Skip to main content

Sunday morning thoughts.

I'm an ardent believer in conventional age-old wisdom but as times change, I think some practices have lost their context & have become near useless. 

Two examples being; "Ithemba alibulali" & "Rather a living dog than a dead lion". 

Ithemba alibulali in my native language simply means "Hope does not kill". This saying comes from a time when the world was still novel & people believed & anything was possible. In today's age of atheism & nullist beliefs where humanity already knows everything, nothing is new. There is no need for hope, just ability. In fact, from my point of view, it is better to have lost all hope & build from there than build on a dream. With no faith in anything, you can build with things that are proven to work. When you still have hope & believe in things "working out for the best", you leave yourself exposed to the elements. When you have no hope & believe that things inherently succumb to entropy, you have a more realistic view of the world. You do not, however, have to be a hardened pessimist but you leave room for fault. Nothing kills the human soul more than hope. When you live in hope, it is like a balloon among thorns. 

"Rather a living dog than a dead lion" comes from a bible verse where it says; “For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion.” - Ecclesiastes 9:4 

This comes from a time where the brave & free were seen with contempt & a timid, mundane existence was more preferred. In today's age, we are all lions, we are all brave & free. Being a living dog is more frowned upon than being a dead lion so this verse has almost lost it's value in the age of extended life expectancy. We see the dead lions as martyrs & living dogs as cowards. Perhaps what this phrase meant was that while the brave die in the battlefield, the coward lives to fight another day. This phrase has lost it's meaning today where the brave & foolish are protected & can live full lives as there are no longer that many wars.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

History of the Mpofana by Mthoko M. Mpofana

I'm not very traditional, I'm more straightforward & basic & often disregard cultural nuances so this history of the Mpofana tribe is going to be as direct & concise as possible.  Growing up, I grew up knowing that the clan praises or izithakazelo of the Mpofana are "Zulu" & "Ntombela", I never questioned that.  What I know now for sure is that there's a lot more that's hidden in history. What I keep seeing being repeated from various sources is that the Mpofana were part of the Amazizi (or AmaTiti) tribe. I now know that in the midlands & perhaps further north, up to the northwestern parts of KZN, they use the greeting "MaZizi okuhlala", perhaps alluding to the fact that the Mpofana as well as other Amazizi tribes were among the original tribes to settle in present-day KZN from 200 AD onwards & the "Dlamini" praise or greeting was used among all Dlamini tribes i. e. the Amahlubi, Amazizi (Mtiti), Hlangwini...
Read more

A little about eSayidi ( Port Shepstone )...

Port Shepstone is a small town on the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal known by the locals as "eSayidi".  In Port Shepstone, attractions include; Port Shepstone Museum, the annual Sardine Rush, a mall, two shopping centres & the beach.  Port Shepstone was settled by British, Boers & Norwegian settlers during colonisation.  By Port Shepstone is the suburb of Marburg where it's said Emperor Shaka met with Henry Francis Fynn in 1828 after the Zulu's Mpondoland campaign in present-day Eastern Cape. Descendants of Norwegian settlers in KwaZulu-Natal include cricket all-rounder Lance Klusener & South Africa's most successful football coach Gordon Igesund.  Despite many groups living in Port Shepstone including those of east African, west African, southern African, Asian, Arab & American descent, it remains a Zulu-speaking town.  Famous names to come from this small town called Port Shepstone include:  • Naima Kay (Singer...
Read more

What would a white exodus in South Africa mean?

Alright, in my previous blog I mentioned a white & Indian exodus in South Africa. We already joke about white people leaving South Africa for Australia, England or Canada & finding the going tough then coming back to South Africa but what if they were to go to a country where everything would be comfortable for them & they would forget about South Africa. What would become of South Africa?  Farmers: We're led to believe that the majority of farmers in South Africa are white so that vaccum would have to be filled & frankly, I don't think the current crop of black farmers can fill the void so we may have to buy food from elsewhere in the world so food prices may increase more than they already have.  Skills exit: Some may claim a skills exit in South Africa would leave a vacuum that would be filled by indigenous black professionals & while that may be true, they'll need to obtain the experience that the former non-black people had. No racism: There would ...
Read more