Call It Well!

I am working on a novel that has been some forty years in the making. Scary that it has rattled around inside me for almost half a century, but it is a complicated tale, made more difficult by not having to hand all the facts I would like to have, so fiction has to play a part in this story.

It is set primarily in Swaziland, as it was then, in the 1980s, a tumultuous decade if ever there was one. A dreadful civil war ravaged Mozambique on our eastern border and on every other side apartheid atrocities spilt into our land bringing their toxic mix of fear, mistrust and ultimately hatred with them.

Into this mix pour local politics and the swings and roundabouts that occurred on our political football field after the death of HM King Sobhuza II and you have a stage set for a drama of equal or greater intensity to any Shakespearean tragedy.

I was a journalist in those days and the pace of life sometimes had our heads spinning, our fingers flying, or in my case words flying out of my mouth down telephone lines. I had these dinky little clips called crocodiles that connected my tape recorder to the transmitter in my telephone headset to send reports to wherever.

It was also a time of much distrust and fear. In my world it was agent and counter-agent, no one knew for sure who was on whose side in any of the three situations I described, and an inadvertent comment could get you imprisoned, marked as an enemy with whatever consequences that might bring, for some it was death, always blood-spattered and shocking, or intimidation and threats, whatever, fear and suspicion were the hallmarks of our lives.

As I have spent many hours researching those days, reminding myself of events and wondering how best to write them, I have again been struck by how powerful the South African Government’s propaganda machine was, how truth was distorted in order to perpetuate a narrative that suited a small portion of the population, and how oblivious so many were that we were indoctrinated.

I was recounting some of the events of those years, many of which were horrific for a supposedly peaceful and neutral country. A friend looked at me in amazement, and said, “But I was here -how come I don’t know any of this?”

I shrugged the question back to her. “Did you not see the headlines in our local papers, let alone the press outside our borders?”

The constant threats and warnings of the ‘Swart Gevaar’, the ‘Rooi Gevaar’ from South Africa, the fear of socialism justifying interfering in and perpetuating wars in Mozambique, Angola, and Namibia, or more locally watching as any voice of opposition was silenced with imprisonment, threats of sedition which to this day, I believe, carry the death sentence. Varying degrees of injustice, justified by self-promoting ideology and law.

That was the power of decades of brainwashing right there. Clever, well-thought-out propaganda, propounded day after day until it was a part of the collective psyche. It was considered so right, I guess, that blacks should be eliminated, that their deaths didn’t register on many people’s radar – especially the comfortable whites. I am not wanting this to seem like a racial tirade, but it is the truth. Because blacks did not matter, especially those who threatened the status quo, their plight was simply not seen.

That is another book I imagine, not sure I’ll be the one writing it, however.

As I read another bluster about the Israeli/Gaza saga this morning, I saw a similar pattern. The same argument is made over and over again, until the truth is blurred under the sheer volume of rhetoric and angry all-knowing voices.

The dictionary definition of propaganda is:

The dissemination of information – facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies – to influence public opinion.

Deliberateness and a relatively heavy emphasis on manipulation distinguish propaganda from casual conversation or the free and easy exchange of ideas.

A scripture came to mind as I pondered this theme: Isaiah 5:18 – 21:

Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as if with a cart rope (don’t you just love the poetry and imagery of this line?)

That say, Let Him make speed and hasten His work that we may see it, and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come that we may know it.

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight.

And I find myself asking again: How come you never hear mention of the hostages, kept like animals in underground cells to be used for barter purposes in all the noise? What about those two infants? What about the women who are brutally raped over and over again? Have their pelvises been fractured? What is happening to the men?

How come there are no recriminations for the theft of millions of dollars of aid to build tunnels instead of an economy and better life for the people of that land?

How come we don’t see the injustice of consistently and unendingly firing rockets at a people, regardless of any argument of ownership, who have long learnt to live with the attacks as a way of life?

How come Arabs can live and work in Israel, but Jews are not accepted in Palestinian-dominated lands?

How come there is no comment when lies about the numbers killed are revealed, by the very body that seeks to destroy Israel – the United Nations? Even they have been forced to acknowledge the reports of atrocious rapes are accurate, and now that the figures touted by Hamas are inflated by at least 30%.

By and large, the world simply does not see the Israeli or Jewish side of the story. Just as many never saw the black African side of the story in the apartheid years. In fact this question can be stretched wide because the same is true of almost every conflict on the African continent. Why aren’t we shouting about Sudan, the ISIS infiltration throughout Uganda, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, the list is endless, the kidnapping of schoolgirls, one horror after another goes unnoticed by a world obsessed with its own well-being and need for significance, those who are wise in their own eyes.

The world is being held to ransom by the ideology of a minority group, and we seem not to realise what is happening and where it seems to be leading us.

When a hot issue fires up, reason and rational thought go out the window, and we become guilty of calling evil good, and good evil. We need to learn to stand back, look at all the facts, exercise our right as human beings to exercise our own judgment not quote parrot fashion that which is fed to us.

Yes, there is blame on both sides, unsavoury acts are being committed by both sides, but there are innocent children being held, young men and women whose only crime is one of race, and before any ‘foul’ can in all morality be called, those hostages need to be unconditionally released, and that should be our first battle cry.