Activating a Thought Leader In Me

Africa Is Open To The Highest Bidder  By: Sinazo Mtshengu This week I had the pleasure of attending the Africa Investment Forum. I set through the first introductory session. There were a few key notes I took from the forum speakers. However more than taking away how great of an initiative the forum is, the question of the economic gap in Africa was in my head, further the question of who are the beneficiaries of these investments? Upon my interviews with a few Ministers and attendees of the forum, I soon realised that the Forum has good intentions, but serves more the governments (leaders) of the countries in attendance and the already rich elite individuals and organisations on the African continent. With international investors from Europe, China and America, who are already major shareholders in the African economy, this will not change the economic dynamics of the continent, in fact it will promote the continuous exploration of the poor African population. The Afri...

My poems reflect the reality of women in South Africa, this is a collection of black women’s voices, voices that are silenced and those who are lost along the path of recovery, they talk of the pain and struggles that black women are faced with every day. The pain of patriarchy, abuse and struggle. One of the poems speaks of the injustices of the story tellers and books on their denial of acknowledging women who have played a vital role in the struggle movement. These poems are heart breaking and yet eye opening to those who dare to read them and allow themselves to be immersed in these women’s stories and voices. My Crown The world never loved us They look at us as though we are foreign in our own home Being black and a woman has us crying when will it be over They look at us once again as though we don’t belong If not in this land, where? God said a women’s hair is her crown But he never specified which woman he was talking about They looked at our hair an...

Critical Reflection on colonial legacies in the African Academy.  Challenges and prospects for the future : We need to understand what colonization is and what it has brought with it that Afrikans are rejecting, what is its legacy in the Academic environment. Understanding the colonial institutionalising of the education system: Definition: colonisation is an ongoing process of control by which a central system of power dominates the surrounding land and its components (people, animals etc.). – Wikipedia Western Education was an important tool in making sure that  colonisation was effective and was needed to pacify the Afrikan. Education was used to restructure Afrikan communities and cultures, to make them more Eurocentric. The French used a policy called emulation that made Africans in their colonies aspire to be more like their French masters. Those who sounded and acting like the Frenchman, were given full citizenship. The idea of being like the West is one ...

A few weeks ago, a friend and I decided we needed to unwind and get a glass of wine after a long day of work.   We decided to find a relaxed bar or restaurant in Rosebank, we found a Grill House called Blaque, a beautiful jazzy spot on Jan Smuts Avenue, surrounded by a number of restaurants on the same block. Upon walking into this earthy decorated restaurant, we were greeted by a beautiful young lady, who had the biggest smile on her face, who offered us a table and menu, then she took us through it. Although we were there just for the wine, her warmth and welcoming disposition made us want to listen to her.   To add to their hospitality, the owner of the establishment came out to say hi to us and give us a background of the restaurant. They went out of their way to offer warm hospitality; we went from just going there for wine, to deciding on what to eat. From a delicious chickpea salad ( probably the best I’ve had) to a plate of mutton chops, beautifully seasoned a...

What if we ( Africans) told our own stories, what if the reality of the majority of the people living in this country and continent was told by them, rather than those who are “qualified” to tell those stories. How would those stories be, how would they sound, who would they talk to and why would they be relevant to be told? I have always loved the hearing stories from my father and the older family members, their stories, weather heartbreaking or funny, always felt real, engaging and full of lessons. The old folk tales that would introduce themselves as “intsomi” , they required us agreeing for this “ntosmi” to be told to us. There is a power in African stories, whether they be true or fiction, but the power comes from the voice that tells the story and the people that give it life. South African stories are so diluted with western influences, that the authenticity of these stories is lost.  While you have a few productions and storyteller making efforts to Africanise our...

I hold my breath as he passes by, I’m not sure what he will do. He says hi and I pull my bag closer to myself, what if he takes it and runs or what if he kidnaps me and rape me? A black man walking past me seems more dangerous than a white man next to me. When I pull up near the traffic light, where there is a black man giving out flyers, I roll up my window and shack my head, hard enough that he does not need my voice to know, I won’t help him, he needs to move, without even looking at him, I give him a clear message. While a white beggar hears my voice, with my window in the same low position it was when I was driving.  Violence and crime has been painted with the paint of a black man, it has been given a face, a face we all know and a face that is the face of our brothers and fathers.  The world has taught us one thing about criminals and that is, they are black and male. Maybe it’s just me, I look at my father as my hero, my brother as the coolest guy out there, and...

 While we fight for equal pay amongst women and men, we need to separate the category of women; there are black women, then there are white women. Within these categories, there are clear wage gaps and clear value of the one, over the other, with the other being black women. I have come to realise that white people do not realise their privilege and supremacy complex, there fake fading smiles when you walk past them, almost to say, “What are you doing in my space”. I don’t think they realise  that we can see right through those half baked smiles. There coldness and uninviting energy makes you self-aware and reminds you, that you are in the wrong place, this is not your space and as long as you can remember that, you will be okay. However white people are not the only problem black women face in corporate, black men also contribute to the demise of black women in the workplace. I worked for a company that was ran by black men and fell victim to the corporate abuse that b...

4:00 am every morning she is up, she leaves the house at 5:00 am to open up shop at 6:00 am, when everyone else wakes up or when they leave the house. She has to make sure she is there early for those who too are early, she needs to make sure all her products are on display for the morning crowd. I wake at 6:00 am like the rest of the working class; I get ready for school, prepare my books and make porridge. I make my way out of the two-room tin house I share with my mother and two of my sisters. They too get ready the same time,  my sister and I  walk to the bus stop and make our way to Bryanston to school, while the other makes her way to Lonehill. Alex seems like a faraway reality from our school lives. We might not have much at home but no one knows it here, I have a new blazer and shoes, my old ones were getting smaller, I gave them to my sister. They were still in good condition, we have to make sure they are, we don’t know when we will afford to buy them again. M...

A taxi just seems so wretched and black. I prefer my car and should my car breakdown, lucky for me, there are so many options, Uber, Taxify and a good old cab. This is the new generation of black South Africans, who grew up in former white neighborhoods and attended fancy white schools or model C schools. The reality of poverty and lack, seems like a foreign subject to them. Them that speak with English that confuses even their white counterparts, “is he black or white”, you really can’t tell over the phone, but that is good, isn’t it? Now they can get better service than the black person who sounds black, just as long as they don’t use their real name, they should be find. The desire to distance ourselves from poverty, has turned to the desire to distance ourselves from blackness. There seems to be so many things wrong with being black and the further one distances themselves from this image, the better it feels for them. The “Kasi”, seems to be a foreign land to those who live ...

2013 I wrote this post after attending my first Black Students Union meeting, with a minority group of  students of the university I attended in the USA. The conversation was interesting and issues that the African Americans community are freely and radically  speaking about today, were those we spoke about in enclosed rooms and among ourselves. I decided that I wanted to share this post, untouched and unedited, as it were in 2013 when i first wrote it. With increasing unrest of race and social issues for brown skinned people in America, this post is just as relevant now as it was then.  Post:  Today I went to the Black Student Union meeting at Bellarmine University. Today the topic of discussion was "What is Black Culture?" A very intriguing question.  I think no one can really define what black culture is because culture is so diluted, culture is determined by different elements of different places people live in. Culture can never really be def...