Healing Apathy

Lots of initiatives and programmes are embarked on in an attempt to reignite and instil sense of urgency, responsibility and discipline in our learners or teenagers. Motivational speakers and affluent people in designer suits are a common feature during most assembly days at various schools; this in a quest to make learners want to learn and be self-motivated. After which they all hibernate to their posh or palatial houses in enclosed boom-gate areas. By and large, children are inspired by substance and their immediate environment.

Our learners don't aspire to be educated or be known as top achievers, because their immediate environment - educators - are a depressed lot. Educators and graduates with assorted qualifications lead mediocre lives. "Kings and Queens of Bling" or "Self-made millionaires", who hardly made it to the tenth Grade, in townships are what they aspire to be like, materialism is more valued than an honest day's work. Opening up a corner, carwashing, and taxi driving seem to have become ideal career destinations. "Thug life" is fashionable and people like criminal William "King of Bling" Mbatha and opportunist like Khanyi "Queen of Bling" Mbau are held in high esteem or on pedestals and usually demonstrate luminous benefits of scavenging. Rappers have to brag about being shot several times or having shot somebody for them to be idolized. Less is known about Mathematics wizards like Loyiso Nongxa (Vice-chancellor at Wits) and the deceased Professor Thamsanqa Nkambule, because no one wants to emulate them.

I earnestly think that adequate recodnition and remuneration of educators can positively impact on our learners' desire to learn and aspire to be like their mentors - i.e. educators. Imagine a situation where educators drive decent cars like Q7's, X5's, R8's, M3/5/6's parked in the school premise, live in posh houses while they are not suffocating in debt, and can afford a decent meal other than the same bunny chow or "kota" that they also devour during lunch. Won't our learners aspire to be like them and see that it is rewarding to go to school or be educated? When you buy a decent house and register in a well resourced school, you have to go on pension before you buy a second hand car, a professional nogal. I can suddenly hear somebody repeating an old adage: Teaching is a Calling or a Noble Profession! Forgetting that Calling or Nobility doesn't pay bills. Eskom wants another elctricity hike, petrol is continuously up, food is agonizingly expensive, the property market is leaving public servants to apply for low cost houses, and education is gradually becoming out of reach. We can moralize for all we like and clatter about how materialistic our learners are, the fact is that we are living in a substance or material world.

Paying educators well is directly proportional to provision of quality education, which learners will eagerly anticipate and acquire to emulate their mentors...

Name changes in SA

As part of a reconciliatory process, the government in consultation with "people" agreed on renaming some of the historic monumental structures and streets to names that highlight and embrace the currrent change. I personally see this as a reverse of what the Apartheid regime advocated for - recognition of the minority. What inspires the criterion used to allocate a name to a street, monument, or place?

During Apartheid, almost every town in SA has to have a Voortrekker and other Afrikaner Apartheid architects (Verwoerd, Malan, Botha, etc.) street names, which seem synonymous to the current trend by the ruling party - ANC. There seem to be an overuse of the name Nelson Mandela - not undermining the momentous contribution the struggle icon has made to the emancipation of SA. There is Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, Nelson Mandela Metro University, Nelson Mandela Bridge, Nelson Mandela Stadium, Nelson Mandela Squatter Camp, Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, Nelson Mandela Lecture, and Nelson Mandela drive in almost every town. Let the names of statesmen be used in Capital cities mostly, and not just a repetition of one icon. Most of the changes of great monuments are almost always named after ANC cadres, neglecting the contributions made by other political organisations. The tussle in KZN where the ANC intending to change Mangosuthu Highway to another ANC stalward.

Street and town names should be accorded bonafide citizens and/or struggle heroes of respective towns or townships, thus enabling the community to relate to and embrace the effected changes. There is a sudden buzz to rename a street in SA after Yasser Arafat - What contribution has he made towards the advancement of this country? What qualifies him to such honour? Name changing should also not be politically inclined, to alleviate continuous changes if there is a political change in governance of the country.

The cost of Geographical name changing in SA, with majority living in adverse poverty, is excrutiatingly expensive; taking into cognisance updating all logistical areas (maps; road posts; GPRS; GIS,: Navigation systems; etc.). What is the point of embarking on a massive name changes whilst people are starving, dropping out of school and unemployed. Change is appreciated but let it not be subjective and honour only people who are affiliate of a certain group.

Let's rewrite history by bestowing honour to the unsung heroes in our towns and townships...

Blacks are bunch of lazy people...

Cyber Junkies

South Africa is a young democracy, still in its teenage years; 15 years to be exact. The country is still reeling from thousands of years of mental/psychological, social, physical slavery, and emotional torment at the hands of former colonial masters under the ideological masterpiece - "Apartheid". Can 15 years into a democratic dispensation quash centuries of oppression? Some affluent black academics seem to think that Blacks should get over the victim or slave mentality.

In one of the lectures that I always attend at the University of Johannesburg, one of our Educational Theory B (which is part of Psychology) lecturer, Dr. Sedibe to be specific, asserted that 99% of Blacks are lazy. It was freezing on the day, the "lazy blacks" who constituted 98% of the overall attendance were in class. If there was any racist pig in the lecture, his/her stereotypic thinking about Black people and where they are as opposed to where they are supposed to be, was confirmed and perpetuated by the learned doctor. On what is her assertion based?

I think there is a tendency about us as Black people that when we become "those that got away" or affluent, we look down on those who are in the quest of making things happen. Who is making white people's houses homes? Who is raising their kids? Lazy Black people I suppose. How many Blacks work in 5 star hotels and yet cannot afford a buffet or 1 night in one of the rooms they so meticulously tidy? Who possess the wealth of this country? She, like many affluent black people, has locked her family in enclosed mountaneous areas, who do they expect to role model the 'lazy black kids'? How many affluent black people who matriculated in township schools, still want to be associated with and invest in their former disadvantaged schools? They rather associate themselves with schools where their kids are, in order to maintain their bourgeoise class.

The doctor's assertion is synonymous and can be equated to what the Australian losers and the IAAF are putting the South African athlete, Caster Semenya, through. How can a girl from the 'bundus' outdo her "masters"? She is supposed to be lazy, ill disciplined, care-free, and maybe pregnant, then she would be a typical black lazy person; but when the inverse is true, eyebrows are raised. These incidents at this juncture are indicative of the relevance of ideological principles like Black Consciousness, which aimed at instilling Black pride and encourage the collective ownership and sharing of resources; where the Talented Tenth (10%) would use their aptitudes and propencities to advance their communities (90% of the less fortunate), as is the practice with mostly Jews and Muslims.

Maybe this is just the concept of "The Wonderful I" - the other person is late, but I am delayed...