Sunday 26 December 2021

Coronavirus streets in Cape Town - LIV

Electric menace with stupid

There is nowhere in the world where the riding of e-scooters is not a menace. In fact, any electrically powered vehicle that shares a pedestrian walkway or a pavement and in this case the promenade has usually inconsiderate riders whizzing past oblivious of others with literally no control or direction.

I had to jump out of the way of one hurling down at speed and in 10 metres, he crashed and fell. Whilst he got up and dusted off himself that we onlookers did not have to ask if he was alright, there have been casualties and fatalities after such accidents. The only word that came to mind was stupid, and we all to an extent have a proclivity for stupidity when the circumstance presents.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu

This morning as we contemplated and vacillated about going to church, which we eventually did not do, as I had a rotten night and his own was hardly any better with insomnia, we learnt that Archbishop Desmond Tutu had passed on, at the age of 90.

So many things will be written about Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I would leave that to the eulogists. To me, he was an exemplary man of God, who understood that his calling and cause was greater than self to the service of humanity, challenging the entrenched, the absurd, the hidebound, the acceptable, the untenable, the reprehensible, the unnecessary, the prejudiced, the judgemental, and the bigoted to see a greater value to our common humanity rather than our diminished individuality in the church, in our communities, and in society.

He enters the pantheon of the exceedingly illustrious, in the class of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, and Nelson Mandela. Our world was by all means blessed by his ministry and empathetic wisdom in his life and living in our time, that his passing, though a loss cannot expunge his footsteps in the eternal sands of time as a record of human history.

In the seat of his priesthood, his archbishopric, and in his heart, he gave Christianity a beating heart, a human face, a loving message, a welcoming sign with embracing arms, revealing divine purpose in mortal and flawed vessels. Rest in peace, Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu and may eternal light shine upon thee.

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