16 June, 1976

This is a little early for June 16 -- South Africa's "Youth Day" -- but this week I was substitute teaching for my mum. The students' assignment was to write a poem about 16 June, 1976. So I decided to do the assignment too! 16 June 1976 was the day thousands of South African students marched in protest of the Bantu Education system. Black students were forced to study a sub-standard curriculum and were taught in Afrikaans, the language that, to them, represented their oppressor. Young SA policemen shot unarmed students and ignited violent riots across the country.

Here is a token to those students, in particular Hector Pieterson (above) -- the first child known to have been killed in the June 16 violence.

[this poem should be read aloud....it needs to be vocalized!!]

16 June, 1976:

Amandhla! Amandhla! Amandhla!
Cry Freedom!
The cry, the cry, the cry
becomes a scream
The scream becomes a yell
How can we, how can we
escape from this hell?

Toyi, toyi, toyi, up and down, up and down
All the way through this Soweto town
Toyi, toyi, toyi, can we change, can we change
this system, this apartheid, that will us derange?

We shout, we yell, we fight, we sell
Our future for our past.

Our past we touch, but cannot reach
Our past we know, but cannot teach
Our past we touch, but cannot reach
Our past we know, but cannot teach
Our past, our past
Our past dictates our future.

Our future, what’s our future?
Our futures don’t exist.
How can we touch, how can we hold what it is we do not own?
How can we touch, how can we feel, what has not already grown?
How can we touch, how can we hold, what it is we do not own?
How can we touch, how can we hold what has not already grown?

Our future
Our life
Our future
Our hell.

June 16, it came and went,
How much young hope, blood was spent?
Dreams poured, flooding down the streets
Streets filled with youth, lost, broken, bent.
Our hopes flowed with our shattered lives,
Our broken bodies, broken hearts,
They fled amongst our fleeing feet
Toyi toyi no more, this day is dead.

One shot killed Hector, hope and life
A generation died that night
A nation cut, slashed by a knife
A bloodbath, war-cry, battle, fight.

Where to SA? Where to from here?
A line drawn, ’76, that year
littered with blood, lost hope and fear
A line extends year after year.
’94, so bright a dawn,
A hope that was malformed, stillborn.

South Africa, South Africa
Amandhla! shout or cry no more
No more let children live in screams
And live to grow their adult dreams.

South Africa, South Africa
Free us from our unseemly past
“Let freedom reign” and no more pain
Follow us; please let it last.

Forced nomadicism...!

OK, so I don't think "nomadicism" is actually a word...but is worth a try! And it truly describes my state right now: am in forced "exile" in my own country. How weird is that? Let's go back to April 5 though, when I last posted on here. In the past 2 months Zimbabwe has had an election (presidential AND parliamentary); failed to release presidential results for over a month after the election; released skewed results; holding a re-run in June. Oh, and in-between all that I was almost denied re-entry into Zim after a trip to Botswana, and then told I had to leave the country in 2 days -- which was then extended to 2 weeks. And therefore took myself down to Cape Town. Wow....

The elections? I'm sure I can't add anything new to the discussion around Zim's obviously flawed elections. Needless to say, we are still waiting for change. Imagine, even sitting in another country, I hesitate to write too much about anything political because I know how peculiar they can be with their "media" laws in Zim and I would hate to be refused entry a second time due to this (severely neglected!) blog!! But quite clearly we need change, we want change, and currently Zim is experiencing over 1,000,000% inflation. Insanity? Yea...

I arrived in South Africa to witness the xenophobic violence that has hit this country in the past two weeks. Your heart bleeds for these Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Angolans, Somalians who are here legally and who are not in a position to return to the chaos of their own countries -- and who have now been displaced, attacked or killed simply because they are from a different African country. Why did this happen? Supposedly because foreigners are taking jobs away from South Africans. Truly? I don't know. I feel there is not enough information shared in S.A. about the need for foreign skills. For example, we have a severe shortage of teachers in South Africa. Without foreign teachers, well-qualified foreign teachers, South African students would not get an education.

Another point: during South Africa's liberation struggle foreign countries gave refuge to thousands of South Africans involved in the struggle. Other African countries gave us military bases nad tremendous support, without which we may not have achieved freedom. And we repay these foreigners' children, now seeking refuge in South Africa, with death and complete alienation. It is disgusting.

I have always had mixed feelings about being a South African. As a child I felt ashamed to be a product of the apartheid system and to be living in a country that so obviously discriminated against certain sectors of society. But after 1994 I felt liberated, as an individual and as a citizen. I felt like my country of birth had done something monumental -- taken freedom without heeding the natural pull towards civil war. We achieved what many countries have not achieved: a rainbow nation.

But during the past two weeks I have again felt ashamed to be South African. At a time when we should all be working together to build a stronger country and continent we have taken the lower road, the more shameful road of attacking people who are "different." We should know better.