hard work. . .

Written by Maleke Montshiwagae

on concept of working hard

there is a general tendency to encourage the oppressed black masses in their various strata, the oppressed and basically the wretched of the earth who forms the foundational shoulders of economic "prosperity" of white south africa through cheap hard labour .....

this tedious "advice" seems to ignore the hardworking miner in the undergrounds of Africa-"land of London"- in Lonmin and really across the underground land of the rusternburg platinum belt within the Mzansi context. . .

these "advisors" of the need to "work hard" can either be assumed to have a convenient memory loss or "intentional ignorance" by any standards. . . intentional ignorance taking the form of "let's all work together and forget what happened for the benefit of "our" country", it's not to say that the "tedious advisor" is unaware of the already hard work that is taking place underground in rusternburg, no, he/she is aware but hides behind convenient memory loss. ...

he/she conveniently forgets that the very economics he/she seems to be preoccupied with in terms of hard work, hard work is already taking care of it! this is the tendency to rule out the black inhuman underclass because it has been ruled out of an everyday dialogue and memory. ..

these tedious voices typically emanates from the black and white petit-bourgeoisie who self-appoint themselves into positions of neutrality in accordance with the visions of a progressive reactionary tendency, rather than to see the need to free the black oppressed hard worker in the bowels of the earth at Lonmin shafts. .

these petit-bourgeoisie are a bribed force who partly and indirectly share from the petty rewards from the super profits of the racist economic capitalists in a form of a black middle class construction meant to neutralize the true proletariat revolutionary consciousness of the underground hard working black underclass. ..

black kids of these underclass slaves or hard "workers" are encouraged to work hard. .. to work hard for what? ... to be incorporated into the black middle class construction project? ...

or we are told again in the inverse rhetoric, to rather work smart! . well let tell you, global economics were never built on smartness, it was built on genocide, violence and gruesome dehumanisation of oppressed. . the smartness entered the white Anglo Saxon consciousness apparently post world war II, this was in realizing the need to construct future black middle class who will preach the message of working hard and importance of a "good" economy, while erasing the underground wretched of the earth off the daily memory. ...

so who is working hard? .. and who must work hard? ...

the brilliance of Jeremy Seabrook in analysing the etymology of the word "work" reveals disturbing latent violence contained in it as he would put it, at least in as far as its Eurocentric conception is concerned. ..

the underlying questions around the word "work" covers things like, is work a act of human free will for substenence purposes or is it a punitive act as understood in a Eurocentric world whose society like the Pilgrims of Plymouth rocks, as highlighted by J. Sakai, fled Holland because they did not want to work but own the land and slaves who would work for them as they enjoy the materialistic good things of life... and they did exactly that when arriving in America. ..

it therefore becomes scary when even the black petit-bourgeoisie screams hard work to the black community, because given the latent violence contained in the word "work" from a Eurocentric stand point, using "hard work" even doubles the trouble of the black oppressed in favour to the white economy. ..

therefore our task ahead whatever the form it may take, must be to bring back into national memory the knowledge of the existence of the wretched of the earth located under the Lonmin earth of Africa. . . just so that we can refresh our memory of the existence of on-going "hard work". . so that working smart also can be problematized because it implies the support of a black middle construction who represents a negativity in the struggle of the true black proliteriat as it were....

the problematizing of working smart can lead us to see it as meaningless unless the Afrocentric definition of the word work is formulated and used as a guiding word

in this way, the true proletariat revolutionary consciousness can become a focal point, rather than pitty-bourgeoisie revolutionary consciousness that is really concerned with petty self interests and the interests of a "progressive" country!

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