PIKELELA GUTYUNGWA MEMOIRS

  Stitched Up! Growing up as a young boy, my younger brother and I almost looked identical. In fact, most people in our community struggled to identify who was who! This was confusing as well as exciting to me. Confusing, because my brother and I could not understand all the farce. It was jolly exciting to me because every time I got into trouble and the offended people would hunt me down. O dear, there goes my poor and innocent brother minding his own business when suddenly, neighbours pounced on him. Yes, it is him! This is Barney who broke our window. My brother Thami would fruitlessly plead with his innocence, and nobody would hear him. Well, funny as it may sound to you. I am grateful to my younger brother for taking all the stripes of punishment for me. This was a stitch up in a clever way, no tricks, and no unscrupulous persuasion. Needless to me, to remind you that we live in a world where the toughest and the trickiest are in charge! They say, you snooz...

  Checkmate! What would you say, if I suggested to you that life is one hell of a game, began with teams of players and continued to play till all the original teammates were dead? No matter how you look around your once busy world, this place is getting lonelier. My mind keeps on jumping backwards, painfully reminding me of my lost world. Just the other day. I was going through my old photos, looking at these unforgettable pictures of my colleagues I shot back in our offices. Why does it never occur to our minds to be observant of all the things we do and the way we do them? Why does no one, ever look around and say, people, let us enjoy this day together as if it was the end of the world? This life is not a 200m dash race but a life-long marathon. Checkmate! It is life itself in a game of chess where we all play together as a unified team against life. We try our best to outpace life in exchange for length of days. Sadly, one by one, checkmated by life. We lose ...

  First Things First! When I was a student, all my math teachers taught me that zero is not a number. But who can ignore and deny the difference that a zero makes when added multiple times next to any number! Wow! You are one of those individuals who feel like they are nothing in this life, no less important than a minus zero? Every time you wake up in the morning, what do you see inside that mirror? Is that the zero you feel you are even as your eyes blink coordinated with your heartbeat with each breath you take? Who do you see, moving and gesturing inside your mirror? There is no power or force strong enough in the world to help change your attitude towards yourself! If you cannot believe what your mirror shows you: as you appear in real life like we all see you; consider yourself another walking dead individual! Do you want to hear the story of God? Sure, then listen up! People do not understand just how difficult it was for God to be God, and actual fee...

  Gnawing At And Teasing Me! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but nothing ever said about the beholden! Two strangers eyeing each other with constrained intensity, is always a give and take. There is something telepathic about the human stare, especially the ones preceded by throbbing heartbeats. Like the sensitive tentacles of an alerted animal, our skin somehow can pick up and sense undue sublime attention. In a room full of strangers, while minding my own business, I sensed and picked up a telepathic wave directed at me from across the room. The sooner I lifted my eyes to identify this peripheral intrusion, the moment I realized I was under the radar. The laws of attraction emblazoned up in the blue skies, floating heart-shaped bubbles and occasionally shot by Cupid. Well, for starters, after tuning into the electrifying vibrations in the atmosphere: I quickly identified these as friendly fires. Like the popping rabbit ears behind the bushes, her big golde...

  Are We There Yet! But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in Heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. I can still vividly remember, how people in South Africa were outraged and incensed after a baby of six months was brutally raped. I was seething and frothing with unimaginable revenge and pure hatred for that evil man who had raped the helpless baby! This was back in the late nineties. O’ for the pain we all felt in our hearts, for this evil which we had never heard of before! There is something strange about human nature. Shocking!   How soon do we accommodate evil and brush it off when it happens on a rebound? This is the reason it is always impossible for man to eschew evil because our very frame of our being is rooted way deep inside the vestiges of evil. Man without the Fear of God is a sinner and becomes evil personified! We are nothing without God in our lives. Are we there yet, is this the End of the World? These ar...