What solidarity looks like

by | Sep 30, 2016 | Opinion

I’ve learnt, not only through my participation and involvement in #FeesMustFall, but my upbringing and other social justice work, that in moments when others aren’t able to carry themselves, I have to extend comradeship in order to continue the cause that we are collectively fighting for .

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“I hope history judges you for not fighting for Afrika.”

by | Sep 30, 2016 | Opinion

I still struggle to fully express the thoughts and emotions that ran through me at that moment when I decided to sit in front of heavily armed police officers, I had no ammunition but my books.

 

By: Fatimata Moutloatse

I had never really imagined how my confrontation with death would present itself. In fact for the longest of time I was quite afraid of death.  However once you truly believe in something, you are prepared to fight for it by all means necessary – even if it means dying for it. That is my stance on the liberation of black people.

 

The #FeesMustFall movement is more than just a “protesting minority who seek to deprive other students of their right to learn”; through access to education this movement seeks to restore the human dignity of the most socially and economically excluded people.

 

It is no secret that black people form the bulk of the population and are deprived of socio-economic opportunities due to their dispossession during colonialism. Nevertheless, what makes me so frustrated is the fact that people do not seem to take this movement and its general call for free decolonised education seriously. I mean, how can you not take access to education seriously? Especially when most of the societal ills we experience as black people are a result of lack of access to education.

On the other side of the spectrum, the type of education we do have access to seems to further subjugate the black person.

The call for free decolonised education transcends the university spaces and finds its origins within our pre-school and primary school.  As an activist within this movement, I realise that our demand can never fully be achieved if we continue to dismiss the appalling conditions of the overall education system in South Afrika. Therefore access to education and a curriculum reform are the right steps to take. Cummon, I mean, take us seriously!

 

Education cannot mean sending poor South Afrikan youth to institutions hoping to produce a larger labour force which perpetuates a capitalist agenda. Instead education should mean service to Afrika. Service to millions of black people who remain rejected, excluded, displaced and dispossessed due to colonialism. Now if that is not reason enough for people to see the importance of free decolonised education, then I don’t know what is.

 

Mine is to say that the emancipation of all Afrikans is paramount to the restoration of Azania. I will continue to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves, speak for those who cannot speak for themselves and ultimately teach them enough that they one day will be able to fight and speak for themselves.

 

I hope history judges you for not fighting for Afrika.

IZWE LETHU MA’AFRIKA

 

 

Keitumetse Fatimata Moutloatse
2nd BA Social Work
#Fmf activist and Wits PASMA

 

I’m cheesed off with your bloody makeup

by | Sep 17, 2016 | Opinion

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I’m sorry to say that the views you’re about to read can be extremely abhorrent and borderline unsophisticated.  I am an exception in a world where beauty and advancement in women is gauged by the quality of nails, hair, eye lashes and the powder put on their faces.  Instead, I appreciate exquisite beauty and I love simplicity.

It’s in my constitution to treat every woman with respect and tact.  And despite my views on this particular topic, I don’t and will never treat women as subjects of my indecent judgement.  I don’t think anyone should look good “for someone else” but as a human being I just happen to find a thrill when I see unblemished natural beauty. When I can’t see any of that around, I fret, which I guess is the reason for me to talk about this.

I love my African sisters.  They are amazing in so many ways.  Most of them have luscious lips, appetizing eyes and drop-dead fine faces.  But I think most often that glamor is defaced by all these cosmetics.

I am not expecting ladies in 2016 to be backward dinosaurs but I always feel a burr in my chest when pure allure is buried beneath some insipid make-up, creepy lipstick, excessively weird nails and a weave.

We are being starved of black beauty by our black sisters who seem to have adopted in their minds an epitome of how a woman should look in contrast of true attributes of natural black women.

It’s basic common sense that you don’t tinker with something that needs no fix.  I’m left wondering why you’re tampering with such beauty with your makeup.  Part of the reason, I think, we were talking about draconian rules on black hair in former Model C schools two weeks ago is because whites have gotten so used to black people wearing weaves that it almost feels eccentric when a black girl embraces her uniqueness.

Those rules were wrong on at least two counts.  One, they’re racist and secondly that they throttle nature and uniqueness.  Dare I say that in my life I see only a few dozen black women with their natural hair.  For many the experience of having “black hair” has become foreign.

In my opinion, genuine beauty is such a rare jewel.  When I spot a beautiful, natural black woman, I don’t think twice about a compliment. Sometimes I compliment originality because originality nowadays is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

There is a television commercial that speaks about character and to a broader extent genuineness.  Towards the end of this advert, there is an important question that goes “take away his award, his car, his girlfriend. What does he have left?” and that’s the question I wish to ask every woman with bogus stuff all over her body.  If you take away your artificial nails, hair, eye lashes, and lipstick.  What do you have left?

I believe that perfection is when there is nothing to take away yet you almost feel like there is nothing more to add.  Being beautiful is being yourself.

Good hair, no Becky

by | Sep 10, 2016 | Featured 2, Opinion

The group of black high school girls in Pretoria who came together to protest their school’s code of conduct that instructs them to chemically straighten their hair have lifted the lid on the far-reaching effects of institutionalised racism that persists within our schools and  within our curricula.

I can never say I understand how black women feel about their hair, I do not live that reality. I can only speak from what I’ve observed. When I was in high school, black boys were always told to keep their hair to a certain length or to shave it off completely. These “styles” were deemed “neater”.

After the Pretoria High School for Girls protest, I realise that another aspect of the narrative of institutionalised racism is the stifling of black expression in its natural, untainted form. The system in which black people exist aims to rob us of a self-actualised identity. The continual oppression of black people comes from many areas: economic disenfranchisement, cultural appropriation and erased histories.

Since the world functions on the disillusioned system that “white is right, black is whack”, we’re forced to make our black bodies less black, to conform aesthetically to whiteness. This is why natural hair is considered “dirty” and “unruly”. This is why young black girls are expected to straighten their hair – straight hair is less of a threat to whiteness.

Black people are also not entirely innocent in this whole system. We, within our own communities, attach this unfounded importance to hair that ultimately is seen as definitive of a human being. In our own black homes, we are told to cut our hair and, like how my aunt once told my female dreadlocked cousin, that “you would look better if you relaxed your hair”. Black people have been programmed by the white standards of colonialism and beauty to an extent that we unknowingly perpetuate those standards in our own homes. We have also been part of this problem, by not calling out a system that keeps telling us to hate ourselves and all the facets of our blackness.

One thing is for sure, hair is important in black culture. Early African civilisations used hair to show a person’s family background, tribe and social status. In the American civil rights movement, hair was used as symbol of rebellion and resistance. Some groups believed that hair was a conduit for spiritual interaction with God. Throughout history, black hair has evolved and morphed to be a representation of many things and even in 2016, it remains a topic of discussion for being one of the sure-fire ways blackness can be expressed.

But remember this, whatever style you choose, you are not your hair.

 

Good hair, no Becky

by | Sep 10, 2016 | Featured 1, Opinion

On Monday August 29, #StopRacismAtPretoriaGirlsHigh was trending on social media while black learners at the school were protesting against what they described as cultural discrimination.

The learners highlighted their school rules which force them to wear their hair in ways that conforms to western standards and how they are prohibited from standing in groups or speaking their mother tongue languages during school hours.

The movement sparked a national conversation in which I think provided a good learning opportunity for all South Africans. First off, let me say definitively, it’s not about hair! The debate plays out through the dreadlocks and the cornrows but really, the conversation is about institutionalised racism. And more specifically about the institutionalised racism at some of this country’s most prestigious schools.

In other words it’s about the fact that black students are animalised in schools. When white teachers think that black hair is untidy, they refer to it as a “birds nest”. They are “behaving like hooligans”, when they are often, just being themselves, themselves in a way that is not white. They are told to “stop cackling” or “acting like monkeys” when they laugh too loudly and their “messy” schoolbags or desks are said to resemble a “pigsty”. I’ve experienced all of this and I am only one person. One black child. So there’s this consistent reference to black students and animal behaviour. This notion that your habits limit your acceptance into human society.

Then there’s the chatter about the code of conduct.

The code of conduct is fundamentally a set of rules that governs the school. It is the law. All laws only find relevance in the societies they exist in. When society evolves, so too should the law. Codes are written by ordinary people who seek to promote their own bias. How can we expect a law that was written without black students in mind to work to serve them?

The very problem that the learners are working to address is the idea of not seeing colour. It is necessary to see race so the structures that people of colour occupy can operate to equally benefit them. Ignorance to colour, “race blindness”, is not a noble gesture, it is to dismiss the diversity of people.  Diversity is good, it also requires flexibility and that must be taught in institutions of learning.

Schools are the facilitators of such lessons but they should not simply distribute teachings as gospel. Paying for an education is not like buying loaves of bread. The factors that produce an education, such as teachers, rules and environment are as important as the education itself. Learners are not consumers but stakeholders in the chain of production.

It is up to the schools to look into their policies, change the rules and fix it. The stakeholders can’t be told to go elsewhere if they are unhappy, it’s their school too. Black students are not the inconvenient guests at the former model C school, they are partners, these codes of conduct should get it right.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Wits Vuvuzela, Good hair, no Becky, September 10, 2016

Wits Vuvuzela, It’s not just about hair, September 10, 2016

Slice of Life: How much longer?

by | Aug 27, 2016 | Opinion

IMG_0765 (2)Thabo*, a student I knew at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, had once applied to the Dean of Humanities to allow him to take a certain combination of subjects. His choice of subjects was quite complicated and his request was rarely agreed to. Thabo though was a high-performing student who had achieved top marks throughout his university career and so it seemed obvious that he would be granted permission.

He had heard of this combination from a classmate of his, (Kate*), who was recently allowed to pick up these subjects. To our surprise, the Dean declined his request, citing marks that did not quite meet the requirements for such a combination. Both Thabo and his classmate were doing the same degree with the same subjects for the first two years at Rhodes, but Kate’s marks were much lower than that of Thabo’s. Naturally, questions of race surfaced and specifically why it was that a white student with lower marks was allowed to take this combination of subjects while a black student couldn’t. The incident revealed to me the issue of white mediocrity in this country.

How much longer will we continue to celebrate white mediocrity? How much longer should black people, women and other minority groups have to work twice as hard to receive half of the recognition and reward offered to whites and men that are clearly not worth it?

How much longer will our lecturers, mentors, tutors, and academic institutions repress the black child? The very same people who are meant to be moulding a new cohort of intellectually, socially, financially and personally “woke” young graduates, are the very same people using their power to ostracize them and belittle their work. I am tired of watching my peers treated as though they can never amount to anything simply because their lecturers do not like them. Academic spaces are supposed to be a hub of intellectual, mature individuals who concern themselves only with the expansion of knowledge and yet this is not the case.

How much longer will it take for the LGBTIQA+ community to be free in their own home? To have the social – not just legal – right to embrace their love, their personhood and their right to belong? It is inconceivable to me that in 2016, people are being killed, raped, heckled and kept out of certain spaces purely because of who or what they are.

How much longer?

How much longer will black knowledge and history be regarded as second grade to western thought? Ours is a rich history shaped by intellectuals and leaders who have transformed what it means to be black and to be African. These are the stories that have to be told in universities, schools, churches and social spaces. For it is in celebrating the fact that we can produce knowledge of a sound and intellectually superior standard, that we are able to move forward as black people.

How much longer until minority groups can rise up and create for themselves a system that embraces them, a system that not only nurtures them but allows them to flourish and realise their truest potentials? In the wake of collective student movements, we must become the leaders we so desperately need, leaders who can recognize their faults, admit that they have failed and yield power others when it is necessary.

How much longer?