by Sanet Oberholzer | Mar 22, 2018 | Opinion
As 2016 came close to an end and people started popping champagne bottles to usher in 2017 with happy smiles, I came to a very stark realisation. I was terrified of what lay ahead. I had reached a point where I could no longer hide behind the title of student to explain why I wasn’t employed in a job that was taking me places.
I couldn’t excuse the fact that I was still not financially independent after four-and-a-half years of university study (preceded by three gap years). Worst of all, I could no longer continue in the miserable pattern of waking up, going to work, going home, trying to do something valuable before going to bed in the hopes of achieving some change, falling asleep and struggling to wake up the next morning to repeat the pattern again.
Truth be told, I didn’t regret any of the choices I had made until that point. I valued all my experiences and I was grateful for every opportunity life had presented. I had been an ambitious, daring go-getter but my then situation was not sitting well with me. I had fallen into what I came to regard as a “quarter-life” crisis. I didn’t know where my life was going career wise.
The more I spoke to friends and acquaintances in more or less the same post-university stage in life, the more I realised this crisis was a real and common thing. Talking about these struggles and comparing mine to other people’s stories helped me to feel normal. Once you realise you’re not alone, that there are other people feeling exactly the same way, you gather some courage to carry on fighting.
So, on New Year’s Eve, 2016, having mulled this over and gathering the courage to climb out from behind the bottle of champagne, I made a decision to make two changes. I wanted to apply for bursaries to further my studies overseas and I wanted to find a new job.
It took the whole of 2017 to make any sort of progress on these resolutions. It was a difficult, pick-yourself-up-again, time-after-time, kind of year – applying, being rejected and feeling nothing I had to give was good enough. By the end of the year I could hardly find the strength to get up and go to work in the mornings. I loved life but I just didn’t feel as if it loved me back.
It was at this point that I decided I needed to make a drastic change. I stopped looking overseas and set my sights on studying closer to home.
In the process, I had discovered that I wanted to pursue a career in journalism.
As 2017 drew to a close, I had applied, been for an interview, and had been accepted for study towards an honours degree in journalism at Wits. It was a step I nearly didn’t take – not because I didn’t want to, but because it was logistically very hard for me to go back to full-time studying. Despite the hurdles, I decided to be that ambitious, daring go-getter again and, in my experience, life has a way of rewarding that. Things fall into place like they should precisely when they should when you refuse to give up.
I’m not there yet and I can’t say I’ve made it but, if I survive this year, I can face the end of 2018 full of hope in my heart, happy to be popping a champagne bottle or two in the face of 2019 and the start of a new chapter in my life.
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by Chulumanco Mahamba | Feb 16, 2018 | Lifestyle
The year 2018 has not only ushered in a new year for me but a new chapter in my life’s story. I turned the worn and tattered last page of the chapter called “Varsity Years” and dived head first into “Adulthood”. My first step into adulthood started with getting a tax number and finally moving out of the student-ridden Braamfontein after four years, and into an apartment in the Johannesburg CBD.
The idea of moving out of Braamfontein had always been exciting to me. However, nothing prepared me for how I felt when the last bag was put into the moving van. My roommate and I were almost buzzing in the front seat of the van, optimistic about what the future would bring in our brand new “adult” apartment.
Upon arrival at the building, all of our stuff was dumped in the living room. We moved our beds and bedroom furniture into our respective rooms and slowly the living room became emptier and emptier. Once the last box had been unpacked, it dawned upon us that we had absolutely no furniture to fill up the very big living room. Our brand new adult apartment did not necessarily look like one because we didn’t have “adult” furniture.
The idea of myself as an adult had always looked glamorous to me. I always imagine myself with financial prosperity and a booming career; complete freedom and independence from my parents and going out to brunches with my friends. All of this would be wrapped up in a nice bow that is a chic apartment with modern decorative pieces. These were all finish line thoughts. I never sat and thought of the realities of how my life would look like at the beginning of the marathon that is adulthood.
When I look at it now, I realise that the reality looks rather similar to my living room. The reality is that, like all things in life, my living room requires patience. I need to be patient enough to save up for furniture and the kind of life that I want to live. I need to not rush myself into making detrimental financial mistakes. I cannot make the same mistake as our parents, who were so quick to want success, that they dug themselves into a hole of debt. I need to think smarter and do better.
Just like my living room, becoming an adult requires time and patience. It requires constantly working and late nights. There will be many nights where all I want to do is unsubscribe to adulthood. There will be mornings when I’ll want to revert back to my student days without the worry of money or work. There will be a lot of falling down, getting back up and falling down again. But these challenges are all part of being an adult. There is a lot more dragging my body through the trenches than cute brunches with my friends. It won’t be easy and I’m not sure if I’m 100 percent ready for it, but I have no choice but to pull myself up and get on with it.
In the meantime, I will not be deterred. I will get creative, learn as much as a I can and take my time. As for my living room, it currently still doesn’t have furniture. However, my roommate and I got a little creative. We gathered all our throw and picnic blankets and cushions and made a pillow fort in front of our very small media stand and television. When we are not at work, you’ll catch us lying on the floor of our living room, cups of tea with lemon slices not far away and watching reruns of Archer until we fall asleep.
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by Ilanit Chernick | Feb 13, 2015 | Opinion
Ilanit Chernick
There is something about walking into university on your first day. Bright-eyed and bushy tailed.
You’ve finished matric, maybe done a gap year and pretty much think you know everything.
You imagine yourself being part of a corny college flick as you walk through the hallways, imagining that you may just fall in love with the cute guy standing in line next to you (Freddie Prinze Jr.) at the campus food store – trust me, it happens, or so I’ve heard.
On my first day I was ready to take on Wits and better yet – the big bad world. I was so excited on my first day that I missed a step and clumsily tripped, falling flat on my face while ascending the steps of the Great Hall (not my finest hour).
I never attended my first year Welcome Day – my siblings took me around to see the place and helped me get my bearings.
I realised after attending Welcome Day as an alumni that I should have done so. I re-lived it, albeit a little late and even got my Kudu horns. I never attended my first O-week either, or my second or even my third. Embarrassingly I thought it was below me. What do I need to attend that for? It’s a waste.
Missing O-week resulted in me missing out on a big discovery: There are societies on campus. Societies for climbers, swimmers, dancers, singers, debaters, Jewish students, silly students and pretty much anything your heart desires.
I missed out on drunken parties, beer gardens, Nike runs and worst of all: Silly Buggers and Model UN (I mean seriously; how did I miss that?).
I only discovered the beauty of The Origin Centre while on the Red Bus tour around Johannesburg this year.
I didn’t attend O-week until my Honours year. Don’t make the same mistake. There’s a lot to see and a lot to discover. So use the time you have you here wisely.
As you start attending classes you learn quickly that as much as you thought you knew everything – you don’t. There are people who are cleverer, smarter and quicker than you. But as time passes you learn to stop comparing yourself to others.
I learned that it was important to learn things at your own pace and that asking questions is okay – you’re not nerdy or stupid as the stigma goes in high school. And I learned that the hard way.
Meet your lecturers, connect with them – I only realised how important those relationships were once I got to third year. But there is a fine line between networking and kissing butt – nobody likes a “teacher’s pet”.
When it comes to making friends, get out there and make new friends every year. Don’t just keep to the same group. The friends I have made at varsity are the ones I will keep for life.
I haven’t visited the Planetarium yet (not even at school) and with only two months left at Wits, it’s on the agenda together with dropping into a MUN meeting, jamming with my guitar on the library lawns, jumping into the pool with my clothes on and making friends with the VC.
Don’t get me wrong – my years here were far from doom and gloom. The four years I spent at Wits were probably the happiest of my life. I loved varsity. Period. And I hope to get back here soon to do an English masters.
But as all good things come to an end there are always moments you wish you could remember. At the same time you have to remind yourself: There are no regrets, just the things you didn’t do.
by Palesa Tshandu | Sep 19, 2014 | Opinion
“I HAVE black friends”: a phrase that some white people wear as armour before entering into a racial battlefield, hoping it will save them from their history. It doesn’t. Instead it reminds us that black people are tokens in the claim for racial neutrality.
Apartheid’s residue left a culture of people struggling to reconcile what it means to be black with the people they really are. Some even reject this compromise, not wanting to identify with blackness because our history is so loaded with injustices. They do not want to wear the trauma of our past.
We can all agree that apartheid should never have happened, but it did and now we are dealing with its ramifications the best way we know how. And that means owning our blackness. 
Consciously black
Being black is one of the most magical things you can be. Being aware of your skin colour means having a deep understanding of the injustices that our forebears suffered under apartheid, despite how foreign that time seems to us now. This gives me a greater awareness of the inequalities we face on a day-to-day basis, even in a supposedly non-racial South Africa.
Black Twitter has afforded us a culturally loaded space where black people converge to launch a coup d’ètat against white supremacy and to find humour in the worst situations. This free space to discuss issues is perhaps one of the best things about being black.
When we deny being black we are in essence rejecting the part of ourselves that affords us the sanctity of knowing.
Using social media as a platform to express our hurts, fears and anger against racism, we make the decision to claim our struggle, label it and place it accordingly, without the misdirection of white supremacy.
Our melanin gives us the ability to soak in the natural goodness of the sun and colour ourselves with the light of the world, showing off the beauty of our skin tone. Our blackness affords us a space in two different worlds. We are able to go from suburb to township and understand our positions in these two worlds without being restricted by our own blackness.
Denying colour
Admittedly, ours is a society with people from different backgrounds and with different experiences of race and racism. It is part of our diversity that we are able to claim our own identities and celebrate them without judgment or fear.
Being black should therefore not be a default condition where we fear claiming our blackness because it’s loaded by stereotypes. We should rather marvel at this melanin cloak and wear it with pride.
When we deny being black we are in essence rejecting the part of ourselves that affords us the sanctity of knowing.This knowing allows us to see past the hidden agenda of white entitlement which caused disillusioned black people to believe whiteness was something people should aspire to.
Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once said: “Racism should have never happened and you don’t get a cookie for reducing it.” But race denialism … well, that is an even worse atrocity.
by Thabile Manala | Jul 25, 2014 | Opinion
Sunday morning epiphanies are always good for bargaining with your truths. Surely it has to do with the redemptive quality religion has attached to this day. Anyway, it feels as though the Sundays in my 20s are loaded with lessons thick and fast and not enough hot shoes, great sex and the no parents telling you what to do.
I am not sure how I believed I’d have life figured out in my 20s. Or myself. I am starting to believe it was a side effect of Oprah afternoons, Iyanla’s books and the quietness that refuses to settle in my head. All I know is I am not the only one with a minor OCD complex to tightly thread my life and feel an unwavering sense of control and certainty.
The business of living is never really “easy like a Sunday morning”.
The business of living is never really “easy like a Sunday morning”. Growing pains simply will not allow it. But a quick reflection reminded me that I am in the second semester of a postgrad degree I am passionate about. Life next year is promising to be pretty dandy. So really, what is up with the tightness in the centre of my chest? The quarter-life crisis of the modern day homo sapien is what’s happening. Anxiety is our biggest enemy and so is the pop psychology that is constantly urging us to “find ourselves”.
There is nothing wrong with waking up every morning interrogating your own existence, choosing the kind of life that is constantly asking the hard questions; attempting to find yourself at every trajectory life calls a lesson. It is necessary, in fact, it’s exactly the kind of living we ought to be doing. But goodness gracious, can we try a little tenderness? Tracee Ellis Ross said: “I am learning every day to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be to inspire me and not terrify me.”
So why are we a generation saturated with so much angst? We are so uncomfortable with the necessary pauses. The moments when you don’t know, when you fail, when you make a mistake. We ride the highs too high and the lows too low – too much intensity, not enough patience. Of course the proverbial question of “who I am?” was never going to find a definition this soon. At the very most, my living has to open me up. Existential complexes can be really vain. But that’s mainly because the world has drilled an aspiration of perfect facades in our brains.
There are Sunday mornings where I miss Amy Winehouse. To me, she was every woman and every man. Her talent was condensed in her flawed humanness. She was authentic about how heavily she loved, how much pain she’d seen, the reality of finding who she was. All of this through the gift of lyrics. For me, Amy always sang the truths that I was sometimes embarrassed to think to myself. I don’t mean to romanticise her fall, but the grey-area person in me saw the light in the frailty of her druggie days. I think the more attractive thing was that she was unapologetic – when your mistakes are evident to the world, modesty can be pathetic.
I’m learning that audacity is a principle of survival. Sure, I don’t know it all and neither am I all that. But when peeling the layers of who you are – sometimes winging it as you go along is the only real way to fly.
by Percy Matshoba | Apr 11, 2014 | Opinion
Percy Matshoba
Photo: TJ Lemon
As an East campus dweller and a West campus trespasser, I used to find that being recognised as a credible student did not come easy.
I always felt compelled to prove my intelligence, particularly on the side where the sun sets. In my first year as a Witsie, I discovered there was an unspoken hierarchy between the different Wits campuses, and East campus was at the bottom. You won’t find this status on notice boards, and there’s no statistic to back it up. It is simply implied by our over-the-bridge neighbours, in questions like: “Do you even need to study?” or in comments like: “I wish I was a BA student, you guys sit on the grass all day”.
After a year of desperation, I enrolled in a commerce course in which our lecturer would often warn us that if we failed, we could always enrol in a BA course. It wasn’t that I was unsure of my choice or that I did not have a sense of direction, it was that I had allowed my insecurities to dim my light. I did not want to be an accountant or an actuary, despite the pay. I did not find the idea of being a lawyer appealing. I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted to inspire, inform and to simply “write what I like”.
After many years of dodging questions like: “What are you studying”? Or “Is there a big market for what you’re studying?” I have found that my choice of study was not what I needed to alter to appease the unimpressed. It was my response to their attitudes. Mine needed to be the weapon which broke the ignorance.
The war between east and west has its source in our country’s education system, which esteems some courses over others. This arrogance has led to companies funding only the faculties which are home to those esteemed subjects. Our attitude as a country has created a clear divide. The fact that there is a divide between the Wits campuses is merely the symptom of a wider problem, not the root of it. I have learnt that I don’t want to be valued because of what I do or how much I earn. I want to be valued because of what I contribute to society.
Mother Teresa once said: “I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.”
by Caro Malherbe | Feb 28, 2014 | News
I come from Cape Town, a city in South Africa, but really, its own little country.
The Republic of Cape Town moves to its own rhythm. It nonchalantly sways with the Atlantic tide and pumps to the beat of the south-eastern wind. It’s a giant film set, picturesque, landscaped and any other slushy adjective you can think of equivalent to a scene out of a Jane Austin novel.
I have always been one for change. I’ve moved around a lot in my life and am somewhat of a “yes man” when it comes to trying new things. When I was given the opportunity to study journalism at Wits University, I jumped on that bandwagon in a heartbeat. I knew nothing about Johannesburg at the time—this goes for almost all Capetonians. But I like to think that after a year in the City of Gold I can make some comparisons.[pullquote]”I love being able to say that my home is in Cape Town despite many of the people there being so insular and set in their own ways.”[/pullquote]
What I love about Cape Town is that I can go from work to the beach. I love that the sun sets so late at night and that I can do more for less. I don’t have to spend much on travelling and the public transport is great. I love being able to say that my home is in Cape Town despite many of the people there being so insular and set in their own ways.[pullquote align=”right”]”For an aspiring journalist, I had to get off this one lane avenue and onto the highway.”[/pullquote]
Capetonians LOVE getting involved in any public petition such as, let’s say, bringing back doggy water bowls at the Corner Café because their Maltese poodle is so parched after a long walk on the promenade. Discussions on e-tolls or the upcoming elections don’t draw the same passion as a thirsty shitzu.
For an aspiring journalist, I had to get off this one lane avenue and onto the highway.
Moving to a city where I knew no one helped me focus on what I was trying to achieve. At first, I made my Joburg experience all about my studies. But it didn’t take long for me to realise that Jozi has so much to offer, and making my studies my first priority was going to be difficult.[pullquote]”There is a certain swag about this place, like a large thug smoking his cigar.”[/pullquote]
There is a certain swag about this place, like a large thug smoking his cigar. People don’t mess around here, they know what they want and where they are going and make no apologies for their ambitious spirit.
Compared to Cape Town, Joburg is a difficult city to live in. People talk fast and loud. They cash cheques, break necks and drive angry. Jozi hardened me up. It’s given me perspective and relinquished my need for everyday comforts and vanities – something Capetonians know far too much about.
I think there is something so magical in people believing that a place can bring them opportunity and that their dreams can come true. You can feel and see this in the people in Jozi.[pullquote]”Drenched in memories and history,Joburg makes me feel like anything is possible”[/pullquote]
I love the rawness and dirtiness of the Joburg city. It seems drenched in memories and history. Joburg makes me feel like anything is possible and that being here instantly connects me to the rest of the world and everyone in it.
Cape Town to me will always be the Mother Land, my mothers’ land. But Joburg is the man in my life who gives me butterflies and fireworks – my lover, who encourages me to be crazy, to push myself and to explore.
