Sometimes we die for compassion. But it is the persistent death in our minds that is poison.
Compassion compels us to conceal the suffering of others. What a selfless way to forget how to breathe.
One of the specialist doctors who died on board a Netcare helicopter that crashed in KwaZulu-Natal cancelled everything and made himself available to try and save Minister in the Presidency Jackson Mthembu's life. The minister died after contracting Covid-19. Honourable deaths befitting honorable men.
It is, however, the death in our minds that is so vile it eats away at our being.
How do we grieve for parts of ourselves while the whole is still intact and we are breathing?
Sometimes this continuous demise in our minds makes us realise our own insignificance. It is acknowledging a new normal, yet we are still not worthy of the milk and honey.
We are unarmed in psychological warfare.
When there isn't too much at your disposal, there isn't much to believe in.
We are not ideal employees of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. They live longer.
We are unemployed. Neither do we possess a broad and complementary set of skills.
Unemployment is synonymous with poverty. If we can’t eat, we die a slow death – so vile our stomachs eat away at themselves.
The new world dictates that ideal employees have a lion's share of talents. They are entrepreneurial by design and plant their feet firm in the workforce with a bag of thrills.
They are journalists with poetry at the tips of their fingers, at the tips of their tongues, and they think in graphics, in pictures — both moving and stills. For the Fourth Industrial Revolution employees, the practice is: they are front line Doctors at government hospitals, but also own practices.
They are drivers, panel beaters, they are mechanics and run fleets of rental vehicles.
They are construction workers who gather sticks and straws, bricks and cement to build nests for their families.
Their now cut-in-half salaries require these entrepreneurial employees to be half self-employed and half working for someone else.
We are not them!
We stagger on our feet – living on our knees, palm on palm, heads bowed, still praying for data to fall. Still praying for the falling of fees.
Rising expectations, living on nothing a day and doing pretty well at it.
Rise in prosperity and freedom makes us seek political change, right?
It makes us pursue opportunities. Makes us believe we can improve life for ourselves and our families.
But sometimes reality sets sight, aims to dust away the glamour you attach to our poverty and dares you to romanticise it again.
We are starving sons and daughters of the soil.
A breed that is forgettable, except when it is convenient to remember us.
A breed that accepts silently with a bow. But when cornered, uncoils and erupts.
We are proud as a fire, burning down India’s Serum Institute, the world's largest maker of vaccines.
It is obscene that we are no stranger to outrage, our electricity is deliberately cut off at 5am, no warning, we are just told not to report the outage.
We are forgettable. Sometimes we die for compassion, to remind others to live.
We die for love at the hands of our lovers.