Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Eric Miyeni buying black favour with a violent pen

So I decided to investigate the Eric Miyeni saga since I had already read tweets and columns about it. I had made peace with the fact that in this world we have people like Eric Miyeni. This meant that I had to read the complete article that caused him all the trouble and not just take snippets of the issue. I have to say that from what I had read about it I was very grateful that I read it.

Beyond his violence against a woman Miyeni actually did have a point though he made his point with hands covered in blood and with bloodshot eyes. I was somehow unsure whether he needed to be taken straight to hospital or therapy, prison or anger management classes first before listening to what he had to say as not even Malema was ever that violent. Not even at the bloody agent!

It is a fact that where the DA gets its money is where the DA gets its money. When the devil is constantly accusing you, you start believing that the devil's accusing voice is God's voice. He pretends to be be righteous, and thus you mistake him for God. To prove his point about your unrighteousness he will not point at things that are not there that is how he works to keep you trapped. So yes to be fair, let everyone open up their books then and be investigated. Point taken Mr. Miyeni.

However, what was new to me was Miyeni's new found love of being black. O wait, I don't know that for sure. He speaks so eloquently about it and defends it in such a pplausable manner like one well versed in the importance of tenders. I am just not convinced about his dedication to blackness. This is about his pocket but I am not saying there is something wrong with a man who looks after his pocket. I can imagine that there are mouths to feed and an image to keep up perhaps or just to make ends meet just like anyone. It is hard to be a black man after all since everyone assumes that gold magically falls on your lap like manna just because of your skin colour so hey, a tender must go a long way.

What concerns me about Mr. Miyeni is his blatant personal attack on City Press Editor Haffajee. He wrote that people like her, "are most likely to be the kind that wakes up in the morning sees their black faces in the mirror only to feel a wave of self-hatred rising up to nauseate them."

When I read that I thought that in order for anyone to have that image and so eloquently depict it takes much more than talent. After all the man who wrote this about a "black" woman, is the same man who once reported in the 90's on a then "white" magazine that he only dated white women because black women were not ambitious enough for him. The message was clear of what he thought of blackness and in his rise to fame he was now too good for black women. I was young when I read that and I made it a point to remember what kind of black I did not want to grow up to be. To demean my own people like that! This man was a new black star when black stars were so few that you wanted to cheer for anyone who appeared even by a hair because if they made it we were making it and we would make it. We needed the one person that is there shining to tell us how great we are or can be and not look down on us. Eric Miyeni failed us and especially black women as he has just spectacularly done so again. My ambition then even as a young girl was enough to be spread among few people. I also knew many black women who were ambitious so I despised him from that day because he was clearly ashamed of his black skin.

So perhaps Eric is angry at his own image in the mirror because in order to hurl insults like that says there is a problem with where they are coming from. I also happen to have met one of the beautiful white women he preferred over us. It was then that I decided not to despise him and let bygones be bygones after all now many black women have proved him wrong. But now the tender is what pays so his speech has turned towards the pocket. I hope he first deals with his own anger and murderous hatred.


Eric Miyeni's article is not brave. Not as the ANCYL would like to believe it is. What is brave about siding with people who are in power? It is as cheap as white people who are now suddenly defenders of justice against a corrupt democratic government when they failed to show up in apartheid years, in a time when their passion for justice was most needed. I am not talking about repentant white people who take responsibility for the past when they look at the present. I am talking of the ones who refuse to see how the injustice of the past is exactly what is our problem in our current world. It needs them to be angry enough about it to do something about it rather than point fingers now. I wanted Eric Miyeni to speak like that when it was the right time but even now the way he speaks exposes him as one who is trying too hard to prove something to make up for what he himself does not believe.

Kuli Roberts and Eric Miyeni truly remind us that we must deal with our cancerous past. This talented man could have written a great article had it not have been for the hellish violence he began with. Since this violence is no different to the one we find daily in our townships destroying our people. A violence we are not angry enough about and do too little about. We wish it away until we see it in educated people of influence. How much longer will we treat it as unrelated incidents?

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