Black Tax, Burden or Ubuntu

Reading the book Black Tax, Burden or Ubuntu? This got me thinking about and reflecting about what it meant to be a black person and the roles and responsibilities that were entrenched very early and a clear expectation when you grow-up.

Black people have always taken care of each other, we have always been our sister and brother’s keeper. There are two statements that really depict the heart mind and soul of a black person in the olden days, even long before oppression and the brutal part of it.

It turned the Spirit of Ubuntu into a burdensome some chore for many loving and kind families. Children need their parent’s affection raw and untainted. That is difficult when you parents are rising villages and you having to adapt to that.

The statements are, it takes a village to raise a child and akunantandane translated “there is no orphan” were the conner stones for any black community, the embodiment of the Spirit of Ubuntu. We did not adopt children we raised children there was nothing legal or illegal about. It was the way of life.

Black Tax, Burden or Ubuntu narrates a story of a family that took in children family or not adults too. The story resonates with most township people more so in cities that drove the economy where everyone believed that is where they need to be some to change their lives and of their families, by finding employment of better education.

The author shares the experience of people dropping in unannounced and being welcomed by their parents and how they also seemed to get better treatment and the lessons he learnt from his parents as well as bonds that were formed during that time. I guess the abruptness of how other came in their lives and in the same way vanish leaving the in complete is my sense.

Here is an extract taken from the book Black Tax: Burden or Ubuntu? As written by Lucas Ledwaba, edited by Niq Mhlongo, published by Johanthan Ball Publishers. What do you do when a complete stranger turns up on your doorstep, asking for a place to stay while he looks for work? Or when a distant relative asks you to take in a truant son who had dropped out of school and was hanging around with the wrong crowd?

Do you flatly turn them down on the grounds that you have seven children to raise and that your home is only a three-bedroomed house with just enough space for your family? Or do you try to explain that you are under a lot of strain as you are in the process of building up your business and money is really tight?

Well, not in the Ledwaba household of the 1980s and early 1990s. At one stage there were as many as 20 people: cousins, children of acquaintances of our parents, greataunts, uncles and aunts, as well as a few strangers, living with us in our home in Soshanguve. WOW