 rands ? What can you buy for that amount. How much does food cost where you live have you checked? Electricity? Transport, clothing, Toiletries, incidentals, Doctors, phones, airtime? huh? Can you live and survive on 150 rands a day, that’s money you spend at a cheap restaurant for a plate of chips and a bun, that you don’t even finish, because you have more at home, you can buy more tomorrow , it’s no biggie for you and its fine A -OKAY that someone else with children – a family, like your cute little girl, or boy , as precious and innocent as your lovely angel – all of them should survive on 50 rands a day? be happy with it? No be grateful, thankful? I’d rather starve!
How much wine must we be drinking – how drunk must we be to think that families should survive on that much – on 50 rands a day? Not even one person an Individual can survive on that. There’s blood in South African WINE and I won’t drink it – the blood of generations upon generation upon generations of slaves. Aphansi Bayakhala.
Someone must have knocked all of us out of our minds and our bodies to think that it’s okay for mine workers who risk their lives ( as in literally) everyday, trapped under precarious rocks and caves digging inch by inch, immersed in water, in darkness, lying on their backs or kneeling for 8- 15 hours underground everyday should be fine with R300o a month or less. Without Medical-aid/insurance , UIF, unemployment fund, NOTHING. Many of them leave the mines with no air, literally. Close to a million former miners in South Africa and from our sister nations are living with debilitating lung diseases ( silica-silicos- TB- CANCER etc) as a direct result of working in the mines. Normally they can only work for 3 years after which they are sent home with little to no compensation or medical assistance to die. Because they cannot work any more. The mines literally took their breath Away!
We need to remind those of us still in a coma that this is not what we agreed on. this is not what we were fighting for. Let us READ the FREEDOM CHARTER AGAIN and remember what it’s about! EQUALITY.
Lets wake each other up from this allusion and be real. We are supporting a SLAVE SYSTEM.
NO we even think mine workers should be GRATEFUL that their employers agreed to give them 600 rands extra a month, that they’re a lucky….
“how can they expect to earn this much when they didn’t go to school?” I have heard people say…
What CHANCE did they have? because they didn’t go to school they must become your slaves, with no rights or say? They cannot afford to be poor, can not afford anything! you give themn enough money to come and work for you. NO GUYS. ITS NOT ON Hey… not on! I don’t think workers are expecting luxuries that our honourable president so enjoys, they don’t need five homes, five wives or however many children, five cars, lifts and private jets, No that’s not what we are asking for. We are asking for fair and Equal Compensation for work, for honest, hard labour. A LIVING WAGE With equal access to education, food, shelter, educations, health. Clean environment. Nothing fancy.
haha I laugh because I’m tired of crying! What is going on with us?
Is this really the freedom we are fighting for, is this a place you want your children to grow up in? Can someone please shake someone up?
What can YOU do with 300o rands, today. Can you buy a house? pay for electricity, furnish it, send your kids to school? go on holiday? eat out? that’s the cost of your bloody shoe… forget the perks, just to live nje on a daily basis? and you don’t get angry, that someone else with hopes and dreams just like you do, is expected to earn that much no live on that much ? to live and survive on that much HOW did you get where you are? through sheer hard-work? really? Come on guys…
How can we expect to thrive and be happy when so many are not? why is it not our mission to help others have a chance?
Would YOU be happy.
EVERYONE must sober up, think about it and don’t be distracted by articulate orators….. count for your self. Do the math. Use sticks and stones if you have to.
Can you and your family survive on 50 rands a day? 3000 rands a month? Be honest
Just think about it…
Think about it…. how will they pay for their kids to go to school to get an education? What gives you the right to earn 30 thousand rands a day for writing a few lines? just because you went to school. How did you get to school? could you survive living under these conditions, aren’t you complaining about your cushy job now, where you get pension UIF, Medical Aid, all the perks, it is still not enough for you right, you could use a little more right?
So why should another live on so little? Why can’t you fight for others to just earn a little bit more? At least enough to live? How will the children ever be able to learn if they are hungry when they go to school, are tired, sick , because their drunken parents from their “dope-pay”, not knowing what else to do were fighting with each other last night, or because yet again there was nothing to eat, or they have no mother or father oh my GOD… I am ranting – I am being emotional – maybe it’s not all wine farms, not all wine farmers , actually that’s besides the point…. the fact that we are not ANGRY and taking to the streets in Support of worker’s rights across the country…. is a REAL SHAME. An indictment on all of us… yes we can’t all stop and let the country go the drain….
But maybe for one day we should all just stop for a moment. And think about where we are going really, LETS STOP NOW, FOR ONE DAY ALL OF US LET’S STOP FOR A MOMENT AND THINK ABOUT WHERE WE ARE GOING AND IF WE STILL WANT TO GO THERE.
I PROMISE WE WILL SAVE MORE MONEY IN A DAY OF DOING NOTHING THAN IF WE CONTINUE THE WAY WE ARE GOING!
Before it’s too late, lets just sober up and realize that this situation CANNOT continue, it is UNACCEPTABLE, to RAZE people’s HOMES to the ground, for which they saved up hard-earned money to build with their OWN resources – What Pray – TELL ME NOW, is the difference between LENASIA and the FORCED REMOVALS of SOPHIATOWN? Does Democracy make it legal to demolish people homes, who bought land legitimately from your own corrupt officials who were working together with the corrupt banks… in a corrupt system, to pay for homes you should have built-in the first place? why are those public servants not in jail or arrested is it NECESSARY to make sure that people, overnight just like that have nowhere to go, no place to sleep at night? No roof over their heads? Who demolished your house when you couldn’t afford to pay the bond? Where is your heart? Do you know how many people still in this country are still waiting dreaming of ONE DAY, JUST ONE DAY owning a house, with four walls and not a tin-roof? HOW INSENSITIVE MUST we BE?
HOW DRUNK are we…?
IT’S TIME! we all SOBERED UP. EVEN FOR ONE DAY, JOIN IN.
and PUT POWER BACK where it BELONGS and then maybe just maybe wine will become enjoyable again…
POWER to the FARM WORKERS In the WESTERN CAPE, LIMPOPO ALL THE NINE THE PROVINCES – MINE WORKERS -ALL OVER THE COUNTRY!
WE CAN CHANGE THIS. WE HAVE THE POWER. UNITED WE STAND!
AMANDLA!
ASIYI!!!!!!!!
Jedi Ramalapa 