From Malcolm X, Anna J. Cooper to Sobukwe, Charwe Nyakasikana a.k.a. Mbuya Nehanda Nyakasikana and many others whom I’m yet to know or whose experiences were not written in the pages of history, there has always been a gnawing at the question; what is the price of freedom?

One of the things I’m grateful for when it comes to reading whether literature – in the case of African Literature what’s now being called realist fiction, or the deeply political and philosophical text; I encounter many brave people who’ve found in them the quiet strength to tell and share experiences, knowledge and bits of wisdom, all of which have often been acquired at great pains if you follow the author’s life closely.

The same is true with writing but only to an extent: that truth is only visible when the experiences connect or converge with something else already written or experienced and shared by someone else.

An example of this is when earlier this year I jotted down a few musings about smoking. It was a terrible period and I’d just come out of writing 6 exams in a five days so in addition to the feelings implied in title of this post I was also feeling stressed, and cigarettes were something to numb both the stress and I guess what can also be summed as depression and anxiety.

Long story short I was on the slippery slope so to speak and very closely becoming ‘addicted’, so after a month I decided to stop smoking and in my attempt to do so I poured in all my longing and desire into a piece of writing.

That post, entitled ‘Smoke’, ends with the question “where is there life that is free?” In retrospect it probably wasn’t a good idea to associate or use as a metaphor my longing for freedom with my longing to smoke, because in giving up the latter it was only a matter of time before the longing for true freedom crept up. In fact I wrote in the same piece:

“Yet, I’d be lying if I did not say there’s a deep yearning of undertaking this journey. My words, and indeed thoughts, have of late become more. It is therefore with extreme caution I write what I write now: a possibility grows to probability, a truer quest for freedom. Fate and destiny once intertwined and seemingly entwined have become but strings which if willing I can pull.

If I to take the will, then I venture into more than boundless and unchartered waters. And this I am scared. Steep is the price of true freedom. Begs the question what price is too great to be free? Surely, true freedom can’t be bought. Yet if you are born a slave to this world, then for you, life itself is your master, to be free means to give up your life as you know it and this world.”

The price of freedom, whether as declared by Malcolm X, is death (literally or figuratively take your pick, though the ‘accepted’ interpretation is that it’s about whether you are ready to “pay the price” and put your body on the line – sentiments echoed by Sobukwe), or perhaps more probable for this generation making grave personal sacrifices, it seems perhaps ill-fitted to be asking the question ‘what is the price of freedom’ especially when the answers historically have either been very forthright and clear, or at least even today fairly simple to answer.

The real question perhaps is, what is freedom? How to conceptualise and define what freedom is for you personally. And then from that, the real, real question, is whether we are ready to pay the price.

My personal longing returned after going home for the vac and trying to think about my life.

I recently attended my mother’s graduation ceremony on Monday the 4^th of July and this was the first graduation ceremony I’ve ever been to. I’m not sure if the ceremonies are meant to leave you feeling basic – average, lacking inept and inadequate – especially if you don’t happen to be one of the people wearing a red gown at the end of the day. What I am sure of however, is that the ploy in making me attend the ceremony worked.

I returned home and finished editing the first instalment of a reflection series I’m currently writing before the graduation ceremony. This post actually comes out of a stasis point in writing part 2 as my mind was more drawn to these issues before I could focus on the series.

My plan for the remainder of the day was to finalise preparations for the 2^nd instalment which I had already went over in my mind and had already conceptualised the structure, it was just a matter of putting it down on paper.

Instead, images of red gowns and flashes of ‘graduating with distinction’ where still in my mind, and so was that feeling of mediocrity my grades have been associated with lately. So I didn’t begin the preparation for part-2: I spent the next two days charting what I’d like to think of as an academic career – I rationalised to myself that a self-reliant and self-determined Africa will still need accountants right? – People who can look at a machine and say, ah the useful life of this asset is x years, and the economic benefit you can receive over its useful life is z. Or those people who know when to depreciate and impair assets and know the methods of measuring and calculating its value. Perhaps more importantly people like asking ‘what are you going to do with the land’ or even the you replaced as the we, so I thought ah, I’ll be one of those cats in the developing Africa camp post-return of land (also land as a metaphor for everything in case that’s not yet clear).

The role of the accountant aside, I thought of how there are many things which need decolonising in the accounting curriculum and profession. Presently the main objective is to assure investors that a company’s financial results have been reported fairly, without any material misstatements. Essentially just making sure that firms are not breaking the rules of capitalism in amassing their wealth. So I thought of how you can be “in the university but not of it” – to steal as much knowledge as possible to be used towards utopian goals.

But anyway, I also thought I’d like the aesthetic that comes with wearing a red gown. Whilst I still had dreams of studying astronomy, the red gown was inevitable because you need a PhD to meaningfully practice and contribute in the field. My grandmother still calls me professor. And since I arrived home she’s been giving me countless speeches about the importance of education.

In these motivational speeches what’s repeatedly said, and the words I grew up hearing are: “without education and without a certificate, you are a reject in the world.”

After perusing through requirements for postgraduate study, I resolved that I’d definitely graduate at the end of next year, with distinction too, lest for my grandmother’s sake. I looked at the rules for when a degree can be awarded with distinction, then I quickly looked at my transcript. And my heart sank. Defeat and depression set in.

I logged onto Facebook and scrolled through my newsfeed full of stories of the Zim Shutdown. I felt helpless as I couldn’t do anything. I was saddened after thinking about what the people are asking for: reforms, not revolution. I was defeated at seeing demands for the privatisation of state enterprises and individual property rights to allow foreign direct investment. A whole Zimbabwe which gave the middle finger to the western imperial powers. Though of course people deserve their salaries and are justified in asking for their pay when not received. And certainly do not deserve any of the violence unleashed which we’ve become so numb to. There’s no mutual exclusivity in being anti-imperialist and not supporting authoritarianism and repressive states: both principles can exist simultaneously – and be upheld.

We are already aware of BLFs reactionary politics which are inherently anti-emancipatory, more so the ridiculousness of actually running for local elections under the banner of being a revolutionary student movement is at best laughable and on sadder days brings lament at some of our naïve political imagination. But to exist on the same spectrum in agreeing with the ANC’s stance on the demonstrations in Zimbabwe is cause to at least worry about your credibility especially for movements without any relevance claiming to be liberatory yet adopting anti-black stances.

My disappointment ran high this week. Similar statements by high profile people about how the land was given and thus the revolution was successful or ‘complete’ were made, thus freedom. And yet here I am. The rise of pastors is actually worrying now.

I listened to a lot of music by Zimbabwean musicians who were involved in the Chimurenga and some went on to be vocal critics against Mugabe – some passed on and some live in exile today. From Simon Chimbetu, Stella Chiweshe Thomas Mapfumo, Leonard Dhembo, and Chiwoniso Maraire, I heard so many conceptions of freedom, so much struggle. And pain. Truly some of the best music I’ve ever heard.

Below is a link of Simon Chimbetu’s ‘Pane Asipo’ https://youtu.be/bSPwTBOaVjk

I felt depressed when it seems every time that there’s mass demonstrations it’s never to asks for structural change, to do away with the modernity anchored by coloniality and a capitalist logic in a neoliberal frame of thinking that haunt post-colonial Africa or manifest as police violence. No one has said anything about how homosexuality is still a criminal offense. No words on socialism. It’s easy to understand how people become cynics. Everyone I’m speaking to, especially about the reform and my critiques of suggested policy changes, almost invariably responds with ‘well, what’s a feasible alternative? Give us a model.’ Responding with ‘socialism’ equates to selling and offering dreams to people. And honestly unless you are me, dreams have very little patience even in our political imaginations.

The events in Zim have really left me wanting to smoke again.

The Dallas shootings. Anger, outrage, to eventually feeling numb. No, Nelson didn’t come.

This week plans to shutdown the US Embassy in Cape Town in solidarity with comrades in the west and #BlackLivesMatter were carried out. Much to say about how we also ignore issues in our own backyard.

I think I’ve discovered my comfort snack as a packet of Simba Fruit Chutney potato crisps, and two chocolates – the jungle energy bars, milk-chocolate flavour.

I woke up this morning with this crushing weight and my thoughts came back to writing this piece originally intended to be continuing with my reflection series. I thought about the university as a site and a place of refuge. How the university is a place where you can secure a future without uncertainties: the security of a job, access to debt and housing, and a salary for the remainder of your life in the system. I then thought about our struggle particularly as students housed in the safe haven of the university and how we conceptualise resistance, or what’s now being called ‘subverting the academy’.

Increasingly there’s the opinion that black students going through the system, graduating, going into corporates and ‘breaking barriers’ etc. becoming the next CEOs, vice chancellors and so forth is a form not only of resistance but of progress. I’m not convinced and at the very least things aren’t that simple. I can understand though talk of building our own institutions, black finance and black owned capital for development projects and the like etc. This talk unfortunately also sounds familiar to a book called Capitalist Nigger by Chika Onyeani’s, which in hindsight I probably had the misfortune of reading in my matric year, but I’m also not too quick to make that statement for there are some lessons I’ve learnt at a great price and will elaborate more of those experiences in part 2 of the series.

Whilst people who endure the system readily deserve applause and I say this as someone who can’t face going to lectures, on a grander scale, I read that more as a victory for the system if we have learnt to function in and imitate it. Learning to imitate something which wasn’t built for us nor benefits us is a tragedy, especially as we can never become of the people it was made for i.e. white.

Yet, so long as the university exists and its role contested, there must be people who argue for the university to be an engine of driving social change and social justice, but ultimately the decolonisation of society perhaps necessarily and by definition is for activism outside of the university space. And perhaps universities will never be engines of social change.

But as I write this, my grandmother’s words about how without education and a certificate you are a reject in the world, still ring in my head.

I think of comrades who now frequently say “when there’s a clear plan to take back the land, I’ll join the revolution. But until then I’m going to get my own in the system.” Everyone is waiting for the revolution to ‘happen’. I don’t know maybe I’m not too clued up on my history and these things do come out of nowhere.

But in the meantime, who is supposed to do the work in working and building towards the perfect revolution which is well organised?

Who is supposed to put in the work so we can all live in a world where university degrees and qualifications aren’t a caste system which isolate and marginalise far too many?

Where you aren’t a reject of society?

A world where a certificate isn’t the gateway to humanity and dignity? What does it mean for us to be following the same trend? Does the right time to ‘join’ also just come out of the aether?

And when do we do this work? Is activism just something we do in our heyday as young people and something to look back at fondly when we are older, and have jobs or when we criticise the next generation who’ll inevitably be taking up the same struggles?

Much as we may shade SRC askaris and people who are now gracing magazine covers and lists of “200 young South Africans” and whatnot to watch out for, at least they are consistent in that they know what they are doing: this phase of their lives is the next step before they become parliamentarians, ministers and sitting on various boards as directors of companies in the next 10 yrs. Whether they are deluded in thinking they will resurrect the ANC of Tambo, Luthuli and Govan Mbeki even as problematic as that was, or even reform capitalism to work for the majority of our people remains to be seen. Though the odds, history and the present trajectory paint a fairly predictable picture.

Regardless I’m convinced both groups do care about the black condition or at least I’d like to think it’s why we take up these struggles.

Thus my question becomes why are many young people increasingly eager to join in the ranks of the establishment, the stale politics of the previous generation and old methods? I ask this with all the seriousness of a B.Com Financial Accounting student who appreciates the risk of uncertainty and insecurity.

Maybe it’s because I’m 20 full of idealism and unwary of the realities of the world, and I’m just thinking to myself “we are young!” This is one of the few times I’m happy to say I’m a young person. When I turn 21 in the next few months maybe that will change. But as long as I remain 20 and hopefully for the remainder of my early twenties, I can still dream about a radically different society. We must at least still be able to imagine new ways of being.

Without coming across as ageist I use the word young in a generational sense though I also think that being 20 means facing a vastly different set of experiences to being 40 in as much as we may be of the same generation and especially as comrades fighting the same struggle.

It’s incumbent upon us to not become cynics so early in our lives and fall into the trappings of neoliberalism, or commit to making ourselves forms of ‘human capital’ whose worth and value is dependent on what you can ‘bring to the table’ and offer to firms.

Yes it may be years before the revolution comes, if ever in our life time. Personally my cut-off point is when I turn 35 and then I’ll become one of those grumpy old people chastising the youth. Maybe even sooner.

But my longing for a truer quest for freedom I find is leading me to unchartered waters. It is giving me a kind of recklessness, which is good, I think.

I don’t know where I’ll be in the next 10 years and I’m learning that trying to plan for that is an exercise in some sort of futility. I don’t even know what the end of this year holds.

But all I can do now is pray and hope in those years I “grow” and “be better” in whatever sense of the word, to remain true and aspire to live out my highest ideals and aspirations in what I do. That a part of me remains ‘20’ forever. To still hope for an ideal society and devotedly work towards building it.

At this point in time I only have hopes and dreams. I can only sell dreams and high idealism, and hope we can build and work towards realising them.

The dream I still hold onto I bought from one Thomas Sankara, and for whatever it’s worth I readily share with any who ask me what we as young people are supposed to do.

We must dare to invent the future.