The story of black men is traceable to the calculated attack on the black family. The attack was to bring down the black man first.
Next was the black child. That it takes a village to raise a child was undermined by what was presented as “a rights-based approach”, treating the child outside the family context for purposes of institutionalisation.
The tendency behind institutionalisation is to shelter children in orphanages as a first resort rather than as the last.
In an African setting losing biological parents did not make the bereaved minor an orphan. Caring survivors instantly assumed parental responsibility in what came to be defined as guardians by convention of the law lacking appreciation of black family values against
disruption to guaranteed continued care.
Increased institutionalisation was occasioned by the rise of shelters for orphans, those infected or affected by HIV/Aids and the so-called “street kids”.
To the notion of “Aids orphans”, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund counter was that there was no such a thing as much as there were no TB orphans, accident orphans or cancer orphans. Orphans are orphans. Let children be children.
Xolani Nkosi, later adopted by Gail Johnson, and later named Nkosi Johnson, was dubbed an “Aids activist”.
Children ceased to be children. They became “activists” with dedicated shelters in which to stay with donor-funding support attracted to their cause.
Then a term was coined for these children – orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). Out of OVC an industry mushroomed as did careers. The numerical preponderance of OVCs were black children. By accident or design, the desired option for reintegration of children to a conducive family setting was torpedoed in preference to the lucrative business of sheltering them. Minors bereft of elder family members were referred to as “child-headed households” for whom legislative provision was made to allow for decision-making capability, albeit not of majority age to take decisions without parental consent.
Like all fires of outrage to public policy gone berserk, the flames were doused back to normality. And off donors went to greener causes.
Efforts to promote the black family did not get as much donor-funding support in comparison to approaches that preferred otherwise – the sheltering of children.
With black men done and dusted after their emasculation, black children dislocated from family centred settings to be individuals with rights to exercise with or without age-appropriate decision-making capacity, black women are next in the queue.
Consistently under attack are black people, their mindset, ethos and numerical majority to render them a cultural minority to a dominant culture for the depreciation of black power, criminalisation of black majority rule for continued negation of independent thought and action to frustrate black self-discovery, self-definition and self-actualisation.
From then on, black people were set, drilled, and oriented to split into multiple special interest groups armed with warring rights caring less about the social fabric.
Down, out, distracted and shaken from the rootedness of being exemplary role models in society, black men are mired in a state of loss, guilt tripped from even accepting that they are not only men but also black. As society succumbs to divide, rule and conquer schemes of imperial political correctness, so did it become safer for black men to rather go by the title PDI – previously disadvantaged individuals? Unrepentant white supremacists’ rejoinder is that white men are PDI too.
Black people must come back to themselves and recover their centre to be human again
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here
