Saturday 5 May 2012

YCLSA national spokesperson,Mafika Mndebele,has infected me with an STD

by Malaika Wa Azania on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 5:11pm ·
I am sitting on my bed as i write this note.My head is pounding with thoughts of the Black condition,questions about its painful endlessness and answers that have puzzling questions within them.I am sitting on my bed with excruciating pain piercing through me,pain that reminds me of my pregnancy.I have always known that pregnancy is difficult,atleast professors and medical doctors have said so.But today,it is i experiencing it,and i realise just how little about life i understood.I have been rather sick in the past few days,battling to contain this illness that torments me.A few weeks ago,i was infected with a fatal STD by the national spokesperson of YCLSA,Mafika Mndebele...and in the process,he impregnated me.

At first,i was hesitant to start a relationship with a Communist,because quiet frankly,i don't trust these people.But when he told me that his favourite writer is Azanian-born Bessie Head,i knew that this was a different kind of Marxist.An Afrikanist Marxist,someone of Frantz Fanon's calibre,and so,i agreed to this relationship.

It began with little things,like our argument over the National Democratic Revolution (NDR).And then the SACP's South African Road to Socialism (SARS).We went on to engage about Dr Kwame Nkrumah,Amilcar Cabral and Robert Sobukwe.He went on to explain Harry Gwala and Peter Mokaba,leaving me to explain Jomo Kenyatta and Mutulu Shakur.The engagements progressed to literature,where we argued which Bessie Head novel is the best between MARU and WHEN RAIN CLOUDS GATHER (He's adamant that it's the latter but i beg to differ).Indeed,every minute spent talking to this man was synonymous to a minute spent consulting a lexicon or an encyclopedia.

Eventually,the discussion got heavier.He sat me down and explained to me,step by step,about the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics leader,Josef Stalin.He taught me about the 1905 Russian Revolution,which i knew vaguely from reading Rosa Luxemburg.He continued to explain Marxism-Leninism,step by step,because he knew my attitude towards that philosophical ideology.He went to great lengths to explain things that never made sense to me,the best way that i've ever heard them explained.Infact,in these past 3 months,i have come to understand and appreciate Marxism a lot more than i ever could,because it was explained by someone who understood that using grandiloquents to educate a pan Afrikanist like myself is tantamount to explaining pan Afrikanism to a Boer using an indigenous language.And at times,when we'd spend hours disagreeing on Marxism,or he'd contradict what i'd always understood about it,i'd remember the words of Luxemburg when she said:
"Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations.Marxism must abhor nothing so much as the possibility that it becomes congealed in its current form.It is at its best when butting heads in self-criticism,and in historical thunder and lightening,it retains its strength."

As i sit on my bed,my head is pounding with all this Marxist words compartmentalising themselves so as to make sense.I am pregnant with information that is giving me excruciating headaches,and these headaches are Mafika Mndebele's baby,because had it not been for him,i wouldn't be bothering myself with this Gramsci literature that he has forced upon me.

So next time i speak pan Afrikanism and amalgamate it with scientific socialism,or juxtapose the national question utilising Marxism-Leninism as a tool of analysis,you must remember that it is merely because i have been infected with Socialist Teachings & Dialectics (STD).

Aluta Continua

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