Dear South Africa

I write this with a heavy heart. You were my first love. I know I walked out on you fourteen years ago, because I felt you were impossible to bring my children up safely in. I worried about your ability to allow me to focus my energies on a higher purpose, rather than constantly looking over my shoulder to see if my doors were locked, my windows sealed and my handbag tucked somewhere obscure. I agonised on the day I stood in a gun shop, when the store owner was telling me that “this gun is great for ladies and could kill someone at three metres”. I remember so clearly putting that gun down and going home, shocked to the core that I had even for a minute considered buying something that was so against my principles. It was a turning point, where I realised my co-dependant love of you was going to harm me, that my adoration for your vast plains and warm seas could not justify the abuse you put me through. That my love for your rainbow people and the funny daily life that came with diversity could not save me. I packed ten boxes, my five year old and gave away my beloved dogs and left. My new relationship is wonderful, it has no abuse. I live in a place that is truly democratic and safe, bar global warming, potential terrorist attacks and economic shocks. The daily assault on my psyche has been removed and I can focus on other things higher on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Yet, somewhere, deep inside me, I always burned a candle for you. I still miss you. I hold a hope that my true love, my first love, the country that held my first breath would redeem itself and realise its own potential. That the amazing people who live in it and manage to buffer against its abuses might enjoy the peace and freedom other countries take for granted. I growled when others slated you, I defended your burgeoning democracy and hoped and prayed that you would turn around. I wanted you to prove me wrong. There were glimmers of hope that you would. Yet, today you passed your Secrecy Bill, reverting back to type. You are the same, regardless of whether you are Apartheid South Africa or the New South Africa. In your core, you believe that gagging your people and preventing free speech is okay. It has long been entrenched in your history. You are proving that the abused becomes the abuser. My only glimmer of hope now is that the Constitutional Court overturns your lunacy. But I am learning that hope has a long, unrequited love affair with you. Hope may be an old woman before she sees you again….

Nkosi Sikele Afrika, God Bless Africa…and help her rise above herself.

© Tanya @ Ordinary Poetry

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