Last year I spent about 3 weeks in Mexico, giving presentations and lectures across various institutions of higher learning. This was done in my capacity as one of the two Afrikan special guests to the International Human Rights Festival. The other Afrikan guest was Heba Afify, an award-winning Egyptian journalist who has been documenting the Arab uprisings in that part of the continent. One of the four universities that we gave presentations at was the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. UNAM is not only the biggest university in Mexico, but it is the top ranked university in the entire Latin America. As if this was not bad enough, I was the only Black person in the entire room. So you can imagine how terrified I was when I stood there infront of a fully packed auditorium, with most of the audience being Masters and PhD students. I was tasked with educating these students on how the violence in post-apartheid South Afrika impacts the lives of Black people. For a few seconds I contemplated running out of there, but I had to keep reminding myself that Steve Biko didnt die for Blacks to be consumed by an inferiority complex on international stages. When I was done, students came to speak to me, take my email address and so on and so forth. One student who was doing a Masters degree in Literature asked me: Malaika, what is the topic of your Masters thesis? I responded that I wasnt a Masters student. When I came back to South Afrika a week later, I told my friend Phindi that the question had actually hit hard. I resolved right there and then that Id return to Rhodes University and finish my degree once and for all. I abandoned the idea of working full time and studying part time as Id planned to do. That question brought me face to face with a tragic reality: people take graduates seriously. The main reason those Masters and PhD students took me seriously was because they assumed I was one of their own. To them, because their university had invited me to speak, and I was speaking eloquently, the conclusion was that I was an educated person. I often wonder whether theyd have been as interested in my views had they known prior that I didnt even have a junior degree at that time. The defeating truth is that there are some of us who are at university not because we want to be here, but because the world is unkind to the uneducated. Its a sad truth that no matter how much you may know, without a piece of paper from some liberal institution, youre screwed. It becomes worse when you dont have this paper, are from a working class background, are a woman and above all, are Black. Whites can get away with not having it, but not us. We are forced to prove ourselves ten times more than anyone else, to give some kind of legitimacy to the capacity of our humanity.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:00:18 +0000
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