An open letter to black tweens

I want to kick start this open letter by saying I am in no way an ageist, in fact I have family who were born in the 90’s and am able to tolerate them in small bursts. Having said that, I feel it is only fitting to ask you to do one thing: listen to yourselves.

I was inspired to write this letter after having a short conversation with a young man who was born in 1993. He was trying to explain to me why his life and experiences would be better than mine because he was a coconut. I trembled in the 35 degree heat as I tried my damdest not to pounce for his jugular like the panther that I am. He then went on to take all of his privileges for granted suggesting that access to running water and electricity had nothing to do with how one performs in school and that everyone should have an “equal shot”. My irritation turned to sorrow as I realised that this poor child had no idea what he was talking about, he was just quoting various catch phrases that the media and “grown-ups” were throwing at him and others his age.

I realised that a conundrum was at hand. As a child of the 80’s who can still smell the apartheid regime on the breath of my elders and can still clearly remember being the only black face in class, what was I to say to this young man? was I to tell him that being a self proclaimed coconut doesn’t not change the fact that he comes from “that side of town” and that his white friend may not be hurrying over for sleep over’s? Was I to point out that racism doesn’t listen…it just sees and acts. Was I to beg him not to listen to a damn thing a single politician tells him because; where one comes from and what one has will always affect where one is going and how one will get there? Or should I have just let him live in his blissful world of ignorance, sent him off on his unicorn and let him gallop into the rainbow?

The fact of the matter is that us old people are battered and bruised. Our bitter experiences have changed the way we move in society. I can’t objectively council a youth when it comes to this stuff because being called black bitch at the age of 12 by a forty-something old white man changed me. All my wit and charm counted for nothing and being a coconut would not have helped me. So I will say this:

Look to elders for guidance not for answers. Taste privilege but don’t forget the taste of deprivation. Touch the highest bar of success with your feet firmly places in the two roomed shack you grew up in. Take in every breath with the knowledge that it was fought for and listen to yourselves. Know what you are saying and why you are saying it. Stop trying so hard. Not everyone is going to like you but remember that has got nothing to do with you. Don’t waste your life trying…just be.

I don't pronounce the "c" in Schedule

White people trust me. They really do and I don’t blame them because I am awesome. They invite me to dinner and introduce me to their parents and feed me crudités. However, today I will have to strain my relationship with my white friends by being honest (I will let the irony of that serve as ambiance to this piece). The fact of the matter is; I have uncovered my secret; that je ne sais quoi that allows white people to let their guard down around me; I don’t pronounce the “c” in “schedule”.

Now before you dismiss this as inaccurate street therapy…or racist, please allow me to elaborate. I am a very dark skinned woman who is often mistaken, by many, for a foreign national on account of my dark skin and my accent. Upon finding that I am in fact a Xhosa woman, both black and white people tend to assume that my command of the English language and my fastidious approach with regards to my pronunciation means that I hate black people. Apparently there is an English Language/Black Pride ratio that is being applied throughout society and my Black Pride numbers are dismal due to the height of my English Language numbers. This would be absurdly funny if it weren’t for the fact that it is a real thing and people subconsciously use this ratio all the time. Still not convinced? Please read on:

When I was but an impressionable youth, I noticed that I kept finding myself in a rather awkward scenario. My white friends kept telling “black jokes” in my presence. The first time it happened I quietly looked for my reflection in a nearby window to check if I still had the charcoal coloured face I had come to know and love. When I saw my dark face staring (confused) back at me, I realised that I had to make a decision; was I going to giggle along and be a good black or was I going to stand up for my people? I heard myself say “that’s kind of racist” softly as if to get the statement out of the way. My white friends patted me on the back and giggled “come on now Julz, you are hardly what I would call black” (that response made me feel funny). These situations kept coming up time after time as if some higher power was trying to bring a point across. Was I a sell out? I began to look closely at the reason my accent was as it was. I did not go to a private school and was not adopted by a gay white couple at birth so there had to be a deeper meaning to it all.

The fact of the matter is I am a child who started at a predominantly white school at a time when the country’s future was not clear. My mother had no way of knowing which way the country was going to go. The streets were on fire and the threat of civil war was hanging heavy in the air. So she decided to arm me with the best English accent that her money could buy. She believed that doing this would secure my future no matter what happened. If the country went to the dogs and white people sent us all back to the homelands, I could still, at the very least, get a good job as a high end domestic worker by impressing them with my poised accent. In the event that white people did not send us to the homelands, I would be in the running to live the South African dream and become an MEC (whatever that is). Fast forward back to present day; I have my “good English” and absolutely no desire to become an MEC, and these awkward scenarios are still rearing their annoying heads and my white friends’ responses still make me feel funny.

I have never considered myself a prude, nor do I get myself all worked up over things before I know and understand the situation but I need to make something clear. Just because I speak “good English” and am well read, does not mean that I think that the word “Kaffir” is nothing but an Arabic word that has been misinterpreted. A Bitch is a female dog, but I don’t hear people telling women to calm down when someone refers to them as such. A seventeen year old democracy doesn’t change the fact that I would have failed the pencil, colour bar and brown paper bag test three decades ago and therefore would have been considered a second class citizen. This means that my parents were considered second class citizens as were their parents. I know that when bad things happen people say; “ten years from now we will all look back and laugh” but I just want to warn everyone that it may take a little longer for most black people to find the word “Kaffir” paradoxical. Am I asking white people to whisper in the presence of black people? No. I am simply reminding white people (as well as all those black people who have promised to find and kill all blacks with the bourgeois twang in their voice) that “good English” is not a symptom of self hate and even if it were; etiquette is a standard requirement if one wants to be acknowledged as a human being. Just like we don’t tell fat jokes around obese people, we frown upon those who tell black jokes around black people.

There is no pride in being perceived as a pseudo white person, nor is there shame in having gotten a good education. The shame is rather in the fact that the good accent matters so much and that English is interpreted as some higher power that only the best of the best can touch. The sad fact of the matter is that; we model C snotty types make the best window dressing…which brings me to that funny feeling I felt in the presence of those “black jokers”: Disappointment. I was disappointed that this group who I perceived as my friends and others perceived as open minded and diverse were racist’s incognito. They were forgiving me for my blackness on account of my general whiteness. I refuse to be that spineless excuse for a person that is too scared of being a sell out to speak English well but that by no means suggests I have any desire to eat crudités for the rest of my life.

I love my culture, my colour and my people. I love my language, my heritage and my country. Having said that; I will never apologise for my education, nor will I be ashamed of my command of the English language. I am a Xhosa woman from Peddie in the Eastern Cape AND I am a woman that doesn’t pronounce the “c” in schedule.

nina simone - my baby just cares for me

She said that she would prefer a broken neck to another broken heart. by Amir Sulaiman

She said that she would prefer a broken neck to another broken heart.
I said "Remember, even the beauty of birth leaves its own scars
And know that you will find your home right where you are."

She said, "I know it sounds cliche, but I really am just waiting to exhale."
She's not looking for a perfect man, she ain't holding out for Denzel
She's just looking for a real man,
But she said "Most of the realest were in graves or in jail"
Just an upright brother, but she's left with low down brothers, homo thugs, and downlow brothers.

And it took her some time with herself to discover
That having love is even more important than having a lover
But what am I supposed to tell her?
That it's going to be okay? But it may not be.
It may be hard and ugly,
Difficult, complicated, rough and bloody
And I said, "So many women are struggling"

She said, "Yeah, I'd like a man to kiss me, I'd like a man to hug me
But he's gotta truly love love before he can truly love me"
I said, "I feel you." She said, "No, you're not feeling me.
We are women bringing up seeds,
Our own sons grow up thinking love is a disease
Ducking and dodging real relationships, and just gonna take what they please
And they treat pregnancy like it's an STD
If the test comes back positive, it's a negative
And they are ghost in the streets,
Drunk in the wind, only a moment is spent and those moments are brief
Our sons' role models are rolling stones unknown or deceased
They figure we can't teach them manhood, so they'll get grown in the streets
So in the cold world they find warmth with the men holding the heat."

I said "There's gotta be a change."
She said, "Yeah, it's gotta be more than poems on TV"
I said, "I feel you." She asked me how I survive.
I said, "By Allah, it was my mother otherwise
I would have been dead, crazy, institutionalized."

"She kept us in the good neighborhoods, even though she couldn't keep on the lights
So we could go to the best schools learning to read and to write.
Sometimes we'd be so broke, in the store, she'd have to pick between the beans and the rice.
Sometimes she'd put ketchup on a navy bean so it wouldn't seem like we're eating the same thing every night.
Two jobs during the day, and one at night.
And the stuff I saw her endure, I never wanna see my wife [endure]
So I know being a man is more than being male, and I'm focused on doing it right."

"But when I think about my childhood, I don't think about poverty
I remember how she hugged me, kissed me, taught me, loved me.
And I know you prefer a broken neck to another broken heart
Broken parts that litter the night sky like stars.
But remember, even the beauty of birth leaves its own scars
And know that you will find your home, right where you are
We will find our homes right where we are."

-Amir Sulaiman

The Voo-Doo we Do

I was 16 years old when I witnessed my intoxicated uncle scream at the top of his lungs: “I’m a witch; Now what?” at a family gathering. I’m not clear on what the circumstances leading to this outburst were (though I think it is safe to assume that this was drunken babble rather than a factual declaration) but I do know that this awakened a curiosity in me that I have struggled to satisfy. It is a cultural barrier that will stubbornly withstand all transformation. Even in the most diversely evolved future, this will be the thing that white people and black people will struggle to logically explain to one another; witchcraft.

In the many years of society grooming me to become an uppity pseudo white kid who perpetuated elements of white supremacy with my snotty “white” accent and my inability to speak my own vernacular, never have I been confronted with my own blackness more than when a white teacher suggested that there was no such thing as witchcraft. My burning desire to tell her that she was an idiot was held back only by my pursed lips and fear of detention. I felt an almost primal need to list the many people who inexplicably went crazy or went to sleep and never woke up again. It was a confusing time. Surely, in a cut and dry world, bi-polar, schizophrenia, or heart and brain aneurisms would serve as more logical than the old lady next door hunched over a cauldron…but for some reason, at that moment my world seized to be cut and dry.

*I would like to take this opportunity to draw attention to the fact that white people are not completely untouched by the entity that is witchcraft as “supernatural” and “vampire diaries” have so considerately brought to light. If you can believe in vampires and ware wolves, we can believe that an undisclosed amount of people have been turned into flies and various other insects.*

Now, before I delve into my opinion of the issue of witchcraft I would like to apologise in advance to the many people who will be offended by my statements: I don’t mean to hurt you but I do mean what I say. The door to the belief in witchcraft is kicked open around the same time that the door to the belief in miracles. That door is then taken off the hinges by the scientific theories e.g. “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Angels/demons, God/Lucifer, Heaven and Hell are all just testiments of this “tit for tat” theory. Then there are slogans such as: “If you believe; it you can achieve it” and “mind over matter” which are thrown around all willy-nilly and everyone feels great about it…but what about those who want to achieve things that are to the detriment of others? Surely they can achieve what they believe too? Or is there some sort of filter that ensures that all bad thoughts are not realised? Isn’t that what witchcraft is essentially: bad energy?

I don’t mean to trivialise the white experience at all, and I promise to write many articles on the white experience when I come back as a white woman in my next life, but right now as a black woman, I can honestly say that being black is tough. Often, watching a black family come from nothing and gradually scrape their way to success, school their children and go on to live a comfortable life is somewhat of a miracle, so much so that most times it is assumed that the family had a little help from say….a demonic snake? If the family suffers some sort of a loss (their child or close relative dies) it is widely accepted that the deceased’s life was how the family had to pay for their wealth. No one mentions the double shifts the mother worked or the two jobs the father has because; everyone has double shifts and everyone has two jobs but not everyone has a Lexus. Who is going to tell the man with two jobs, five kids and a mountain of debt that; the only reason the Nxumalo’s have a double story house and their kids are in private school is because they made sacrifices? We all make sacrifices and no one wants to hear that despite their sacrifices; things may never work out for them as well as they worked out for the Nxumalo’s. So it must be a demonic snake. It can’t be luck or good fortune or hard work and preparation meeting opportunity…it is obviously a demonic snake because a demonic snake means that it is fair. A demonic snake means that the only reason the Nxumalo’s are making it, is because they have no problem selling their souls and we all have souls to sell meaning we can all make it.

I’m not saying that witchcraft does not exist but I do believe our insecurities and hardships as black people contribute widely to how much of a role we think witchcraft plays in our lives. There are people who experience hardship after hardship and struggle to make it from one day to the next. People who struggle to actually live due to the amount of sorrow that burdens their day to day lives. Those people are the ones who wake up one day and think: “this can’t be life”. Those are the people who are looking for a reason…desperately seeking an explanation for their unending misfortune and in those cases, it takes one person pointing out a possible witch to initiate a re-enactment of the “Salem witch trials”. With belief comes passion and not all passion is positive. So again, negative energy steals the show.

There are very few black people (if any) that can say with a straight face that they honestly do not believe in witchcraft, mostly because we have just seen too much. The average black person has seen things that would send most whimpering back into their mother’s arms. When I apply my cheap street psychology, my findings are that we need to believe in the supernatural. We need to know that, when needed, there is a means to protect oneself from the evils of this world, whether it is by means of prayer, meditation or chewing on a stick Gonondo gave you. But whose Voo-Doo is the right Voo-Doo? Well that is not for me to decide.

ANCYL: Zuma’s uthini baba moment - by Tinyiko Maluleka

*A must read! by Tinyiko Maluleka...very engaging and interesting angle*

Jacob Zuma was made to wait for three hours because the start of the ANCYL’s elective conference (Midrand, June 16 2011) was delayed by, among others, the late arrival of ANCYL president Julius Malema. Once the conference began, Zuma had to listen to Malema‘s wide-ranging, 90-minute speech — a speech that was not all that flattering of Zuma or the ANC. When Zuma eventually got to say his say, there was such disrespectful heckling, especially from a front row of seats where a section of the ANCYL leadership was seated. Apparently, such was the brazenness of the heckling that at one point in his speech, Zuma had to pause and confront one particularly indecent heckler directly. “U thini baba? U khuluma nami?” Excuse me sir? Are you talking to me?

Zuma’s u thini baba moment was an astonishing moment. It occurred in the middle of one of Zuma’s most important speeches of the year. The speech was important enough for Zuma to wait for three hours in order to deliver it. It was important enough for Zuma to keep a crowd of 55 000 South Africans at Orlando Stadium waiting for three hours — not to mention the millions who waited to see and hear him speak on television. Some commentators and observers have slated Zuma for standing the nation up in order to buy ANCYL support for his second term. Others took the Malema bait about the ANCYL being “the protector of Zuma”. All indications are that there was no love lost between Zuma and Malema. Not then and not now. Not even when Zuma touted Malema as a possible future president. They simply recognised how much they needed one another — each for his own political survival.

Ever since Malema burst onto the political scene in 2008, Zuma and Malema have been playing off each other like striker and midfielder. Such has been the intensity of their mutual need for one another it has been necessary for each to routinely check his potential for independence from the other. In 2008 and much of 2009 Malema’s midfielder role included deflecting attention away from Zuma so Zuma “could score the goals”. Of course Malema was but one of a dozen of Zuma “midfielders” — Mbalula, Vavi, Mantashe, Phosa, Nzimande etc. From late 2009 onwards Malema started showing signs of boredom with the midfielder role. Soon he was scoring own goals and real goals, politically and financially.

The u thini baba moment occurs smack on the day and occasion where Malema was officially declaring his graduation from both the midfield role and the striker’s role into the captain’s role. Where Zuma’s June 16 speech was framed in didactic and clarification mode, Malema’s June 16 speech was clearly framed as an agenda-setting speech. Malema’s lieutenants sensed that their leader had the upper hand and in their enthusiasm, to savour the moment, they catapulted Zuma into the u thini baba moment.

Was this the moment in which Zuma came to realise that his partnership with Malema had served its term and outlived its purpose? I want to suggest that the most significant thing at the ANCYL conference was not the waiting Zuma had to endure; it was not when Malema declared his loyalty to Zuma; it was not the shameful jilting of the crowd-in-waiting at Orlando Stadium; the most significant thing was rather the u thini baba moment. Like a spurned lover who knows deep down that the game is up but waits and pleads desperately for denial or unequivocal confirmation, the u-thini-baba moment was the moment Zuma both needed and dreaded.

When the moment came, the least Zuma could do was acknowledge it. So he pressed the pause button on his speech, forcing a moment of complete silence in the hall. Typically, he pushed his reading glasses up his nose bridge, bit his lower lip and wiping all traces of the smile that sometimes seems to sit permanently on his face, he turned around, looked the heckler in the eye and asked two terse questions: U thini baba? U khuluma nami? Say that again! Are you talking to me? The questions were rhetorical and the heckler new that instantly. No response was necessary. These were no questions, really. It was a growl accepting the challenge to war and verbalising a broken relationship and publicly acknowledging a deep sense of mutual disdain.

It was a moment of revelation for the youth league as well. It was a moment that unmasked the webs of deceit and flattery that had characterised Malema’s earlier pledge to Zuma that he was seated among his staunchest and most loyal supporters — his “protectors”. The u thini baba moment was therefore a moment of truth for both parties. Before that moment things were tricky and difficult for Zuma — much like looking for one’s lost or misplaced contact eye lenses in a dark room. After that moment things became clearer but no less difficult.

We now live in the post-u thini baba era. This is the era in which we have seen the installation of Mac Maharaj and Amos Masondo in Zuma’s presidential offices — the Union Buildings and Luthuli House. But alas! Seduced by the almost total victory at the ANCYL elections and buoyed by the animated responses to the nationalisation proposal, Malema and his supporters appear to have either missed or misread the significance of the u thini baba moment. From time to time they slip into pre-u thini baba mode. They seem to think that they are still covered with Zuma’s boundless blanket of goodwill and goodness. Malema and his friends do not seem to realise that Zuma has withdrawn the political overdraft he had given them.

In the process Malema and the league have proceeded to usurp foreign policy and economic policy leadership from both the government and the ruling party. This is how Malema has proceeded to install the nationalisation of mines debate at the centre of national discourse. And this is how he has issued some of the sharpest and most embarrassing criticisms of South African foreign policy positions — on Libya, on Ivory Coast and more recently and most brazenly on Botswana. Nor has Malema stopped doing what he does better than everyone else — manufacturing a thousand red herrings and plausible plastic issues to rationalise and justify his actions and utterances. One such red herring is the threat of disciplinary action against Malema, an attempt to reduce or remove his influence on the ANC succession debate.

Meanwhile the South African media have been hard at work — over the past month — trying to expose what they see as the unseemly side to Malema’s wealth. AfriForum has laid criminal charges. The Public Protector has indicated she will investigate certain aspects of the allegations. The ANC has a meeting with Malema and Co today. Will the ANC have the courage to act decisively? Will Zuma have the courage to act in a post-u thini baba manner or will he revert to a pre-u thini baba mode of action? All will soon be revealed

Degrees of separation

There is a major misconception in our modern society. Our post apartheid, rainbow nation, “we all have rights,” khumbaya, hand-holding society. The misconception…the assumption is that turning a privilege into a right makes it easier to attain; that the word “right” will cause a ripple of transformation which will, eventually, reach everyone. Here’s the problem with this assumption; it’s a load of rubbish. An example of this load of rubbish is the relationship between basic education and its distant cousin (twice removed); Higher Education. Allow me to elaborate:

When a child is sent to Pre-Primary School, it is generally assumed that from there they will advance to Primary school. Parents give one another advice as to which schools have the best teachers and conversations are had about application forms and similar processes. The child reaches the seventh grade and the same conversations are had about which high school is best and concerns over transportation and fees etc. When the child reaches the eleventh and twelfth grade, the conversation comes up again, which University or Technical college (or whatever else they are calling them nowadays) is best. Their fees are debated and reputations scrutinised and large volumes of information are shared. Now, these conversations stretch from rural Eastern Cape to Sandton, however whether all three of these conversations are had depends heavily on class and/or privilege. So…the access to the so-called right; depends on ones class and/or privilege. The margins seem clear; supposedly, everyone can ride the basic education bus…Higher Education, however, is a two seated sports car; no one is saying you can never ride it, you are just going to have to pay…and the currency is either Rands or human tears depending on your circumstances.

We have a knack for holding up “token rural pupils”. “Look at Themba, he lives in a mud hut and has never slept in a bed. His mother is a drunk and his classroom has no roof but he managed to get six distinctions in matric and go on to get more distinctions in University. He hasn’t a worry in the world because we are picking up the tab” what we don’t realise is that we are making Higher Education seem even more farfetched for any ‘C grade aggregate’ student who goes to the same school. By no stretch of their imagination are they going to get six distinctions and unfortunately that may be their only shot. Now there are those chosen few who decide that they will apply and attempt to get study loans once they are in University, but no one prepares them for the hostility that they will be faced with. They are not told that they will be expected to submit assignments electronically regardless of them having never used a computer let alone email. They are not warned that privileged people tend to stop listening when they hear a heavy rural accent. They are not informed that though they may have been accepted into the University; they will only be tolerated by the people in it. So, once again class and/or privilege (or lack thereof) stands between an individual and their rights. Even Themba and all of his distinctions and his zero balance on his fees account will struggle; and eventually have to choose: Is he Themba, the boy from a small village in Peddie, or is he a scholar at the University of Snooty. The two worlds are very far apart making them difficult to straddle, and usually the only method of survival is to succumb to grooming.

Our society is always too happy to throw people onto the lazy pile. Could someone please explain to me where ubuntu went? Whatever happened to empathy? When did it become so difficult for people to attempt to understand the circumstances of others? How is it that when a child goes into University and experiences a genuine culture shock, they become the responsibility of the Christians or the Hippies and everyone else is willing to stand back and watch them drown. Young men and women are leaving universities with debt and no degrees. Coming out worse off than when they went in. We, as a society, would like to attribute it all to laziness and lack of will…however, our unwillingness to acknowledge that there are other factors reveals that we are in fact the ones who are lazy and lack will. Perhaps I am being rash, perhaps my rants are propelled by mountains of debt made by student loans and I am just a sorry, nagging, bitter, stick in the mud who owes the government money….OR maybe, just maybe, there is some work to be done when it comes to the elitist nature of Higher Education.

Attaching privilege to any form of education perpetuates poverty. Children in rural areas throw blankets on mirrors and sit flat on the ground when the heavens darken for fear of being struck by lightning, those same children go to school every day but a University degree may never even cross their minds. What are the odds really?