Say again how we end like this. Please start at the beginning and slowly recite the beginning to me. Render the Alpha to me again for they say it is the beginning. Tell me again. Please do.

All I know is that we started as equal peers, racing for survival. All I know is that we all started as seed in the loins despatched to match and fertilise to form the embryo. Tell me again how seed from loins could have been different.

Tell me again why in our innocence we could play together, speak a mumbo jumbo that only we two could understand but we never had animosity over who we were. Tell me again what they meant when they said we couldn’t play together because we were of some different societal orientation. Tell me again why we both risked beatings to sneak out at any opportunity to stand side by side by the fence that divided us, sucking our thumbs in defiance of parental curfews.

Tell me again why it was easy for us to stammer each other’s languages yet the adults claimed it was a taboo to do so. Tell me why we were equals until we were told it was not so.

Tell me again why I can speak your language with ease and at a certain point you also could and we would laugh at our pronunciations that we mercilessly brutalised with not much regard.

Tell me again why all that changed. Actually tell me when that changed.

All I know is that we woke up and we were suddenly different. We could not be friends anymore because they told you that we were ethnic enemies. We could not joke anymore for I was warned that all your jokes were lined with acid venom meant to demean me and my people.

We became so different to an extent that, merit did not matter anymore. Acumen did not matter anymore. All that mattered is where you came from and what language you spoke. We became so different that my proposals were turned down without regard but when we cut my name and pasted yours they were approved yesterday.

Tell me again why this became so. Tell me at what point we lost the magnanimity of merit and ran the ethnic gauntlet. Tell me how this killed the brotherhood, our dreams and made us overnight sworn enemies.

Tell me why we allowed the poison to infect us when we swore in our innocent childhood that we were friends and patriots for life?

And tell me why we can’t go back to our innocence and see beyond the blight of tribe, language and ethnicity. Tell me again.

By Phindela's Muses

Phindela’s Muses is the pen name of Nqobile Ncube. After much prodding i reluctantly waded into transferring my thoughts to the electronic notebook. I write as I see. I write as I feel. I write as I hear. I prod the deepest vivid image I can conjure and if at least one person derives some good from it then I am a happy man.

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