Home | Business | THE MARTIN FAITH

THE MARTIN FAITH

Font size: Decrease font Enlarge font

I’m not American but I know the American history. Instead I’m a liSwati and I couldn’t write a whole chapter about my history. Google gives me information that other races wrote about us and I dislike that I have to go to the archives to find information. Let’s move with the times.


The disinterest coming from my generation is hard to ignore. It could be because history in general is old and outdated in our point of view and so we seek new things. Perhaps another reason is that our history is not dramatic enough like that of the South Africans to interest us or we just don’t care.


The movie Sarafina, we could narrate it for you scene by scene. So yes, I have a grievance.
It’s a good thing we have taken down history, now let us dramatise it because this information age needs just that to appreciate our struggle. We know about Shaka Zulu and his strength but in an assignment I was doing, I learnt that we had intelligent warriors as well who we ought to know about.


My article today takes us back to the time our grandparents were young and vibrant. That was when the beret was a thing and stockings were a highlight in fashion.

I didn’t mean to roll my eyes I promise you. One of the greats of that time and now besides the bandana was Martin Luther King Jr. That man had a dream and it was a big dream. It was impossible and ridiculous and daft to those who heard it. He was speaking to the then America, which oppressed the Negro telling people that his dream was about justice and unity.  Let’s look at a part of his speech. He says:


“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”
Okay let’s just talk about this. Mr Luther King, the oppressed black man, actually had the hope that the sons of slaves and slave owners would chill at a shisanyama and braai. Wasn’t this man supposed to be angry and throw tantrums?

I ask myself, what did this man see, which he spoke about so subliminally? Was he delusional perhaps? In all honesty, I marvel at this man’s faith. He continued to say:
“...we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”


The use of his words speak faith.
“Knowing we will...” He seemed sure of it like it had been revealed to him once. It was as if he had a guarantee and he could prove it. Faith is the evidence of things unseen indeed. If I had a chance to sit at a table with him I would want to know how his mind worked, how he interpreted the world and why he was so sure of the word’s he uttered.

This man was insane in the eyes of the world. As if the whole speech wasn’t enough to drop my jaw, what startles me the most is that at the end of his speech he chants:
“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”


What kind of next-level faith was that? Were they free yet? No. What kind of man proclaims freedom in chains? How does one even begin to mention the name of the Lord amid their troubles? But Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. This man saw the chains off him before they were. He saw his victory amid the war. He felt the sun shining on his face in his prison cell. And if there was ever a man with that kind of faith, then believing is possible. Marvel the Martin faith. The dream was farfetched and inconceivable.


In fact, the speech at that time it was a lie; it was a tale. But this man told it to the world nonetheless. And you know what the funny thing is, the Negro believed.
I have magnified this man’s faith, expand yours.

Comments (0 posted):

Post your comment comment

Please enter the code you see in the image: