I am from a generation of “opportuned” individuals, and when I say “opportuned”, I mean young Africans with ideas of freedom roaming the corridors of their minds. We are obsessed with the freedom to create, the opportunity to show and show off, to learn and re-create! How not? We are the generation of the internet, the generation of live feed and real time virtual applications. We can see and say anything! That’s our freedom.
About one year and a half ago, I was tasked to write out a proposal for my Masters year, beginning in 2016. This just so happened to be the same time that the #feesmustfall movement gained a voice at the University of the Western Cape campus. This coincidence then made way for me to set out to research the performance of protest movements, trying to find linguistic differences and similarities between the female leaders in this #feesmustmovement and the #antiaprtheid movement. Which would have been a rather frustrating task as I am still uncertain as to what end I wanted to explore this to. But necessary to say, in this process I found that the new generation of black male and female leaders incorporated the speeches and movements of leaders that came before them; particularly from the apartheid era. I was intrigued by this, particularly since most of our leaders were born 2 years prior to the democratic vote. But then I realized; digital media!
It hit me then that we are a generation of virtual entertainment and information consumers, we learn not from human experience anymore, but from books and the ever loved internet. We are surrounded by shows that show us how to live; where to eat and how to shop, and what we love the most; who has lived before! This is not a bad thing (if you don’t want it to be) because we learn from the experiences of others, we have learned how to communicate and how to speak life into the hearts of people, to get them ignited and reacting. This is beautiful.
However, it started to seem like instead of incorporating, we started performing history, and that our plights were mere representations of reenacted realities. Unfortunately, with all that beauty in that learning of our history and history of our people, we found ourselves lost to our own voices. We re-enacted speeches and demands that I think were neither moving us forward or backward. We were stuck and we are stuck, we are sitting ducks as we continue to wait for another speech from MHE Blade so that we can react, reenact and ‘burn’ for our black government to correct something from the past, and to change something for the future. You doubt? Ask yourself, where is #feesmustfall on your campus today?
My guess for a possible solution is; Perhaps if we spent more time thinking about how we could best improve our lives in this present moment, in this reality then we would stand a better chance at saving the future of future black children. Could we possibly give ourselves the chance to know who we are as “black young thangs!” in academic and corporate spaces today? Could we change the narrative of the black child by actually being active in the participation of our black lives? Could we give ourselves and each other the opportunity to exist as ourselves? Can we change the status quo, not through narratives from and by those who have come before (though important), but by living that change in our own voices? In our own words?
To do that we would have to know Africa today, we would have to see its colors and hear its buzz. It is a rich buzz, full of endless opportunity and creative freedom. Challenge yourself, live in Africa today. Create in Africa today! Live feed, real time, real share, but are you ready to be alive today?
Post A Comment:
0 comments: