Why are areas like Timothy Valley, Barcelona, Helenvale, Bethelsdorp, Gelvandale, Missionvale, Kleinskool and elsewhere in existence, and all the other subeconomic areas of the northern areas? It is not only our government that has failed us, but the model and design of the South African democracy.
Are the children of the northern areas invisible, are they forgotten, why this racial burden, do they ask themselves when they go to bed hungry, why this inequality? The black and brown children of the northern areas and the township want you to see them, they want you to understand their plight, to understand their troubles, to acknowledge them, they want you, outside this community, to show concern and care. Our children are God’s children, the creation of the Almighty.
What you don’t see is how the scenario and landscape of the racial burden and inequality is changing, conditioning psychologically and otherwise, the brain of the black and brown child. The child who faces an uncertain future, a lack of adequate housing, fair and decent education, supervision and representation, the presence of sufficient role-models and mentors, and competent leaders in their lives. Please stop negotiating our identity, the black and brown child’s identity.
Don’t teach them to play obedient, submissive, gentle or to go silent, to talk in whispers about what affects them because it makes you feel more comfortable. Racism and inequality changed me, please don’t, in this post-apartheid era and new dispensation, let it affect an innocent child. Our children must refuse to be diminished and controlled by a status quo that wants to erase their hope and identity. Don’t teach a child to be grateful for integration, for it is a human right.
We shouldn’t have to adapt our experience, our vision of the areas we live in, or ourselves to a world that sees us, and brown and black children as second class citizens because of the colour of their skin. Let the children inherit freedom, economic and social freedom, and psychological release and not struggle, despair and hardship. A subeconomic area, township and informal settlement is a reflection of how this country’s leaders, how the infiltrated design of this democracy has failed the most vulnerable, it is an indictment of our silence, an indication of our inhumanity and it is a reflection of the economic inequality of this country.
The minority are still very much in power, and the majority for the most part, are still poor, still uneducated, still disenfranchised. Poverty is not a naturally made set of circumstances. It is up to black and brown intellectuals to completely erase the dehumanization of the black and brown child. Oppression doesn’t require permission, just bystanders and witnesses who remain silent. We need service, skills, jobs and job creation, social cohesion, infrastructure that works and education. We must not neglect to support the dreams of our youth and to watch them blossom.
We need to talk about youth crime and how we are going to rehabilitate children and the youth. I want to talk about our sons. We must teach them to have courage, a spiritual outlook on life, how to attain financial independence without resorting to crime, how to achieve a natural balance in their lives, success, adequate mental health, and how to cope with depression and bullying. Courage is the answer. We need to raise our sons to become men who won’t practice or resort to domestic violence in their homes. We need to raise men who will refuse to turn to substance abuse.
Mothers and fathers, love your sons unconditionally, listen to them, supervise homework, know who their friends are. Drug addiction starts with peer pressure. Stepmothers and stepfathers show loyal support, grandmothers and grandfathers your presence is enough, aunts and uncles should be an example. Communities and schools must introduce workshops where young men are taught to cope with depression, self-doubt, insecurity, to handle outside pressure and their mental health. Mental health sometimes takes fragile work. This starts in the home.
Our sons still wear the badge of colonial conquest, the emblem of the colonial scheme, racial inequality, the racial burden, colonialism. Our sons are still being taught that they are inferior. We must raise our sons to be good men, respectful to women, to be kind to children, to the elderly, to the homeless, to the disabled, to the mentally ill, to the depression sufferer. Our sons are the voice of Africa. Our children are the voice of Africa, but our sons are weeping. Our sons are resorting to gun violence and youth crime. Why? Why?
It starts in childhood with mentors, with unconditional love, with religious instructions, and with education. It starts with a society in which our sons are seen as equals, where they are responsible and make choices that result in their own personal happiness. Our sons are being mentally captured by inequality, racial burden, food insecurity, corruption, and the fact that not only is South Africa in dire financial need, struggle and straits, but so is Africa. Africa is an economic island.
In order for our sons to achieve, not just to endure or survive on the streets as they are doing now, we have to deconstruct colonial systems, structures and infrastructure.
We can still introduce them to Bessie Head, Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Rainer Maria Rilke, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, John Updike and J.D. Salinger. Yes, even reading Rilke and Hemingway can be inspirational and motivating. We have to choose another way for the youth and I reckon education is the only way. The child is intelligent and he knows right from wrong but when he grows up he makes the wrong choices. We have to ask ourselves the tough question, why does this happen? Are we failing our sons?
We have to educate our sons that father absence is the incorrect choice and has prolonged and damaging effects on the psychological framework of the child and children, especially sons. We have to enlighten our sons about the economic fragmentation and erosion of Africa, and corruption sooner rather than later. How all three are crimes to humanity, how they destabilise the social freedoms and economy, the education and health systems of the people of this country, and the personal freedom of her inhabitants.
Our sons are the future, the future fathers of this country. What is certain is that the son will outgrow their mother’s lap. It is up to us to decide whether they become a burden to society, an outsider or a beacon of hope inspiring others to make a positive contribution to the betterment of society. The church must invest in our sons, sooner rather than later and our sons mustn’t define themselves around colonisation but the history of Africa before Berlin. Before the decision that grouped Africa into colonised states.
In this day and age, the brown identity, Coloured people, mixed raced individuals cannot live separated or isolated physically and psychologically from the black identity and minorities. The standpoint isn’t about black vulnerability or black stigma, vulnerability is vulnerability is vulnerability. Stigma is about marginalised and disenfranchised identities dealing with, coping with and confronting the oppression, the trials of the past apartheid dispensation and the difficulties of liberation and emancipation from the said oppression.
Is freedom coming? Yes, yes. Freedom is coming. I believe economic freedom is coming even amidst downsizing and the aftermath of a recession and the problems we are facing in South Africa and the rest of the African continent. But the economic freedom of this country, like the laws of this land, is not in the hands of our president and his cabinet, but this country’s citizens, her working classes.
