I think people who love loudly and boldly are the bravest people on this planet. Why? Because it takes so much courage to show vulnerability and still be standing tall after it all.
In my mind I try to compare it with the most frightening things I can imagine. Going to war and getting your leg blown off? You could also lose your leg in a car accident. Fighting off a bear? Play dead from the start. Trying to kill a gigantic snake? Ok shit you’d be in for it on that one. But you get the drift right?
I’m 25, I see myself as so young, my life hasn’t even started. But even here in my youth, I feel that I have encountered so much loss and heartache that even admitting that I feel things is difficult, daunting even. It’s something I try to avoid at all costs. There’s an irony to this, I have no problem at all expressing negative emotions like anger, disappointment or even sadness, in fact, I’m brilliant at it. But love? Shoot me in the foot, will you?
I had a boyfriend of 2 years who I think I can say I loved deeply in the time we were together. The first time he told me he loved me, I was still some chapters behind in the love story. Three weeks after, the words were on the tip of my tongue and it still took me another hour to actually say them. And when I did, I wanted the ground to swallow me whole! That relationship took me out of my comfort zone a lot and I’d often go out of my way to do things for him I’d never done before, heart pounding and every alarm bell ringing in my head to abort mission 🚨. I did it anyway. I can’t say I regret doing any of those things, but my psyche probably does because where I thought I was reticent before, now it’s even worse.
I want to say that I feel myself losing the “flowers and sunshine” part of my personality and it’s true, but part of it is still there. I just feel that that part of me is more comfortable expressing itself in small things and actions rather than in bolder methods of expression. Where I’d have verbally expressed liking someone, I’ll just smile at them warmly or crack a joke instead. My words fail to go deeper than that because my brain has created a barricade around it.
The trauma of lived experiences like infidelity or abuse is something I could never give justice to in my own words. It goes beyond heartbreaking, it’s soul shattering. It leaves you as remnants of someone else you used to be. The pain is in seeing the old version of yourself fading in the hands of the person that broke you. Perhaps you stay but it’ll only worsen, so you leave to go and bleed on someone who never cut you. Such a vicious cycle! This is where all the courage lies because to open up your heart to the possibility of that happening again, but with the hope that it won’t is, to me, the epitome of sheer gallantry.
All this is to say, in my attempts to not punish people for the sins of others, I’ve found myself creating more and more barricades around myself. I know it shouldn’t be that way but it seems to be working at least in protecting myself from past experiences repeating themselves. But the conundrum is that you can’t avoid hurt without avoiding happiness too. *insert pensive sigh*
For the first time in my rants, I feel I may have the answer. For anyone in this same predicament, what you need is a partner who becomes your safe space. I don’t think we could ever truly express ourselves to people who didn’t make us feel secure in our emotions. There are people who feel like home. Go find them.
I have a person in mind as I write this. In fact, “the cult of the personality” phrase or whatever it is, came into my mind as I was thinking of this person. I read on it and I ponder now…
verywellmind.com tells me, “A cult of personality, sometimes referred to as a personality cult, is defined as “exaggerated devotion to a charismatic political, religious, or other leader.” Authoritarian figures, such as Benito Mussolini of Italy and Vladimir Putin of Russia, are often associated with cults of personality, as are totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, Germany under Adolf Hitler, and North Korea under Kim Jong-Un.
Leaders of cults of personality often use imagery and the manipulation of mass media to form an exalted, even superhuman, version of their persona in the minds of their followers. Their followers accept the leader’s persona and authority, which leads to their devotion to the leader and their mission to bring about an imagined future.”
From what I’m seeing here, the term “cult of personality” was coined to refer to widely known political or religious leaders. People who have large followings by nature of their chosen jobs as statesmen or priests etc. But this kind of cult can exist in smaller settings too, and it does. This thought takes my brain to remember a statistic from Forbes that said 4 to 12% of CEOs exhibit psychopathic traits. With the issue at hand, it’s easy to understand why this would be relevant.
study.com gives me some characteristics of a cult of personality. I’ll give 2 that feel the most relevant here.
Idealized Leader: The leader is a heroic figure in the followers’ eyes. Followers see the leader as superior to others and often put the leader on a pedestal above everyone else. Anyone who questions or opposes the leader is regarded as a threat to the leader’s infallible nature and is subject to be disowned, punished, or eliminated from the personality cult.
Distortions of Truth: All information in a cult of personality is filtered through the leader’s point of view to make the leader seem larger than life, and the opposition comes across as more threatening. Every statement and statistic is interpreted through the lens of groupthink, and this narrow, skewed view distorts reality. This distortion is bias taken to an extreme degree, such that individuals consuming the distortions can longer identify bias and interpret distortions as fact.
How does one pull off such mass manipulation and idealisation without being some sort of psychopath or perhaps, sociopath? But this leads me to think of the followers themselves. Is it their fault that they’ve been successfully inducted into a human-sized chess game? Perhaps not. I’d like to delve into the line between manipulated decisions and free-choice, like in the years-long events leading up to the Jonestown massacre, so if consistency decides to let me flourish, we’ll talk about that tomorrow. Adios.
So, one year ago from today, my life did a 180. Completely unexpected and very much unwelcome. I remember it so clearly because an event like that is imprinted in your brain for eternity, how could you possibly forget it?
Quick backtrack, a week prior to this day, I’d been in my Tuesday Investment Law class, getting bored. I checked my phone and realized my aunt in Australia, Aunt Lucy had messaged me on WhatsApp, checking on how I was. She asked if I was free for a call and I told her I was in class and she could call after the class or during my break which was in 20 minutes. She insisted on calling during the break. Strange, I thought, but oh well.
She called and we talked about school, work, boys and the latest development, my Mom’s admission into hospital. She asked what I’d been told about her condition and I told her that Dad had said she had fluid in the lungs. I’d done a bit of research and found that a possible cause of that is heart disease among other things. Nothing I’d found online made any sense because as far as I knew, Mom didn’t have any of those conditions. I told her I was worried of course, but not a lot and would just wait to hear what they’d say after they did more tests. This was the same reaction I’d had when I received the message the previous week from the day of the phone call, in the beginning of November. I read it in the family group chat and IMMEDIATELY told myself not to worry because that wouldn’t help anything. I always sent in my messages of support and love and Mom did the same. More than she’d ever done before.
Fast forward to a week after that phone call, I was back in Investment Law again, getting bored, checking my phone when my aunt asked if I was free for another phone call. “Maybe she’s just checking in on me”, oh my youthful naivety. Of course, she wanted to hear how I was but that was not the purpose of that phone call. We exchanged our usual pleasantries; I’ve always loved talking to her but then the words hit me in the face like a steel door. “Ruva, the reason why I’m calling you is because Mom has cancer. Breast cancer, stage 3”. I could hear in her voice that it took every bit of strength in her to say these words to me. I was in shock. I was horrified. The tears did not delay in showing up from the prompt of my broken heart. “What?”, was all I could say as they burned my cheeks in streams I was failing to control. “Yes, my dear, and I know it’s very painful but I’m telling you because I know you’re very strong and I need you to help me to find a hospital for her because we are going to give her the best treatment possible. I’m going to look here and you look there and we come together with all the information we can find. We are going to give her a fighting chance and we will stop at nothing.” Yes, yes, I’d heard all that but you said my Mom has what? Whose Mom? Mine? AFTER EVERYTHING THAT SHE’D BEEN THROUGH?! I had to put all that aside so I could listen to what Aunt Lucy was saying. I promised to do my best. I was going to get through this, I always did. I had to be Mom’s strength and rock now and there was no way I was losing her. Snowball’s chance in hell.
Yes, I was feeling empowered inside but that did not stop the waterworks. It’s strange how the body can have so many different emotions at the same time. I walked back to class and my best friend, Martin was outside, he saw me approach and the minute he saw the tears he ran to get me and asked why I was crying. It was so hard to get the words out because it was the first time I was saying them out loud and that made them real, so real. He suggested going into class to get my stuff so he could take me home. Teresita, my other best friend, came outside with us and when I told her, all she could do was cry and hug me. Friends that cry with you are priceless.
Martin took me home and promised to bring me food after class. I almost went crazy in my room. I screamed and cried so much because all I could do was to ask why. Why would something so terrible happen to someone so kind? Why couldn’t life just give her a freaking break?! I cleaned out my dresser, throwing all things I now deemed useless, on the floor. I needed an outlet, this was it. I even prayed. “Lord, if you truly do exist, please save my mother. She doesn’t deserve this.” There was a lot of pain in those words, it was overwhelming. My brain was spinning and my heart was racing. Ugly crying, clutching my chest, the whole nine yards. There was no way this was real, there was absolutely no way this was happening. It sounds so cliched to say that I wished it was a dream but you know that moment you wake up from a terrible dream that felt all too real? That moment of relief that immediately sends you int a phase of gratefulness for what you have that the nightmare had taken away from you? There was nothing I wanted more than that feeling at that very moment. My mind was racing with all those memories of the trials and tribulations we had been through together and how I would always say to her “Don’t worry, Mommy, it will get better”. “When, my daughter, when?” with tears streaming down her face she would ask. “Soon.” I would respond, hoping that the sound of my voice could conceal the echo of my breaking heart. I needed God to answer my prayers, not even for me, but for her. I had so many plans to make her happy, to make her proud. The joy that was awaiting her was inconceivable. She had to survive!
Coincidentally, this was also the day I was supposed to be getting paid so I went and collected my coins. I remember being on the subway and on the bus not even trying to hold back the tears. Whoever saw me was free to judge, yes, big girls cry when their hearts are breaking, even Sia said so. I texted my friend and colleague, Michelle and even just typing the words made my chest heat up and heave. I got to the office and collected what was mine. While I was there, my brother video called me. He was in Mom’s hospital room and then he flipped the camera so I could see her, man, my heart broke. She looked so weak and vulnerable; she could hardly speak. Oh, my poor Mother! How could anything as destructive as cancer be allowed to exist in human bodies? Had I not been standing next to my boss I would have screamed out, but again, I couldn’t stop the tears. Thankfully, he didn’t notice. I don’t even remember how I got back home but from the moment I saw her on that bed, she was all that mattered. I knew I had to be there.
I texted Aunt Lucy and told her I wanted to go see Mom and she was in agreement. “You’ll feel better after you see her,” she said. She definitely knew what she was talking about because 9 years back, my grandmother had a stroke and Aunt Lucy jetted in in the blink of an eye. When your mother gets sick, you go and be by her side. Aunt Lucy offered to pay for my ticket back to China so I could use half the money I’d budgeted to buy some stuff for Mom and also so I’d have money when I got to Zimbabwe. The plans were underway and only the two of us knew. I was planning to surprise them. I was getting excited to see them. I had so much hope that Mom would get better. I bought her nighties for her hospital stay, a digital watch for the bedside, slippers, dresses, wigs because I knew she’d lose her hair from chemo and Martin and Teresita even bought her a pair of kitten heels, so sweet of them. My wonderful friends, Rosette and Michelle did everything they could to help make the trip as stress-free for me as possible. I could not be more grateful for them. I fueled Mom’s emotions by telling her how much I missed her and how I wished I could be by her side. Sending her songs and love everyday as I planned my trip.
Needing to make a plan for my arrival, I texted my old-time best friend, Lennon (I seem to have a lot, who says you can only have one?). “I miss you so much! Can you believe it’s been 3 years?” I said. “I miss you too, Phoebe! When will I see you again?” *crying emojis*. “Well maybe after I graduate in June 2020 unless you can pick me up from the airport at 11.05 on Monday?” Oh, the excitement. I knew I could always rely on Lennon and he would make a plan to get me. I’d land at 11.05 and that would give me 55 minutes to get to the hospital before visit hour was over. Everything was set.
On Sunday the 25th of November, I boarded my flight out of Hangzhou, destination: Harare. I remember crying when the plane took off. “Really? After everything that she’s been through? This is how you do me, God? Wow.” The background song I’d coincidentally discovered on that day, Homesick by Dua Lipa, was really sending me to tears. I would cry and stop intermittently. Thankfully, I’d taken the window seat so no one could really see me. I calmed down and took in the beauty of the clouds.
My flight connected to Beijing, from there to South Africa and then to Harare. Landing in my homeland was an exciting feeling. I’d missed it, the clean air was very welcome. I went through the formalities of landing and arrival and went out to see Lennon waiting for me. He hadn’t changed much and I was so happy to see him. Unfortunately, my flight had been delayed in Johannesburg so I wasn’t going to be able to make it for morning visits so we drove to the city where we left my luggage so we could walk around to buy my all-time favorite food, pork pies. Shout-out to the City of Harare for satisfying me with an almost meatless porkpie.
I put on my glasses and a baseball hat so that no one would recognize me (in case I ran into a relative or family friend). We went to surprise our friend, Leon (we were always a group of 3) and what a fun reunion that was.
The hours passed and soon it was time to go to the hospital for the 3 o’clock visit. Leon went with me and helped me up the stairs with my heavy suitcase. When we got to the door of the ward she was in, B2, we saw my cousin and his wife there. They were so shocked, of course. I beamed at them and immediately asked them to be quiet and gave them my phone to take a video. They followed me to the room and as I was in the corridor, another cousin, Marcie, who was standing by Mom’s bed saw me and her mouth dropped open. I quickly motioned for her to be quiet. At this point, she was the only one in the room who could see me. My grandma was sitting in a chair by the door but facing away from it and she turned to look and all she could say was “Ah ah ah”. Mom being in bed, had no way of looking to see why everyone was so shocked so she had to wait for me to actually walk in and when I did, her entire face and posture softened. You can watch the video here. I hugged my grandmother, who I hadn’t seen in 3 years. “Hello, Grandma.” I said, in a very high-pitched voice because I was fighting back tears. “No no, don’t cry”, my grandmother said. I’m sure she’d seen the tears forming in Mom’s eyes. “Don’t cry, don’t cry. This is a good thing that we shouldn’t be crying about.” I wanted to cry the minute I laid eyes on my Mom, she looked so weak, like she’d given up and was just waiting for her fate. That’s not the Mom I’d left at the airport 3 years back. She was strong and she’d hugged me so tight. Looking at her now just made me so sad because I’d never seen her like that. I hugged her and let go, then I noticed the tears in her eyes and hugged her a second time. Tighter, as if to say, “There was no way in the world I wouldn’t be here for you.”
I’ve always said that humanity amazes me. I’m constantly in awe of the incredible things we have built and achieved collectively as a race. I think everyone has perhaps a few things that also puts them in that state of awe, for me its vehicles- cars, trains, planes, ships. I’m fascinated by how they work, why a plane is shaped exactly the way that it is, why the wheels of a car can break down into so many small parts, all with very important roles of their own, how ships are so heavy yet they float, how Magnetic levitation has found its way into train technology! Is that not simply incredible? But goodness me, there is a darker side that lies on the other face of the coin of our existence and today it hit me ever so unapologetically, in the face.
I decided to go to a museum. Any museum really and as I was going through the list of museums in the city, I stumbled upon the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre in Forest Town and as a student of International Humanitarian Law, I didn’t need to look any further. I decided I was gonna be cute with it, you know. Cute outfit, messy bun, content creation essentials.
Thinking I was about to be cute with a genocide museum SMDH
I got there just 5 minutes before 1pm and struggled to find the entrance after my Uber dropped me off. Pressed the call button to no avail but just a few minutes later another visitor spotted me from the reception and directed me through the back. Having thought it was almost closing, I never expected to find so much meaning in that place.
There was an elderly man at the reception who greeted me with a wry smile and apologetically explained how he’d seen me when I arrived but I’d already been assisted by the other visitor. He then offered to show me around the building so he could give me a story of the place as told through its architecture, “in brick and mortar” he said. I will never be able to do justice to the thoughtfulness and curation that went into the architecture of that museum. As you arrive, one of the first things you see is this wall which, on its own, is filled with symbolism.
This wall is made from Johannesburg dump rock which is basically waste rock from the mining sites around Johannesburg and the architect did that as an identifier of the museum (there are 2 other centres in Cape Town and Durban and I believe they have their own similar identifiers). However, you’ll also see that in the wall are rail tracks that have been placed there and the reason is grounding. When the architect was given the task of designing this building, he interviewed a few Holocaust and Genocide survivors and asked them what they remembered most about the Holocaust and the most common answer was the trains (most of which were actually cow carts) and the rails and that’s why he placed those train tracks in the wall to be the most visible part of the building. You’ll also notice that only the two rightmost tracks are straight and parallel to each other, the way a train track should be; to take you from one place to the other. The rest of the tracks in the wall are juxtaposed to each other, some crossing over each other going completely off-track and this was done to symbolise the mental states of the people who were enclosed in those trains and carts. Some were confused, disoriented and others experienced complete loss of sanity. As psychologists put it, people who went through this period did not just experience trauma, they experienced catastrophic trauma. A complete loss of all they knew, their belongings, their lives and their identities. That statement took me to think of how prisoners, including children at concentration and labor camps were no longer identified by their names, but by numbers burned and tattooed into their arms.
Beneath this wall is a water feature. As told by the elderly man, Stuart, every museum must have a water feature. Water features symbolise life but one immediately wonders what life is being celebrated here?
*****
And so you see that the water feature looks dead-ish, the water is green and probably slimy and there is no motion of the water in the way you would expect a fountain to operate. This was also intentional and I hardly need explain why. However, you’ll also notice that even in that dead-green water, there are plants that grew there and are floating around slowly. This is to show that even in such horrific events and times, there can be growth.
By the time he got to explaining the water feature, a young couple had joined us and we were all intently listening to Stuart and his well of wisdom. Stuart then took our attention to the cobblestone pavement we were standing on.
The cobblestone was a symbol of Europe and the time in which the Holocaust happened when Europe was industrialising, developing on all fronts and the placement of the cobblestone there right beneath the wall and on the pavement was to show that even in this place where enlightenment, industrialisation and growth was happening, such horrendous things could happen too, so they could indeed happen anywhere.
In addition, the industrialisation of Europe gives further meaning in how the Holocaust itself was, simply put, industrialised murder. As Stuart put it, “They had a commodity (Jews) that they put on a mode of transport (cow carts/ trains)and transported to a factory (death factories).” I personally prefer the term “industrialised murder” because there must not be euphemisms placed in telling the stories of people who lost their lives at the hands of racist and sensationalist regimes built on frivolous and anti humanistic sentiments.
Anyway, there was further symbolism in the use of the cobblestone in that it was made specifically for the Genocide centre and is made from tombstone remnants sourced directly from a Johannesburg tombstone manufacturer. Just adjacent to the rail track wall is a wall with glass panels that I’ll address soon, but you’d also notice the rectangular granite tiling that is then placed and lined with the cobblestone. The shape is not coincidental. The granite tiles are rectangular, just like the water feature and this was done to symbolise the mass graves that were used to bury the victims of the Holocaust. It is here that Stuart then explains that the Holocaust is usually divided or placed in two main categories which is the Holocaust by shooting and then the gassing. As he was explaining the shape of the water feature, he explained how it was also made to symbolise the role of the community in the success of these genocides (Jewish and Rwandan) and how the governments and leaders would encourage people to turn in their neighbours who were Jewish or in the Rwandan case, Tutsi. In Europe, some people would round up their Jewish neighbours for the soldiers and force them to dig their own mass graves and then line them up on the edge of the grave and shoot them to fall in. In Rwanda, the killings happened in the forests mainly (using machetes and knives mostly) and just like in Europe, the Tutsis were killed in their numbers and buried in similar mass graves. Even when the Germans then transitioned to gassing, the mass graves remained and thus the shape choice of the tiles and water feature are such a powerful symbol of these horrific events.
Stuart then took us to what is supposed to be the end of the museum, right next to the gate and pointed us to a feature that is placed over the windows of the second floor. Painted in a dark shade of army green is the architect’s version of a cow cart, placed over those windows.
You can see small openings which were the only “windows” available to those hundreds of people packed in one cart, the only way they could see the outside world. This small window to the world is a recurring theme actually seen throughout the building. The most powerful showing of it is actually inside. As you stand in one corner of the lobby and look up to the second floor, there is a flickering light projected on the wall in the shape of a rectangle and next to it, a square. This, as Stuart explained to us, was done by the electrician to show how it must have looked to the people in the cow carts as they passed the world by being transported to their deaths.
We were then taken back to the wall with the panels and the bottom of each panel, in a different language, it says “Everyone has a name” and on each panel are the names and details of some of the 1.5million Jewish children killed during the Holocaust.
It is absolutely heartbreaking to see that some of these children were only a year old but were killed because their parents were Jews. On the two rightmost panels are names of Rwandan Tutsi children in a particular village who were killed during the genocide. However, their ages here are not listed and as Stuart explains, the Germans had records of all the Jews they murdered and there were such things as birth records etc in that society whereas in the Rwandan village, most stories of the genocide are told orally. On these panels were also drawings of children that were found at Aushwitz concentration camp. The motifs are glaring, flowers and butterflies, often symbols of freedom were a recurring theme and the now heart wrenching image of the rails were all present in many of these drawings.
Right before we went back inside the building, Stuart took our attention to the glass walls opposite us and explained that this was done as a symbol of transparency. I opined that it wasn’t just transparency with in the sense of retrospective perspectives of the Holocaust, but even during the commission of these mass murders, it was never a secret that they were happening. It was all done in the open and as we’ve even seen above, with the help of the local communities. As I stood there looking at the glass, I couldn’t help seeing that reflection of myself and wondering what part I would have played or what my fate would have been in that era of time. Of course, as a black woman, its almost obvious that I would have been persecuted. A very saddening thought.
From the glass walls we went inside the building were a wall almost identical to the identifier outside is also inside the building, but this time, with the rails missing and the meaning of that is found in combination with other things also in the lobby of the building.
The floors are wooden which is meant to symbolise the trees of the forests in which the Rwandan Tutsis were mostly murdered and buried. The feeling of the lobby itself is very different from what one feels when standing outside after having learnt of all the symbolism that exists in all physical facets of the exterior of the building. When you enter the lobby, it is much more calming as an educational centre and a place where people come to receive a sense of enlightenment they didn’t have. This, together with the wall with the missing rails is to say that even from the most horrific events of our history, we must educate ourselves and others but the scars (symbolised by the missing rails) will forever remain and at some point, a whole community was missing from an entire continent.
We moved a few metres next to the wall to see a typewriter placed in a glass box and almost menacingly written at the bottom, “Adolf Hitler’s typewriter.”
I was quite in awe as I looked at the contraption that had been the output of some of the most sinister thoughts known to mankind. The pure hatred and loathing of a group of people that led to the killing of millions, the trauma of millions more and several generations to come, the almost complete extermination of an entire race, came from words typed on that very thing. Words failed me and even now, they still do.
Stuart then took us to a wall close to the elevator where a collage of 8 pictures were hung neatly. In these pictures I saw despair in the eyes of a father fleeing with his child, a mother and her son watching what I can only think was a horrific event of some sort, a few black men standing with their hands to the wall in the centre of Johannesburg that had spray painted names of other African countries excluding South Africa in what looked like a raid by the SAn police force, a stocky black man cowering in between two black men facing one of them who yielded a knife just seconds from stabbing him, a group of black people standing in front of what looked to be a very fierce fire where I imagine a man was burning, a broken door, a man standing in front of his tuck shop and a black man in the middle of a circle among other black men with pure desperation in his eyes begging to be acquitted from the crime of being a foreigner. It was a wall depicting xenophobia in South Africa. I couldn’t even bring myself to take a second look because I know those people died at the hands of other black men.
Just after this very heavy-sitting wall is the entrance into what is usually the exit point for people who have finished their tour of the museum and this place is called the Garden of reflection. It is one of the most calming and serene places I’ve ever been in. Small as it is, it was designed beautifully with trees, flowers and plants opposite from the benches where one must sit and reflect on what they have seen in the building. The best feature is the granite on the walls that bears, in 3 languages, short poems about the genocides. But not only are the words touching but the stone in which they are engraved is reflective so as you read these lines, you see yourself. The couple I was with had a guy from Germany and a lady from the Ukraine so to them, these events hit very close to home and a very grounding question was posed by Stuart where he asked himself, I wonder what I would have done if I were there in that time.
I have to say that there was so much more to see in the building as well. More formal educational material about the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide and the Armenian genocide, but after that hour or so with Stuart, nothing else could compare. We did walk through the building to see all these things for ourselves. The most touching for me were the actual remnants brought in from these countries to the museum like spoons, glasses and forks from Auschwitz, machetes from Rwanda that were actually used to murder Tutsis and clothes from the victims of a massacre that took place in a Rwandan church during the genocide. Now we call them artefacts but they were ordinary belongings belonging to ordinary people who committed no other crime than assuming the identities they were born with.
*****
As I walked through the museum, I also couldn’t help but feel that I would have wanted to see something similar for the genocide that took place in the Congo at the hands of King Leopold II who killed 10 million Congolese people for his rubber exploits and also for the genocide known as the Gukurahundi, that happened right in my homeland, Zimbabwe. For the latter, it is just absolutely heartbreaking that the government itself has not even acknowledged that these atrocities happened, let alone apologised for them so we are so far away from actually having centres and resources such as these to learn from. But just like the Jewish and Rwandan massacres, we have communities that live with the scars of those atrocities but they can’t even talk about them.
I went back to the garden and sat there for a few minutes. I took it all in, the sun on my face, the trees in front of me, the city bustling just outside. I wondered to myself about what, as humanity, we’d learnt from these experiences. I wondered and went back to my awe of the human race and took some steps back. I thought to myself, “How can we be so forward thinking to be able to fly from the north to the south, but our minds can be so malleable that we can be taught to hate with such blinding passion? Maybe, just maybe we’re not that smart.” All I know is we cannot afford another such moral recession.
Her_PrettyHeart 