Listen to the red cries of a red man

| Tuesday August 7, 2007 00:00

So many names or titles, I have been given; Bushmen, San, Basarwa, and Remote Area Dwellers. Who am I? I don't even know myself. Why do I ask this for I'm only a Red person?

I'm laughed at with words connoting negative aspects and I'm discriminated against. What am I? I don't even know my kind. I'm understood to be indigenous, yes! Indeed, I'm indigenous for I have originated in this country before any other and from time immemorial but I'm always the last. My life is the last. Is there a quest for life? Tell me the price so that I can buy. Oh! How I'm dying to know. Or am I helpless for I'm only a Red person?
Why was there a Red person? Who made me to be such? But I neither want to be a Black Person nor a White person. I just want to be equal. Why do I say this for I'm only a Red person?

Was it a mistake for me to be a Red person? Those are the questions I shall not answer even others cannot help me find a solution to. I did not ask to be a Red person but I have become one, who should I blame? Some of them ask themselves 'who am I? What am I? Where am I?' They have lost their culture, their history, they don't know whether they are humans and they don't know where they are because their land has been taken away from them. Driven away from their ancestral lands to other lands with infertile soils in the name of development, they become impoverished. Thinking of solving a problem, if ever it were possible, a lot more problems are now created, a catastrophe.

Who can hear me out for I'm only a Red person?
My culture is in the hands of a stranger. He is using my culture to solve his problems. He is using my culture for commerce. Why is my culture shared? Does he who uses my culture has a culture? Is he ashamed of his culture? Is my culture an asset? A priceless jewellery? I'm used as a tourist attraction in the Safaris but yet I'm becoming more poor and poor. Am I a valuable possession to be used for the other to make money out of me? Tell me for I need to know or do I not deserve to know for I'm only a Red person?
A road to opportunities; where is it? Is it there? I can't see it, why doesn't it manifest itself? If it is ever there, why is it so narrow? Why am I so disadvantaged? Why do I say this for I'm only a Red person?

JOB MORRIS
D'KAR