Diversivty Divides.

So now it's a countdown to the writers in exchange festival, diversity is power, in south africa, 22 day to go!

As for the last couple of months i'm like a hungry child reading everything i can get my hands on about South Africa. Nelson Mandela, his first autobiography and Winnie Mandela, een stuk van mijn ziel (ein stuck meiner seele ging mit ihm). I've subscribed to the thought leader, of the mail & guardian online, for getting a sense of the Africa I’m visiting, what's going on and especially, South Africa post apartheid.

The struggle of the people of South Africa who were against Apartheid and Nelson Mandela's role is for me almost beyond reality. A list of all the banning orders, and imprisonment for forty years! Both Nelson Mandela and Winni Mandela fought for something bigger because it was in fact impossible to have happy personnel live as man and woman, as a family in the South Africa of the white leaders. Diversity was used by people to divide more.. for the benefit of holding to it own ethnic group. I admire the strength of both Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela not to get lost in this madness but still , even with all this pain hold on to the idea of unity and a Africa for all people, whites, blacks, colored, communists, socialists.

I'm confronted with diversity daily in my country with its different ethnic groups , cultures and therefore different political parties, different ethnic groups, different religions and traditions, languages and ethnic based broadcasting companies. Bollywood channels, Indonesian TV, Chinese broadcasting, Braz TV (Brazilian TV) . In these last years instead of moving more to a united society where diversity can add to one united community with the energetic diverse vibes we are moving apart and trying to gain power out our own group. Because of our diversity it seems almost unable to develop this country in a way it benefits all the people who live in it. With the indigenous tribes on one hand who don't speak the same language as the people of the cost and the people of the coast are yet even more divided because of their ethnic and cultural background.

Reading about the anti apartheid struggles in South Africa makes me wonder. The power of the Nationalist Party became only stronger using the diversity of groups . More diversity gives parties more power, a tool to suppress, a tool to divide, a tool to gain development only for one particular group, meanwhile suppressing the other.

Diversity divides is my statement of today. And still diversity is the most powerful tool for creative development!