Dizemba carries a strange softness.
People speak more freely, laugh easier, and allow themselves to drift into the “what-ifs” of our politics without getting angry. Today I found myself thinking about Thabo Mbeki — a man who feels like he arrived both too early and too much himself for the era he was given.
When Mbeki spoke about an African Renaissance, most South Africans looked at him as if he was reading poetry at a construction site. Too abstract. Too intellectual. Too sincere. Yet the ideas he pushed — continental sovereignty, African knowledge systems, and global multipolarity — fit today’s world far better than the early 2000s. Maybe he was not the wrong leader… maybe the times were too small for him.
And then came the controversy that swallowed everything:
“HIV doesn’t cause AIDS” — the sentence that turned a philosophical fight into a national wound.
Looking back now, it’s clear that two battles were happening at the same time:
- the scientific battle, which required clarity,
and - the political battle, where Big Pharma was preparing to lock Africa into permanent dependency.
Mbeki entered the second battle using the tools of the first.
That was the mistake.
The tragedy is that behind the beetroot-and-garlic drama lay a valid fear:
Western pharmaceutical power has always shaped African health sovereignty.
The man simply refused to play the game on their terms. In another era — maybe this era of BRICS, generic medicines, decentralised supply chains, and a more assertive Global South — he might have been celebrated instead of destroyed.
But timing is a cruel judge.
After Mbeki, South Africa got the opposite: Jacob Zuma — the “trusted ally” of everyone who feared a thinker. Zuma was predictable, populist, and perfect for stabilising Western interests. Even today, the man is still fighting court cases like someone who refuses to leave a party after the music stops.
Mbeki, on the other hand, left quietly. No decade-long scandals. No habit of singing and dancing through crises. Just silence, pipe smoke, and the aura of a man who was either misunderstood or trapped in his own brilliance.
In Dizemba, it’s easier to breathe through all this.
Easier to say:
“Maybe he was right in spirit, wrong in execution.”
“Maybe the Renaissance he spoke about is only starting now.”
“Maybe the man did not arrive too soon — maybe we arrived too late.”
The truth is, African revival was never going to come from one president or one policy. It’s a slow, generational heat — like the way the sun (Ramasedi) rises without announcing itself. Our grandparents fought for land. Our parents fought for survival. We are fighting for sovereignty of the mind, sovereignty of the body, and sovereignty of African knowledge.
Dizemba is almost closed, and with it comes a soft reminder:
History doesn’t move in straight lines.
Sometimes the thinker appears before the people are ready.
Sometimes the hustler appears to balance the thinker.
And sometimes — like right now — the country sits in a quiet space between collapse and rebirth.
Maybe this is the real African Renaissance:
Not a speech, not a presidency, but a generation finally willing to think for itself.
It was Dizemba, after all.
A time to exhale, laugh gently at our political scars, and prepare for the joy that follows honest reflection.