Call him by name

Does naming and “shaming” out abusers truly liberate us? Are we overwhelmed with a great sense of freedom when our peers, family and friends are invited to what was happening behind closed doors? Do our open mouths and bleeding hearts fix even a fraction of the frame?

What happens when your abuser is say a celebrity, wealthy or good looking? Say he is a respected member of society or a man of the cloth. Perhaps you were involved in a romantic relationship with your abuser and he is married and the wife sits quietly in her home and marriage. Who is the fool now? The abuser could be a family member who lacks deeply in emotional intelligence. What if the abuser was abused as well, and suffered a little more than you if that is at all possible.

Shame. We seem to believe that we can cultivate sympathy and grow consciences through shaming. Not realising that our sheltered upbringing kept very essential truths from us for a very long time. What we assume to be shameful, hurtful, abusive or self destructive could be considered absolutely normal on these circular streets. We also do not realize how deeply embedded the roots of patriarchy are planted within our so called new age, new thinking beings.

We hold men to a much higher esteem. We teach men not to be accountable for their thoughts or actions. We aid them in the abusing of our time, means and bodies by pretending that “sorry” fixes a damn thing. We pick up the phone to chase. We buy the birthday gifts, do the cooking, drop the panties before we are wooed. Shame? No longer a thing when females are buying condoms and lubricant because we are now in charge of our sexual appetites. No, we are definitely not teaching our younger sisters that cultivating ones mind is a safer bet in possibly retaining ones dignity if all hell breaks loose. Do we discuss that your womb will be scrapped bear when he finally confesses to having a much more preferable being in his life who his mom who always greeted you lovingly completely adores.

Run to Twitter, compile the hashtags and shame him.

Did it work?

Did he lose his job? Did his following decrease? Are the women who encouraged you to air your laundry standing in solidarity with you or are they his new most frequent Whatsapp contact?

How much time did you spend with your therapist understanding that you may never expect an apology but may have to move on as though you received one. How much do you understand about personality disorders, attachment styles, relationships, abuse beyond the physical, sociopaths, narcissism and the demons mothers marry their children to through neglect?

Before we sensationalize our truths and cause their testimony to lay void, let us stop to think;

What good will it do me to invest more time in my abusers publicity. Are all my wounds well bandaged and my mind sitting in good balance that I can handle the possible backlash. Will I cope with the means of retaliation when he drops buckets of my deepest darkest secrets. Will my family understand why it became necessary to leave us all raw and exposed. Did I prepare them for this? Did I prepare my children, my current partner.

A moments glory is never worth a lifetime of brokenness. Who is shaming who

A Good Goodbye

I desperately want to close this chapter of my life. As a matter of fact I have to. In doing so I am required to make a couple of changes.

I am saying goodbye to my blog.

Before anything else, THANK YOU.

My readers, friends, supporters, and yes the judgy Judy’s too; thank you for allowing me to share my heart. That you for allowing me to split open and spill generously. My personal life, work, lifestyle, thoughts, ideals and so much more has been splattered all over this WordPress medium and I have found much pleasure in discovering that like you I am simply human.

I’d like to create a more professional blog for my personal brand and my lifestyle blog. This will become available with the next http://www.mathunzi.com website update. I also wished to be booked for more professional writing work in various spaces, so rather that be my resume of all things “vocab”. The opportunity to study further has me taking advantage of the chance to better my technical writing technique. Allow me to grow and prepare to do better by my audience in future.

I will spend what is left of 2018 catching up. I have promised you so much and I will deliver as far as my being and time permits. I will then only manage comments and communication on this page and leave it open simple as a reminder of where I have come from.

The book

Turns out it isn’t as simple as one would assume or prefer. As much as “best selling author” is seemingly a popular title of late, putting actual pen to paper is not as breezy as a Sunday morning.

This how ever is a story that I must tell and I will tell it. On my own terms! This is where I will shift the pieces of both the making and the breaking of my heart to. I pray that someday someone picks up a copy and says “God must be real”.

Please do not categorise my work amongst the memoirs of victims. I am not here for that. I have ingested enough pity, mostly from self, to drown me for decades. Take me as I am. She who loved even after loves wrote her multiple goodbyes. She who said yes, again.

2018

Less than 90 days of this indescribably turbulent year. Stay with me if you dare as we say goodbye to that which was and can no longer be.

DM me for lunch dates. Email me for collaborations. Invite me to talks, campaigns, NGO’s and events. Let’s have those conversations

Mathunzi MacDonald

Hello Google?

Timelines are flooded with the instruction to Google search “Squatter Camps South Africa”. I complied, after a friend expressed her incomparable disgust to what she had found when she made the search.

I have not laughed this much in a very long time. Responding to the first ten or so images, my lungs filled up with enough air to send rigorous vibrations through my voice box to create numerous loud and genuine boughts of laughter through the room.

The alternative was rage. The tear filled kind? The kind where you wake up mid month scrapping together money for cellphone repairs after hurling it across the wrong in anger. How was this almost perfect misrepresentation conjured up? How could what I see and what I know fail to meet at any point in agreement? How many actors or posers of caucasian decent lived in South Africa and agreed to be part of this gut wrenching showcase? Could I ever trust google again?

Maybe I don’t travel enough, that must be it. Maybe my own black and coloured family members living in informal settlements are but a handful of poverty stricken beings in this country. Black squatter camps are but a dream we all seem to slip into so as to have something to complain about and blame the white man for. Blacks must live in wealth and run endless food and blanket drives for their fellow poverty stricken, squatter camp living, caucasian countrymen.

Painful.

How the truth has been neatly buried with deliberate photo ops and catchy titles.

May I kindly leave this here post right here. Maybe we will wake up to an apology regarding a distasteful and inhumane joke and begin to read and see about the actual reality of the South African population of colour.

Please do not misunderstand. I am not arguing that there are no white families living in poverty. We are simply asking how such an obvious truth, heavily populated by black and coloured persons can be so beautifully masked?

Maybe if we search placing the words in a different order? Maybe?

Exhale (Poetry)

​I need to exhale. 

The time has seen me turn black and blue from the poison infiltrating my lungs that I refuse to spit out. I can not breathe. 

I am ashamed of failures I did not instigate or carry through. I am a victim who over time has learned to victimise. I now know how to suffocate you.

I am built to withstand the stakes darted at the lungs of my core being, but perhaps my manufacturer forgot the final piece.

I no longer feel but see the air oozing out. Left empty, there is nothing left to pick up the bicycle patch that could extend my survival. 

I have been ridden. A bicycle has seen more care. Like a horse and then like a dog used to fight for small change. I have been tossed aside and flicked out of my own space and reality to gather the pieces of me with the hands that were bitten and chewed by those who said that they love me.

I can’t blame those who take pride in the multiple punctures they have inflicted. Two punctures left a hole big enough for human life to seep through me. I partly blame myself. I saw the sharp edge. I felt it carress me. I remember the first time it grazed me. Of course it would crave depth.

I am not yellow. My color is off putting. So why not deflate what you have come to fear simply at a glance. 

Peirce me.

Poke me.

Plunge into me.
Slit my throat and quicken the torment. Maybe when my blood flows my color will turn to red. Even if it is for but a moment.
I want to breathe. I want to be the time keeper to an open heart that craves only me and not my death. 

I have been holding this evil in… inside my being. 
Where is the pen and paper? Where is bag of change? 
I need to exhale. 

Mathunzi Macdonald