Honourable Speaker, Please Recognise Me

"Please recognise me."

These are the words that have become synonymous with our 2015 National Assembly. While many argue issues around the EFF being disrespectful or the ANC house chairs being intolerant or biased towards their own, what most of us are missing is the meaning behind the words, "Please recognise me."

Listening to my favourite rapper of all time, and personal role model, Tupac Amaru Shakur, I heard the words, "You better recognise." This took me back to my embryonic years as an uncontrollable hip hop fanatic whose main sources of entertainment was music and violent movies depicting black American youths killing each other within a maze of cuss words and unprotected sex with one another's girlfriends. In one of those movies, Above The Rim, Birdie (played by Tupac) can be seen stabbing his enemy who had been sleeping when he was woken up to meet his Lord through the sharp end of an indifferent knife in the hands of an angry young black man. As he stabs the black flesh, Birdie says to him, "You better recognise."

Now, as I grew older I started reading philosophy and psychology books. Reading was a prerequisite for any true follower of Tupac, whose greatness can be attributed to the thousands of books he read. Unlike Tupac, my mother didn't have to send me to the library or have me read entire newspapers as punishment for my misdemeanors. I read because I loved Tupac's mind and he attributed it to the heavy books he read. Peradventure, among the sheets of material that I read in stacks of stolen textbooks and through my defunct Encarta computer library was one philosopher named Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German idealist whose works have influenced a lot of present day socio-political discourse. Hegel championed an argument that at the centre of all human life and history was what he termed, "Kampf um anerkennung (Struggle for recognition)." Through Hegel, Tupac and our parliamentary (or unparliamentary) shenanigans I have come to recognise that we are indeed in a struggle for recognition. Every human being wants to be recognised, acknowledged, respected and favoured (sometimes above others). The struggle for recognition permeates our family lives, work environments, friendships and romantic relationship.

In my work as a sub editor, I have come across a number of freelance journalists who lose their tempers when their stories are published but their bylines are not used. I would wonder why these people would be so angry at not getting a byline when everyone knows that some publications only use the news agency's name as a byline for all stories that come from us. Listening to Tupac, watching the Parliamentary Services Channel on 408 or via internet streaming and reminiscing on my Hegelian days as a rebellious youth hungry for knowledge, I have come to understand. We all want to be recognised. Journalist or not journalist, we all want the byline. If you buy booze at a round table at Orange Restaurant or Cappello, you'd probably feel bad if most of the people guzzling the liquor had no idea it was you footing the bill.  You want your byline. If you bought your lover a present using your last money and they failed to recognise your efforts, you might somehow feel dejected and uninspired to continue doing good for them. You want your byline. If your team won a big contract and everybody in the team knows without you their goal would not have been achieved, but they still failed to recognise your hard work, a resignation letter might follow suit. You want your byline. Everybody wants their byline.

Unfortunately, the struggle for recognition doesn't just end or start with genuine demands for recognition. Even those who don't deserve to be recognised still desire to be recognised. When it comes to the struggle for recognition, the mantra "Give respect where is due" doesn't matter; people just want recognition even when they have not earned it. We want to be recognised as the best child to our parents, best brother or sister among our siblings, best cousin among our relatives, best employee at work, best lover ever to our significant other, best friend amongst our acquaintances. The irrational need for recognition even prompted the writers of the Bible to depict God as a recognition-hungry idiot who'd unleash eternal fire and brimstone upon anyone who failed to recognise that he is God. The struggle for recognition is real. You can see it on our social networks when we tear each other down in various forums or comment boxes; where some of us write long post in order to demonstrate our unmatched intellectual abilities. The only people I know who don't care about recognition are resting quietly in their graves or fragments of ashes either stored in an urn or scattered abroad like the children of God in the Bible.

So, next time you see an honourable member standing up in parliament and shouting, "Speaker, recognise me, please recognise me," you must understand that this is just another chapter in our quest to educate ourselves about ourselves. Human nature demands to be recognised. Yes, it is an ego thing, but it is a real thing. Somebody better recognise.

Wagago

Kgoshii Lerabela (byline)