There have been people put to death for it. People blown up, followed, beaten, intimidated and silenced. In some countries, a blog entry is akin to barrels of gunpowder under the houses of Parliament. Writers and journalists are an army whose quartermaster’s store is the local internet café, or the strength of the passwords on their own PC. In a world where some people choose the internet for anonymity to dupe and confuse, there are those who choose it as an instrument of truth.Ouch. Truth. Is it relative to the size of your guns, prisons or courtrooms? Is it formed out of passion or fact? (Or both) Well, the internet is a chaotic fence with every possible opinion to the right, left or straddling the middle. But what is important is the freedom of choice. To be able to choose to write, and to choose to read. Both have merit.
Imagine if blogs were controlled by the State. You’d write about your holiday and have to add something about the way government has created superlative leisure infrastructures in holiday towns, or that there were toilets available for every second person in the endless QuikStopz along the way. A birthday party post would include a small praise poem, intoning the magnificence of some obscure department for allowing the population to go forth and multiply.
Look, this blog is never going to have much substance to it. It’s about images, feelings, senses and random obscure metaphors. But if I choose to talk about the gulf between rich and poor, sick and healthy, educated and illiterate, I will. As long as there's a Declaration of Human Rights and our own SA Constitution I will write. Even if those documents did not exist, I would write. I will write and make an effort to acknowledge heroes- sung and unsung, and to encourage heroism within.
I like this sentiment, the title of Steve Biko’s famous work:
I Write What I like.
I am no Biko-sized activist, but… I blog what I like.
#SpeakZA
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