Racially Segregated Townships
By Mocholoko (Dr), Zulumathabo Zulu © 2020
The Preamble
In this analytic article using metascience, we focus attention on a racially segregated infrastructure as an artifact of design. In the Basotho philosophy (Basotho; Bapedi; Batswana) which I describe in the forth coming book Nahanosene: Basotho Origin of Philosophy there are five taxa (philosophical categories) of Nahanosene namely (1) Phe; (2) Tse; (3) Ra; (4) Pha and (5) Tshe.
For purposes of this article we draw from category three which is Ra meaning design and arrangement. Words like Rala; Raloka; Moralo; Raleha; Raro; etcetera describe the design philosophy of a system. The Basotho taught the principles of design to their children at a very young age as confirmed by words like Moradi (a designer) and Mantlwana (game of architectural design), among others. Plants or certain actions are also named using the design principle as in Morara (twining plant like vine) or Raloka (design play).
According to the erudite ancestors of the Basotho who have gone before us, to understand Marangrang (infrastructure), necessitates the knowledge of design philosophy. In the land of Azania (South Africa), the design philosophy behind Marangrang was a permanent segregation of the races in order to ensure the mainstay of the economy is skewed in favour of the colonial descendants as per the strategy of the architects of racial segregation.
This racially segregated infrastructure would promote the superiority of Western ideas and lifestyle via institutions like the Church; the Bank; the School, and others. Images are part of this mind control like a White doll; a White god and White beauty. This fact of preserving colonial possessions was also transferred and encoded in the post-Apartheid Constitution of 1994 as confirmed in clause 25 that perpetuates the material interests of the colonial descendants at the expense of the African Natives.
In addition to the above, it is prudent to point out that the recorded minutes that ensued from those negotiations and agreements are hidden somewhere in a vault and are not made accessible for our historiographical review. This means we walk in the dark not knowing who proposed; counter-proposed and vetoed what or who got paid for what. The greatest question is: How long will these forensic records remain out of sight?
When I returned from exile in 2010, I made a good faith attempt to access these records but all I found were Groot Schuur and Pretoria minutes but actually they are not minutes. They are like a car dashboard that tells how how much petrol is in the tank without giving you the quantitative; qualitative and strategic details behind the petrol.
We need strategic knowledge in terms of the garage station; the cost of the petrol; the grade of the petrol; the volatility of the petrol; the amount of octane in the petrol; the impact of petrol on the environment; the revenues generated by the petrol; the market share of the petrol; the shareholders; the stock price; the oil refinements; the source of the petrol; the oil rigs or coal mines; the contribution of the petrol to the GDP; the taxation of the petrol and more. Without these scientific details, we are just like an intellectually disenfranchised driver who has no clue about the petrol that goes into the car and keeps the economy going.
To take over ownership of a new house, you need an appraiser to scientifically give you an agnostic appraisal of the house. If you skip the appraisal step then you assume responsibility of everything wrong about the house after signing the agreement. This is what our leaders have done in taking ownership of a new country without appraisal. Now they are blamed for all the wrong things.
Without further ado, we present Racially Segregated Townships.
the colonial infrastructure
like permanent architecture
Preserved racial segregation
Tightened fiscal strangulation
Sanitary distance between the races
Their mundane lives attested
Their reality arrested
the good Constitution slides
to end apartheid that hides
Segregated lives crushed by poverty
Segregated lives crushed by pestillence
I searched hard for envisagement
The only hope is the youth
To end segregation that persists
A drone photograph showing a racially segregated infrastructure in what CNN describes as a racist architecture. The highly dotted and dense township on the left is where the Black Africans live while the nicely spaced houses on the right is where the White colonial descendents live. There is a sanitary distance that creates a buffer zone to seperate the two peoples in the post-Apartheid Azania (South Africa). The highly corruptible leaders in the new political dispensation have been unable to end the racial segregation of the residential infrastructure because they stand to benefit from the racist architecture. The prophetic book The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born by the Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah fits hand and glove in the broken promise story of Azania. The beautiful ones are the uncorruptible ones but are not yet born. Armah lives in exile in Senegal as a result of writing this book. Picture Credit: CNN.
Contextual Commentary
In the article A White God wherein I describe my expedition to the desert of Kgalagadi (Kalahari) of Northern Botswana during my exile in 1987, I saw two things that changed my life namely (1) the harsh conditions of the desert and (2) the desert plant trying to make a living in the forbidden desert grounds. The desert is the adversity and the plant is the victory over adversity.
In the thesis of this contextual commentary, we elucidate the adversity and the envisagement.
The Adversity
We begin with adversity. I lived more than half of my life in the great City of Ottawa. As the Canadians will attest, moving is in the same harsh category as divorce and death. Thus, moving to a new place is an extreme form of adversity.
After I was vetted and officially certified as a landed immigrant in 1989 in the Toronto Pearson International Airport, I boarded the domestic Air Canada aircraft for Ottawa. After I had landed, I surveyed the land and looked at the infrastructure of Ottawa. To my pleasant amazement, I discovered a remarkable fact that the infrastructure of Ottawa was an agnostic infrastructure devoid of racial design unlike the case with the infrastructure of Azania (South Africa).
As a result of this paradigm case of experience, any new immigrant who lands in the great City of Ottawa integrates seamlessly into the greater society because of the absence of a racially segregated infrastructure. As I write these lines on a massively celebrated Women’s Day on August 10, 2020 in Azania, the economically and culturally disenfranchised women; men and children remain inescapably trapped in the brutal infrastructural axis of a racially segregated society albeit governed by the post-Apartheid non-racial constitutional agreements of 1994.
Moreover, Ottawa boasts a welcome centre wherein the immigrant receives inductive orientation with respect to the Arctic seasons of the land; how to access available government and social services and how to overcome the transitional stress of settling down in a new country making Ottawa the most hospitable city I have ever sojourned!
Canada’s Parliament on the hill fondly known as Parliament Hill. You are looking at the Northern side of Ottawa and Southern side of the Ottawa River. I lived here near the Official Residence of the Prime Minister of Canada. The waters you see is the Ottawa River which seperates the English speaking province of Ontario and the French speaking province of Quebec. I have lived on both provinces of the region. The mighty Ottawa River freezes to a rock ice surface in Winter and you can walk on the river. I drove a car on that river inspired by a French speaking Quebecois who had his truck in the middle of the frozen river on an ice fishing expedition. Picture Credit: Greymouser, Wikipedia.
As a matter of fact, infrastructural segregation does not exist in Ottawa! The only segregation that exists is the psychic segregation wherein some Canadian families teach their innocent children the hateful ideology of White Supremacy. Barring that acrimonious reality, Ottawa is the greatest City to live in.
The Envisagement
Now we turn our focus to envisagement! If you spend more time in nature such as in the African desert, you will find that the desert is not about adversity alone. It is also about the envisagement as confirmed by the desert flower Mponeng that bursts into breathtaking petals when the rain comes pouring down from the heavens. This metaphysical experience of transcendence is the subject of the book The Sacred Knowledge of the Desert: African Philosophical Transcendence. In the literary piece Venturesome Kisses, we read these lines:
“Forbidden grounds of love cast their spell. The naivety of love sweetens the love that exists like a desert flower. Deprived of water, the flower waits underground until, when the rains fall, it springs to life, knowing that the rain will soon be gone”.
The great desert flower Mponeng is not self-complacent! Her philosophical strategy is to restrain the natural urges; to arrest the bad habits; to prune the wrong tendencies and to preempt the natural genesis of pessimism. She internalises the rain in her succulents because she knows about the cruel ephemera of the falling rain. She has the instinctive grasp of the reality that the rain will soon be gone. In fact, the material evidence of the fallen rain can vanish into oblivion in a matter of minutes or hours.
For this reason, it is philosophically edifying that Mother Nature does not only throw adversity at you. She also gives you a fresh start of envisagement by way of a fragile plant showing some green in an otherwise drought stricken and faulted terrain. The desert plant is steeped in adversity! The desert plant is surrounded by an array of endless reasons to be an eternal pessimist but she does not allow the metaphysical cases of adversity to define her. She remains undefined in the adverse conditions of the terrestrial space.
Moreover, the desert flower is checked and highly disadvantaged. She is not able to run away from adversity like some men who run away from the adverse conditions as evidenced by father-absent boys and father-absent girls in the racially segregated townships of Azania.
Thus, Mponeng is the unbought and the unsold architect of destiny! She vibrates as she was intended to vibrate unimpeded by the adverse conditions in the terrestrial space. She vibrates in accordance with the cosmic resonance so that she does not lose the symmetry of resonance.
Symmetry is the antithesis of evil in the cosmologic philosophy of the Basotho as described in my forth coming book Nahanosene: Basotho Origin of Philosophy. You can also listen to my electronica music CD, African Spirits in the Jungle recorded in my recording studio in the basement of the great matriarch of the Canadian family Janina Deveau.
La lucha continua! (The struggle continues); No rendirse! (No surrender); Nunca jamas! (Never, never); El destino es nuestro! (The destiny is ours). Siyathokoza Makhosi! (High veneration to the ancestors).
References
Armah, A. (1969). The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Heinemann African Writers Series: London.
Zulu, Z (2014). The Sacred Knowledge of the Desert: African Philosophical Transcendence. Madisebo University College Press: Johannesburg.
Zulu, Z (2014). A Woman In The Bush. Madisebo University College Press: Johannesburg.
Zulu, Z. (2019) “African Metaphysical Science and Decolonisation”, Faculty of Education, North West University – Potchefstroom, North West Province, Azania.
Zulu, Z. Ontological States of the Object, Unpublished, Ottawa, Canada.
Zulu, Z. Nahanosene: Basotho Origin of Philosophy, Unpublished, Madisebo University Press, Azania (South Africa).
Zulu, Z. (2007). African Spirits In The Jungle. Music CD. Genre: Electronica. Ottawa, Canada.
Madisebo University 