The Bantu Spring

By Sizwe Mabanga

THE BANTU SPRING

Hello my fellow Bantu. I wrote a book for you.

It's about your rebirth.

My father taught me that if you must be anything, be everything. But to be everything, I must start somewhere. I must start by understanding where I am. We all must.

So. To begin your journey to being everything that you can be, to begin your rebirth, I suggest you start by reading this book.

It will help you to identify why it's been so difficult to grow and live your own life until now. It'll give you new ways of seeing the problem and hopefully kick off a new coversation about what we Bantu are actually about.

Who knows. Maybe you'll be the architect of tomorrow? Maybe you'll win the all-time everything? Lol.

I can't promise that you'll like this book. Most people won't like this book.

But just because you don't like it, it doesn't mean you don't need it. Most people need this book. The contents cure all forms of illnesses including cowardice, bigotry, pettiness and delusion.

Seriously though.

"The book that blacks need."
- ybi.co.za

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Mar 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504998581

Sizwe Mabanga

Sizwe remains profoundly confused about most things, but writes things down when they make sense. He works writing software for large corporations. He is quite convinced that one day he will say or write the one thing that will convince the most Bantu people to wake up from our day to day's gentle hell. At office parties after too many he likes to shout “I’m an artist, your mind is my canvas!”

Book preview

2016 Sizwe Mabanga. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/03/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9857-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9858-1 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Contents

On the Author

On the Bantu Situation

On Forgiving Ourselves

On Decoding the System

Slaves to freedom

The Broken Global Financial Market

Faith in systems

Racism

On South Africa

On what could be

Localisation (real apartheid)

Conversationalism (real democracy)

Intent (real people)

On What to Tell the Children

On the Economic Man

Wanting to own ‘Stuff’

Wanting to own Ideas

Wanting to own People

On like… (sigh)… so what can you own?

On Ubuntu: Immersion vs Transcendence

On the Power of Words

Identity vs Intent

Infinite Love vs Romantic Love

You vs Evil

On Leadership

On Assholes

On the Author

Sizwe remains profoundly confused about most things, but writes things down when they make sense. He works writing software for large corporations.

He is quite convinced that one day he will say or write the one thing that will convince the most Bantu people to wake up from our day to day’s gentle hell. At office parties after too many he likes to shout I’m an artist, your mind is my canvas!

On the Bantu Situation

building starts with destruction - Bantu proverb.

Let’s face it friends. The struggle for freedom did not end when we were ‘allowed’ to vote and get rich like white people. Voting and riches do not amount to freedom for aBantu, or anyone else for that matter. In fact, now, the real struggle for freedom and dignity begins.

Many Bantu, like myself, are waking up and understanding that we are now enslaved using those very same votes and dreams of getting rich. A few Bantu are realizing that governments and money cannot provide freedom for aBantu and that we have missed the point of the struggle entirely. The struggle is over here in our hearts. We’ve been over there chanting for jobs, education and policy changes.

Lol.

Bantu freedom and dignity will not be found in democracy or capitalism. Only further humiliation and endless carrots on sticks will be found there.

The woke Bantu realises that there is no amount of changing regimes, political parties or economic policies that is going to make our lives better. We can even change our education systems as much as we like but that won’t make our lives much better either.

The woke Bantu sees that what must change is the Bantu himself. The Bantu must in every way become better than he was yesterday. And to do that he must

• forget what he thinks he knows,

• take another look at the world that he faces today and

• change.

That’s all. I so wish I was strong enough to end this book here.

We Bantu first need to accept that we have to do a lot of unlearning - that a lot of the things we took for granted are simply not true. For instance it is not true that we are blacks. We are not blacks we are aBantu. We have our own story spanning tens of thousands of years and many travels and many discoveries that we carry in our blood.

It is not true that we must choose between communism and capitalism. It is not true that voting puts the people in charge. It is not true that aBantu have to integrate with their former colonialists to move forward.

Once we realise that much of what we think about life has been fed to us by others, we also begin to see how much power these ideas had over us. How they limited our choices yet called it freedom. That’s the second step for us: to see things as they actually are.

And dammit, seeing the world as it actually is, understanding it, is hard. There is a