#ILookLikeASurgeon first appeared on my timeline a week or so ago. I was interested in it because I’m a surgeon in training. Background: it’s a campaign against gender stereotypes. Piggy-backing on a campaign called #ILookLikeAnEngineer, it aims to show that surgeons are no longer just good-looking white dudes (think: Chris Barnard in the sixties) flanked […]
white privilege
Posted inEquality
Why I can’t ‘get over’ apartheid
By Khanya Mathambo As a black girl attending a private school, where white people are the majority, I often find myself on the opposing side of controversial issues. I think that this is a result of my own bias and what I feel are the blatantly ignorant views that form the basis of the opinions […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
I’m sick of statues
I don’t want to tap into the anger, the misunderstanding and the adolescent reasoning anymore. I don’t want to be caught up in the wildfire of people who are wilfully ignorant about our past, and I don’t want to jump on some bandwagon either. 1. This is not about a statue This isn’t just about […]
Posted inEquality, General, Media, News/Politics
Terrorism or mental illness? Why race matters
When co-pilot Andreas Lubitz crashed the Germanwings plane, killing 149 people, “mental illness” was deployed as an explanation. If he wore a turban and had a beard, and if I were a betting man, I would put my money on the media labelling him a terrorist. Where would you put your money? Be honest. Have […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Confronting our white ignorance in a time when #RhodesMustFall
By Roné McFarlane As the #RhodesMustFall debate continues, there are aspects of white reactions that need to be talked about … by white people. There is, however, a danger in discussing whiteness in the time of the #RhodesMustFall protests. You could rightly argue that it would be detracting from black struggles that are receiving more […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
10 useless responses to #RhodesMustFall
By Ntokozo Qwabe As the Rhodes Must Fall movement at the University of Cape Town (UCT) approaches its third week, I thought it necessary to put down the 10 most useless responses people have made to it thus far, and jot down useful counter-responses to them. These counter-responses are collated and developed from real responses […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Is there anybody there, beneath the trolling shit?
In 2014 I had a troll who wouldn’t leave me alone. He wrote hundreds of words about me without having ever met me. This troll painted a distorted picture of who I was, while hiding behind the safe anonymity of a non-descript picture and made-up name. He responded to my writing with outrage, and people […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Poo-pooing the Rhodes historical narrative
In two years, Cape Town has experienced two rather rude awakenings in the form of “poo protests” in normally sanitised areas meant to represent the best of the Western Cape’s development. The first protest, organised by the disenfranchised Ses’khona People’s Rights Movement, was meant to highlight the deplorable conditions of toilets in informal settlements and […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
Access to white privilege equals freedom?
Since the mid-1980s, many black parents have sent their children to “white schools”. Much as they may have been criticised, they have not been bothered. In the first years of their schooling, these children would, unavoidably, be one of five children, at most, in a class. Some parents worried that this would make them lose […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
A comprehensive guide to white privilege in South Africa
After spending two hours on Aubrey Masango’s Radio 702 show Talk@9 this week, fielding questions and accusations around my views on racism and attempting to explain white privilege to white callers, I decided to write an extensive guide to recognising white privilege, borrowing from this anonymous Thought Catalog document, which extrapolates from Richard Dyer’s work […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
A comprehensive guide to white privilege in South Africa
After spending two hours on Aubrey Masango’s Radio 702 show Talk@9 this week, fielding questions and accusations around my views on racism and attempting to explain white privilege to white callers, I decided to write an extensive guide to recognising white privilege, borrowing from this anonymous Thought Catalog document, which extrapolates from Richard Dyer’s work […]
Posted inGeneral
Young white South Africans…where are you?
By Janet Jobson I never imagined that one of the biggest challenges I would face this year would be how to get young white South Africans interested in joining a network of young leaders driving public innovation. It had simply never occurred to me that it would be difficult. After all, my whole life I’ve […]