Dear South Africa…

And so the letter begins.

A letter penned to a nation.

Well, not ‘penned’ per say, because who does that anymore?

Typed. A letter typed to a beloved country. But what type of letter might that be?

How would yours look?

Would it be filled with hope or be more likely to resemble a tired, worn out missive of anger and accusation?

Might it call people out to be what we’ve seen them be? Or would it feel the need to remind them of how many times this past year they have not even come close to resembling anything that could be described as rainbow, united, nation…?

Perhaps your letter would feel compelled to be infused with hashtags as memories of 2017 pervade? #NotAllLetters

If you, stopped what you were doing right now, and put thirty minutes aside – or longer if you need – to write the kind of letter you would write, if you knew that every single person in South Africa would get a chance to read it [in a language they understood well] how would it look?

[i would love for you to do just that and send it to me at brettfish@hotmail.com by the way]

But i did ask a number of my friends, towards the end of 2017, to write the letter they would write if they knew that the whole of South Africa was listening…

And over the next few days, i am going to share some of those…

Dear South Africa…

Dear, dear South Africa.

These are to you…

A letter from my friend Wayne Eaves calling for honest and real conversations…

A poem from my friend Thandi Gamedze inspiring us to be real and better

A letter from my friend Thandi Refilwe-Rose Nkomo challenging us to love black people

An Afrikaans brief deur my vriend Jana Niehaus aan Afrikanermense in Suid Afrika

My friend Ntobeko hopes that 2018 will be the year the oppressors start to really understand their legacy

My friend Dalene Reyburn calls us towards the courage to own our own context

My mate Terence Mentor manages to write his Dear South Africa piece in just two words…

My friend Jess Basson writes a short note more specifically to white South Africans

A letter from a “Privileged White Woman” which resonated very strongly with a lot of people

[For my Poem of hope for South Africa, in 2018, click here]

[For some other blog posts looking at different issues in South Africa, click here]