22 years ago I was just another Black child born in a community clinic in the dusty streets of Soweto. 15 years ago I was an 8 year old watching my family being evicted from our home and hurled back into yet another shack. 10 years ago I was just another 12 year old attending a township school where teachers sent us to buy them magwinya during lunch and didnt pitch for classes on pay day. 8 years ago I was another Black child living in an RDP settlement, Braamfischerville, on the outskirts of Soweto. I was living in a house that wasnt plastered, sleeping on an uncomfortable sponge. 5 years ago I was an 18 year old who didnt write four of her matric prelim exams because my mother didnt have money for my transport to go to school. 4 years ago I was a 19 year old exploited worker trying to raise money to put myself through university. Today, I am a 22 year old doing her second year at a respectable university, I have travelled to more than 20 countries in four different continents, I sit in a position where I can accept or reject offers that could bring me money without blinking, and most importantly to me, I have joined the list of Afrikas youngest published writers. My preoccupation has ceased to be where the next meal will come from, and is now what will I leave behind in the world. Many of my peers whom I grew up with were not able to escape the cruelty of township life, and today, sit in corners, unemployed and unemployable, without even degrees to fall back on because the system has shut the doors of learning in their faces. They escape their realities by being suffocated under the bodies of men who are nothing more than meal tickets, and drown sorrows in cheap but potent liquor. I couldve been one of them, but I am not. Not because I am better, but because I had people along the way who opened doors for me. I will never forget where I came from. Everyday I remind myself that I am where I am not because I am better or smarter than the people I grew up with, but because I am standing on the shoulders of giants. This system that seeks to dehumanise us, to render our dreams and aspirations invalid, will be defeated. We are not going to drown in the nervous conditions of Blackness. We will escape this thing, because our dreams are not invalid! We are NOT an invalid people!
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 16:53:03 +0000
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