Acrobat PDF - Kubatana

upbringing instilled in me a sense of confidence, a pride and
arrogance that did not acknowledge the existence of anyone else
as an equal but more as a servant class.
I went to a predominantly white primary school. I played with white
kids and ate with them, I did not have to interact with black kids,
they were few and I wondered what they were doing in our school.
I despised them. Did they know anything about birthday parties?
They were created to be servants, just like nanny. Fortunately, all
the teachers were white. The grounds-men and office messengers
were black just like the servants that worked at home. There was
nothing unusual about that. The best pupils were always white. It
never occurred to me that a black kid could be as intelligent as the
rest of us white kids.
Racism dissipates useful energies of the perpetrator in useless
pursuits to maintain the superiority complex and to ensure that the
oppressed cannot rise to decipher the superiority illusion. Indeed it
is an illusion because science has proved that beyond the skins, all
human being have the same bodily functions. Given equal opportunity,
they would probably achieve equally. Can you imagine how the
notion of superiority haunts the racially prejudiced? It haunted me
for years.
I was growing up in a racist community but I did not know that it
was racist. I assumed that the way we did things was the way they
were supposed to be done. I assumed that the rest of the world
was like us, and yet as time went on, it was obvious that this was
not so. This truth almost killed me.
I went to a predominantly white private secondary school, one of
the best in the country. My six years at the school could be
equated to a series of journeys across various contradictory, and at
times antagonistic locations. The first shock was when, in our very
first test, a black kid came first in the class. We raised an alarm
and I mean an alarm. My friends and I alleged that he had
cheated. How else could anyone explain that a black child was as
gifted as a white child? We complained bitterly both at home and
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