The Chief is Dead, but My Little Memory Lives
Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi is dead, but I have a teen memory of his letter to me.
I have one memory of Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi who died yesterday, at the chucklingly good age of 95.
If my overseas readers draw a blank, search for him and discover that he was a giant in my country’s bloody political history.
I’m not here to justify his lovers or haters, just to remember (which is my luxury as one of the living).
MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI’S LETTER
It was 1989. I was 16 or 17 years old, a student at Queensburgh Boys' High School, when Buthelezi responded to my letter. He complimenting me on my pending History project on Apartheid (for which I had surprisingly gotten permission for from the Department of Inequality Education).
He invited me to the Inkatha Research Institute which contained a library of a world that I had hardly experienced in white suburbia. There, I met a studious Gavin Woods who would later become part of the team that tried to bring justice to the Arms Deal, the first big corruption scandal of our advertised ‘Rainbow Nation’.Â
I was expecting to go on the run the following year, to avoid conscription into the border war and township battlegrounds - I had no intention of killing Russians, Cubans, black foreigners and black countrymen despite my diet of Whiteness and Good CIA.
North of my hometown of Durban, Buthelezi’s Zululand was my intended destination. His letter emboldened my intention to ask him for help. Thankfully, my world and my country changed, so I didn’t have to.
My home life was a mess when I received Buthelezi’s letter. I was rebelling, so tactlessly delivered a half-arsed report (that’s reason alone for the corporal punishment system I fought). I let down my History teacher, the incredibly sexy Ashleigh Bojé (a second memory), as my final grades were below her effort and my capability (and hypocritically earned after I’d already been awarded the History and English prizes).
I was a teen failure which is now irrelevant with the knowledge that life is only a collection of memories.
A kind word from Buthelezi was further encouragement for a young me to become an adult believer in human rights. He inadvertently encouraged me to become an arsehole in this gaseous globe.
Nice post.
Mike, I must confess that I used to be a Neocon Dupe. Now that's an arsehole! My mind was programmed by CIA/MSM propaganda so I was afflicted with the mental disorder Hate of the Other. Looking back I see I had a Nazi mindset.
Years ago my eyes were opened to reality by a man named Larry Kummer and his website fabiusmaximus.com. He engaged me, challenged me and mentored me. His astute commenters did as well. Larry and introduced me to Caitlin Johnstone. His son Ian is an excellent blogger who writes on his site reading junkie.com. He's a US Marine veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan and became disillusioned to the point he eventually had an identity crisis that put him in a psyche ward for a few months. I think he was medically retired from the National Guard in which he was serving at the time. Ian now resides in Moscow.
I mention all this because it's people like you I've discovered in my journey since fabiusmaximus.com. I've joined you in the network of resistors against the CIA/MI6 Narrative.