Why a country is not always a nation...

I often hear people calling South Africa a nation & I cringe because while South Africa is under a single political structure, it is very diverse linguistically & genetically so most certainly is not a nation. A country is not exactly a nation, below are reasons why.

A NATION 

A nation is a settlement of homogeneous clans which originated as families. I assume as clans used to roam about, they would encounter ethnic territories or lands where they would settle among. The roving clans may intermarry within the larger nation & become part of it. Multiethnic "nations" or empires are typically a Eurasian ideal than an African one & came with increased population & improved modes of travel. What centralises a nation is usually feudal chiefs, a monarch, a faith/belief system or simply physical features of an individual (genetics) & language. A nation, by default, is a usually - at best - a country because it's land & thus it's borders are typically known by other regional clans & nations. A nation with no land typically become roving clans among other nations or are constantly in conflict with the imperial power that aims to annex their land. 

A COUNTRY 

A country is a state with centralised or consolidated authority. An empire made of many other nations & states can be an country. What centralises a country is politics or documents. A country's land (or borders) are commonly demarcated on a map. A country cannot exist without land it can defend or exist on. 

Example of how an empire can simultaneously be a nation.

In brief; a diverse country (linguistically or ethnically) is more commonly referred to as a "state", "country" or "empire" & a more ethnically homogeneous country is often called a "nation" 

(N. B.: A homogeneous empire is still a nation.) 

A nation is more a homogeneous people regardless of which political structure they are under & a country is more often a political structure governing a land. So while you can call the USA, South Africa, Belgium, Nigeria, DRC, Kenya, Australia & India "countries", they are not nations. 

This may or may not be associated with the above but here's something interesting to know: 

Country in Zulu is "izwe" & inhabitants of an izwe are "isizwe" (a nation). Nation & country having the same etymological origin in the language. Indicating that in the Zulu world a nation & country used to be one & the same thing. 

In Latin languages, peace & country seem to have a similar etymological origin indicating a country is a land where citizens can live in peace. The assumption then is if people can't live with each other in peace, it's not a country. 

National Unity

Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a computer operating system created by billionaire & "first African in space" Mark Shuttleworth. 

Ubuntu simply means "humanity" in Nguni languages (compare with "ubulwane" meaning "animal-like cruelty") but it has been stolen & twisted to become a cult ideal embraced by celebrities & influencers as some sort of virgin African mentality. It's the belief that is verbatim stated as "I am because you are" by certain influencers. For me, this concept is just asking to be ridiculed. Personally, I would find it more sensible if ubuntu meant civilization because Africa had some precolonial civilizations as you may or may not know. Civilization in the dictionary is stated as; "An organized culture encompassing many communities, often on the scale of a nation or a people; a stage or system of social, political or technical development." By this, I think we could call the iron smelting, stone wall building, stone calendar making, gold & bronze artifact making Bantu agripastoralists - a civilization. The Bantu Civilization being called called Ubuntu would make more sense to me than the vague vitriol I've heard. 

"I am because you are" is virtually black Nazism & could lead to ethnic genocide. For the sake of all logical Africans, I think we should rebrand this word called "Ubuntu" because it will lead to othering disenfranchised people not indoctrinated into another person's idea of "ubuntu" as not being "abantu" (people/humans). We mustn't forget that these so-called ubuntu preachers can be ubulwane practitioners when no one can see. 

Ubuntu bethu: Our civilisation. 

The Bantu region, as by anthropologists, in Africa. 

Ubuntu should simply mean "humanity" or the Bantu Civilization. Nothing more.

The error with the doll test.

Some of us have seen this social experiment where kids are told to choose between a black or white doll. And more often than not, the kids choose the white doll. 

What I'd like to emphasize is that these are dolls & while there are many aesthetically unappealing black features, there are aesthetically unappealing white features as well. The human body was designed for function & not aesthetics. What this doll test social experiment shows that we don't notice is kids are impressionable & want to make a choice that will please the adult. The very race of the individual conducting the test pressures the child to make a preconceived choice. 

Also, dolls are manufactured using a universal set of facial features, usually made from European features so naturally a European-looking black doll will look a bit unsettling compared to a doll with features black people would consider aesthetically appealing. If the doll test were reality, in any case, there would be no single white women & an abundance of single black women - which (by watching dating shows) is clearly not the case. 

Do kings/chiefs need to be educated in separate educational institutions?

I've always juggled with this concept but never reached a conclusion because a separate education institution for royalty would still need the requirements of other schools & it would be seen as an elitist institution in some way - so may gain some dislike from common people. Funding models, physical training & systems to ground the princes & princesses enrolled in such an educational institution would need to be created. And, of course, this educational institution needs to be funded so the royals & state should naturally "foot the bill". 

Personally, I feel that royals need to be in touch with the people, gain military training & a short briefing or "education" on their role as tribal leaders from a select group of elders. So, I do feel that the sons of chiefs & kings should be among common people (i. e. the people they will lead) during their school years somehow. But I suppose interaction with common people can be done during the course of daily life & not enforced upon royals as a requirement. 

Public school education could present a unique problem for educators & perhaps some unwanted obsession with the school the royal is in & peer obsession during school or maybe even hatred due to having royal blood being something common people can't work towards having. 

Perhaps, a separate education system for children of royalty could be established - one for males & one for females that could go from primary education right up to tertiary education where they would then join national military service. In these educational institutions they could learn the land's language, the land's laws, land's faith, the land's politics & political history, the land's history, public speaking, self-defence alongside the national school curriculum. Their chosen tertiary studies - if they wish to have further education - & military service with "commoners" would follow afterwards. 

I wrote this blog entry partly because I feel many African royal houses send their youths to overseas educational institutions where they become out-of-touch with the people they are expected to lead. An indigenous educational institution for only royalty could help prevent this divide. 

And I suppose that this is my idealistic blueprint of creating generation after generation of chiefs & monarchs that won't embarrass the people they lead or tribal leaders who won't go against what is required of tribal leadership. 

AN IDEAL EDUCATION SYSTEM FOR AFRICA

Black stereotypes & their origins.

• Black people are ignorant / uneducated: 

Black people & education has always been a thorny issue because the very Western education we're given almost always clashes with our lived realities. So most black people often dismiss education as unnecessary because they are being given knowledge they will likely not use in the real world of taxes, fluctuating markets, government documents & affidavits. A black African needs to know just six things things; national law, the national language, how to read, how to write, how to count & basic geography of his/her country. The twelve grades Frankish Charlemagne education system the world has adopted is not always ideal for African societies so we may need our own education curriculum to be taught to all African scholars. Education & knowledge systems need to be Africanised so they don't seem so foreign & frightening to educators & students, respectively. This will eliminate the "ignorant", "uneducated" tag from our societies. 

Ignorance is also a matter of perspective, you can't expect a carpenter to know climatology concepts. Likewise, Africans can't be expected to be familiar with Western concepts so the ignorant tag will always apply to someone from a different culture. 

• Black people are loud: 

I think being loud among black people comes from the sense that our existence (since colonisation) has made us lack peace. The most uncolonized places are inherently the places where you find the most peaceful/quieter black people. 

• Black people don't know how to be civil / criminal behaviour: 

This also comes from the fact that our recent existence has been filled with turmoil, so we respect authority less & tend to get in trouble with Western legal systems because of our disdain for the lands we live in. 

• Black people are lazy: 

I think this stereotype depends on what cultures consider lazy. For example, a lot of black people in rural South Africa consider office work "lazy". Whereas in Western society, productivity or laziness depends on the outcome, infrastructure & visible results of your culture & society. So what is lazy is largely cultural. Unemployment in black societies where black youths are found loitering around on the streets may be seen as "lazy" by Westerners who do not consider a failure of governance in black lands a factor as to why youths are unemployed or unwilling to work. You usually get motivated to work for something that works for you in return, when the system you are meant to work for is against you - it feels futile to work for anything in that system/culture. 

• Dark skin & kinky hair: 

Dark skin & kinky hair has nothing to do with any biblical curses or references to hell. The "Curse of Ham" in the bible refers to Hamitic people (ancient Egyptians) & not black people. On the equator where the first homo sapiens lived by, it gets very hot & naturally our bodies adapted to that. Likewise, Nordic people adapted to life with less sun & more cold. The whole of Africa is mostly sunny & hot except mountainous regions, so Africans naturally adapted melanated skin & kinky hair. 

• Stealing Eurasian culture: 

We can't really steal something we are constantly encouraged & forced to adopt. When you're indoctrinated in Western systems, you subconsciously look to Europe as a compass in your life. African spirituality, knowledge systems, sociocultural traits & scripts are undocumented & not understood in detail by the world so are seen as unserious, obscure & unsupported by any serious institution. For example; there is no digitised African version of Wikipedia with the knowledge from the Timbuktu library or even a reputable organisation for any African faith/spiritual belief. 

• Can't govern themselves / Africa poor: 

Whenever Africans govern themselves well, it seems like some foreign power always wants to come in & claim some of that success or disrupt the progress Africans made. It happens so frequently that you almost expect good African governance to constantly be fending off attacks from foreign powers. This is why Africa is seen as poor; wars & destabilising objectives are constantly being funded by outsiders, leaving us almost always on a constant economic & development backfoot. The last few people to promote African sovereignty in economy & agriculture were ripped to shreds (reputational, health & financial ruin), if not killed by foreign powers. We're going to have to defend ourselves against sabotage if we truly want to develop. 

• Living in huts / dirty / smelly: 

I'll be honest; in the heat, it's harder to stay clean. Things rot faster in the heat also. Huts are still basic shelter & provide protection from the elements so are not nothing. Most of Africa has modernized though & adopted modern construction techniques. Most Africans no longer live in huts & deodorant has been introduced to Africa as well since it's invention in 1888. We have adopted modern hygiene methods also. 

• Punctuality: 

I honestly don't know why black people are said to be "never on time" but I guess it depends on the importance of the occasion because I know of black people who are very punctual for things that matter like work & job interviews etc. but come thirty or forty minutes late for events & get-togethers with their friends. I guess it has to do with consequences, if there are no consequences for arriving late - many black people will take their time.

Conclusion: 

We simply need to look at ourselves & compare ourselves to developed lands & ask ourselves what it will take achieve a certain level of development. I feel that if we can feed ourselves, house ourselves & our people as well as express ourselves in our lands fully in our own languages - it would be the best outcome of any situation Africans are in. It would create a generation which has faith in it's land & more eager to comply with national law & national institutions. If we can re-Africanise / decolonise our lands while being fully capable of feeding ourselves & sheltering ourselves, it would be the greatest triumph any African generation before us — since colonisation — has ever achieved. I imagine that these above-mentioned stereotypes can often sound so damning as a young, black individual. Being made to feel responsible for the behaviour of an entire race when it's not the responsibility of any one person but rather the collective responsibility of every member of that race to do an introspection as to whether or not they are contributing towards the hatred other races have towards us. 

Why consensus in a language & identity is important in a land...

I spend some of my time studying human nature. Partly to make up for the time I was accepted to do a Sociology degree but chose to go to another university. I often study other countries concept of national unity compared to South Africa's lived reality. We have two realities in South Africa each trying to enforce their way of life as the truth. One group of people believes in a decolonised land & one believes the "natives" are savages to be tamed. This is the simple truth, a bipolarised land with no identity consensus. Anything else; crime, poverty, racism, tribalism, inequality & even some corruption are a byproduct of this underlying conflict.

We have to ask why is it that the most multiracial & multicultural countries are the most racist & tribalist. While most monocultural ethnostates, simply get things done. This is especially pertinent to Africa because we're not like Europe & Asia, our concept of nationhood was stripped away in the 1800s. The most common type of state historically & most successful type of state today is the single language nation-state. Yet, somehow, modern-day Africa did not get this memo. 

Unfortunately, in many cases where there is exteme nationalism or "rabid nationalism" as it is sometimes called, we get bouts of ethnic cleansing. This is unfortunately often a bloody process which I think could be fast-tracked by a better process of amicable deportation, making less enemies while freeing a people from an imposing group. Amicable deportation can even involve swopping of non grata population groups among countries to solve problems on two fronts. 

A monocultural ethnostate can most definitely accommodate minorities, we see this all the time worldwide but it is the native majority that is the accepted creators of the national identity not the minorities. If minorities are not imposing, discrimination of them is less likely to occur. This is simple human nature & requires no degree to comprehend. 

Language unity goes a long way in expressing ideas within the land, this alone causes the unity required for a land to move forward without implementing further unifying measures like standardised national education. 

National Unity

A conflict of perspectives...

Now, everyone who lives in South Africa knows that this is firmly an African (black) country. Over 80% of the population is black. If we were to measure race percentages of the South African population by Usonian measures, over 91% of the country would be black. It is an African country by many respects. The most spoken languages are African languages & not French , Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Dutch or some English variant. But the problem is the previously advantaged races see themselves as living in a European enclave or some sort of colony within Africa. These are also the people with the biggest voice in the global media & who fund propaganda campaigns overseas making the world think that they are the majority & are "persecuted". As a black person in South Africa, I am honestly more persecuted than white people because nobody cares about us & these previously advantaged people are quick to try stifle our progress using other black people against us. And black people are quick to sell their soul & destroy other black people for some sort of renumeration from this previously advantaged group of people. Let me repeat, BLACK PEOPLE FEEL MORE PERSECUTED IN SOUTH AFRICA THAN WHITE PEOPLE. And this is a simple problem to identify & isolate, we black people in South Africa never made our own systems even if we made most of the country's infrastructure today, it was around white-made structures. So it still feels like an Anglo-Dutch state no matter what black people do. This makes European colonisers still feel entitled to African land. 

Overseas, when they see South African media, they see black people embracing white people & other races... Of course, the races of South Africa get along on surface values like black exploitation & white opulence? But on more foundational values like nationality, ethnicity, non-racialism etc. we do not see eye-to-eye. Non-racialism to many white South Africans is a Western-facing & Western-biased black majority land where whites live in comfort amongst themselves, Indians & coloureds but blacks live far away from them. The suffering of black people in South Africa is caused by two enemies; rich black people who see themselves as special & separate from the black majority & the rich white/corporations who fund them. Overseas, they are shown South Africa from the minority perspective & while black people in South Africa see some sort of magical multiracial land in South Africa on a good day, they see the simple, ugly truth on bad days i. e. a European colony which has invaded African land & persecuted it's people. 

This may be more a vent than a casual opinion blog entry but I felt that it needed to be emphasized that what the black majority believes South Africa to be, what white South Africans believe South Africa to be & what the world thinks South Africa to be are three different things. And I feel it's the prejudiced, more than black or white liberals who see South Africa for what it is. The mess expands to the rest of Africa when you consider what the Berlin Conference brought us. While we are a European colony in outline in South Africa, we are not that much different to other "liberated" African countries who still have colonial puppets in power & "Made in Berlin" borders not ethnic borders.  What makes us different in South Africa is that we just have a population of fascists who seem to have overstayed their welcome by more than two hundred years. 

Hopefully, South African land returns to it's tribal ethnicities & we could do an amicable deportation programme for those who do not want to stay on land under tribal/ethnic African rule. That's the only logical solution for anyone who sees what's coming in the future of South Africa (& Africa). No wars, clean separation of ethnic regions into new countries would save us decades, if not, centuries of turmoil & suffering.

Black faces, white mannerisms.

I was just watching a British guy documenting the history of South African television. And we never mention this even though we unanimously know it, but we have a class of quasi-European black people in South Africa & nobody is addressing this issue decisively. It's not always the people who went to white schools who act white but it's people who have simply embraced the South African system & somehow become quasi-European. We often call them Uncle Toms, Uncle Ruckuses & Aunt Jemimas but we never go in-depth at addressing this problem other than just ridiculing it.

There is a SERIOUS problem with black people embracing foreign/un-African systems & having genuine hatred towards their own kind. 

We can see it in our xenophobic sentiments towards black African immigrants but not so much towards white European immigrants. I know of black people who genuinely dislike black tendencies in South Africa despite over 80% of the country being black. 

This then begs to question, the South African system that these quasi-European black people are embracing has to be non-African at the very least for them to have such a manner towards other black people to uphold this system. 

I mean, I've seen enough media from the African continent to understand that South Africa has too many barriers to entry in some places. There are some things that are still subconsciously reserved for certain races in South Africa even though it is a "liberated" country. 

These quasi-European black people then become gatekeepers of certain activities which are reserved for certain racial groups. For example, there are very few black franchises & banks in South Africa in comparison to white franchises & banks. So 9% of the population has more than six banks while the over 80% black majority has less than three - if that. Yet there are black people actively working at stifling black banks. The richest & most powerful black people in South Africa are often ridiculed while the richest & most powerful white people in South Africa are left untouched from character criticism or ridicule. 

I felt that I had to blog this because we have black people who have never set foot in Europe acting European in South Africa & perhaps other places in Africa also have this type of person. These quasi-European Africans have genuine hatred for other black people for the mere reason that they are opulent or mildly well-off while not being white. 

I imagine there are such black people in other African countries but to a lesser extent than in South Africa. And in South Africa it comes off extra bad because we kept our colonizers, so it ends up looking like some black people are willing to be slaves of South Africa's quasi-European system & actively attacking other black people to uphold a system that is not theirs. This is what I see among many black Americans also, especially from the USA. These black people see themselves as so apart from Africa & Africans that they go as far as threatening death to Africans who reject USA's imperialism. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that such people are really "Not Like Us" even though we have a common origin. They have had Africa, literally, beaten out of them. The language & cultural systems they had while in Africa are completely forgotten to them & southern USA culture has replaced everything they knew from Africa. Virtually making their ancestry British. 

As for me, I did pick up quasi-European mannerisms in some places during the course of my life but I would only hate another black person if they themselves took it upon themselves to be my enemy & not because they are simply black. 

We have a serious problem in black society & we're just laughing it off as "coconuts", "Oreos" & Uncle Ruckuses while the root of the problem is very ominous & destructive towards black people in general. It's funny but it is no laughing matter. 

Black communities are not disfunctional, let me explain...

When we stroll through black communities, almost worldwide, people complain about; crime, drugs, fatherlessness & everything associated with disfunctional societies. But when you track back to when the degeneration began (approx. the 1970s until today) we find that we simply lack a system. By system, I don't mean whatever was left by European colonialism when their empires fell. I mean the indigenous systems of yesteryear - the Ethiopian Empire, Ghanaian Empire, Sokoto Caliphate, Songhai Empire, Oyo, Mandigbe, Zulu Empire, Kongo Kingdom, Buganda Kingdom etc. These people knew that there was a system to ensure the people of the land do not become disenfranchised & created systems that allowed for peace within a land. That is, peace until a foreign entity challenged their kingdoms. Even lesser known ethnicities & nations in Africa, the most primitive of nations in Africa had a "way of doing" which had been tried & tested for centuries. 

In the 1960s, what happened was the Europeans left most of Africa with systems they had implemented for themselves. The black leaders that came into power after the power vacuum left by Europe were themselves dependant on the European systems left behind, the problem is European systems are meant for Europe & not Africans. The lawyers, doctors & teachers left in Africa by the colonial system had no systems they made themselves that allowed them to flourish. They had to make constitutions from scratch or simply adopted the European colonisers blueprints. Even an independent-minded leader like Kwame Nkrumah expected Europe from Africans instead of understanding that the African is out of place in incorrect borders & Western systems because of his Eurocentric indoctrination. 

Even today, in Africa, we find that people of the same country in Africa do not speak the same language. Language is a fundamental building block in creating a nation. Taking an example from my own people - the collective mentality was to adopt isiNtungwa as a language & let go of isiMbo of the Mbo peoples that were displaced by a new ruling power. You can embrace multi-ethnic lands all you want but without a common language, we'll always be unsure & debate whose land it is. "Izwe" (land) & "izwi" (voice) in my language have a common etymological root, implying that language & land are one & the same. 

Going back to the degeneration of the 1970s; the time of African independence came about in the early 1960s. But it was not African nations that were gaining independence, it was the "nations" created by the Berlin Conference. After the Gatling gun was invented, many African nations fell one-after-the-other to European powers in the late 1800s & from then on, they were under a system - an oppressive system - but a system nonetheless. About 80 years later, the generation that fought against colonisers from Europe & knew the old African systems - had died & left little recorded in books on how they used to do things & carry out their lives. They left a youth educated by Europe who knew nothing outside of European domination. This is why, even today, our people cannot develop their own systems that will work for them in their own lands but rather depend on Eurocentric systems & laugh off their ancestor's creations as archaic & outdated yet Europeans are still using systems today that were still being used during the Roman Empire in the year 0 AD. We can EASILY modernise our African systems & resurrect something that used to work for us before to use in the modern day. But again, it starts with land & language. An ethnicity is an ethnicity because of the land it originates & language it speaks. We can't create a land if we are divided on these very basic fundamentals. 

"Africa is big enough to have 200 countries." - Unknown | Africans do not live within borders they created.

Next time you walk through a black neighbourhood & see brokenness & degeneration; you must remember that there is a black-created system that was designed to fix this degeneration & order was not something strictly reserved for countries that are in now called developed lands. We had an order & laws in Africa just like the rest of the world. Our order & laws allowed for the development of a young individual mentally & emotionally into an adult that could help the land move forward & not disenfranchise them to drugs & crime like we have done in the present day. It may not have been perfect but it was what worked for us in KwaTu. 

National Unity

National Unity.

I am an admirer of the concept of "national unity" as I have seen how much a lack of national unity has harmed South Africa. Were South Africa as unified as China or Sweden, we'd be near a first world country but we are so divided, the stark ideological & cultural differences within South Africa have consistently proven to us that we are forcing a united country in vain on many occasions. So I propose this (more conservative) branch of Kwatuism to deal decisively with disunity in nations. I studied global politics to reach this conclusion so I cannot give this political concept an African name. Instead, it's based on Old World-ist tried & tested methods of national unity. 

• The state language: I don't understand how a land does not embrace the concept of a national language more often. In South Africa we insisted on having a full eleven official languages rather than simply choosing English as the medium of instruction in schools, language of the media, language of communication & our lingua franca. This could've avoided a lot of problems nationwide. Instead now, we have remained divided in islands of indigenous languages which find it difficult to integrate with the larger land. The most spoken & understood language being Zulu will not be learnt by tribalists of Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana, Pedi & other groups. When whites, Tsonga, Swazi, Ndebeles & even Vendas don't find a problem with the Zulu language - we find tribalists truly loathe the concept of Zuluness nevermind learning the language. A national language likely provides unity more than anything else. If South Africa is to unite, we may need to consider adopting the European languages of English or Dutch/Afrikaans as the national language in all media (TV, radio, internet & print) & daily life because learning any of our indigenous languages will simply increase tribal hatred. 

• The state religion: A state's faith provides a moral foundation of a people & ensures all the people in a land understand the land's concept of wrong & right. The state religion should naturally bleed into the nation's legal frameworks with the religion of the land being the foundation of the law of the land. While living in a land that has laws that oppose an individual's religion today is the norm, it is what causes religious extremism. I imagine that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church could gain ground in Africa instead of Roman Catholicism, Protestantism & other Christian sects which were founded in Europe. If not, Africans could resurrect their ancient faiths which would ultimately be both their faith & law. 

• Integration of foreign names: I'm a studier of languages i. e. linguist & study how languages define culture. I understand how the Anglophone, Lusophone, Francophone & the Castillian-speaking world integrates & understand how foreign names can cause confusion in a land. So for this I propose, domestication of foreign names into the local language. Everything from provincial names, city names, river names, mountain names & even the names of individuals in the land. I'm of the belief that a rich & vibrant language is vital in maintaining a successful nation. Using my native indigenous/vernacular language as a reference base: Biblical names could be indigenized (e. g. Eve ~ Eva, Michael ~ Mayikheli, Jacob - Yakobe, Thomas ~ Tomasi etc.) while foreign names could be translated into local names (e. g. Thomas ~ Wele, Harold ~ Mbusi/Mholi, Henry ~ Mzuziwendlu, Paul ~ Mphansi etc.) This could be done by default for anyone on the national database who has citizenship in the land. They would need, at least, one name in the indigenous language to obtain citizenship & perhaps prevent ridicule of individuals in intolerant communities.

• The head of the state: Ideally, the head of state could be a leader elected with open ballot elections but this causes problems in time & lacks consistency. Whereas a monarch & the elected ministers could provide long-term consistency, a minister under a monarchy could stay twenty years & grow to understand his portfolio better than the five-year ministers of our democratic elections. A monarch is often a descendant of the ancient rulers of the land so provides a link from the land's past into the future which serves in legitimising a land & it's institutions. 

Many of the readers of this blog entry are going to ask where any of this has worked in the world or in Africa particularly. You're in luck as I have plenty examples: Imperial Ethiopia, Japan, Thailand, England, the Netherlands, Spain & the entire Scandinavian world (Denmark, Sweden, Norway & Iceland somewhat). Germany & France have a state language even though they no longer have a monarchy & have a more secular society today. The same secularism that is now proving a problem in Western Europe with the influx of Islamic extremists. Eswatini loosely employs two of the four above-mentioned points in unifying their land but they are less insistent on using Swazi as the absolute language of the land, I suspect that they are more tolerant of different faiths as well as foreign names so only have their monarch & partly their language as unifying factors in their land. Another example of language creating unity would be the East African bloc where language unity through the Swahili language has made it possible for them to seamlessly work together across different countries. A state religion works in unifying lands especially in Islamic lands, where their faith is their culture & often their law which often indirectly accelerates development of a nation (e. g. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, & the UAE). So the above-mentioned four points have genuine real-world examples of their success & are not just fabrications of this blog post writer. 

The above-mentioned four points may seem unimportant but become defining factors in divided lands to forge unity. This could be the early stages of an index measuring a country's national unity in place of using economic or financial equality as measures of a country's unity.

What will it take to reach a truly non-racial South Africa?

In my world, it's very difficult to ignore race & how it determines people's lives so I don't know what these people claiming we should ignore race are on but let's play along. What would it take to achieve a racially-oblivious South Africa? 

Firstly, we'd need to get rid of mentalities we inherited from Apartheid; we need to see a human being & a person first not his (or her) race & his racial stereotype first. We need to stop looking at black opulence as a negative & stop finding jokes in white poverty. Many of us still chuckle when we see interracial couples in South Africa but we'd need to stop that also. 

But, ultimately, I think any attempt at non-racialism is futile because race is not fiction, it's a biological reality. There'll be mixed-race people who would attempt to promote non-racialism but mixed-race communities themselves are an example that non-racialism fails. I think tradition, heritage & centuries old indigenous customs are more important than any racial experiment in the end. 

I can appreciate what the different races of South Africa bring to the table but we may need to accept that for South Africa to truly work, it may need to federate. Like how oil, water & petrol work in the same motor vehicle but not in the same compartments. Or maybe even separate regions into new countries by race. While nobody is taught to be racist, they learn to be racist the more they experience life in South Africa. 

Even if we did legislate non-racialism into law, one race or the other would eventually strive for supremacy rendering the whole practice unworkable.

Two blog posts that are worth reading again.

Fame: https://potmfm.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-reality-of-fame.html

Liberty ideas: https://potmfm.blogspot.com/2025/06/what-happens-when-western-concepts-of.html