/ 31 August 2016

Elders need to step up: Respectability politics, generational policing won’t free us

Elders Need

“‘”Who unleashed the canines or gave permission for the canine to handle the peaceful protest that was made on Friday and Saturday?” asked an elderly black man at the end of the school governing body (SGB) meeting that was held at Pretoria High School for Girls on Monday August 29.

At that point the two white men on the mainly adult male (and three-learner) panel looked timidly at one another, avoiding the cameras and the enquiring man.

“In simple terms, this is going to be part of the investigation enquiry. I don’t want the SGB to respond to something that they’ve agreed they are subjecting to an independent enquiry. And I feel it’s unfair to open them to such criticism. It’s a matter that we are going to appoint an independent body to deal with this issue within 21 days. They’ll give us their findings then we’ll resolve this,” says the education MEC in a beautiful display of master protecting.

Behind the cameras, sheepish murmurs (“yes-yes”) emerge from the audience, who are majority black parents. “There’s nothing wrong to end a meeting early. Some of us have been here for quite some time,” says the MEC and with that the press conference ends. Zeemkii’nkomo.

Some of the powerful people appointed to solve the crisis of exclusion tactics and racism at ex-white schools are our parents, who, with all due respect, do not understand the daily proximity to and intimate existence in the heart of colonial whiteness that their children experience.

At the press briefing, the MEC proceeded with predictable sobriety, out of respectability and fear of further upsetting the status quo, staying firmly within the prescribed avenues of sensitivity to the school’s deepest fears that it is indeed an institution built on and maintained by the brilliant racism that maintains this nation. And it is not the only one.

From what I saw at that presser, the white and black adults, in alliance with one another, are handling this with reputation-protecting PR gloves. They are applying the exact same cosmetic approach that was used at the beginning of this project in the early 1990s, one that ensures that nothing actually changes on a radical and fundamental level and, in so doing, they are dismantling trust where they should be building bridges of understanding.

After that, I stood in a circle interviewing the learners. They wore the looks of restaurant diners who have just received sliced apples when they had ordered steak with a side of chips.

The first student said: “Right now, it’s hard to say we are dissatisfied without being looked at as antagonist but we are dissatisfied.”

She continued: “Having investigations has happened previously, yet nothing changed. For us it’s another empty promise, but we will take more initiative in how the proceedings happen.”

The second student, who had been waiting for a while to speak, said: “We didn’t know we had this much power because we were never told to have power. We are dissatisfied with the fact that the fate of racism in this school is essentially being held by an SGB that we’ve never interacted with.

“We’ve never seen these men in our entire lives. These are the same old white men who know that this system exists and have been okay with the fact that the staff is predominantly white and are still calling us indigenous Africans in 2016.

“Why should I be okay with the fact that that man is going to do something about racism for me as a black student? This school is run by old white men and women who cannot be oblivious to what is happening in this school. If you are oblivious then you should be taken out because you don’t know what’s happening in your own school.

“We want retrenchment. We want apologies. This is not over,” she said, speaking into my recorder.

The third student: “I feel like this meeting was held to calm this matter down so I am not satisfied at all. I think my friends and I have a strategy after this but I can’t comment on it right now.”

Notwithstanding the fact that this episode is a vile distraction to teenage girlhood, the greatest milestone black girls and subsequently women are making in this moment is that they are finally not fighting among themselves.

They, themselves, are not privileging one type of hair over another. They are not dividing themselves into different teams. This is a clear bell ringing, a loud disruption that says “the problem has never been you, it’s the system that was created to devastate you”.

As we were leaving the school at the end of the night, a colleague overheard a mother talking to her two daughters as they walked out. “Why didn’t you guys tell me these things though?” asked the bewildered mother.

“But mama we do,” said one of her children. “Whenever we talk to you about these things you always say we must just focus on our books.”

If black parents are not prepared to build their own schools as suggested by the lone man who held a placard that read “Only a fool would let his child be educated by his oppressor” outside the school, then the least they could do is listen to and be led by the wise young minds that they have birthed.