If The Teacher Only Knew!

During my school days, the teachers used to beat us like crazy. Many kids dropped out of school because of corporal punishment. They called this truancy. It was a system inherited from the apartheid era. Teachers ruled by fear.

I used to have panic attacks every Sunday evening on the thought of Mr Mabuza alone, the Maths teacher because Maths was not my strength.

I in particular remember this other day when we were doing oral reading. This is where you were required to stand in front of the class and read a story assigned to you by the teacher.

A number of children didn’t know how to read. These were particularly the older kids of the class! Who were known to have repeated every grade. The teacher would then ask, what’s wrong with you? Are you brain damaged? Are you retarded? and the class would laugh at them, HARD.

Those were hostile and dark days, If you would have asked the teachers if they knew about ADHD, ADD, Autism or Dyslexia they would in fact beat you for thinking that you are smarter than them.

Thinking about all of this now I feel very sorry for those poor kids. They are adults now, I’ve seen one of them some couple of weeks back when I went to Nelspruit my home town. He used to sit with me in class and I would deliberately let him copy my work. We never spoke about me letting him copy my work, it was something we both knew I had to do because we both knew his struggle with learning!

This guy is now running one of the biggest shops and butcheries in the township, he also has a tent business, where he hires out tents. He is indeed a very successful business person. A thousand folds better than the teacher who used to make fun of him.

And I’m thinking but this guy couldn’t read in class in fact I’m pretty sure to this day he still can’t read because he dropped out of school because of his struggle to read!

This write up is to say I’m sorry for laughing when the teachers made fun of our friends. THE TEACHERS DIDN’T KNOW THAT THEY DIDN’T KNOW!

“It’s all in your head.”

Seeing the picture of Rashied Staggie, the (former) leader of the notorious gang “The Hard Livings” from the Cape, reminds me of one of the ferocious killer and criminal we’ve ever had in Pienaar, the township I grew up in.

His name was Skara,

You see, as a kid I was tall and my name????… Let’s just say I was bullied a lot because of my height and name as a kid and so, I tended to be a loner.

Skara on the other hand was one of the most feared criminals in my township, he spent half his life in prison. He was particularly known for his violent temper. You really didn’t want to cross paths with him!

Skara was my neighbour, and the day he was stoned to death by the whole community I was there! Before he died he asked for water from me. And everyone was astonished to hear him mention my name and asked for water because Skara didn’t have any friends and didn’t talk to anyone!

This though was not an accident or came as a surprise to me because I only and only I, was privy to a side of Skara not everyone knew. His softer side.

Skara grew up a tall child like me, and the name “Skara” was a nickname from jail, so he identified with me but didn’t say anything. And me being me as a kid didn’t figure out why the notorious thug liked me so much!

He sure was thinking that I was gonna turn out like him. Full of extreme anger and hate!

Skara didn’t figure out one thing though. That it’s not about how you look or your name, even where you come from or your sexual orientation or what people think of you. It’s about your mindset! It’s all in your brain!

I realised this from an early age!

Am I A Monkey or A Man?

This is my respond to Penny Sparrow a real estate agent woman from KwaZulu Natal (KZN) who shared a post on Facebook comparing holiday makers that flock to beaches in KZN on New Year’s Day to monkeys.

When apartheid died, the millions who firmly believed in it didn’t die with it, in fact they are still here with us hiding behind pseudonyms secretly pushing the apartheid agenda everywhere from schools to corporate to public spaces. I’ve been called all sorts of racial names by racists like ‪#‎PennySparrow‬ and I’m just glad that finally there’s a face

Asking for a bland forgiveness

No madam, apology not accepted madam. Not only because it is loaded with sarcasm instead of sincerity but also because your initial statement was truthful to your thoughts. For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Your initial post is not a bad joke, or a distasteful utterance, it is the honest truth of how you really think and feel about black people. The problem here is that you are not the only person who sees us as stupid monkeys who deserve nothing better in life. White supremacists like yourself keep raping this forgiveness that we as black people are extending to your kind. We are expected to “move on already” because it doesn’t matter anymore, when there are people like you who will not gracefully share a public beach? If you’re disgusted by the presence of black people in a public beach, how repulsed and revolted are you when you have to spend days on end selling a house to them? Oh! Wait, you wouldn’t sell a house to a monkey!

We live in a society where we have to scrape our way to get basic things like education, housing and medical care. We work in industries that try their best to exclude us. Our intelligence and leadership skills will not be acknowledged without government legislature like BEE. We continue to be sidelined and denied opportunities because we are black. We have a generational poverty inheritance to undo while still trying to obtain economic freedom and accumulate our own wealth that we will leave for future generations.

This whilst racism and fascism is blocking our every endeavor. It is extremely hard for us to live everyday hoping and working hard to make this country a better place , letting go of the justified resentment and grudges that we should be holding. We extend a hand, we are civil and welcoming to white people,we give you the benefit of doubt by not assuming that not all white people are racist. Then comes you, insensitive white supremacist racist, in the nature of the monkey you call us, you swing feces at us! How long must we forgive the same people who insist on poking the same wound we are trying to heal?
So no madam, your apology doesn’t mean anything to us, because it means nothing to you either. Apology not accepted. In isiXhosa we say uyasinyela straight.

A way forward

The only reason that so many people are shocked by comments made by this Penny Sparrow is because of the fact that as South Africans we pretend as if all is well, things are not okay in this country, racism is still rife in this country, majority of black people live in extreme poverty, yet we pretend as if everything is okay. We pretend that black and whites live together in harmony, no it is not like that and we all know it. Deep down, behind closed doors we all have issues that we still have to deal with. In the dawn of democracy in 94 we pretended that we like each other, but we knew it that it wasn’t the case.

We pretend under the so called Rainbow Nation. South Africans racism is alive and we all now it, but we pretend as if it doesn’t exist because we don’t want to look bad in the eyes of the world. We pretend that it doesn’t exist because we don’t want to upset the spirit of Mandela and his reconciliation. Stuff that, let us face issue and deal with them head on, because this pretending will never take us anywhere as a nation. So stop acting so surprised when the likes of Penny Sparrow and co reminds us of the brutal truth. South Africa is still far from being racism free, unless we wake-up, stop pretending and do something about it.

If only South Africa was hard on drugs, if only!

I’m a seldom overseas traveler. I’m stunned by the stories here. I’ve bumped into this site (lockedup) while looking up for Minister Siyabonga Cwele which eventually led me to his wife’s arrest and I found myself exploring South Africans in foreign jails. It is heart-wrenching to read these stories and eye opening at the same time. In particular because when they give a description of how a drug mule looks like, they simple say ” Just stand in front of the mirror, that’s how a drug mule look like”!

I’ll make do visit South Africans in prisons whenever I go abroad, just to give them emotional and moral support and maybe some financial support as well. Thanks for starting the site, and warning us of the realities out there Belinda West!

Speaking of which!

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I lived in Indonesia for a while. The first thing you are constantly reminded of when you’re reading the brochures to go there is “Don’t get yourself in trouble by doing drugs” and when you go for your visa at the embassy they will dedicate some 2 to 3 minutes to warn you about doing drugs in Indonesia!..When you are about to land, the airline hostess will clearly announce in English and Bahasa that drugs have a heavy penalty in this country. When you step in the airport, the first thing you see is a big sign, I remember it well it was all in red and the words ” PENALTY FOR DOING DRUGS IS DEATH SENTENCE” were in white and I thought to myself, these people mean business about this drugs thing! Only to see on the news the very next evening that 4 Nigerians and an Australian were caught with drugs at the Soekarno-Hatta Airport, the very spot I passed through, and they hastily received the death sentence in a much publicized case. I thought to myself if only in South Africa we were this hard on drugs if only!