Just Monkeying around
Tumie Modise | Monday January 18, 2016 15:00
I don’t know about other people but I am already overwhelmed!
It all started with the most outrageous of all. Strange thing is, this didn’t even happen here at home but it got people worked up all the same.
Somewhere in South Africa, I imagine at one of those coastal towns, probably at some affluent ‘Trespassers will be shot, shot again if Alive” affluent neighborhoods, a lady, I imagine, woke up from what I strongly suspect to be booze induced sleep.
I cannot think of any other reason. Well, maybe I just sympathise with her amid the entire never-ending backlash and maybe, just maybe, I am making excuses for her. Blame it on the devil or alcohol, it works all the time.
Or even some strong potent Irish coffee. Last week a colleague ‘sold’ me a sachet of Irish coffee. I hallucinated for five straight hours after taking it; mind you I was at work the whole time. I only regained my senses after someone brought me a plate of hard pap and cow intestines from a nearby shop. I was gone!
So this lady dared go where even the angels don’t tread. In her disgust after seeing tons of horrible junk at some beach after Christmas, went on the offensive, took to social media and blasted Black people for the offending mess. She said quite a mouthful, her statement was littered with both hate and disgust and to demonstrate her level of disgust, and she labelled black people MONKEYS.
Monkeys? Did that woman just call us monkeys? Those fluffy grey-haired four- limbed primates with shiny flat black noses, which do nothing all day except hop from tree to tree making funny hissing sounds? In the animal hierarchy they are neither hunters nor feature anywhere near the ‘Big 5’ list. They are neither carnivores or herbivores. They feast on just about anything and everything. At Grandpalm hotel, I’ve seen one running off with a beer a couple of months ago! But someone out there is convinced they are our (black people) closest relatives.
There is one other simple reason why I am a Christian. Even if I were to come back in another life, I will still choose the theory of Adam’s spare rib over the ape evolution twaddle any day.
I don’t know about everybody else, but I am 100% certain that I did not evolve from no ape, and I suspect many black people don’t buy that either. Little coincidence where this theory even came from.
Black people, by their very own nature- and I qualify to say this because I am one of them-generally take insults and most of the time they choose to just brush them off. Sometimes if you push your luck, they will return them two-fold.
This being no compliment, they returned the favour in a very big way! Why this woman ever thought anyone was ever going to find this flattering beats me! Even her own people were outraged. Verbal diarrhea doesn’t get this bad, but this was a calamity. Admittedly, I was not in the least bothered. I don’t think I am still that bothered. If anything, I feel sorry for this woman. Hers must be a very sad life where she sees everything in black and white, even decades after the black and white googlebox made way for the colour television sets, later by flat screens.
As I have alluded before, we often take it for granted that everyone is just like us; that they are of sound mind, that they have some varying levels of IQ’s, however minute. The moment we realise that it’s not always the case is the day we’ll learn to accommodate ‘weird’ people like this lady.
Seeing that the mother was in hot soup, the daughter, obviously disturbed and possibly after pulling a few hairs off her head, decided to jump in and save her mom from the public backlash which by now had reached feverish peaks.
By now most Africans, even in the Diaspora, had jumped in. Diplomacy flew out of the window. Insults rained from all angles. The daughter drafted a piece, a plea for forgiveness, and also testified that her mom was not racist at all.
The note was convincing. Well, until the part where she innocently stated that ‘after all Monkeys Are CUTE’. This apple that obviously fell right on the tree, didn’t know what hit it! As we negotiate 2016, one valuable lesson I have learnt, is to keep some of my weird opinions to myself- where possible.