A TRUE CATCH-22 OF SORTS IMMEDIATE DOWN UNDER!

By Namakando Nalikando-Sinyama Even Joseph Heller would turn green with envy at the apt application of the phrase he so naively coined decades ago. Come ooooon Uncle Bob Gaby Gaby! Show 'em just who really is Boss. Until then, am afraid they may have to first find one with an equal Blood of a Revolutionary and visionary spirit of a rare witty leader of our Age. Win it and then ma......gnanimously just identify your successor to carry on the baton of True Pan Africanism which should ably co-exist with the modern dispensation of evil capitalism spurred on by egotistic philosophies of profit at all costs. Your people have survived with you through political turmoil effected and inflicted on them by the despotic western hegemonic rulers. Your people are hard workers, resourceful and thus survivors, they obviously need some form of reprieve from their economic ordeal. This however must never ever come at the expense of National Pride and Identity which is represented by the people proudly owning a piece of their ancestral land. Mutabaruka, which is Rwandese or Burundian for 'The Unconquerable one' once said," Land is Power without it, Life has no Worth." Believe me, we are from Barotseland, and by God we do know what Land is truly worth! Your people must never be shot at for so-called trespassing in the land of their birth by people who own duo-citizenship. Granted, that the path taken may have caused the many sufferings and eventual deaths and break-down of the societal fabric in The House of Stone. These events have no doubt been highly regrettable and to some extent they could have been avoided. We who share his visionary spirit however saw and still see the broader picture of a True Revolutionary. There was collateral damage along the way but my prophecy is this that Time shall come when U Robert Gabriel Mugabe shall be read of in History books as a great Leader! This is obviously sounding quite controversial to armchair critics who know not the basics of Revolution and those that may have suffered and still suffer harsh conditions which they rather wrongly attribute to The Supreme Leader and i mean that in a good way! I can actually go on and on ad nauseam on the subject matter but space and time cannot allow. May the Change that most people require come but it must never happen at the dictate of foreign powers with ulterior motives. Our friends must not be allowed to jump from a frying pan into the fire. Change is very necessary but to what? Do people really think Uncle Robert does not realize he needs to rest? He is to me one of the smartest Presidents Africa has ever had whether currently serving or past. Now you can join me in ranking them and see what you get! Enjoy the exercise .Selah

TO BE OR NOT TO BE DREADLOCKED IS THE QUESTION MY DEAR WATSON!

By Namakando Nalikando-Sinyama My concept is this that the presence of dread locks on someone’s scalp actually has a lot to do more with what is in the inside of their heads and not on it. That is, the quality of their thinking, content of their character and their life’s guiding philosophies. You may prove this from the list you can come up with of notable people that are or have been dreaded (as we say in the business) once in history. It is extremely saddening though how some backward societies still think to spot dreadlocks means that you are weed smoking, unprofessional, un-serious, uneducated hooligan and unmotivated!! To the contrary, this fashion symbol is in fact a very strong and powerful public statement that people make and one only needs to sit down with one of these that have genuine dreads to realize the depth of misunderstanding that abounds about who they are as people. By genuine dreads, i mean I have actually crafted a categorization of a myriad reasons why I think people decide to go dread. Although, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as genuine dreads because each person ultimately has a reason why they choose to throw the comb away! To illustrate; 1. FASHION DREADS- Everyone is doing it and it looks pretty cool and trendy, so why the hake not? 2. ECONOMIC DREADS- I may not be able to manage or afford to always go to the salon and the barber shop so… Dread is the way to go and that is how it is going to be! 3. IMITATION DREADS-There are a lot of positive reasons I have heard about going dread so I would like to be associated with them even when I may not completely understand what these are! Please, grow a brain. Can you not be a little more original in your actions? 4. COMMERCIAL DREADS- When I go Dread there are sections of society that take to people with dreads and develop a fondness for them. I will take advantage of them economically or financially once they fall in love with me because of spotting dreads. There is a fad or craze in tourist towns like Livingstone where a certain clique of blokes who strictly seek out white girls and as my observation would have it these guys are mostly in dreads! These have sometimes been the source of the foliage of the cheap and easily accessible now criminalized but really innocent mood altering hallucinogenic palmate herbaceous shrub! You get to see a lot of this in Livingstone where some unsuspecting Caucasian and fairly youthful girls fall for brothers who are otherwise widely deemed to be of humble looks and quite simplistic in their demeanor. If you ever thought you would win the hearts of these females by waltzing your way to them with your perceived sense self-importance and sophistication, you would be disappointed. Some of these brothers sometimes do not remember the last time they came into contact with water. They even develop a rare form of hydrophobia that would make a rabid dog seem like a platypus. There are exceptions to this general rule though because a few brothers are actually very well-tended and are very nicely dressed too. A number of them even hold quite respectable positions in society at their levels. There are those in the entertainment industry who see dreads as the in thing among performers and resort to being dreaded so as to increase their stage presence and appeal among their followers and funs alike. The trouble is in primitive or not socially advanced and diverse communities as Zambia is akin, they would not let you keep dreads and keep a formal job. This is the reason I had to hastily clip me well groomed ‘Crown of Jah’ after varsity as I needed to look for a formal, white collar job. I see this perception slowly changing but we still have a long way to go. Other African countries like South Africa have gone so far and they see this hair style as perfectly normal and is commonly accepted as a beautiful way of expressing the nature of an Afrikan person. 5. LAZY DREADS- I would rather just get up and go about my day to day business every morning without having to waste time attending to my hear and styling it. 6. ‘ANGEL’S’ DREADS- These are dreads you see on the many tramps, hobos and vagabonds walking around nearly half dressed and stack naked sometimes. These so-called mad people are called ‘Angels of Jah’ because of their innocence, purity of heart and the protection they receive from Jah. They pick their food from the garbage dumps but never get sick at all. They quickly attain some mysterious form of immunity from disease that would easily get the so-called ‘normal’ people down in no time if at all they tried eating from the dumps. 7. CONSCIOUSNESS DREADS- These are Sistrens and idrens who are aware and are thus conscious of the history of dread locks and their religious significance. This category includes Rastafarians and those who may not really subscribe to any Isms or ideologies of any religious Order but have strongly opted to take a stand in society against or for an issue they feel deeply about. These are Doctors, Engineers, Clergy, Scientists and other professionals from different sectors. They have then opted to present a personality that outwardly expresses their inner self .These people who decide to go dreadlocked have a personality that is capable of confronting a stereotype and conquering it. They have attained a certain higher plane of spiritual awareness of their innermost being that had hitherto been trapped in a cocoon of self-imposed ignorance and fear of retrogressive societal norms but have now freed themselves to radiate a soul liberated from all known prejudices. This has long been dubbed rebellion against the established social order of things. These have been fearless and intrepid political activists against all forms of injustice and all manner of ills that still plague and mar the societal fabric. This is exactly what I was as a freshman at uni when I had kept my hair long and occasionally in dreads for a specific reason that is! http://namzybraveheart.blogspot.com/2009/06/measure-of-man.html These are a people, men and women alike,from all walks of life who have not fallen for the lies that have been spread for years to people of colour that you look untidy when your hair is in dreads or kept kinky. There is a fight, a sort of, undeclared war against the keeping of hair in a seemingly ‘unkempt’ state by attaching some ugly stereotype and caricature of it being an embodiment of all that is unclean and vile before the eyes of so-called civilized modern society. This has triggered the mushrooming of barber shops at every street corner from every nook and cranny. These have consequently been profiting from this falsehood that anything naturally afrikan is ugly and dirty. During the ‘60s In the deep South of the United States a well-tended afro hairstyle was the in thing then as it was used as an assertion by the oppressed people of colour’s pride in their afrikan heritage to let the oppressors know that, to paraphrase James Brown, we are Black and extremely proud that we are! We are never apologetic about it! What my favourite world’s greatest radical poet, Mutabaruka advises is that we truly need to ‘Dispel The Lie!’ My honest truth is this that no self-respecting Caucasian male ever cuts their hair as short as we Africans do. Unless of course, these Caucasians were of a lower social class, or recently survived a vigorous cancer treatment of Chemo and Radiotherapy combined or were members of some Right Wing Neo-Nazi group of Swastika inked skinheads that holds that, ” To attain a certain degree of congruence with The Fuhrer philosophy is the ultimate goal of any well-meaning Neo-Nazi protagonist.”-Namakando Nalikando-Sinyama. We so unwisely clip our hair even during the coldest months of the year. This has made us look like a batch of cleanly shaven clones of skinheads from a yet controversial Eugenics experiment. The climatic conditions in afrika make it unbearable to keep long hair so you have been made to believe? The other excuse we have been sold is that kinky or afrikan hair is difficult to style and does not look nice when uncombed. This is of course a bunch of tripe, utterly preposterous and stupid. What really is at the core of the matter is what the world has been made to believe Beauty is and in whose eyes it is beheld. But, above all, people ought to look beyond the state of hair and see or reach out to the humanity in people. What, if I may know, drives our afrikan women to be so desperate and dehumanizing to themselves by imitating or mimicking the straight hair of Caucasians by burning theirs or smearing in it some offensive chemicals so extremely damaging to my olfactory abilities? They have even pushed the boundary of low self-esteem and self-perception by wearing the hair of actual dead people all in the name of vogue! This is when I find it particularly troubling. Just how ugly does one feel about themselves to want to walk around adorning some copse’s hair whether Peruvian or aboriginal? I dread to live to see the day my own daughters will want to change their appearance because they feel ashamed of my genes as their father that did not accord them the outward appearance that the world considers acceptable. If one engaged in some pure Chi-Thinking it would be revealed to them that there is a whole lot more at stake than just personal outlook and hygiene of the black African person. They have perpetrated the myth that as an African you look unclean when you keep your hair long. What you will see is that with long hair you will reach a realization that your appearance will be reflecting the true image of our ancient original Hebrew Sephardic Jewish ancestors as Beta Israel. The greatest of who was the man Yeshua, The Christ! Your heritage and connection to this personage has been made nebulous in various copious religious translations of manuscripts and writings and it has effectively been stolen from you. The reality we grew up with as young and radical Garveyite youthmen is that Caucasian hair is incapable of matting into dreadlocks naturally the way that of negrescent or that of people of colour does. We proudly sing that, “we had never seen the image of a bald head Jesus Christ, for we read it in our Bibles that Jesus Christ was indeed a dreadlocked Nazarene! You correctly ask, “When will we learn as Christians not to judge others based on their appearances??? Such un-Christian behaviour and I doubt Jesus is proud of all those who look down their noses at others because of their hairstyle!! This behaviour is indeed shocking actually. But do you really want to know why Jesus would be particularly disappointed? Lo and Behold, he was himself Dreaded! Remember him being referred to as Jesus of Nazareth? He was and is a Nazarite or a Nazarene , who took the vow of the Nazariteship as recorded at Numbers 6:1-5. http://biblehub.com/numbers/6.htm. This vow involved a very strict regimen of dietary restrictions and behavior in society. Although, Jesus himself was by his very nature a revolutionary individual who came and challenged most of the laid down traditions. He could come into contact with the dead contrary with the dictates of the Nazarite Vow. Some of the notable Nazarites in the bible were Samson, John the Baptist e.t.c https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazirite. The prophetic revelation of the appearance of The Ancient Of Days as recorded at Daniel 7:9 http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Daniel-7-9/ will tell you without a doubt the texture of his hair. Wool as we know it is not straight but kinky! I could obviously go on ad infinitum on the subject but time and space cannot allow…..

SUBTLE SEXISM OF SWARTHY MASCULINE BOVINES DECODED

By Namakando Nalikando-Sinyama The following below is an excerpt from the Summarized Version of The ROYAL BAROTSELAND NATIONAL INVESTMENT POLICY 2012 (First Draft) http://www.barotsepost.com/index.php/en/frontnews/local-news/430-summarized-version-of-the-royal-barotseland-national-investment-policy-2012-first-draft You will, no doubt, find that this is a very nice piece of writing indeed. However, from the very first paragraph which reads, “Building the nation is an activity that is very enormous and it requires every citizen’s participation for us to have a society that is founded on strong laws and policies which don’t segregate any black bull. We have a vision that is achievable and we need to share this vision with all the black bulls." It must be remembered that, SEGREGATE and BLACK BULL are the operative terms here. It is shockingly blatantly oxymoronic in a way; Am I the only one who has picked it up? Let me explain; I know not whether that was meant to emphasize something that we are probably not privy to or what exactly were they trying to say here? The above statement from the Investment Policy repeatedly and deliberately segregates against 'Black Cows'! This might seem funny,trivial, petty to most and hence viewed as an academic argument but to me we appear to building a sexist Nation that is already making the fairer gender feel more alienated. This type of disposition has a psychological effect of influencing the thought processes and behavioral pattern of the resultant society in whose psyche the expression is drummed into. The effect of which could manifest itself in a multiplicity of ways. What I fear, more than anything is when it gets engrained as a skewed mass tendency to isolate women and marginalize them in the struggle for total liberation and the subsequent rebuilding of Barotseland especially when it comes to occupying positions and roles of decision making. This issue is all the more worrisome in that the statement above appears in such a key document as the Investment Policy which should chart the course for our gallop into the beckoning economic future of the Nation where we all need to be equal and dedicated players. Unless, of course, you tell us that you are using 'BLACK BULL' as a generic term like MAN which to me would be utterly ludicrous as we know that all Bulls are Male! It is also zoologically impossible for a Bull to be a Cow. Moreover, as far as I recall animal husbandry has not yet ventured into the area of transgender operations. It is my humble request that I am afraid we may have to come up with a more uniting expression or phraseology to denote the collective people of This Great Nation of Barotseland and not one that calls its citizenry after some testosterone-packed Bovine species! There is a psychological phenomenon which I have coined ‘Reinforced linguistic Operant conditioning’. Not exactly in your classic sense of Skinner and Thorndike, but their ideas and work were the precursors to my line of thinking. The Reinforcement occurs when Black Bull is repeatedly used to refer to Barotses in general. Operant conditioning in Psychology is a process of behavior modification in which the likelihood of a specific behavior is increased or decreased through positive or negative reinforcement each time the behavior is exhibited, so that the subject comes to associate the pleasure or displeasure of the reinforcement with the behavior. The reward the operant gets is an emboldening sense of Nationalistic identity that induces an unexplainable inner warmth for being referred to by a collective term, albeit a terrible divisive misnomer. The reality and what I feel is the truth about its true origins is in the mistaken belief by most traditional afrikan societies that men are actually in the forefront of any struggle. It is but a male-chauvinistic expression meant to exclude the fairer sex as they are deemed more fragile. It is a well-known fact that cattle is a symbol of national wealth in Barotseland hence its appearance on most proposed future National insignia. The Bulls are a masculine symbol of strength and sexual virility even among our many tribal cousins. The most interesting possible explanation for the use of ‘Black Bull’ comes from my early pre-pubescent years growing up in Rural Barotseland when we used to herd cattle. We used to organise animal duels in the plains between villages. Each village would select what they felt was their strongest stock of fighting Bulls. These would then have their horns sharpened with broken glass so as to inflict the most pain. I vividly recall how the boys from each of the villages would return late evening with their sets of Bulls covered in blood gashing from the multiple goring wounds sustained in the plains at the hands of ill-informed savage boys, that was us, then. In retrospect though, now that I know better and steadily on a Buddhist path, I would never imagine myself engaging in this form of inhumane savagery of the worst order. Visions of equal barbarism by Matadors of Spain spring to mind. Anyway, before I digress too much I believe I have successfully made my point. As for the colour of the Bull, it merely makes reference to the legendary rich skin hue of us Barotses who are heavily endowed with melanin.And for all those that may be curious, I am very much male but I felt compelled to bring this issue up and subject it to stringent public scrutiny. You will find that actually the more accurate Anglicized rendering of the full expression ought to be, “ Children of The Black Bull”. This though, is by all counts, a bit of a mouth full hence it is rarely ever used. But still you realize why it is subtle, The Bull surely must have been born from a cow that was once in calf but this biological logic is scrambled in nationalistic fervor. Knowing Malozi as I do, they may come up with some idealistic mythology suggesting once there was only a solo Bull that appeared mysteriously from the watery deep. I just so love the creativity of my people. We clearly we need to fully understand in depth the sophistication of Malozi in order to know them and how they are really wired as a people. I leave you with my favourite words by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) “A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts, In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts, While from the bounded level of our mind Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind; But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise New distant scenes of endless science rise!”

FOOTBALL PARADIGM SHIFT

By Namakando Nalikando-Sinyama The Hitlerites have this week stamped their tactical supremacy on the European football scene in a very authoritative manner. The outfits from the Fatherland, Deutschland that is, made easy meat of the Iberians like they were not even there. The last two nights UEFA Champions league fixtures further underscored the fact that any ‘team’s’ over reliance on individual players usually exposes their Achilles heel and consequently spells their ultimate doom . This point football managers world over can choose to ignore at their own peril. This psychological aspect has been known to completely kill off self-esteem and confidence of other players or make it remain inert forever without having an outlet. The general belief and expectation is that only a select few can perform wonders and so it stays in those teams. The diminutive Amazonian from the Andes was virtually nonexistent even invisible in the team from Catalonia and believe me this was not for his lack of vertical reach at all. You could clearly see how the Bavarians were running circles around him as they brought the juggernaut in their territory as a unified force without any identifiable solo soldier. They could not know who to pick out and concentrate their resources so as to neutralize the threat. And so it was, a tidal wave came and what we saw was a 4 nil drabbing of an otherwise quite useful side by mainland European standards of performance in football. The Bumble Bees from Borussia as I endearingly like to call them were equally relentless against the Spanish municipal Whites from Madrid. Out of my immense respect for their maverick coach who thank heavens might be making his way to Stamford Bridge to stage a daring come back, soon I hope, I will not be saying much here. Let us just say for now that they made him look, well, not so special but more ordinary than he would have us think of him! In the end I guess this reality check has been long overdue. I can imagine how he must have relished the possibility of leaving Madrid on a high, say with a continental trophy for them to remember him by but alas Dortmund had other ideas on their mind. All I saw was that goal from Cristiano which he celebrated with much pomp only to have it expunged by someone’s solo effort. I but blinked after the half time break only to see the scores which at first sight were unbelievable 4 goals to the Germans against the one for Madrid. In case anyone is entertaining illusions of a possible upset of these first round results in their next encounters, you may wish to know that most of us do not share your optimism. The only down side to all this sporting duels is that permutations permitting, sadly the prospect of an all-German final looms large on the horizon and some of us would rather not have had this outcome. Granted, that the modern generation of Germans would rather discard and completely sever any ties with their past and the immense influence that the Fuhrer has had on their affairs. I do not mean to get historical but what the world should never forget is that these teams are extremely disciplined and are still inspired by age old German values for the pursuit of excellence in all they set out to do. This is akin to the war machine that he(The Fuhrer) put together which made the whole wake up from their slumber which consequently almost caused large territories to be taken over. These virtues are still engrained into their psyche in all they do. This aspect may not have been noticeable to most but it was there for all to see. Look, this is what has given us such state of the art technological aesthetics like BMW, Mercedes Benz, Audi, Volks Wagon, OPEL etc The lesson we get from all this is that just because we are constantly bombarded with commercialized biased television imagery of Spanish and English football leagues does not mean there is no football skill elsewhere in the world. Humble pie sure does have a bitter taste sometimes which makes it rather hard to swallow.

THERE HAS NEVER EVER BEEN ANY REPORTED CASES OF CHOLERA IN BAROTSELAND?

By Namakando Nalikando-Sinyama This was one assertion of that a brother called fact after my earlier submission on ‘Malozi And Their General Hygiene Or The Lack Of It Thereof ’. Whether or not this...... can be collaborated by thorough Epidemic Research Survey findings collected over a protracted period of time is something we have to subject to scrutiny. I will from the outset state that I am no medical expert in any specialized field or neither did drop off from med school or anything of the sort but I will attempt to explain the above phenomenon as debatable as it maybe. Cholera is a diarrheal illness caused by the bacteria Vibrio cholerae. This species is not endemic to humans, and its presence in the human digestive system is not part of the natural life cycle of the bacteria. Normally found in estuary ecology, the Vibrio cholerae bacteria life cycle naturally shifts between various reservoir species such as small snails and crustaceans, free-floating planktonic forms and static forms resident in the silt and muck of the estuary.Vibrio cholera bacteria enter the human ecosystem through a variety of routes. The most common entry is through contaminated food or water.(SOURCE: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/189269.php) An acquaintance of mine once lambasted this growing trend among academicians of citing web sites in their former scholarly presentations as not being a commonly accepted practice. I am yet to have some good old intellectual intercourse with her for me to fully appreciate the angle she has taken on the matter. It is just unfortunate that I may never even have this chance though. Since I am not exactly writing for my Post-Doctoral thesis yet, nor am I a fledgling academic, allow me to indulge myself as above. It has been established that wet conditions are a necessary precursor for the spread of the disease causative agent or vector of cholera. The topography of Barotseland proper being generally low lying and set so many meters below sea level which mostly would have made it more prone to flooding . Surely this feature ought to have provided ideal conditions for the spread of Cholera, right? Wrong! What would have been technically more correct to state was that when we were still trying to be legally part of Zambia then courtesy of that Agreement, the Vice-President’s Disaster Management Team may never have constantly blackened our door steps that much because look, where we come from we celebrate floods and they are never viewed as disaster per se. Back to the vibro issue, let us address other conditions we see in Northern Rhodesia which has annually helped them get persistently plagued by this same disease yearly just like clockwork. It is almost an officially recognized and accepted occurrence, which is quite shocking if you asked me! The geology of Barotseland even in times when it receives heavy down pours of rain does not predispose it to conditions that can allow cholera to thrive. The Barotse/Kalahari sandy soils we have will always ensure that all the rain water that falls on it never collect in stagnant pools but percolate and seep through right down into the lower lying aquifers , water tables and under lying bed rock. This rain water even if it did fall, does eventually become part of the hydrology in the many sources of running fresh water in the rivers, streams and brooks spread all across the length and breadth of ancestral Barotseland. It is also a well-known demographic effect of population density that if poor sanitation exists disease will almost always be the inevitable end result. This is not usually true though as can be seen from other densely peopled metropolitan cities around the world. In Barotseland, the general description of our human numbers by head count per square kilometer through a stratified random sampling method is termed as sparsely populated. This amount of people is scarcely sufficient to generate the needed filth to provide an enabling environment for germs to breed. I have always held that the degree of urban conurbation is directly proportional to economic activity. This is what attracts people to be huddled up in a small area well exceeding its carrying capacity. The come to cities in that well known cliché of old ,rural urban drift. The only trouble is that the whole of Barotseland proper is mostly rural so there is no one drifting anywhere to search for which jobs in which industries created by whom? So our numbers are by and large mostly scattered in neat pockets of near predestined poverty. This reality we have to seek to redress and fast. This does remind me of a scientific paper I presented as a child at secondary school on the potential of unchecked population density causing mass deaths as espoused by The Right Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus in his dissertation on The Principle of Population. I experimented with bugs and gooey stuff on petri dishes people Yuck! The only problem is that, Barotseland Proper is mostly rural and has endured years of abject inhuman poverty through a sustained subtle form of economic neglect and I shudder to even think of what I had to go through growing up in rural Barotseland .To think that my kith and kin are still going through conditions of similar and even worse squalor just bites at the inner core of my consciousness. Mine eyes get glazed close to tears just recounting our day to day ordeals of life back home. These facts prove that there is hardly any chance of Malozi generating enough litter and waste or disposed of excess food material as most households sadly lack the financial spending power for them to buy the non-existent goodies that would eventually create garbage anyway. Let me put it more coarsely and crudely and for this, I apologies in advance. It is a well-accepted biological fact that you need to have eaten to defecate. Pardon me if you are fresh from enjoying a sumptuous meal, I did not exactly intend for you to get disgusted to the point of bringing the food back. I just needed to put things into their rightful context. Ladies and gentlemen there is poverty in Barotseland , we do not just parrot it, some of us have lived it and who feels it knows it,lord……singing! It is therefore my humble submission that to assume we have not had cholera in Barotseland because we are generally more hygienic than other people may be slightly flawed. The assertion above by the way, is one that, as I would say in Latin tongue Quod Est Demonstrandum (Q.E.D). We should take heart though for,” Amid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be they ever so humble, there is no place like Home.” – John Howard Payne. There is a clarion call though silent, but when we meditate it ,we will hear it as loud a Jewish Shofar from our ancestors to genuinely look back home in a way we have never done before and answer the call. We urgently need to prepare for a Renaissance of enormous proportion, may God, Nyambe ni Nasilele richly Bless us ALL!

MUSIC AND THE HUMAN BRAIN

By Namakando Nalikando-Sinyama “Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and quits the memory with difficulty. Magical music never quite leaves the memory.” -Sir Thomas Beecham quoted Lord Booth by ‘My Yesterday, Your Tomorrow.” ... We no doubt all have different genres of music we enjoy, some plain and gentle, some mellow and just and others coarse and offensive even vulgar at times and others exquisitely sublime and heavenly. In order to fully enjoy music, a genuine connoisseur is really never that fixated about what genre a musical piece is. For as long as it appeals to their inner spirit, then they will respond to its rhythm. I do completely agree with this assertion however, truth be told, you will never ever catch me dead walk into a music shop with any reputation to speak of and come out with a copy of some of this racket that we are treated to which now passes as music. What we must be alive to, is the fact that, as shocking as it may be,there are actually human beings who do this and we are forever indebted to the great fashioner of human natures for this diversity of interests in all things artistic. After having said all this, you will perhaps appreciate how I have,in my cherished humble collection, New Age tunes, Nature Sounds, The music of The Brave i.e Hard Rock, Native American Chants, Gregorian Chants, Radical & Dub Poetry Yiddish(Jewish)& Arabic folk Tunes, hypnotic Barotse Royal Drum beats. We must however respectfully admit that, for most, their taste is but a cacophony of incoherent unintelligent din.The only consolation is that, and this is true, to those who are keen lovers of music, somehow we all have a particular piece or pieces of music we can play over and over ad infinitum but still enjoy them the same way as if playing them for the very first time. I will give examples of a few of the many songs I cannot seem to stop playing back. 1. Zahara’s Loliwe,an eternal ballad sang in Si Zulu. 2. Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D 3. Giacomo Puccini’s Nessun Dorma ; well ,really most other Classical symphony pieces by great composers just whisk me away to another spiritual plane I never thought existed. 4. Antonio Vivaldi’s "The Four Seasons" or like I would say in the scanty Italian I picked up from my brief Tuscany connections, ‘Le Quattro Staggionni.’ 5. The Celts and their Gaelic Tunes mostly on flute and Harp. 6. Barotse Royal Drums-Sikota Mutumwa litondo lya linene/ Ngoma ya Lume 7. Mzwakhe Mbuli(The People’s Poet’s) poetic renditions 8. Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Dub Poetry 9. Mutabaruka’s (Which is Burundian or Rwandese meaning ‘The Unconquerable One’) his Agitative Propaganda usually delivered as Radical Poetry. 10. Scottish Highland Bagpipes Etcetera et cetera ……….. The simple explanation is that one may just like the song, period. The truth though, is deeper rooted than that. The inner workings of the mind and brain are more involved than earlier realized. This perhaps is why left handed people using the dominant Right side of their brain have an upper artistic advantage. If you are interested in knowing just what happens to your brain under the influence of music I urge you to read up on this subject matter on (http://io9.com/5837976/what-happens-to-your-brain-under-the-influence-of-music) The personality which we are born with or the one we have acquired or attained because of being shaped by the external environment we find ourselves in has a lot to do with which music we lend an ear to as well. To most, the music they choose to listen to is reflective of a certain mood they are in and it keeps them that way for as long as they want. What I can state here with a great degree of certitude is that, whoever we are and whatever we listen to, any music is by its very nature spiritual. I may not be an acclaimed neuroscientist or anything but, I am quite curious to know just which parts of our brains get excited for us to respond to different types of musical pieces differently from other people. I will here give an example of situations when a certain song is loved by a surprising huge number of listeners and manages to maintain its followers. Are we to say these people were touched the same way when they first listened to it? Unless you are wired like me and are not afflicted with Herd Mentality and have not thus succumbed to the Lemming Hood Effect then you would understand what I mean. If you have had to suffer the misfortune of being born in a part of the world replete with overzealous Christian fundamentalists who are perpetually on a high of religious excess where we get all manner of half thought through explanations for certain physical or psychological phenomenon then you will miss my point. From them, you will even get to hear nonsensical talk of certain songs having great appeal because they were composed under the sea by some mythical mermaids! What balderdash indeed, these folks may be abusing substances seriously! I have never done anything because everyone is doing it no matter how strong the urge becomes and i have realized that sometimes I have done this out of sheer stupid pride. The saddest thing is, most pieces of music no matter how nice after they are first released, have been spoiled from being over played to obsolescence. I have, on countless number of occasions, simply kept away from and avoided things that every Tom, Dick, Harry and Jane have taken to like a bear to a honey pot just to be different. I will never be painted with the same brush as my surface is a bit coarser than your average bloke. You may need brushes with wire bristles to achieve this artistic feat. This is exactly what I did when James Cameron show cased Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio as they treated us to that epic romantic nautical disaster that The Titanic was. This apparently also applies to certain movies I find irresistible to sit down and watch over without ceasing. You just cannot seem to get enough of them. So there are Mermen or satanic directors at Holy Wood right? Please get a life! Those who have had an encounter with me know that I am a keen follow of global Illuminati activity and the extent of their reach in influencing events on the planet past and present, but we are now over stretching issues to dizzy heights if we ever started thinking like this. I hope you had sufficient attention span to go through my rumblings which a brother called unsolicited verbiage! Mwiice, I will bring a train on you Mudaala…..

WARNING: SIM CARD REGISTRATION EXERCISE COMING SOON NEAR YOU!

By Namakando Nalikando-Sinyama Kindly join me in saying a BIG NO to the current maneuvers of forcing mobile phone service subscribers to register their Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards. I am of the considered view that we have given up way too much of our privacy already. Therefore, this latest intrusion into our affairs is highly uncalled for. Look, just because South Africa has done it does not mean we all must follow suit. This is Africa, the registered SIMs will merely be used to track down people and political opponents who have divergent views to the established body politique. To the relatively uninitiated these are the initial signs of The Illuminati moves of extending their tentacles into your sleeping quarters if they must and these actions are akin to the micro-chips to be implanted into the nape of your necks or foreheads and the upper right arm. What? So they will ask for my blood group as well, eyes color or the arrangement of nucleotides in my Double Helix DNA molecular structure? This is utterly absurd. The concept of Big Brother always peering into our affairs with that Occultist ALL Seeing Eye of Horis is one that needs to be confronted and opposed. Seeing that am not really up to date with the Rhodesian social calendar, I may be behind a little who is doing this anyway, ‘ZONKTA’? As a timely warning therefore, to all those who lacked the good sense and got my mobile number, wasted their meager phone memory space on their humble phones, but have never used it for calling me, I am afraid as a matter of principle this might be the last chance they have of ever calling me. I have chosen to be off any mobile communication if it ever came to this manner of autocratic Corporate Aggressive Coercion. I will officially be heading to being the typical village boy that I have always known meself to be. Folks will cry on and on until the cows come home but I will choose to be without a phone because, like Sting (Gordon Michael Sumner) aptly put it, strangers are listening in to my transmissions! This will very much be in keeping with my much sought after but yet elusive Minimalist outlook on life. These introductions, It has been stated, that without the micro-chip implant for instance it will be made rather hard for anyone who will not succumb to carry out day to day activities especially in global commerce and trade. The American public has had issue with such matters due to that Health Care Bill which was recently signed into Law by Hussein, who by the way,is very much in league with shadowy elements owing to the agenda he is towing. Americans are taking a stand due to their much cherished privacy. Granted, that I have nothing to hide really, but there are certain people and entities I choose to know things about me and that is just the way things are. I recently UN-LIKED Barack on Face Book for the many unfulfilled promises he made to the world. Some of us had way too much hope in the poor guy even when he is poised for re-election, It quickly dawned on him upon taking office that there are far more powerful forces that control world affairs than this Kikuyu man had earlier realized. He is but a marionette on the strings of those that rule the world in proxy! This planet is indeed exciting I want to Live forever!!!!!! selah Kozo, Namakando Nalikando-Sinyama Barotse Patriot Barotseland, Central Africa “I tell you a Truth, Liberty is the best of all things, my son, NEVER live under a Slavish Bond.” – Sir William Wallace’s Uncle