Friday, September 12, 2008

Window Washing

I haven’t been able to sleep very well this week. Its definitely not the usual alarms and gunshots and sirens ringing out in the night keeping me awake. And I don’t think that the change of routine in terms of eating schedule and sehri has really affected me. the truth is, I’m worried and its that nagging worry where you know all you can do is mull over it because alone, you can’t really make a change to the situation.

Its not anything new that I’m fretting about. But when you’re faced with stark embarrassing reminders of how sick a society we really live in, you can’t help but spend the nights pondering.

We’re aware of the demons inside ourselves that we’re constantly battling – and I’m told they’re supposed to be under lock and key in this month – so who do we have to blame? How loud is this devil whispering that so many in our country seem to be lured by his call? Or is it a sickness we’ve failed to find a cure a for?

Yes, we live in a country with violence – what country on this earth is without it?

But how tragic that in our communities and in our land we choose to follow the ones who act so unashamedly! And worse still, we defend and protect them in the face of criticism.

I’m sick of the hypocrisy!
We fail to take responsibility for our own shortcomings and look to others to hide our flaws. The more we do that, the more it festers within and we’re crippled by the gangrened limb we fail to sever.

Enough!
Enough with defending the rapists, sodomists, murderers and fraudsters!
Enough with pretending that the Muslim community in this country is immune to it!
Enough with pointing the fingers to others as we knowingly go to bed with the perpetrators!
Enough with sucking up to those we think are powerful so that we can fill our pockets!
Enough with the denial!

It does happen to us!
In your homes!
In your lives!
Its not something distant and its not happening only to “them”

Wake up and smell the fucking incest and crackheads!
And for a change, look at the reflection in the damn windows of your glass houses!!!!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is so true ur writing is brutal and brilliant

Shafinaaz Hassim said...

i love the way you say it like it is!

desert demons said...

Thanx 4 the visit. I'm so annoyed by the state of the nation - we're suppose to be better than this !

Anonymous said...

Im so very glad to find your blog. SA most of the time feels like a lifetime away for me. I left 9 years ago but reading your blog and a fe other SA blogs it brings back many memories.

Your post on window washing really hit home. It's what I wonder about myself. How the hell have we gotten to this point of utter moral degradation.

In my line of work I deal with family & domestic violence abit amongst other community issues.

I had a mother who emphatically denied her husband was raping his daughters for a long period of time. We all knew she knew, her daughters knew she knew but she stood up and condemned them for lying. She later said that they shouldnt have told anyone because of the shame they brought on the family. One daughter was 13 and the other 11.
I will never understand this, I will never understand how firstly a father can do such a thing, but how a mother can ignore that it is happening to save face in a community. I lost my mind. I was crippled for a long time but I got over that because we have to fight against people like this. The world still has good moral human beings and I believe with every cell in my body that the good people need to stand up and condemn such things. It might take a long time but I believe the moral compass will move.