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What does the feeling of hopelessness mean to you, especially when thinking in terms of young black, coloured and Indian South Africans today? This was the conversation I found myself having with a friend recently.
As we continued to unpack the harsh realities on the South African population's majority as a result of the Apartheid regime, I began feeling suffocated by the disproportionate depression faced by many black, coloured and Indian South Africans.
It wasn’t just the fact that many of these South Africans were and still are introduced to an education system that is poorly managed to say the least, but the resolute fact that there is still a large culture of racism in South Africa, whether people would care to admit it or not.
Now, before anybody goes and rolls their eyes, dismissing me as a person who would pull the race card at any given turn, give me a chance.
I think in South Africa one of the major problems is this feeling of minimising what Apartheid really meant to the majority of the population. Many of whom, as a result, live in informal settlements with faulty drainage systems.
I seriously cannot count the amount of times I have overheard people sighing and stating how they have learnt about Apartheid, and they're over it. "Over it" should not be what you are feeling when 80 percent of the country is still impoverished and banished to a cycle of hopelessness based on race or, increasingly, class.
It is a fundamental fact that this country, though breathtaking in its natural terrain, is crippling itself and its people.
It was this admission that had my friend perplexed, who continued to quiz me on how I could still say that one should never lose hope.
"How can one not?" he asked me. He went on to explain how he had learnt that, at a very prominent private school in South Africa, they had begun educating their students by having video recorded sessions with different teachers viewed on iPads issued by the school.
Students are required to review the study material at home and class time is reserved for discussion of material, and not even two hundred meters away from what I even had to admit was an impressive education model, one could find themselves in a school filled with children who come from generations of uneducated people.
A school where teachers even showing up to teach is not guaranteed and violence and the extremities of poverty are an everyday reality.
Yet I still strongly advocated the idea that there is still hope for the masses of young people faced with the daily reminders of what Apartheid meant. ‘How?’ he continued to quiz me.
Now, as a middle class black female, I understand how people may believe my views are comfortably voiced from an ivory tower, and in all honesty, I do not negate that ideological fact.
However, my middle class position within a democratic South Africa - a position I should duly note I could never have held thirty years ago - has allowed me to establish a truth that I feel is integral in counteracting this widespread feeling of hopelessness. I do not deny that the lack of resources faced by the population’s majority does feed the feeling of hopelessness which is further heightened when faced with the popular nonchalant attitude of the white and newly formed black elite in South Africa.
Do they not realise that protecting hierarchies built from the past in order to make oneself feel superior, leaves one locked in a crevice of history?
My hope however comes in the form of a lineage of people who have come before me and who will come long after I am gone. The hope I see for the seemingly hopeless was discovered by the very position I now occupy in society. In that each person within my lineage never gave up hope. They never gave up the idea that one day a child could be born to our bloodline who could do whatever they wanted, have access to unlimited resources and go on to shape the world.
It was ideologies like these that created the Rockefellers and Firestones of the world. Ideologies like these that could go on to put South Africa on the map as a major world player, and the ideology starts with you as the individual.
It starts within the understanding that every step you take is part of a greater step, within your own lineage and the lineage of this country. Its understanding that one belongs to a life that is greater than their own needs and that each step taken is a step that effects everyone who has come before you and who will come after you.
As we continued to unpack the harsh realities on the South African population's majority as a result of the Apartheid regime, I began feeling suffocated by the disproportionate depression faced by many black, coloured and Indian South Africans.
It wasn’t just the fact that many of these South Africans were and still are introduced to an education system that is poorly managed to say the least, but the resolute fact that there is still a large culture of racism in South Africa, whether people would care to admit it or not.
Now, before anybody goes and rolls their eyes, dismissing me as a person who would pull the race card at any given turn, give me a chance.
I think in South Africa one of the major problems is this feeling of minimising what Apartheid really meant to the majority of the population. Many of whom, as a result, live in informal settlements with faulty drainage systems.
I seriously cannot count the amount of times I have overheard people sighing and stating how they have learnt about Apartheid, and they're over it. "Over it" should not be what you are feeling when 80 percent of the country is still impoverished and banished to a cycle of hopelessness based on race or, increasingly, class.
It is a fundamental fact that this country, though breathtaking in its natural terrain, is crippling itself and its people.
It was this admission that had my friend perplexed, who continued to quiz me on how I could still say that one should never lose hope.
"How can one not?" he asked me. He went on to explain how he had learnt that, at a very prominent private school in South Africa, they had begun educating their students by having video recorded sessions with different teachers viewed on iPads issued by the school.
Students are required to review the study material at home and class time is reserved for discussion of material, and not even two hundred meters away from what I even had to admit was an impressive education model, one could find themselves in a school filled with children who come from generations of uneducated people.
A school where teachers even showing up to teach is not guaranteed and violence and the extremities of poverty are an everyday reality.
Yet I still strongly advocated the idea that there is still hope for the masses of young people faced with the daily reminders of what Apartheid meant. ‘How?’ he continued to quiz me.
Now, as a middle class black female, I understand how people may believe my views are comfortably voiced from an ivory tower, and in all honesty, I do not negate that ideological fact.
However, my middle class position within a democratic South Africa - a position I should duly note I could never have held thirty years ago - has allowed me to establish a truth that I feel is integral in counteracting this widespread feeling of hopelessness. I do not deny that the lack of resources faced by the population’s majority does feed the feeling of hopelessness which is further heightened when faced with the popular nonchalant attitude of the white and newly formed black elite in South Africa.
Do they not realise that protecting hierarchies built from the past in order to make oneself feel superior, leaves one locked in a crevice of history?
My hope however comes in the form of a lineage of people who have come before me and who will come long after I am gone. The hope I see for the seemingly hopeless was discovered by the very position I now occupy in society. In that each person within my lineage never gave up hope. They never gave up the idea that one day a child could be born to our bloodline who could do whatever they wanted, have access to unlimited resources and go on to shape the world.
It was ideologies like these that created the Rockefellers and Firestones of the world. Ideologies like these that could go on to put South Africa on the map as a major world player, and the ideology starts with you as the individual.
It starts within the understanding that every step you take is part of a greater step, within your own lineage and the lineage of this country. Its understanding that one belongs to a life that is greater than their own needs and that each step taken is a step that effects everyone who has come before you and who will come after you.
