By Sonny Jermain
The beauty of growing up, is the ability to enhance one’s catharsis. Katharsis, a Classical Greek word meaning ‘purification’ or ‘cleansing’, is a journey that every person gets to experience for themselves.
According to Toffler in 1970, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”.
The effects of colonisation came with sudden uprooting of the African from Traditional Land Authorities (fiefdoms, kings, chiefs, and pastoralism), to living in European-based Church authorities (missions, parishes) combined with European-based Constitutional law.
To the untrained eye, this appears unique to Africa. Often people view Britain as being a democracy, but when has Britain ever been a democracy? Two thousand years ago, it was invaded by the Romans. One thousand six hundred years ago, it was invaded by the Anglo-Saxons from Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands. One thousand three hundred years ago, it was invaded by the Vikings from Scandinavia. A thousand years ago, it was invaded by the French Normans who created the line of kingdom succession as we know it today.
What part of any of this is a democracy?
While you are at it, the Church of Rome, one thousand five hundred years ago, converted the Anglo-Saxons king into a Christian. Sounds familiar? If not, the Catholic Church started to control England, until only five hundred years ago when the Church of England famously broke away from Rome. It had been a long time coming, with the Magna Carta “Great Charter”, three hundred years prior to that.
The Magna Carta of the year 1215 is considered to be a corner stone of constitutional law and democracy. It sought – and this is the key – to separate church from state, to separate feudal land authority from state, and thus to create the elusive Rule of Law for ordinary citizens.
I have seen an original copy of the Magna Carta – for a hefty fee – in London.
In trying to “stick it” to “the West”, the black community across the world has become enamoured with the erstwhile feudal land authorities or their reincarnation in the form of oligarchies in the East. The reasons why the Roman Kingdom fell two thousand years ago, are the exact same reasons why the Ndwandwe Kingdom fell two hundred years ago. They are the exact same reasons why the Mthwakazi Kingdom fell in 1893.
Notably, the Europeans who were cast out of Europe due to poverty, established their own Protestant churches in the Scramble for America. Anyone, who in 2026, still thinks that Church is a about “salvation”, “redemption” and all of those perfumed things, lives in la-la land. When Trump invades Venezuela and Iran in 2026, dreamers of la-la land started reaching for Bibles and prayers, instead of history books, while the US is simply utilising Protestant values of land grabbing. “Protestant Work Ethic” they still call it.
This then asks: if Britain has never been a democracy, when on earth has the US ever been a democracy?
Democracy is an aspiration. One that needs knowledge of history, daily newspaper reading, and voting in all available elections. If one barely knows history, one barely reads a newspaper – because history is made every day last time I checked, and if one does not vote, one lives in a kakistocracy instead.
Thus, many people confuse democracy with what in reality are kakistocracies – where the most unethical people, some even with university degrees, are in power.
My family left a Tribal Land Authority almost a hundred years ago. I do not and have never cared about Church authorities in life, and so I will take European-based democracy anytime. You cannot want to struggle with three systems, especially as the first two are well-documented to be centred around an individual and his nearest rival waiting to take over.
As a matter of fact, if you ask AbaThwa, the “San”, they will tell you that they lived an egalitarian life, emphasising on ecological sustainability of planet and community sharing, before the land barons came. Now that is the democracy that King Mzilikazi saw in AbaThwa and Mthwakazi, before those concepts went to Europe barely 200 years ago.
Sonny Jermain (Bulawayo, 1986) is the author of Thole LikaMthwakazi, and is based in the Netherlands