Obedience is what white people wanted from us — still want from us.
Our obedience keeps them guilt-free.
When you obey, you stop asking questions.
And when you stop questioning, you stop living.
They built three temples of obedience — Church, School, and Work.
These were not African inventions.
They arrived with the ships of Jan-what-what and his crew.
They called it civilization.
But civilization without balance is sickness.
Before Obedience
Before the classroom, we learned through life.
Before the sermon, we spoke with the wind.
Before work, we worked the land.
Our ancestors didn’t need bells to tell them when to wake up.
The rooster, the sun, the smell of morning — that was the timetable of life.
The law of nature was enough.
But when they took the land, they took the rhythm.
And when they took the rhythm, they replaced it with rules.
Land, Labour, and Law
I was in Ga-Matlala, a dry, rocky place where cattle still know their owners’ voices.
A stranger at a watering hole in Mamehlabe told me that our ancestors ran to the mountains — chased ke maburu.
The mountains were dry. They could not grow food.
So they went to work for the same people who chased them and stole their land.
That’s how work replaced land.
That’s how the law replaced truth.
That’s how obedience became survival.
When you lose land, you gain chains.
The 1913 Native Land Act didn’t only steal the soil; it stole the soul.
The Orphaning of a People
When fathers were sent to work and mothers were left with bitterness, the home cracked.
The white man replaced the parent with a system.
Children were sent to school — not to learn, but to be trained to obey.
In Setswana we say:
Ngwana yo o sa utlweleleng molao wa batsadi o tla utlwa wa manong.
(A child who does not listen to the wisdom of parents will listen to vultures.)
That proverb wasn’t about obedience — it was about listening to life.
The vultures of our time were the schools that fed on parentless children, teaching them new laws to bow to.
We were told that obedience is a virtue.
But obedience only rewards the thief.
The False Virtue
Look around.
We obey traffic lights, time clocks, and church bells — yet we disobey the call of the soil.
We have jobs but no land, degrees but no freedom.
We measure success by how well we follow rules written by strangers.
Obedience became the chain that looked like a medal.
We polish it every month with a salary.
And we call it progress.
Return to Natural Law
There is no room for obedience in life or nature.
The river does not ask permission to flow.
The bird does not obey a timetable.
The sun rises without approval.
Nature follows rhythm, not rules.
Ga re obamele.
We align.
We listen.
We flow.
There is no African proverb that praises obedience.
Only those that remind us of balance — between self, land, and light.
The real law is truth.
The real order is harmony.
Walking in the Light
Obedience is the language of slaves.
Alignment is the language of the free.
When you align with Ramasedi, you don’t bow — you glow.
You don’t conform — you transform.
Ga re obamele.
We bow to no man-made law.
We follow truth, not fear.
We serve Ramasedi, not Rome.
