I have spent a good two hours writing this exam paper and am relieved to be finally constructing a good response, with just over an hour to go before “pens down”. No later than my relief came, the intercom rings, and with that my answer vanishes. “The school is requested to please stop writing, stand […]
Equality
Posted inEquality, General
The unfinished business of the TRC
Acting on the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), in 2003 the President’s Fund was set up to provide comprehensive reparations programmes for victims of apartheid crimes. It was intended to restore and repair the damaged lives of those who stood for justice against the apartheid regime. This was to be done through […]
Posted inEquality, General
On being mis-recognised: Julian Hewitt and the angry black woman
People think I’m an angry black woman. People who know me well, know that this is a misrecognition of me. I’m a nice person. I hate foot-in-mouth interactions: that awkward moment when someone says something they shouldn’t have said, and someone else has to salvage the situation or we all walk away. I save face. […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
Gareth Cliff: Who do you think you are?
The funeral of slain soccer star Senzo Meyiwa was barely over when polemic radio jockey Gareth Cliff took to the Twitterverse to ask who was paying for the funeral. Another South African is lowered into the ground after an act of violence, another family mourns, and another story of our failed collective freedom is written […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, General
Get your clothing laws off my body
I recently read a piece on Buzzfeed about items of clothing women have been barred from wearing in 2014, and I was livid. Some of them include: * Women in Uganda being banned from wearing mini-skirts. Some were even publicly undressed for wearing them; * More than 250 girls being removed from a school in […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Winnie Mandela and the misrecognition of black women
Mail & Guardian columnist Verashni Pillay in “Five times Winnie Mandela has let us down” writes that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s quest to reclaim the Mandela Qunu home “is another embarrassing incident to add to her growing list of failures”. Pillay says there’s “historical revisionism happening in some quarters of our nation these days that brands Nelson […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Apartheid, torture and the potential for forgiveness
By Dylan Wray George* is a history teacher. He used to be very high up in the apartheid security police in the Eastern Cape. Zolile* has always been a history teacher. As a young man, he was arrested attempting to flee South Africa to take up arms with Umkhonto weSizwe. George more than likely oversaw […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
Two sides of a racist coin: White privilege and cadre deployment
The appointment of Lesetja Kganyago as governor of the South African Reserve Bank provides an excellent opportunity to examine both cadre deployment and white privilege. Race reductionists from both side of the racial divide confirmed the inherent problems with their thinking when the announcement was made: the white privileged types who bemoaned another cadre deployment […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Listen to immigrant stories
By Anthea Paelo An Eyewitness News’ headline caught my eye the other day, “Zim home affairs call deportations ‘inhumane’”. Being a foreign national myself, I’m drawn to news articles like this but with the careless disregard of a person confident of their legal status in the country. This changed one weekend last month. It was […]
Posted inEquality, General
Education: What’s the point of it all?
A few weeks ago, I read an article to my grade 11 students with the headline “Youth unemployment in South Africa – apartheid is alive and well”. My students are usually opinionated when it comes to certain issues, but not this time. They walked out of the classroom in silence. I noticed their quizzical looks […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, News/Politics
Emma Watson’s HeForShe campaign just what we need
Emma Watson invited men into “the movement” and the feminist world is in uproar — split into the yay and naysayers. It’s even gone to the extent of fractures along racial (according to one blogger it’s white feminists who support her), regional or even socio-economic background. But identity aside there is some good and bad […]
Posted inEquality
Being disabled doesn’t make you special, being South African does
By Maggie Marx In December 2005, I took my driver’s test in a small town in the Free State. I told the friendly, albeit mumbling officer that I was severely hearing impaired. I also told him that during the yard test I would be able to decipher his hand signals, but that when he got […]