South Africa – August 2021

12 August 2021

SOMEHOW WE SURVIVE

„Somehow we survive and tenderness, frustrated does not wither. …“

Dennis Brutus

I come across these lines in South Africa. I read these lines here in South Africa.

These lines themselves take me back to South Africa’s past. Into the so often quoted power, intensity and hardness to end an unjust oppression, to crush, to spearhead.

But that was a long time ago now. And although history teaches us many things, or at least should teach us many things, countless things are breaking out around the world that can only be accomplished by looking forward. Isn’t it the eternally outdated, the militants, the agitators, the entrenched, the all-rejectors who constantly want to explain to us how easy it all is to see through, how obvious a solution is?

Somehow …

Somehow contains fear, insecurity, improvisation, dream, restlessness, phlegmatism, avoidance strategies, … and in spite of everything – an unbroken will to try everything, to make it somehow, just somehow, to get ahead, to achieve something, to have, to buy, to support, to help someone who needs it even more.