By failing in education, the ANC has failed to set us free

The beauty of empowering yourself comes from empowering your mind.

There is nothing more deadly than an educated and informed person with a mission. These were the words my late grandfather used to tell me every time I felt like skipping school because of homework. Like any other child back then for me school was an obligation and a job I never applied for.

Getting good grades and excelling academically was your mission and everything else was a distraction. I attended what most people call a ‘multiracial school’ which kind of feels weird now that I think about it because the only race that was there were black and Indian pupils.

Back then this was a privilege and gave my family some sort of status. Attending a multiracial school was seen as me being super smart and that’s when I slowly started realising the differences between being informed and ill informed. Everybody treated me differently only because of the name of the school I attended and the way I spoke.

My accent slowly pushed me into a corner of being an outcast and feeling weird and misunderstood.

I grew up in a household of smart people, I mean my uncle would read the entire dictionary and try to compile sentences with all the difficult words he found and somehow as unorthodox as this was, it motivated me to becoming a better version of myself and pushed me to a point where I wanted more.

I wanted to be the best at everything, not just at reading but at debating and at conversing in English. The more I wanted to be better, the more people around me began to treat me different.  I wasn’t just that little black girl who could read but I was that little black girl who was trying to be white.

One of the major problems that we face as (black) people is that we come from a non-reading culture and we are comfortable with the status quo.  Most of my friends don’t see the value of reading and most of them don’t understand the essence of being educated.

Being an adult and an older sister has opened me to heartaches of education and the loopholes it has created… Putting that statement into perspective in South Africa simply means that we are screwed not in a bad way but in a devastating way, in a ‘we are’ doomed kind of way.

Education is important for survival that is initially what the government has made everyone to believe. The government has conditioned us into believing that without education you are nothing and can’t do anything. But another thing the government has done is create some form of segregation amongst school and students.

If you want your children to have a good future your best choice is taking them to a private school, which costs money and with money comes parents not being around as often or parents not really knowing what is going on in their children’s life.

However if you cant afford a private school your next solution is a government school which is just as bad as attempting to teach yourself, because the reality of is that your child might end up with bad grades, or a teacher who doesn’t care much about teaching.

That is the mentality the government has created within people. By making education a luxury the government has managed to take a basic need and turn it into a rich class vs poor class competition.

Gone are the days when education was the same amongst districts and teachers all taught from the same syllabuses. Gone are the days when teachers took pride in teaching and gave minimum homework because they had faith in their work. Gone are the days when pupils from public schools would compete with pupils from government schools.

Gone are the days when spelling bees were the pride and joy of every child who knew how to spell and couldn’t wait to bring back the trophy. Gone are the days when education was offered based on quality and not on how much money one has in their bank accounts or what your parents can do for the school to better your academic record and grades.

Education is the essence of survival and until the government takes a good look at the great damaged they are inflicting to the nation, education will never be fair and the fields will never be even and we will forever have little black girls and boys who feel like wanting more is not allowed based on their circumstances.

Education should never get to a point where it feels like modern slavery but should feel like an emancipation and a liberation for something greater.

So I ask this how do you make something as simple as education an important need of life, when our own president doesn’t see the importance of it but would rather talk about minerals and dancing.