One of my guilty pleasures is the movie Mean Girls. In the movie, a character named Karen asks the lead character Cady: “So if you’re from Africa, why are you white?” Although the question is asked in a funny way, the idea that there are no white people in “scary, dark Africa” is a stereotype that has often annoyed me.
Does the unavoidable pigment of my skin really exclude me from being a member of the continent I call home?
I have been extremely privileged to represent South Africa overseas in international competitions. Every trip has come with countless stares, mumbles and tactless questions from strangers about my obvious lack of expected blackness.
I can remember two accounts in particular, the first round of questioning came from a young Texan man who was fascinated with the strange mixed group of South Africans, to which I belonged. To his absolute amazement, not only were some of us white South Africans but we were all dressed in “real clothes”, were well-groomed and could speak fluent English.
He then launched into a list of questions about what it was like to live in huts, how we felt about being fully dressed instead of wearing animal skins, the difficulties of driving elephants to school and what we feed our pet lions.
In his defence, we all wove elaborate stories of what life in wild Africa was like. After a few minutes, the stories became too elaborate and we felt bad so we told him the truth about life in Johannesburg and that most of the wild animals were kept safely in zoos and game parks.
“Often I feel like I am not allowed to be proud of being African because my skin is too light.”
The second incident happened in Malaysia a few years later, while I was walking in the city to get food with friends. A local woman, seeing the South African flag on my backpack as I walked passed, stopped me and with genuine confusion asked me why I was white if I came from South Africa.
Fighting back the urge to give an offensively sarcastic and dramatic answer of “Oh my gosh! I’m white? I never noticed! All my life is a lie!” I opted for the more polite response that there is actually a reasonable amount of white people in South Africa (Surprise! We are not a bunch of unseen yeti-like creatures of legend who have all immigrated to Australia).
Despite my often humorous or sarcastic responses to questions about race, I find that these questions, which often come from a place of sincere misunderstanding, cause me to question my identity as an African. From a young age, I saw myself as member of a diverse and abundantly beautiful country.
I have jumped at the chance to make friends with people from other African countries and dreamed of exploring this beautiful continent I am lucky enough to call home. I was born in South Africa and have lived here my entire life, does that not classify me as South African? According to my I.D book it does, but I feel that society has a different opinion.
Often I feel like I am not allowed to be proud of being African because my skin is too light, like I should be ashamed to be a white African because it does not fit the common global idea of what being an African means.
I am fully aware that I am not black and that my South African family tree does not span the ages of history. But, I am an African. I am an African because this is where the roots of my identity lie, this is the land I love and this is where I will always return when home is needed.
South Africa is an undeniably beautiful and unique country. Those who have left the country can’t help but miss the many small things that make South Africa home.
1. Being able to watch live South African sports games at a reasonable time, not 2am.
When you are too tired to watch the game because it is on at 2am your time. Image: Disney / Via thebestgifsforme.blogspot.com
2. Cosmos blooming at the end of summer to show that winter is coming.
Cosmos grows along most roads to signal the start of lowered tempretures. Photo: Jack Holloway
3. South African Sunsets and Sunrises.
Sunset silhouette of Johannesburg. Photo: Samantha Camara
4. Buying fresh biltong hanging in the butchery.
Biltong selection. Photo: fabulousfab
5. Supporting South African Sports teams with other South Africans instead of being the only South African fan in the room.
A lonely South African Supporter. Photo: Peter Baker
6. The diversity of the South African nation.
A small representation of South African cultural diversity. Photo: Chrisna Herbst
7. Simple South African foods.
Simple South African food menu offered at the Kruger National Park. Photo: Vaiz Ha pap
8. Having people understand your South African accent and slang.
9. The Abundance of natural beauty.
The beautiful Blyde River Canyon. Photo: Fiver Locker
10. Finding South African sweets easily.
An illustration of favourite sweets that many South Africans abroad miss. Image: Dimitra Tzanos
Struggles of the young, successful and independent.
I’m 24, I live in Jo‘burg North and I’m working on my second degree. By most people’s standards I’m well on my way to success. Yet I hardly ever feel that way. Mostly because these achievements are nothing to write home about, at least not on the global scale.
People are often shocked to learn that one of my main goals in life is to be a mother. A mother of six to be exact. Six beautiful, cultured, free-thinking individuals that will give birth to more of this kind of human. That is the legacy I want. Planning, praying and hoping for my family is what keeps me up at night. Not the rat race.
Judge me not
Women like myself are constantly judged for putting their efforts into finding a life partner and building family rather than chasing a career.Such women are often seen as lacking ambition or having low self-esteem. Some people – usually other women – even dismiss such aspirations as their way of dealing with coming from a broken home. Well my self-esteem is doing just fine. I don’t have broken family issues and I am perfectly capable of having a kick-ass-career, if that is what I want.
“I would rather wake up at 7am to bake cup cakes with my little girl than be stuck in traffic on my way to work.”
The truth is, there is no profound reason for me wanting a family more than I want a career. This is just the kind of life that I want. I would rather wake up at 7am to bake cup cakes with my little girl than be stuck in traffic on my way to work. This is not to say that I don’t want to work, it just means that my career choice was specifically selected to allow for such a life.
From an early age we are all taught to work hard for what we want and who you want to become. We are encouraged to work on our spiritualty, our health and career constantly. Yet one of the most important aspects of one’s life must wait until all the other things are perfectly aligned? Who are you meant to share your career achievements with? Who are you meant to travel the world with? Who else is meant to benefit from all the wealth we’re accumulating?
We are finally in a world where women can choose whatever life they desire and make it happen. So if I need to serial date to find my life partner, I will. If I have the option to marry rich to ensure my six kids are well taken care, I’ll take it. If being a mother means I must adopt across racial lines then so be it. The point is that my life choices are nobody’s business, not even the feisty feminists who fought for me to have this choice.
Tshepo Mothiba is a programme project officer at the Wits Transformation Office. He spoke to Wits Vuvuzela about the challenge of having few Black South African academics. Only 14% of Wits’s academic staff are black South Africans.
Why are there so few black academics at Wits?
I do not think academic careers are attractive. Universities cannot afford to compete with a private sector which offers people better salaries. Some people have been discriminated against because of their gender and race, even students. So, as soon as they finish their degree all they want, is to leave Wits. We have had cases of people coming to us saying they were not promoted because they are black. Some people do not feel they fit in to the culture of the institution.
Do you think Wits promotes black African academics?
Over the years, Wits has put in place measures aimed at providing support to develop academics.However, the transformation process has been very slow. Wits has always portrayed itself as non-racial but there are challenges with employment equity. The university says it cannot find suitable-qualified academics, as they cannot compete with private sector.
Who should be blamed for this?
The apartheid system. Even today, white people still have privilege. In job interviews, blacks compete with people who are being interviewed in their [first] language, so they stand a better chance of getting a job. The legacy of discrimination is still felt even today.
What should the government’s role be?
Universities are independent institutions. They are the ones who should tell government what to do. Still, government should use its available resources and influence to drive change in all sectors including higher education. It is important for government to develop performance indicators and to ensure continuous monitoring in this regard.
What is the role of the transformation office?
We are playing the supporting and advisory role. We ensure transformation is put on the agenda of relevant structures across the university. But, it is the people in the position of power who have to bring change. The university schools have a responsibility to present reasonable targets in terms of the Actively Employed People statistics.
The #RhodesMustFall campaign has resulted in a decision by the Senate of the University of Cape Town (UCT) to move the statue of Cecil John Rhodes.
For the past few weeks the national news has been up in a storm with the Rhodes saga. It all started at the University of Cape Town (UCT) where students threw human excrement at a statue of Cecil John Rhodes. The outrage then spread to Rhodes University where students demanded that the name of the institution be changed. Most recently, students from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (UKZN) have defaced the King George V statue, splashing it with paint.
Students have justified these undignified acts by calling the statues “symbols of colonialism and white supremacy”.
With over 20 years of democracy, black people are still suffering from the mental repercussions of apartheid, or what I refer to as a ‘victim mentality’. If the black population was fully emancipated, it would not be resorting to such undignified measures (throwing faeces) in order to be heard.
If the black population was fully emancipated, it would not be resorting to such undignified measures (throwing faeces) in order to be heard.
University of Free State (UFS) Rector Jonathan Jansen posed a significant article in his analysis of the movements: “Who cleans up the mess once the media cameras are turned off and the triumphal students return to their air-freshened accommodation on or off campus? It is black workers, perhaps even the parents of students. None of this humiliation matters to the students. They made their point and got their airtime. Who cares about the cleaners?”
“A sense of weakness and lack of education”
Personally, I do not think that the removal of the statue will change anything; it will not even change the history. The very act of removing the statue will only display a sense of weakness and lack of education. Instead of focusing on the negatives of Rhodes, why don’t we acknowledge the high value he put on education? Rhodes University was named after him, after the Rhodes Trust donated 50,000 British pounds in De Beers shares to build the institution in 1904. While Rhodes may be a symbol of white supremacy, he also embodies the value of education and civilization. I believe his statue was erected there for the education values he had. Removing the statue will not only be a futile attempt at resolving the race issue in South Africa, but it will also fuel it.
Mugabe on Rhodes
The changing of the name of the Rhodes University might also be problematic because already there is no unanimity with whose name it should be changed to. The changing of names is also an expensive procedure. Instead of thousands of rands being spent on name-changing, perhaps more money could be invested in transformation campaigns. Perhaps we could learn a thing or two from the president of our neighboring country, Zimbabwe. Over the years, people have threatened to dig up the body of Cecil Rhodes who is buried in that country. But Robert Mugabe has argued that Rhodes’ legacy was a significant part of history.
Does the end justify the means?
With all these movements going on, I ask myself, is this a much-awaited revolution on the race issues that are still faced in this country? Will the removal of the statue bring about ‘change’ or ‘transformation’ as they call it? Will this be a case of ‘the end justifies the means’?
Before one starts a riot, a hashtag, before one throws faeces at a statue, one must ask themselves the following questions: Do you know enough history of that person? Do you understand why the person’s statue was erected there? And most importantly, are you aware of the positive contributions of that person to the institution?
Steve Biko once said in a speech: “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
Until we emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, colonial symbols will forever threaten our existence and freedom.
“The #RhodesMustFall movement at the University of Cape Town has spread to other universities in South Africa, sparking debates about institutionalised racism and sexism. The campaign seeks to decolonize our universities.
As a former University of Cape Town student, I came face to face with the statue of Cecil John Rhodes many times, sadly, unaware of what the bold figure standing before me meant. My ignorance was unsurprising, institutional power makes a deliberate choice to cleanse figures like Rhodes so that Black people unknowingly accept them without questioning or fighting their presence.
As a science student at the university, I was confronted with a curriculum that was so white and Western you would swear Africans had never contributed to the sciences. Africans only appeared as victims of malaria and HIV or as assistants to ‘great’ White, male, heterosexual, able-bodied scientists.
Our lecturers were mostly white and male. The few Black lecturers we had were always mocked for their accents or their lectures hardly ever attended because their lecturing style was not “appealing” enough, both by white and black students. All this in a university geographically located in Africa and in a country with majority black people. No wonder sometime early this year, when my Journalism Studies lecturer asked what I thought of UCT, the first thing that came to mind and mouth was, “I didn’t like it. I never felt any connection to the place.”
“a starting point to finally decolonizing our universities, minds and society”
The #RhodesMustFall movement at UCT began when student Chumani Maxwele threw human excrement at the statue of Cecil John Rhodes located at the centre of the university. The movement spread to other universities including Rhodes University, where students began calling for the name of the university to be changed. Students at the University of KwaZulu Natal covered a statue of King George V with white paint and students at Wits held a transformation talk.
“Black people bending over backwards to accommodate whiteness”
Defenses of why the statue of Rhodes shouldn’t be removed (and why Black students should stop being so angry) have come in far and wide. But, no amount of belittling, and calling the cause invalid, has deterred the students. Instead, they are building a stronger and wider movement.
Some may ask why now. But why not now? Students have been watching, for 21 years, Black people bending over backwards to accommodate whiteness in the country of their birth. Students are using the Rhodes statue, as a unifying figure to speak back (and black) to power! Finally!
It is important to note that an overwhelming majority of UCT’s senate recently voted for the removal of the statue. But what does this mean? What does waiting on an overwhelmingly white and male senate to decide on the fate of the statue mean? Should Black students wait for this decision – a decision that I feel will function to pacify the voices of the students or should they take matters into their own hands.
“We can’t breathe”
The #RhodesMustFall movement – along with the Black Students Movement at Rhodes University and the TransformWits movement at Wits, and other growing black consciousness movements on campuses in South Africa – is important and valid. Not only because it highlights the violence that these colonial figures and names carry with them, but as a starting point to finally decolonizing our universities, minds and society. To finally strip white privilege bare. To finally begin dismantling institutionalized racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. To finally start speaking our pain, without shame or fear of backlash and finally labelling correctly what imperialists like Rhodes, and others like him, were – white supremacist patriarchs that unashamedly massacred black people and looted our natural resources without any regard for the people Rhodes referred to as “niggers”. And those who reduce these movements to just the statue, are failing to see the wider picture these students are trying to paint.
Assata Olugbala Shakur, a former member of the Black Panther Party, now living in exile in Cuba, recently wrote a moving letter of solidarity to the UCT SRC:
“[Freedom never comes], until the Afrikan slave uses his force to break the shackles and obtain emancipation for himself,” she wrote. “You and your comrades have hands. Use them. Pull down the statue. If it doesn’t come down, think of something else.”
Black students across the country are crying, “We can’t breathe”. And these movements are an effort to break free from colonial shackles that still bind black bodies to this stay. What will happen if we do not listen to these cries?
Screaming pre-teens with banners declaring undying love and tolerant parents is what met me at this weekend’s One Direction concert at FNB Stadium.
Being in my twenties and knowing the depths of fanaticism of the “Directioners” I was understandably apprehensive to embark on this journey to Soccer City, and I wasn’t disappointed.
Fans came out in their thousands to see their favourite band complete with the official 1D survival kit of: a custom t-shirt, a sign with Harry Styles’ face covered in glitter hearts and, of course, parental supervision.
The organizers seemed to be fearful with the large number of hormonal fans causing them to beef up security and enforce strict rules. Some new rules included parents accompanying their children to the concert with one particularly peeved and heavily tattooed father that I noticed who would seem more at home at a SlipKnot concert than waiting for his daughter to see her boyband heart throb.
The crowd waiting to see One Direction at FNB Stadium on March 28. Photo: Tanisha Heiberg
But not all the Directioners got to see their favourite member, with the recent split of Zayn Malik, which sent fans into a whirlwind of tears, tantrums and emotional angst, even resulting in the bizarre hashtag of #CutForZayn promoting self-harm.
One 13-year-old named Nikata Bullah, who arrived in a limousine with her friends, described Zayn’s leaving the formerly five-person band as, “Losing a fifth of her heart.”
Instead of the usual beer drinking and stumbling audience that we are all familiar with, this audience of pre-teens were giddy on excitement, hormones and too much candy.
The show began with 2013 winner of SA’s Got Talent, Jonny Apple, nervously warming up the crowd with the help of guests, X Factor SA 2014 winners, FOUR. Then, just to add more suspense for the fans who were now fast approaching what would usually be their bedtime, they played party classics that everyone knew the words and moves to like “The Macarena,” “Single Ladies,” “You’re the One That I Want”, and others that only the mothers knew the words to, such as the Friends theme song.
The most baffling part however was watching thousands of midriff baring tweens singing “All the single ladies, now put your hands up”. You are eight years old … of course you should be single!
After hours of waiting for the show to begin the lights dimmed, the screaming hit a decibel that only cats could hear and the boy band, consisting of Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan, finally entered the stage.
The band performed their hits like “Steal My Girl,” “Midnight Memories,” and “Story of My Life” in between constantly thanking the crowd and telling them how amazing they were. They also told the usual lies of how this was the best crowd they ever had and waving the South African flag, just in case we all forgot what country we were in.
At moments I found the crowds reactions more entertaining than the band’s performance. The now quartet had to dodge many “gifts” being thrown on stage like teddy bears, large bras (clearly the mothers’) and plastic cups.
After a Mexican wave, a final thank you and the encore, the band left the stage while cleverly using an amazing fireworks display to distract the fans, so as to avoid possible tears and tantrums. Clever thinking boys!
It was an interesting experience even just to understand the lengths that fans of the four boys from England will go to in our own country. It also brought back memories somewhere deep, deep, DEEP down where there’s a little girl in each of us that remembers the moves to the Backstreet Boys songs and still knows which Spice Girl she was in her group of friends.
My Body, my rules: Masego Panyane writes about body image. Photo: TJ Lemon
Body image plays a huge role in how we are perceived by the society we live in. This perception impacts our experiences in everyday life. We are nudged, not so gently, to make an effort to look a specific way. It’s everywhere. We see it in images on television, magazines and billboards. We are told about perfection on radio. We speak about it in everyday conversations.
I was bullied for about half of my early schooling days because my teeth were skew and I was the fat little girl. My tormentor, a girl much shorter and skinnier than I, used to refer to me as Sibeko from a comedy show called Emzini Wezintsizwa. The horror I had at being compared to the fat, untidy, always drunk-but quite smart- television character. Bathong!
As a result of that, I became an awkward and sad fat little girl. Until one night, I had a glorious dream of me bashing my tormentor into the ground. A classic case of mind over matter.
“I have struggled with weight and my body image for years. It took me storming out of the gym one afternoon to realize that I had been doing it wrong all this time. I wanted to lose weight because I wanted to fit in, not because I wanted to be healthy”.
I walked onto the playground the following day with the bravery of a Charlie’s Angel. The bully started her usual routine and made fun of one of the other girls. She made a stupid comment about how dumb the girl was because she couldn’t read properly. I didn’t laugh. She noticed, called me Sibeko again and I promised her a serious beating if she carried on. The rest, as they put it, is history.
For the next few years, I built my confidence up brick-by-brick. I focused on the things I was good at. Accepted all the things I was not. I made it work. But for some reason, the confidence I felt in my head didn’t mirror with how I felt, physically.
Now before you give me a lecture about fitness and weight loss, please do me a favor and have a seat. The likelihood that you are going to tell me something I have never heard before is slim. Yes, pun intended.
I have struggled with weight and my body image for years. It took me storming out of the gym one afternoon to realize that I had been doing it wrong all this time. I wanted to lose weight because I wanted to fit in, not because I wanted to be healthy.
Since that penny dropped, I joined a number of body positive movements which advocate for a healthy lifestyle and a positive look at your body, regardless of what size you are or however many defect your body has.
I realized how much pressure I had put on myself to transform my body into what it could possibly never be given my genetics.
I am aware of my body. I know that becoming more active would be great for me. That does not mean I must hate myself in order to achieve this. I will dress as I please and I certainly will not disappear from the face of the earth because I am not conventionally pretty. No can do.
My experience with the school bully stripped me of my voice for a while. After I got through that, I promised myself I would never allow that to happen to me again.
I will get healthier. But at my own pace. Not because I am trying to subscribe to some standard of beauty that I probably would never attain.
Gauteng MEC of Transport, Ismail Vadi, launched the Johannesburg commuter bicycle map 2015 together with Johannesburg Urban Cyclists Association last week Saturday. He spoke to Wits Vuvuzela about cycling. He believes that the new maps are an invaluable contribution to making Johannesburg cycling friendly.
How does cycling contribute to the development of the province?
The Johannesburg Urban Cycling Association’s (JUCA) map promotes non-motorized transport in the city of Johannesburg. It provides a user-friendly guide to cyclists to travel in the city and suburban areas using routes that have been carefully selected and tested by cyclists themselves. If more people take to cycling to get around the city, or to work and back home, it will help to reduce traffic congestion and pollution in Johannesburg.
Do you think citizens of Johannesburg will adopt this initiative?
I am confident that the roads and transport division in the city will support this innovative work by installing the necessary signage on the selected cycling routes. I hope many more students will take to it to get to campus and back home. Road safety remains a challenge for all be it motorists, pedestrians or cyclists. You advocate for cycling. Do you cycle from/to home and work?
I enjoy cycling and have participated in the 94.7 cycle challenge in the past three years. I do not cycle to work.
Is cycling among your top priorities?
Yes, it is. The Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport has set a target that in the next five years each city in our province should have 50 kilometers of pedestrian and cycling lanes.
What is the growth plan for cycling lanes in Gauteng?
Each year the department sets aside some funding for the construction of pedestrian and cycling lanes, particularly in townships. We are pleased that cities such as Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni are now providing dedicated cycling lanes for daily use by residents.
Pontsho Pilane is a Media Honours student who writes for The Daily Vox. An unapologetic feminist, Pilane describes herself as a “force to be reckoned with”.
You’re a student, and also juggling your journalist career at The Daily Vox. How has that experience been for you?
Working at The Daily Vox has been one of the most fulfilling endeavours of my life. I’ve met so many people and my mind has been stretched. I am constantly put in a position where I have to acknowledge how privileged I am all the time.
Your thoughts on female empowerment or feminism?
In a society where women, especially black women, have been marginalised how can I not be a feminist? Feminism is not just about equality, but justice and reformation. A woman should not be afraid to wear whatever she wants out of fear for being harassed. A boy should not be afraid to take up cooking because of his gender. And that’s why I am a feminist.
Your interests stems from gender, class and social identity. Why?
To be a woman and black is to be forced into activism. The fact that one cannot walk in Braam or to Bree without constantly being cat-called or groped is a problem. How many girls and women use public transport daily? Too many, and to think that this is my and their reality keeps me talking about these issues.
Who is the one person you consider yourself to look up to?
I look up to my mother, she was the first feminist I knew. As far as I can remember, in our house there was no such thing as girl chores or boy chores. Everyone cleaned and helped with the garden work. She broke a lot of gender norms.
Tell us more about #sexistSA.
It’s a campaign we started at The Daily Vox. I was in Marikana covering the community’s reaction at the end of the gruelling five-month long strike when a man flashed me. On my way to the police station to report him, I got cat-called by a policemen. This is everyday life for many women. We felt the need to raise awareness about this issue because street harassment is so normalised in our society.
Chairperson of the Law Student Council (LSC), Phesheya Duma, is currently in his fourth year of study. He, along with the rest of the 2014/2015 LSC, are managing this year’s council campaigning and elections. He spoke to Wits Vuvuzela about the challenges of his position and advised students on what they should be looking out for in the new leadership.
What does the chairperson do?
I represent the council. I take everything that the council says and I articulate it. I don’t have a personal opinion, just like the council has no opinion. They take what the students say and we put it in office, and I put it to management. I take what management says and I bring it back.
What are the three biggest challenges you face as chairperson of the LSC?
The first is managing expectations. The second is persuading, and the third is giving bad news. When students ask, for example, about supplementary exam issues, we try and we try and we try, and we exhaust all channels. It’s always difficult to go back to the students and say, ‘listen, we tried’. They don’t see the steps that we took, and they always think that it’s not good enough.
What should students be listening out for during LSC elections?
Students should be listening out for the substance, for example, continuous assessments. A lot of the time in the law school, we have subjects with 50% weighting for a test and 50% weighting for an exam, that’s a problem. We’ve addressed some of these issues with admin law and contract law, and we now have continuous multiple choice questions throughout the year. Those are the things that are important, because those put a lot of pressure on you when you’re writing an exam. If you fail the first exam, you only have one other chance. In other schools, you have continuous assessments, we don’t have that here.
How have you managed the transition from having an undergraduate LLB, to only having it offered at a postgraduate level?
We were actually quite involved in the planning. Law firms and the school itself feels that when you come out of high school, you are not fully equipped or well-equipped to actually deal with the content of the legal degree. So what they now want you to do, is something else first and then do the LLB.
After matriculating, I assumed that the days of hierarchies were over. Being in an environment filled with intellectuals, I thought that everyone was open-minded enough to understand the term “different strokes for different folks”.
This was until an engineering student confided in me about not wanting to date Bachelor of Arts (BA) students. Being a BA student myself, I was shocked at this statement. I thought that there was a disease that broke out which happened to only affect BA students, but boy was I wrong. Apparently, BA students were known for their laziness. BA has been dubbed the “easy course” which does not require much hard work. These students were said to spend all of their time on the library lawns and the Matrix where they would smoke hubbly-bubbly while other students are slaving away.
This made it difficult to date them because they have too much free time and could never understand when other students were studying all day. As if I didn’t have enough problems, now I had to deal with the fact that people would undermine me because of the course I chose.
“I thought there was a disease that broke out which happened to only affect BA students, but boy was I wrong.”
According to my knowledge most lazy, unintelligent people prefer to relax in the comfort of their homes. However, BA students are even worse. They cash in on bursaries or thousands of rands paid by their parents’ for fees then “chill” all day on campus.
Hierarchy on campus
Top of the hierarchy, in this parallel universe, are medical students followed by engineering students and all other courses in the science faculty. Commerce and Law students are next and right at the bottom of the hierarchy are BA and Education students. I wondered if this was based on fact or opinion. One thing’s for sure, I felt the condescending tone from people when I told them what I was studying, even from students who take up to six years to complete a degree that should take just three or four.
I thought we had left such a mentality in the 1980s when studying certain courses was seen to be more acceptable than others. Some people do genuinely have a passion for the social sciences. They are content with what they are studying and are not too stressed about conforming to what is acceptable in the Wits society.
“According to my knowledge most lazy, unintelligent people prefer to relax in the comfort of their homes.”
After three years of undergraduate studies I would not change anything at all because I followed my heart. The bottom line is that we were all accepted into Wits, whether it was to study Medicine or Education.
All students should be respected for what they are passionate about without being judged. This means that the hierarchy must crumble and everyone must come back to earth.
Since her announcement as the Democratic Alliance’s mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, Helen Zille has dominated national headlines. In this bonus episode of We Should Be Writing podcast, hosts Lulah Mapiye and Bonolo Mokonoto dissect a media meet-and-greet with the mayoral hopeful. From her extensive political résumé to her controversial public utterance, we examine why the Democratic Alliance has chosen Hellen Zille as their candidate for the 2027 local mayoral elections. Additionally, […]
