In this extract from her book My Land Obsession: A Memoir, lawyer and author Bulelwa Mabasa turns the spotlight on the euphoria that followed the demise of apartheid, and the immediate challenges that faced the first post-apartheid government
It was increasingly evident that the election of the first black president was not suddenly going to eradicate apartheid in its form or substance. Our parents’ financial upward trajectory and their ability to afford a better-resourced school were not enough for us to be enrolled at a school of choice without a hassle. Apartheid’s spatial planning remained as racist as it was the day before Mandela was inaugurated as president.
The lack of a residential address in Highlands North and its surrounds was not the last of our woes. It was just the beginning. It was an uncanny introduction to systemic years of subconscious othering, exclusion and subliminal racism that was meted out to black girls at the school. It was not overt, but it was pervasive and effective. It played on our individual and collective psyche and self-conceptualisation.Black girls were overwhelmingly in the minority at the school.
In my teenage mind, there was everything fundamentally wrong with my mother tongue, my complexion, the size of my nose, the hair on my scalp and, indeed, where I came from. I wanted so desperately to be seen and to matter, and the only way I figured I could achieve this was as clear as the light of day: I needed to un-black myself. Thoroughly so. I needed to clothe myself in whiteness, learn it and mimic it until I reached acceptable levels of palatability. I was undone.
The change in the law regarding the admission of black children to white schools and the installation of the new government did not offer protection against the feelings of unworthiness that black girls brought from their poorer homes. They did not shield us from the fact that we had to be up at least three hours before our white counterparts, just to access better education that came with resources and sporting codes we had never heard of before.
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