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This article will no doubt offend many, but understand that this is my truth and my understanding of the world I now inhabit and the childhood I came from.
I was educated in a Christian so-called "multi racial" school. upon being accepted into this school I was thrust into a different way of life. The life of "whiteness", a place where I could no longer express myself in the beauty of my mother tongue for fear of punishment, where daily the undeserved material superiority of the white race was flashed before me and the financial short-comings of my hard working parents were all too evident.
After all this, my accent, my values and my outlook on life began to change, in fact I began to see the inferiority of my own race. As I progressed to higher classes, I was always reminded by my teachers how fortunate I was to receive this "superior" white education and as a gullible child I believed this lie and became an eloquent fool!! understand that when I speak of whites, I speak of a group of people who have bought into the psychological placebo of white minority superiority, just to get that clear.
I was taught that the history of robbers, thieves and rapists like Jan van Rieebeck, Christopher Columbus, Vasco Da Gama and company was a glorious history of discovery, I even remember making posters and projects about these abhorrent men!!
Life was easy and fun, I made many friends from different races, but in the end lost touch with my own history because our sessions on Shaka Zulu were very short and lets not forget, he was an evil tyrant who wiped out the "other tribes' and the victory of Isandlwana wasn't because of Zulu military genius but because of British negligence!! (How arrogant).
The turning point came when I had to go back to places where my own community were struggling. (You see I never grew up in any township, now you know). And I was confronted with the truths that came with the colour of my skin.
Every holiday I would make pilgrimages to townships where my relatives stayed and the rural areas where we have another home and residence KwaSwayimane. I learnt to embrace my own culture and became OBSESSED with gaining more insight about it.
Nowadays I work in a museum of historical and cultural history, and I began to untangle the web of lies I was taught in my youth by reading books, realising the merits and short-comings of these books and then searching deep into our oral history. IZITHAKAZELO ALONE CAN TEACH YOU SO MUCH.
Then I grew eons apart from many of my childhood friends, in essence I was detoxing from the poisonous notion of white superiority that had engulfed my life for so long and hence my rehabilitation from being a Oreo is still in progress.
