As in, each time it’s mentioned, it’s not a story to me, it’s reality. From the leafy suburbs where I went to my White school, to the townships guarded by police officers on huge tanks as you ‘enter.’
I tried to join some neighbourhood WhatsApp groups where I live. It’s a previously White suburb. I left. They hanker after the good old days and for me, there is no such thing. They get angry about things that only Black people do. Like, selling vegetables on the pavement without a license. We don’t have that concept! We just have “trying to provide for my family” traditions. They get angry that the people didn’t apply for this and that compliance certificate..They get disgusted because one guy who was selling was picking his nose.🤣🤣They have time for loads of petty complaints. But all I see is, “Those Black peoples who don’t have the capital to buy or resent stores are an eyesore on our pavements.” (Sidewalks)
And there’s actually order. They group themselves in specific areas. It’s like an unplanned marketplace. And no, when I drive past I never feel like “they’re a danger.”🙄
So, that will be the background or context to this rant that I put up on my other social media place. First, I’ll post photos of Gugulethu. That’s the township I grew up in. Home size, home type, and area not of our choosing. Forced there by the apartheid government. Then below the rant, I’ll put photos of the homes in Simon’s Town. I’m sure you’ll understand the heartache and sadness of my childhood experiences.
I’m leaving the descriptions in the adverts on purpose. The difference between Gugulethu and there, is stark and sad.
My goodness!
I am angry and heartbroken in equal measure!
Periodically, we see updates on our Black and Coloured people getting keys or money for land in areas they were forcibly removed from.
This hits hard. Those triggers that the woke talk about?
Takes me back to junior school when I moved from Mickelfield Girls (Independent school. Rebel that took this Black girl when other private schools kept to the law) to Rustenburg Girls (ex-government school), where I felt the difference.
No, the WHITE GIRLS IN MY CLASS MADE ME FEEL THE DIFFERENCE.
During history, “Do you know Zooloo?” (Lessons on king Shaka)
“Do you live in a hut?”
And randomly, they’d ask, “Do you have a house? Do you live a shack? Is it stinky?”
One girl said that her father said “Gugulethu is an eyesore.”
This morning’s news about the Gugulethu people receiving keys after being moved from Simon’s Town hit hard. I had no idea Black people used to live there. It’s such a “White” area!
They took us from beauty and dumped us in squalor.
They took us from the coast, from the mountainside and shoved us where there was nothing to see, none of God’s beauty.
Then the racists have the audacity to long for “the good old days” in the white neighborhoods of theirs!?
Which good old days?
The ones BEFORE they invaded our land, took us from our property and colonized OUR neighbourhoods while forcing us to live where they then mocked us for living??
Or the more recent ‘good old days’ when they smugly lived on stolen land and only saw us when they needed our broken bodies to wash their stolen toilets and weed the grass that was ours?
I’ve never rejoined any neighbourhood WhatsApp group. People don’t think before they type. And my own life is painful enough without reading their dark thoughts.
They said I should write a book 