I was listening to Mary J Blige and my playlist went to Jojo ft Bow Wow - Baby it’s you remix and I was beaming with joy because I have not heard this banger in a while! I remembered last time I had it on my Samsung E250 that I thought was the coolest thing around. I then realised how important it was to have such music being sang by someone that young while navigating feelings you’ve never had before and realising your sudden like in boys is actually normal. I realised that kids nowadays do not have this privilege. They do not have their age mate making a hit song about whipping your hair back and forth. The hair in question and being represented being braids that turn walls into beautiful colours! Kids do not have that, they unfortunately have to listen to City Girls partnering up and sleeping with scammers and criminals to get weaves and designer! Now don’t get me wrong I love City Girls and their music, however I’m old and wise enough to discern! I know this is nothing but entertainment and dating scammers and criminals never ends well for women and people around them. A young impressionable mind will not know that without any guidance. Even that guidance can go so far when their whole environment has been infested by such. Now City Girls and the other rap girlies might be adults but let’s look at their age mates that are in the spotlight. Most are STREAMERS!! I actually think this is one of the three letter entity’s best work! It has only gone downhill ever since the rise of these teenage streamers. They are listening to these songs there, they’re seeing their age mates in bussdowns that they bought from money made from these streaming platforms and that’s what they want for themselves.

Now I know you might say that when we were teenagers the weave market didn’t look like it does now and you’re right. However Beyoncé, Alicia Keys and co also wore weaves and we did have Joedir and the other brands but it isn’t something we aspired to much as we had teenagers that were singing and weren’t wearing such! You might look at it as a “reach” but it is something to think about.

Oh the horror, feminists fought for you to be educated and have an office job while the woman of Afghanistan have been banned to speak in public. Ohhh you definitely have it the worst! Sudanese children are being married off to old men and falling pregnant at the age of 11 in the middle of a genocide and feminists fought for you to stay in Teams meetings and do your to do lists the whole day, don’t you have it the worst way?? There are South African churches and traditional leaders that are looking away at the act of ukuthwala that is still happening in their neighbourhoods! There are old men that are using their money to “buy” child brides in this very same country but it is feminists that fought for you to be able to drive yourself to work and choose to not have children that are your enemy.

I hate to truly use the religious way of having to point at a horrible thing people are going through to make you appreciate what you have but most of you that say this are religious anyways! It truly might be the only way you get to stop this foolishness.

I know you’ve been listening to red pill jibber jabber and are being duped by women that are throwing away their financial freedom for men but some of you are in your late 20s and early 30s saying this!! You are too old to be duped by foolishness. Your brain is SUPPOSED to be fully developed. You see all these countries without feminism and how horrible life is for women and little girls and you think if you did not have feminism you’d spend the day doing Pilates and drinking matcha?? You’re in your late 20s/early 30s, if you were married off at 11 how many kids do you think you’d have by now? How many other women would you need to be comfortable with so you and your kids can eat??? This is not the worst case scenario, it is a reality for alot of women that are raised in countries that lack feminism!

What is also so interesting is no one is stopping you from getting married! The only problem is no man has chosen you to be his wife, luckily for you feminism made sure whether a man is in your life or not, you will still be able to eat and create a life for yourself. It’s not feminists that are telling these men to not choose you and make you a SAHM/W, but it is them making sure you will not starve because of that.

Ever since we have received our democracy, we’ve lived with all nations. Ghanaians, Congolese, if you’re from the Eastern Cape especially East London you’ll remember there was a time we lived with Egyptians too that sold blankets, photographs that were hung on our sitting rooms and cutlery. We have always been accommodating so this notion of making South Africans as these monsters that cannot live with other people have been shocking to say the least. We’ve always had our tribal differences but unlike other countries they’ve never been bloody (except for the time where the IFP collaborated with the apartheid government to sow division amongst us). So seeing our own country men saying such and being shocked when these African countries agreed with them and took it to hell has been interesting to witness.

I will not speak much on the countries that have engaged in bad faith in this, it is clear they do not even care about the citizens that have voted them in power in their countries. They certainly do not want more people that have tasted abit of a working government coming back to them and holding them to account. They do not care about xenophobia, they don’t even care about the bloody tribal wars happening under their own nose. Their brotherhood does not even extend to Congo or Sudan, all of it is an act!

On the 11th of May, Cape Town experienced one of the worst storms where multiple trees that have lived for decades on this land were uprooted, people left homeless and businesses wrecked. A very horrible image of a Checkers 60/60 guy on the floor from being blown by the wind and rain circulated the internet. An image that captured what poor people have been fighting about for the longest time, competing in the job market with people that are okay with being exploited. Now for the longest time, the consensus was to direct the anger to the corporations that are exploiting people rather than the people accepting this treatment and calling anyone that doesn’t “lazy”. This was a fair argument until digital nomads entered the scene and people started being mad at them instead of the landlords that are increasing the rent and pricing out the locals. Now I saw people comfortable telling foreigners (that could be tourists by the way, helping our economy) to not overstay, to leave, to go back to their countries. Now, if we tell poor people to be mad at the powers that be, we should take that advice too! We should not be harassing them posting their TikToks online (because you could never tell a digital nomad anything to their face) and call the D.A. and the NGU to account. Wait on them to create laws that protect us. That isn’t happening and interesting enough that isn’t labelled xenophobia either! If you are still comfortable, have a roof over your head and do not have to worry about what you will eat before you sleep, can you imagine how horrifying things must be for people fighting to atleast not sleep with an empty stomach that night??

If it needs to be said, I also do not support digital nomads leaving their capitalist haven countries to come and reap socialism rewards in other countries while pricing out the locals but we need to practice what we preach. In that same breath, we also cannot act like there aren’t people that are using this as a Trojan horse to unleash their own tribalism, colourism and sometimes straight misogyny. We’ve seen that anytime anyone opposes how March & March is doing things (which is valid btw, no one is above criticism) and they’ll be labelled a slur for sex worker if they’re a woman, they’ll be labelled a foreigner if they’re dark-skinned men or a tribalist stereotype. These need to be called out, the leader of the movement could atleast call that out.

It is sad that it had to come to this point, it truly is but the government has proven time and time again that it will only respond to violence. It is only responsive when people are in the streets, burning tyres, burning infrastructure and blocking roads. This has been their pace from service delivery to now immigration.

When I was younger, soul ties and “receiving bad energy” was something that was packaged for women/young girls. This was to scare us into not having sex or so I thought, but as I grew older I realised it’s also a weapon that is used to shame women that enjoy sex no matter what the age. This also to make sure that we know that sex is for men and men only as these soul ties never stick to them regardless of them having the same sexual intercourse. So instead of calling them demeaning slurs, you can just say they’re “dirty” from demons they received when they were having sex. With the rise of conservatism and right wing propaganda it is not foreign to see such videos on any application algorithm reiterating on soul ties and keeping your neither regions “clean”.

This became so much of a shocker when I saw it being repackaged by “femininity” coaches that were wearing weaves to show that it works. Not only that but it can have monetary benefits as well to follow this “let’s avoid soul ties” model.

If like me, you grew up with a spiritual parent or grandparent you would know you do not share hair accessories, combs, doeks or beanies. If it touches another persons head, they would need to keep it. Your hair needs to be touched by a single person (I know this might be hard as you might get specials in other salons). This was to protect not only your hair but your head. I grew up to be very interested in chakras even though I do not take them as gospel. I found out that the head has the Crown Chakra (Sahasrara) and is the seventh and highest chakra, acting as the gateway to universal energy, spiritual connection, and higher consciousness.

Now, if you believe in energy exchange during sex, why wouldn’t you believe that you’re disrupting your higher consciousness with a random lady’s hair glued to your hair? What if the donor has not broken their generational curses and died without doing so and now you’ve gladly worn that energy and carry it on your head. How sure are you that the donor was even alive when they were getting their hair? What I find interesting is you would have more of these questions if you were being sold dreadlocks / an Afro cut from someone else’s head. Which now shines a light on colonialism and the internalised anti blackness we carry on our daily lives.

I say this not to say soul ties exist because truly they do not but it is of interest that I highlight the irony of choosing which energy transfers you will believe and which you will not.

Even though South Africa is a secular state, a large majority is very religious and conservative. Religion teaches thanks by comparing your very horrible circumstances to catastrophic ones so you can feel better. It also teaches you the catastrophic circumstances were God’s way of sharpening your faith until things get horrible before they get better. This not only grooms religious people to persevere even if there’s no need to but it sets a tone that God himself can have people He chooses to do good to and those he will shower with nothing but unfortunate events. This will then set a foundation that makes you question that if the same God is able to be great for others and be absolutely horrible for others, what’s a mere mortal that too is created in the same image as God? You couple this up with the forgiveness route that doesn’t care about the victim and you have created a haven for exceptionalism.

This is why a convict fresh from jail with a record of being abusive towards minors can go to church and easily find a bride. The woman will not think that the children she’s yet to have will be endangered around this man because once again, even God is able to be horrible to others while amazing to others. This also creates a haven for criminals, deadbeats, corrupt politicians and all horrible people under the sun. Religion is one of the biggest set backs to women’s freedom and their movement.