The Swart Gevaar

By Mocholoko (Dr), Zulumathabo Zulu © 2020

The Preamble

The beautiful land of Azania (South Africa) and the land of endless sunshine is arrested by the vestigial chains of the Luso-Anglo-Dutch settler colonialism that began on Christmas Day in 1497 under the command of Vasco da Gama and to be subsequently butressed by the Dutch-Flemish Jan van Riebeeck of South Holland. This taxonomy of colonization is like a tenacious monkey on the back that is proving hard to shake off. It is also like a mathematical conjecture that remains uncracked.

Jan van Riebeek and his crew meeting the African Natives at Table Bay in April 1652. Picture Credit: Wikipedia.

This article utilises the new cutting edge research methods that use the multidisciplinary framework of Africography to foreground Metaphysics; Cosmology; Historiography; Linguistics and Metascience. We are inspired by the need to rely on uncontested facts that speak for themselves for the benefit of those coming after us.

Amongst many forms of colonial systems, a settler colonial configuration is the most brutal in terms of colonial conquest. A settler colonial schemata is more far reaching in the scattering; the unbalancing; the dispossession; the genocide and the the displacement of the local indigenous peoples of the land.

The Displacement

The principle of displacement leads to extinction as is the case with a cuckoo bird. Unlike other birds, the cuckoo does not build a nest. She waits for another bird to build the nest and to start laying eggs. When the owner of the nest goes out to find some sustenance, the surreptitious cuckoo stealthily moves in to lay her eggs amongs the eggs already in the nest. When the host returns, there are more eggs in the nest than before. Since maternal love does not tally the clutch, she assumes they are all hers.

When cuckoo chicks hatch (they are wired to hatch faster than incumbent chicks), they instinctively jettison the host eggs out of the nest until the cuckoo chicks are the only ones left in the host nest. Having thus displaced the incumbents, the mother bird now has to work twice as hard to feed her new insatiable chicks. This is the cruel displacement of the incumbent chicks by the agonist cuckoos.

The Official Policy of Extermination

This was the case with the Cape Colony of the Dutch East India Company known as VOC (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) when it surreptitiously gained a colonial foothold in Azania by hook and crook. As meticulously recorded by the English missionary and Supertendant of the London Missionary Society in 1791 at the Cape of Good Hope Rev John Philip in his journals, the Dutch Colony had an official policy of exterminating the Black men who resisted the settler colonial expansionism. The library of Rev Philip and the research papers of his archive were later destroyed by unexplained arsonist fire.

The official policy of exterminating a Black man marked the genesis of Swart Gevaar (Black Danger) used to describe and to target a Black man for elimination. The official policy of extermination was carried out by the Dutch military units known as Commandos.

The Dutch Colony of Jan van Riebeeck is the inventor of the Commando military system which later inspired the formation of the SADF (South African Defence Force) during the era of the Apartheid State which began in 1948. The Etymology Dictionary Online confirms that the word Commando is attested for in 1791 in the Dutch Cape Colony.

The Commando System and “Go Commando”

The Black men were shot on sight by the commandos and their women captured as a prize to be distributed among the male members of the Commando along with children and cattle. As a consequence, the Mulatto population increased to outnumber the San; the Khoi; the Nama; the Xhosa; the Sotho and others in the Western Cape.

On account of taking the wives of the exterminated Black men for their self-gratification, a new expression known as “go commando” or “going commando” was coined to mean a woman must not wear an undy because the wives of the slain Black men of the era were found without undies. Thus, the Dutch Cape Colony Commando was a tactical and testicular killing machine.

The extermination policy of Swart Gevaar was used by the subsequent Voortrekker; Apartheid State and some colonial descendants to conquer and to rape the beautul land and to brutalise the Black man as is the case in modern times as confirmed by Azania’s many newspaper reports of incidents like the spray painting of the Black man; feeding the Black man into the lion’s den or shooting him and later to attest before a court judge that the Black man was mistaken for a baboon just like the White Ottawa police who shoot a Black man on a mistaken identity. Without further ado, the literary piece The Swart Gevaar.

cultures clashed in bloodpath,
Swart Gevaar on the gun’s path
Genocidal Dutch colony in 1652
To arrest destiny of Swart Gevaar
Hateful target is the Melanin
Rape target is the Motherland
To exterminate the Melanin

fang-like chains for Swart Gevaar
extract nutrients from afar
To unbalance the Melanin
To impair the serotonin
Hitherto, the Melanin disrupted
Hereafter, recovery corrupted
Haters suckled from hateful breasts

Contextual Commentary

The great desert flower Mponeng of the vast expanse of the Kgalagadi (Kalahari) desert remains loyal to the post like a good soldier in spite of the extreme drought. The scarred memories of the past recreate the cruel blows of the elements like a diluted existence that overshadows the sacred glow of a resilient plant. The resilient plant with an ability to recover from setback must restrain the memories of the past to enhance its survival experience in spite of the perturbations of the terrestrial space.

From the book A Woman In The Bush in the literary piece Diluted Existence we read these lines:

“To degrade like bad cadence
To fail to act in accordance
To lead a diluted existence
Tendencies to disobey the voices
To disaffirm the voice of instinct
To render existence more succinct
Instinct is better than the mind
Instinct is always as divined
Its path never to be confined”.

Book Cover of A Woman in the Bush. Picture Credit: Z. Zulu.

Many days have passed without rain. It is not feasible to resist forever without water. Photosynthesis necessitates water as the first order of business. In the absence of water, photosynthesis is deletarious to the wellbeing of the plant. It is hard to draw strength when the innermost is falling apart pulled in opposite directions like disassembling on account of weak thoughts. A weak thought is like a pessimist microscope that magnifies the adverse conditions.

The plant trusts its instincts and vigorously resists these weak thoughts to gain a higher sense like a helicoptor view and never to be subdued like a caterpillar view on account of the anxious thoughts. When fixated on weak thoughts, it gives an override to the funks. The overtures of the funks must be preempted with vengeance like the indefatigable Ichiliza girl of Zululand when resisting unwelcome sexual advances.

Sacred thoughts and strategic vision are needed for clearity of the mind to see the way. For this reason, the plant must refuse to iterate the adverse conditions that exist. Iteration should only be used for purposes of regression analysis in order to find the interpolation data points that are closer to the regression line and to avoid the extrapolation data points that are further from the regression line.

If the waterless circumstences persist, the plant must make some tough decisions to disengage the photosynthesis and to prepare the underground as a refuge to await the advent of the falling rain in the safety of the subterrain.

While making a good faith attempt to resist the extreme drought, the plant must remain undefined in the adverse conditions of the wasteland. Sometimes the tropospheric configuration plays a cruel game when promissory rain clouds appear only to disappear shortly afterwards with no rain in sight.

These tropospheric perturbations are very hard on the desert plant that anticipates the rain. As a matter of exigence, the desert plant retreats to the underground to await the advent of the rain without worrying about photosynthesis. The maxim of military strategy is pertinent herein that those who run away will live to fight another day.

Moreover, the desert plant is pregnant with a precious seed to preserve for the future generations. The preparations must be made to deposit the golden seed to the underground. The desert seed must remain safely deposited in the vault of the underground while listening to the slightest indications of the coming rain.

The sanctuary of the underground is refreshing to the desert plant but it also carries the prospect of a risky underside like the dark side of the moon. There are bacterial decomposers whose business is to exterminate the undefended rhyzome leaving no trace of its former self. The plant must install counter measures and remain neurotic and guarded at all times to avoid the subliminal infiltration of the draconian decomposition. The counter measures of the African desert plant can preserve the seed for decades even centuries for the survival benefit of the future generations.

When the rains fall, the plant energetically springs to life like the coiled Masumu of Matamong. The new rain is evanescent and will soon vanish into oblivion leaving no trace of the precipitation. The risk-taking plant internalises the falling rain knowing that the rain will soon be gone. No need to fixate on the adverse conditions of the harsh memories of the past. Life must go on and the plant must dance in the breeze wearing some green like a new chapter of zestful living as if there was no problem because the desert flower is not defined by the problem.

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

Zulu, ZZulu, Z (2014). The Sacred Knowledge of the Desert: African Philosophical Transcendence. Madisebo University College Press: Johannesburg. (2014).

The Sacred Knowledge of the Desert: African Philosophical Transcendence. 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 (2008). ‘Ontological States of the Object’, Unpublished, Ottawa, Canada.

Zulu, Z .(2009c). ‘The African Philosophy of Coexistentialism’, Unpublished, Ottawa, Canada.

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).

Philip, J.(1791). Researches in South Africa.