G.j.C.B.C Corner

  (left: Nkosi Ndebele (Chief Ndebele) center: Umntwana Omkhulu (The head royal Prince of Egazini in Zululand) ) The understanding of South African history has easily lost its relevance to the new generation. With the country still being in its democratic infancy, cultural identity is easily forgotten or misunderstood. Personally,  my understanding of the different tribal bodies that makeup South Africa is only the size of the Shaka Zulu modules that were squeezed into my high school syllabus. The apartheid regime lessons then stripped away the little tribal and cultural knowledge of my own country. The different clans and tribes were all easily bundled up as just “blacks”. In the past year, I had the joy of exploring the beauty and the grim nature of the Zulu Nation. In many ways, I have become less Black and more African. The apartheid regime had created a lot of disruption within the tribal structures which traditionally were the pillars of the once-...

Dear School and Society  I'm writing this letter because I believe you two are not on the same page. You see I passed Life Orientation with flying colours but yesterday a man touched me, and I saw my dignity crash down like an injured blackbird falling to her death. He was my mother's best friend. I rushed home feeling like I was falling apart and had tried to scrub away his unwanted hands that were like ghosts haunting me, in need of answers I searched for my notebook. You know the one that I was required to have marked and checked regularly? Yes, that one. You told me not to talk to strangers and not to accept anything from them. Society taught me to respect my elders, and not to argue, traditions found ways to promote strangers to ‘aunt’, ‘uncle’ and ‘grandfather without my consent. I was never comfortable calling him uncle but when I tried to raise that issue I got disciplined on respect. They were strangers to me, but mom and dad have known them for what ...