OPINION | KZN must consider pushing for self-determination like Orania

As black South African citizens, especially AmaZulu, we have been sold a lie. A united, non-racial, equal, human rights-oriented and prosperous South African society is simply unattainable given the gross levels of hypocrisy and corruption in this country.

In his book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, Paulo Frere says:“The oppressors do not favour promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders. Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle.”

Here I am, a proud Zulu, a scholar yet feeling as a foreigner and without identity in my ancestral land after sacrificing my entire life to the struggle for liberation.

I am economically and linguistically invisible despite belonging to the nation of AmaZulu, the largest linguistic community in South Africa, accounting for 23% of the population.

About 16 million South Africans are Zulus, yet still I’m being annihilated at a speed faster than lightening. Even road warning ⚠️ signs in my KZN province where 90% of the population speaks isiZulu, they are written in English as in “SPEED KILLS” not “IJUBANE LIYABULALA” in my language.

Even the food I consume; legal contracts I sign; medication packages, dosage, and warnings; billboards, I’m simply disrespected and discarded as a non-entity. Children are destroyed with drugs and alcohol.

Our children who work for Afrikaners and English speakers are made to communicate in their languages and not in IsiZulu. Despite battling in English, the corrupt ANC government is forcing our Zulu learners to forget their language.

The 30 years of Constitutional democracy in the Republic of South Africa has been the living hell for me as a Zulu-speaking person. I know millions of Zulus feel like me regardless of class, qualifications, status, skills set and expertise.

We no longer celebrate Shaka Day. We no longer celebrate King Dingane Day. We have become lazy and have surrendered to foreign cultures to throw crumbs at us in the form of jobs they would rather give to foreigners anyway.  We need to reclaim our hard-working ethos underpinning Zulu economics.

We have become selfish, trigger happy turned into izinkabi and amadela ngokubona because none can hear our cries for a better-quality life. No one feels our pain. We have allowed foreign businesses in our areas who feed us poison because we have no capital to start ethical businesses. This must stop.

The disputes in the Zulu royal household, the Shembe church and even of ordinary Zulu families are resolved using foreign British Westminster traditions and practices-inspired laws.

Ultimately, we must continually feel inferior in our ancestral land despite our greatness as a Zulu nation. We are known for the wrong things, yet I know that there is good in each one of you Nina beSilo.

What I am saying must never be confused with tribalism. As Bantus we marry one another.

Our current Zulu King, MisuZulu kaZwelithini is a product of Zulu and Swazi. We all share the same Ubuntu, the supreme philosophy of being, existence and justice which is about distinctiveness, compassion, interrelatedness, interconnectedness, and interdependence.

The current white supremacy designed Republic of South Africa led by the manufactured corrupt ANC government is simply not working for us as Bantu South African citizens, especially in my case Zulus.

I’m reclaiming my Zuluness because for too long Afrikaners descendants of Dutch even established Oriana, but none label them as tribalists.

I’m a Zulu from KwaZulu Kingdom, the same way as a German from Germany, Chinese from China, Japanese from Japan, English from England, Portuguese from Portugal etc.

The white supremacy Republic of South Africa of 1910 is still the same, except that there are carefully manufactured corrupt black African leaders at the helm of power. They are there to line up their pockets, not to liberate us as Bantus.

I feel shortchanged as a Bantu South African citizen like King Dingane, who signed a document of peace written in English – a language His Majesty did not understand. The document later turned out to be a land transfer to Afrikaners/Boers.

A language is not just a tool of communication, it is a carrier of culture. It is one’s identity. It is one’s intelligence, logic, and heritage. It is the moral fibre and mental stability of that linguistic community. Without which we are doomed.

If we look at linguistic communities who govern themselves like Botswana for AbaTswana, France for French, building social cohesion in these communities is easy. They are prosperous. Yet, as diverse Bantu linguistic communities that are following the Utopia of United society we are easily shortchanged. We are easily divided.

We are being destroyed because the corrupt ANC a government is alienating the nine official South Bantu African languages from their people. We are literally being nullified.

The corrupt ANC, EFF and white businesses care more about illegal Pakistanis, Nigerians, Zimbabweans, Somalians, among others, than millions of suffering black South African citizens who are drowning in misery and hope for united prosperous utopia that will never come.

My mother tongue, IsiZulu is a highly mathematically coded and configured language more than English and Afrikaans/Dutch, the languages of colonial foundation logic system.

I discovered that my IsiZulu language possesses not only arithmetic, but also algebraic logic.

IsiZulu word for eight (8), which is agt in Afrikaans, acht in Dutch is isishiyagalombili.

This Zulu compounded word for 8 features word “shiya” which means minus , a basic mathematical operation and “mbili” which means “two, 2” and “galo”, a limb representing the missing numbers in the equation. Hence, IsiZulu word for 8 is literally the following equation:

x – 2 = y.

My language is one with the abstract science of numbers. It has five vowels. Each syllable of any of its words features one vowel behind each consonant-unit. That is why Afrikaans/ Dutch words like “tafel” becomes itafula in IsiZulu.

IsiZulu is a 12-noun class set specific. Its noun classes are therefore not 17 as proposed by Karl Meinhof, a German linguist or nine as later revised by C.M. Doke, a British born linguist and missionary.

Even everyday words such as “beautiful” are extremely quantity sensitive and 12-noun-class set specific as in: umuntwana muhle (baby is beautiful), isikole sihle (the school is beautiful), ingane inhle (child is beautiful), abantwana bahle (babies are beautiful) etc.

I published a 500 pages IsiZulu grammar logic textbook with Cambridge University Press in 2017 wherein I deciphered its secret code. Yet, it pains me deeply that Zulu children are alienated from their mathematically wired logic. Consequently, they perform poorly in mathematics not because they are stupid, but because they are alienated from their mother tongue.

They speak it for communication purposes and not to stimulate their inherent intellectual abilities. They continue studying a fundamentally flawed grammar logic system of their mother tongue in South African schools. Yes! This is deliberate so that a Zulu-speaking person is always portrayed as a synonym of stupidity.

I never thought that in my life I would ever yearn so much for my identity. Indeed, experience and necessity are twin mothers of all inventions. The corrupt ANC elite and their white supremacy masters have taught me a lot. What they did to us as Bantu South African citizens is responsible for shifting my perspectives.

Suddenly, when I look at Botswana with 2.5 million population, Batswanas feel they belong and they are enjoying peace and stability. There is social cohesion and comparing them with over 15-million Zulus who are drowning in confusion and misery, the numbers are not adding up.

Amaswati in Swaziland, with a population of 1.1 million, have a place they call home. They are not subjected to the South African utopia. They are grounded in their culture despite their challenges.

Basotho in Lesotho, with a population of 1.2 million, belong. The spirit of Moshoeshoe dwells in tranquility in their majestic green rolling hills. Yet, my over 15 million Zulu nation disappears in nothingness. They are struggling to breathe in the South African utopia that only benefits our former white oppressors, and black South African sell-outs.

Chapter 14, Section 235 of The RSA Constitution allows for self-determination.

It states: “…within the framework of rights, recognition of the notion of self-determination of any community sharing a common cultural and language heritage within a territorial entity in the Republic or any other way determined by national legislation.”

Yes! The hypocrisy of white South Africans, specifically Afrikaners, they used this very constitutional provision to establish Oriana. The English together with the Boer elite are trying to do the same in Western Cape.

As a descendant of Ntshingwayo kaMahole Khoza (1809 -1883) who was King Cetshwayo’s general during the mighty and most victorious first Anglo-Zulu war in 1879, I take immense pride in the simple yet absolute genius of my great grandfather. Armed with buffalo strategy, knobkieries, assegais, spears, and Zulu shields, we defeated the English with their sophisticated automated weapons.

My mother uMantombi, Ntombazi, Ntombiyenkosi Thakathile Nxumalo is a descendant of King Zwide of Ndwandwe Bantu-Nguni speaking nation. She is named after King Zwide’s mother Ntombazi. This history will never see the light of day under the current utopian dispensation.

There are Voortrekker Museums, monuments of the first and second world wars that had absolutely nothing to do with me as a Zulu. If I were to demand the monuments of those killed in Marikana and July 2021 unrest, such will never get support of the state because Zulus and Nguni’s who perished in these bloodiest events are not monied. They are trapped as employees or worse in unemployment and abject poverty.

As a mother with children, I am asking myself what is in it for me in the celebration of the 16^th of December, a day which is supposed to be about reconciliation? Lest we forget, it used to be Dingane’s Day, my greatest king who tackled Voortrekkers, the Boers under Andries Pretorius.

Like all my history as um’Zulu, it simply gets diluted in the utopian soup that from experience is not good at it sounds.

How can I look forward to the December 16, a Reconciliation Day in South Africa, when I don’t experience justice at all?  Yes! When I feel like an outsider in my own ancestral land, the KwaZulu Kingdom.

I’m calling on the entire Zulu royal household, all our 350 amakhosi, izinduna, the Shembe church, the entire Zulu nation, South African Indian citizens residing in KwaZulu-Natal, all ethical businesses regardless of skin colour or linguistic community to unite against the mafia that is controlling South Africa.

We must seriously consider invoking Chapter 14, Section 235 on self-determination. In 2024, let us unite as KZN people for self-determination and elect ethical and competent leaders to run our province. It is not consistent with the Zulu culture to steal, discharge sewer into the beaches, look down upon iSilo, amakhosi, izinduna and destroy businesses. That is the captured corrupt ANC foreign culture. We must restore the Zulu culture of respect and Ubuntu.

We must unite and vote the corrupt ANC out that has portrayed all black Africans as corrupt and incapable of governing. We can rescue KZN and make it a prosperous nation.

There will be order, peace, stability, and great environment to do business and prosper as all KZN citizens, especially AmaZulu, if we vote all Machiavellians out. Written by former ANC MP and KZN ActionSA leader, Makhosi Khoza (PhD).

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