Dear Beautiful coconut black girl

It took time for us to realize that there was power in our skin colour, we grew up in towns and went to schools that did not value our skin tone or our languages. We grew up trying to emulate whiteness because our teachers and white schoolmates respected us more when we sounded like them and acted like they did. There was a desire to be like they are, to live like they did, our parents seemed to smile more when we spoke “perfect” English, their kids were like the white kids, they too could be at the same level as the white parents, sit in the same room at prize giving and have pictures of their kids in a classroom full of white kids and a white teacher. What was better than your child being like a white child?

We are models of our parent’s dreams, we are the example of “freedom” for them. We too did not understand the enormous responsibility that was handed to us. This responsibility to prove that we have defeated the system, that the ANC government led by the former late   President of the country Nelson Mandela had done their job. We were born after the release of the ANC political prisoners, and we accepted never to experience the pain of racism. The country belonged to “all who lived in it”, black and white and our white teachers made sure that we knew that the country was shared (we just were never given the stats of who had majority shares).  We spoke English with our friends and classed schools that did not speak English as their home language. Schools in township and their learners were not in our league and their learners were funny because they “broke English “. English became our measurement of intelligence and class.

We grew up with strong women surrounding us and you with a single mother raising you. A mother who paid for all your school fees, your food, your house and clothes, you have not known a single cent from your father. Somehow with all these powerful women around us, we still knew that a man, a black man was above us, you submit to a man, you don’t question a man. We accepted it because we had to, as young black girls we don’t question, we just do what is done.

We grew up playing with dolls that never resembled us or our skin tone, but it was ok because no one would buy a black doll, after all white was the goal and anything that made us white was accepted. Race was not a subject of discussion to kids, not even in high school, not in the history class, Mandela made racism disappear. That was it, colour was not a barrier, our eyes, our ears, saw no racism and heard no racism, jokes about black people in class were funny and we laughed.

Our schools told us to thigh up our Afro's and not speak our natives languages on the school grounds, we understood it was for our own good, after all those were white English and Afrikaans schools. Teachers told us “if you want to speak you’re native languages, go to a township school”, off cause we did not want to go to township schools.   

University became a new journey, there seemed to be politics everywhere, people speaking about poverty and racism. Blacks students from township schools where leaders, they spoke English in a black accents, but yet they got better marks then us in assignments and tests. How  could this be, they were nothing close to whiteness, what was happening to our perfect world, Mandela did not tell us about this, our teachers did not prepare us for this. There was a another side to this, the white lectures (majority) seemed to favour those who spoke better English then those who spoke poor English, but white students still got better treatment, Afrikaans in some lectures halls was used to teach. This was becoming unfamiliar, we started realizing that we are black and different from Jessica.  

Students from rural areas were missed placed in institutions of higher learning in South Africa, they had not known English as their home language and as medium of instruction. The more we observed the treatment of black students in these institutions, the more we realized that we were nothing like the text books taught us. There was no rainbow in this nation, history was not over and the legacy of Nelson Mandela was not in these spaces we were now occupying.

We felt black for the first time in South Africa, on the African continent. Our voices sharpened and we became aware of the reality of South Africa. We wished we could have been as brave as the Pretoria Girls High girls, who said our Afro’s cannot be tired, they not silky and  do not fall like white hair, we wish we could have quoted the constitution that allows one the freedom of expression in their home language. We wish we could have rejected those offensive black jokes said by our teachers in class. How I wish we could have seen black dolls growing up, sold at Shoprite and Pep, dolls with big beautiful Afros, with dark skin kissed by the African sun. Dear Black beautiful girl, how I wish we knew how beautiful our black African skin was.

Now we are older and live in a new South Africa, that still feels like the old South Africa that we read about in our history books, where women are still oppressed, where blacks are still poor and being killed, where the economy still is in the hands of the minority, where the land is still disposed, where we cannot walk outside at night because of fear. Dear Black beautiful girl our education is still Eurocentric, South African Africans are still calling for freedom, we seem to still be asking the ANC to free us. Some PAC political prisoners are still in prison, whites still call us Kaffirs. The youth are still marching in the streets for education, women are still marching for freedom and protection. We are still in under the land act of 1913 and the Koi San are still called coloureds.

Are we really free or are we still dreaming of freedom. Dear Black Beautiful girl, we are still growing, we too may be mothers, and we too may be wives one day or teachers and writers of history. The fight is still prevalent and we are still in a war for blackness to be approved.