By Malaika Wa Azania, author of “Memoirs of a Born Free”
Tomorrow every newspaper in the country is going to run a story parading some few Black students who passed their matric in spite of very difficult circumstances. These are students who studied using a candle, living in a poverty striken home. These are students who, at 18, were heading their households after their parents died, or who are taking care of sick mothers and being traumatised by drunkard fathers.
These are students in rural Eastern Cape who did not have teachers for six months, students who walk 5 kilometres to school every morning, crossing through broken bridges, falling into water puddles from time to time. The newspapers will parade them as strong and tell us how anything is possible if we just work hard. The general theme will be: “Even in extreme poverty, students can rise above difficulties and get distinctions. They must just work hard. They can do it!”
Millions on social media will share links to these “touching” and “optimistic” stories and affirm that indeed, if every student in such conditions works hard, they will get into university (a cruel lie).
We have normalised violence against Black people in this country. So normal is this violence that instead of fighting a government that enables the creation of such violent and debilitating conditions for a Black child, we want to talk instead about how Black CHILDREN must just work hard, just endure the pain of poverty, the pain of neglect, the pain of being dehumanised, the pain of being second-class citizens in their own country, and they will be fine. We want to measure the strength of Black CHILDREN by how much pain and suffering they can take without breaking. Suffering is normal to us. We even romanticise it. That distinction is only truly meaningful because the student suffered to have it. We applaud our children for surviving a ruthless system as if it is an initiation into being a functional human-being, when in reality; it creates Black adults who spend their entire lives recovering from their childhoods (and often failing).
This violence that defines Black lives in our country is not normal and we must stop normalising it.
By Malaika Wa Azania, author of “Memoirs of a Born Free”
