Gravity

If an Avalanche is
Crashing
Down a mountainside
Shall we believe
That the atomised snowflakes are engaged in
A tacit
Conspiracy to crash
Through
Their destination
Or would
It be rational to conclude
The destination to be
Inevitable: a result of
Critical mass.

.NiK(00)
from the collection: Random Notes…

I decided some years ago to rename Gauteng, the so-called “Golden Province” in which i live, as Zone One. I intended it as a literary device wherein my Zone One could be many things that I choose it to be, without it necessarily being what it was when I was not choosing.

Some of the rationale for this had to do with the difficulty offshore citizens had with pronouncing the name [where is this place called Gouting? For instance] and I am sure that if people can’t remember or pronounce your name they will tend to avoid using it. So I unashamedly appropriated the name from another part of the continent. Like other places this one defines its regions by Zones rather than by pretty names. In my view the name ‘Zone’ reflects a continental reality emphasized by our beloved leader’s supreme masterstroke of turning our Zone One into the ‘Washington’s of Africa/Azania’. There are Zones where people can make loads of money and live well and there are Zones where they can only eke out a decidedly miserable existence. I am pleased that I live in one of those where people can live well without having to be politically connected.

Now I see that a new so called ‘factional’ novel is about to be launched onto the market and the setting for this book-Zone One. Is the name use spreading or is the new factoid novel one written by Moi? Is this the stuff of conspiracy?

Why would a place in Africa simply reduce regional segmentation to the abstraction of Zones 1- Whatever-. Does the numbering itself reflect the State’s priorities? Or perhaps –

No one thought about it at all. There was no careful conspiracy. Or perhaps someone somewhere among the initiators thought it out: some genius of pre-modern communication theory. Don’t you find that to be the most fun about conspiracy theories. In our general day to day lives we encounter nothing but broad ranging incompetence, foul-ups, plans shot down due to misinformation, disinformation or just plain thoughtlessness-and yet in conspiracies all is perfection-I’m always most curious about the seemingly supernatural powers of the unsung participants in the conspiracies that are the basis of conspiracy theories, aren’t you?

The Zones are places that have been geographically segmented. All over the continent there are zones where no nothing lives, something lives, some people live and many people live. The places where many people live are always the most free: citizens are free to merge their shadow with darkness and slip unknown through their scurrying lives.

Zone one is the primary liberated Zone. It is vast, one of the world’s mega states in a globalising world. It could be argued that Zone one is vulnerable to implosion. It could equally be argued that the issues arising that indicate potential implosion are soluble with money, effort and enthusiasm. Broadly speaking Zone one is the fastest growing region amongst a toddling but nonetheless growing region.

A while back people who obsessed about conspiracies placed the big corporate monster identified in the book S A [Inc] published some dozen or so years ago as the prime mover and shaker in the transition. They were allegedly the architects of change. The Liberal SA writer Jill Wentzel added to that fire of speculation with her evaluations of policy adaptations of SA [Inc} over the decades of the dispossession era in a groundbreaking book on the Liberal perspective around the time the country was liberated.I don’t have it to hand and the local library has misplaced their copy-possibly someone wanted it and took it before someone else did?

According to the venerable Robin Mc Gregor, SA[Inc} owned some 90 odd percent of the SA stock market listings in the late 80’s. Now they don’t I’m sure, and the press is increasingly muttering on about the stark reality that SA Inc has ducked out of the country altogether and is divesting itself of its SA holding with almost unseemly haste. Now that would have been a strange outcome for a conspiracy wouldn’t it-unless there wasn’t a conspiracy and all the various players were doing was ‘adapting their skills to the situation’ as the lead character in the above mentioned soon to be published factional novel set in Zone One, is frequently apt to point out.

Notwithstanding this, the rump of the old SA [Inc] that remains will no doubt continue to exercise formidable resources with the possibly over cautious dexterity that we never saw, experienced or cared about with the late large murdered mining man [about whom I alluded in my blog story called ‘the Apprentice Hit Man’ in an earlier blog. This overweight life connoisseur undeniably, to my mind, holds sway as the most flamboyant, over-the-top criminal we have ever experienced, and being a country rich in diverse resources we have experienced many. There was theft on the grandest scale ever conceived and it just went on and on-Significant commentators have pointed out huge discrepancies in the man’s dealings for over a decade -and the party as we all know went on-My personal favourite in all of that scam was the fake Arts awards thing where the artists got zip and the marketers won the prizes.

When you can have crime on that scale, taking place with impunity, then who needs more secret conspiracies if indeed there are such things. And was it a conspiracy or was the BIG BAD MINING MAN simply someone seeking attention on a vast scale.

I have mentioned before I’m sure my favourite conspiracy. Growing up in a small now forgotten mining town on the eastern edges of the eastern quarter of Zone One, east of Jozi-my journey to school was one undertaken daily through hostile territory. There were warring factions and tribes that hated each other and one tribe in particular; a newly ascendant one was violent in the extreme. I grew up believing that the members of that ascendant tribe were the most hateful of people and was later most surprised to discover that to be reasonably untrue.

Decades later, in my mid-forties I befriended an old Septegenarian who told me- in confidence over a few too many dops of Klippies and iced water – that the fathers of his generation would pay their sons two and six [refers to currency prevailing in 1950’s -had a purchasing power parity index value of about R150.00 in 2006 currency-using the ‘how-many-times-could-you-go-to-the-movies’ index -five times for two and six.]. If that is not a pretty solid incentive to beat the shit out of your neighbour than what else would be.

I suggested this to him. ‘Did the orders go out?’ I asked. He shook his head for awhile, thinking back over a confused life of ups and downs. No-he said eventually. ‘It wasn’t as though he had ever been told he should do it;’ he said. It was just that he didn’t want people to think he was a ‘joiner’, as he called it.

So a wave of terror-certainly on me-was unleashed for two and six. A tacit conspiracy whereby we all agree without formalising our position.

I would suggest that the recent decision of a labour court to rule in favour of a Black man of the now ascendant ruling class dominant ethnic source, over a Black man of mixed blood/original colour origins reflects a tacit conspiracy in favour of the wrong recipient.[see Escom appointment saga recent press reports]

There is wide agreement that the dominant black part of the population are themselves usurpers. The so called ‘coloured’ man derives [frequently] from the ancient remnants of the Koi and San tribes who were engulfed by the southward migration of pioneering agricultural settlers and were effectively dispossessed centuries before the pioneering [so-called black] settlers were themselves displaced and dispossessed by an even later invasion of differently hued [so-called white] settlers.

In this new more materialistic post revolutionary age who was the more sinned against is slowly becoming a divisive issue as I predicted in a piece published in the Mail in Guardian back in ’99.


Conschmiracy

I couldn’t find the things I wanted today, they’re in
The computer somewhere,
Probably neatly filed in place
Under a name I’ve given it
And a category I deemed appropriate at the time.

When I read of hackers entering the domain
And looting the contents
Of one’s hard drive and thus
Becoming privy to these thoughts
I wonder if they find the things I can’t.

Were I a conspiracy theorist I should believe that ‘they’
Had taken
My thoughts away
And that is why I can’t find them.

Then perhaps there is a more prosaic side to
This belief that groups meet in huddled rooms
And plan the enslavement of the world [and perhaps they do?]
Do herrings shoal from tacit conspiracy?
Or is it simply
Sensible
To pursue the pulse.

.NiK[2002]
from the collection: Rehearsing Nietzsche.