There have been flare-ups of racial bigotry at schools recently and it boils down to this type of behaviour being taught in homes by parents.
We owe it to our children to unburden them from our discrimination born out of a history of violence, pain and unresolved resentment, writes Gasant Abarder in a new #SliceofGasant column.
I feel hurt, angry, frustrated and utterly dejected while writing this. It’s all because I tried to do a good deed in a queue to pay for parking at a mall and it backfired.
Ahead of me, my wife and our three daughters, was a woman in her 30s struggling to pay with a free parking voucher from one of the stores. I moved forward offering my help and she turned around and berated me for being impatient.
She was there with her parents and when they arrived, they could see she was visibly upset. She told them I had tried to prise the parking voucher from her hand. I was gobsmacked. I told her mother I had tried to help but she bit my head off. The mom jokingly replied that her daughter bit her head off frequently too.
The daughter kept up her tantrum and was now instructing us to go to another paypoint. We weren’t even saying a word. The mom, standing at the back of the queue, then started flipping the script and was now loudly telling me to stop. The conversation went back and forth until there it was: If I didn’t stop, the mom was going to call the security.
I was one of maybe two people of colour in the queue when she threatened me with the security. I asked for what reason because I was merely trying to assist. I was confused and insulted because I knew full well what was implied.
It is one of those incidents that doesn’t carry a parking ticket receipt but something I’ve encountered numerous times here in Cape Town. The non-bloody, non-violent type of micro-aggression. But let’s call it what it is: Discrimination.
It happened in the wake of a quite extraordinary scene at Pinelands High School where there was a ‘slave auction’ of black pupils. A few days ago, a principal friend at a Southern Suburbs school, who is proudly from the Cape Flats, was told to go back to where she came from by a parent in a most vile and despicable way.
Yesterday, another high school – who had its share of racist incidents in the not-too-distant past – held a symposium after school, cancelling all extramural activities to sensitise its learners about racism. It was a great initiative by the school and it’s commendable.
But the parents should be there as well because this type of behaviour is taught at home. Publicly, we all back the Boks and Proteas. But in the confines of our homes this is the terminology and the prevailing sentiment between anything that is other.
In my football circles there is growing integration of children born in South Africa from migrant parents. They are seemingly welcomed but in private – in front of children who are … let’s call them bona fide South Africans, for a lack of a better description – called Bongos.
I didn’t know what this meant and had to look it up. Africa, according to a colonial politician of the 80s was the derogatory Bongo-Bongo land as a reference to third world countries. Its residents who reside here are now referred to as Bongos by adults on the Cape Flats and the children of these adults are listening.
About a decade ago, I was in Northern Ireland as a visiting editor at the Belfast Telegraph. At the time, the debate was whether there should be a TRC like South Africa had after a 30-year conflict called The Troubles. Unionists and loyalists, who for historical reasons were mostly Ulster Protestants, wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom. Irish nationalists and republicans, who were mostly Irish Catholics, wanted Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and join Ireland.
The physical and mental scars from the bombings and many fatalities were visible. There were shrines where parks should be and murals depicting the violence that you opened your door to each morning. I argued there was so much water under the bridge that it was too late because the resentment ran deep. South Africa’s TRC had dealt with racial segregation by allowing victims and perpetrators to reconcile early on in our transition to a democracy.
I was wrong. We need to talk more urgently now and to stop paying lip service to nation building. It’s a tough ask when we have a sports minister who can’t hide his hatred for the immigrant community of South Africa.
As parents, we are burdening our children – and more specifically the victims of discrimination – to deal with our hangover of racial bigotry. We need to have these talks for adults so they can cease teaching their children to hate.
The responsibility doesn’t lie with teachers or a principal. It is our challenge as parents to nurture young South Africans to do better than we did so that the sins of the past can never be repeated.
Also read:
Our school curriculum is an oppressive tool designed to produce clones
Picture: Diva Plavalaguna / Pexels
