A dream realized, nearly 65 years after….
Written by: MaKhulu Nana Nxumalo of Magona Village, Granddaughter of Chief Albert Luthuli.
Like a dream, they burst into the world scene like a lightning bolt from everywhere. Whoosh! While millions were mesmerized and enchanted by their love story, others were angry, challenged and outrightly furious!
How dare they?
On this matter of Shaman Durek and Princess Märtha of Norway, it is hard to be disinterested.
They are an unapologetic new age activist couple against racism and bigotry. They are bold, courageous and totally unfazed by the feelings their relationship has managed to conjure up in each one of us. By standing their ground, they are in effect calling the world to order. Hello world, wake the hell up from your slumber.
“And to those of you who feel the need to criticize: Hold your horses. It is not up to you to choose for me or to judge me. I don’t choose my man to satisfy any of you or the norms or boxes you have chosen in your mind for me to be in. I don’t thrive there, nor do I exist in your illusion about me. I choose from love. And that’s it.” – Princess Märtha Louise of Norway in Norway, 2023.
In the meanwhile, back in 1960 nearly 65 years ago, Chief Albert Luthuli, the first African to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his human rights stance, climbed onto the Nobel podium to deliver a speech that was an impassioned call for all to be treated with dignity and respect irrespective of their race and class. As an activist of his time, he was making a plea for a society free of all the ills of bigotry and divisions informed by his experience of apartheid in South Africa. At that time nearly sixty five years ago, the world heard the message but it has taken decades for the world to accept the inevitable. The Shaman Durek and Princess Märtha phenomenon is repeating itself the world over – many away from the headlines. Only this time, it has crossed all these fluid manmade boundaries of gender, race and class in one instance. What a great feat of our new reality.
“Laws and conditions that tend to debase human personality – a God-given force – be they brought about by the State or other individuals, must be relentlessly opposed in the spirit of defiance…” – Chief Albert Luthuli in Oslo, Norway 1961.
The Shaman Durek and Princess Märtha story takes us back another 65 years back in Oslo where Luthuli received his Nobel Prize in 1960 but only received it in 1961 due to the delays by the apartheid government not wanting to grant him passage to Norway. Isn’t it ironic that Norway and more correctly the royalty of Norway, is confronted with their new reality that has challenged them on who they really are as humans encumbered by the imaginary racist baggage they carry, sometimes without being aware of it. Princess Märtha has admitted more than once in her interviews how unaware she was of her racist tendencies because she, like many white people, have never really questioned their false sense of whiteness that has protected or burdened them for so long.
What Shaman Durek has in effect done, is to prick open that thin veil of lies and stepped into the spaces where very few people of African decent have entered. That door can never be closed again. The genie is now literally out of the box.
Very few people have, in recent times, pushed our buttons the way this couple has done. Like many who have died for their beliefs, they have been vilified and have experienced hatred of enormous proportions, mainly in Norway. And at times, Märtha says, they have questioned their journey together. But like committed soldiers, they have become convinced of their cause. By doing so, they are making us crawl out of our holes of smallness and biases. In standing up for themselves they have made many of us stand one inch taller. They have extended our consciousness many frequencies higher into the Universe, in effect, giving us permission to fearlessly step into our greatness.
I don’t think Luthuli thought it would take another 65 years before Norway would accept him as one of their own. They were only happy to accord him the Nobel prize and waved him back to his country not thinking that his message was being surreptitiously manifested by the Universe right at their backdoor.
Well, as the Universe would have it, he is now there in the form of Shaman Durek. There is no denying the love Shaman Durek and Princess Märtha share because there is nothing to explain when you see them together. They have declared that they are getting married on the 24th August 2024 in Norway, with Luthuli looking out from that Nobel Museum window, in Oslo.
“When we judge, and we condemn, we are challenging God’s creation in saying I can only love and accept that which I understand from my limited perspective, which means we don’t actually love God, because God is not limited to one form, or to one perspective, and God’s love isn’t ever conditional.” – Shaman Durek in his book, Spirit Hacking.
