A Traitors Heart

The journey of my “political awakening”

“It might be hard for you to understand this being an outsider; but South Africa holds the souls of its sons and daughters in an almost inescapable gasp. History cast all of us in a strange and gripping drama, but I had deserted the stage. I had no idea what my role was, and felt I would never be whole until I found out!”
- fine writing by Rian Malan in his “compelling” book MY TRAITOR’S HEART

How a “South African became “politically aware”...
The journey of my “political awakening”

Thanks, once again, Madiba for all you have done for the “always beloved country”

This little e-book of memories is for you and all South Africans

(written in the very dark days of June 1992)

Reflections on my very privileged journey “born under Apartheid”

I was born in 1950, two years before the National Party won the election in South Africa and imposed the harshest racial legislation the world has ever known. Here is the story of my journey and the first stirrings of my “political awakening”...

This work is also dedicated to all those people who over the years fought for a free and democratic South Africa. It is especially dedicated to those who made the supreme sacrifice in paying with their lives, the "supreme sacrifice". I'll only name a few: people like Steve Biko, Neil Aggett, David Webster, Abdul Timol and Hector Petersen, the schoolboy and the first shot dead in the Soweto uprising of 1976.

It is especially dedicated to all those people who have suffered under the OLD SOUTH AFRICA of racism and oppression...and that is ALL SOUTH AFRICANS. Apartheid divided not only blacks and whites, but everyone.

SEA AND SAND

Sea and sand
My love
My land,
God bless Africa
Sea and sand
My love
My land,
God bless Africa
But more the South of Africa
Where we live....
Bless the angry mountains
And the smiling hills
Where the cool water spills
To heal the earth's brow

Bless the children of South Africa
The white children
And the black children
But more the black children
Who lost the sea and the sand
That they may not lose love
For white children
Whose fathers raped the land....

Sea and sand
My love
My land,
God bless Africa
Many sunsets
Gold and crimson
Have dripped on the horizon,
Weeping for the dying day.
Many dawns have risen
In timely resurrection
From their cradles of light
Sunsets and dawns
Dawns and sunsets
I have seen them all
But when,
Oh when will I see that day
When love will walk the common way
To heal my wounded people
And break the shackles around their hearts?
- Don Mattera.

Dec 2013

“Watching children grow
is like threatening the ivy
to climb the garden wall.
You wait for it to happen
you hurry it along with love.
But still you’re disappointed
at giving someone life enough
to walk off on their own
and not be carried in your arms.
You never turn back – not once,
and yet one day they’ve grown apart
or taller

Giving love to children
has made us older overnight.”
•Rod McKune
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I don’t know how the story will end...

but I know how it all began...