We have to speak out – I most certainly will!
WHEN the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.
Each and every single one of us has a choice. We have the choice to stand up and speak for what we believe in or simply keep quiet and accept the very nature of things by asking ourselves: “Oh well, what can I do anyway?”
And no, you’re not alone; many of us ask ourselves the same question but we are faced with many ways to answer it for ourselves. It took one bus passenger to help Rosa Parks answer that very question.
Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a bus spurred a city-wide boycott. Rosa Parks possessed the power to speak and take action against what she didn’t believe in. She proudly stood her ground. Or in her case sat her ground. Our voices can be loud enough to influence only our friends or peers and that’s fine, but sometimes you have to admit it, you aren’t like everyone else. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes.
But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider watching the normal people as they go about their automatic existences.
For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s great today, don’t you think?” you yearn to say something forbidden such as “What do you think déjà vu is for?”
Okay, I don’t know what it is for but I do know that I feel as if I’ve already experienced this present situation because I’ve used my voice many times, the best way I know how, but unfortunately I have remained silent because this is the 21st century and we don’t need chains to make slaves of people anymore.
A moment in my life where I’ve felt captive by the chains of society was the first time I was called an Oreo or, the commonly used term, Coconut” – simply meaning that I am in the category of people who are black on the outside but white on the inside. It was as if the name was to make me feel as if it was the closest thing I ever came to white privilege.
I cannot describe the pang of betrayal when they speak badly about black people in my presence and say “No, don’t worry. Not you because you’re like so white.” I was called a Coconut because my pronunciation was too literate to sound anything like “an actual black person”.
It was because I was fortunate enough to go to a private school; because who needs a voice when my school uniform says more about my parents’ financial status than the education I receive?
I am not a Coconut. I will not be defined by a fruit on a tree when I am the tree. My roots go as deep as my African ancestors, both Zulu and Xhosa. Therefore I am not white on the inside, I am soul. I am being.
Stereotypes cannot silence us any more. Mutism cannot hold us back. Mutism is like a drug, it is so addictive, you don’t have to do anything. Women. Let us not silence ourselves for the greater benefit of someone else.
Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird said: “Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” It is a sin to kill your spirit and your voice.
You are a mockingbird, your voice is the sweet music ready to be heard by the quiet world.
The suffragettes, a union of women who protested for all women in England to have equal rights to vote, were the most influential people simply speaking for what we now know as our right because of the influences they had. To think that our voice and opinion was once not taken because we were seen as not as intelligent as men. Because our bodies automatically made us a vessel for birth and nothing else. We obeyed and submitted to men’s wishes and I fear it still happens now.
We need to speak, but why bother when they shoot Malala for it?
We need to be heard, but how, when they refuse to listen to us, to scream no? No to rape! No to inequality! No to inhumane treatment! I can’t give you all the answers you may be seeking but I can tell you that there’s hope.
I can tell you that I am one of them. I am one of the women.
I am black. I am a voice and I will speak for my mothers and sisters who didn’t have the voice to speak. It is my duty to do so because I believe in us.
I am the daughter of a woman who says my voice is an earthquake in waiting, and I should hold it in my mouth as a secret the world is about to know. The world is going ARE you a pupil at a South African high school, private or public? Do you have strong views about your country, its people and where it is going?
If so, The Mercury would like to publish some of the best young readers’ thoughts about our beloved city, province and country. Send an e-mail to: mercomment@inl.co.za
We will publish the best essay on our print and digital platforms to know our power. They will know that our power is not defined by the way we look because being built like a short story is the best way to give the tallest tale in the room.
I will carry out that tale, bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave. I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
Nandipha Khubone is a Grade 11 pupil at Maris Stella School for Girls in Berea, Durban
poll, whose results are about to be released, voters believe by a margin of 9% that an unconscious Hillary Clinton would be “substantially more fit” to be president than a conscious Donald Trump.
The same poll finds that a broad majority of voters find an unconscious Donald Trump more fit to be president than a conscious one.
Yes, it’s satirist Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker, but he’s the only one who makes sense these days. Less than two months to go now.
Snake River Canyon
A STUNTMAN has successfully jumped the Snake River Canyon in southern Idaho in the US, in a custom-built rocket.
Eddie Braun, 54, hurtled across the 1 000m-wide canyon, reaching an estimated speed of 650km/h before his parachute deployed to land him safely in fields the other side, according to Sky News.
The rocket was named “Evel Spirit” to honour Braun’s boyhood idol, Evel Knievel, who performed all kinds of astonishing stunts on motorcycles but never did manage to jump the Snake River Canyon.