An open letter to the girls at Sans Souci

Molweni gals

Ya'll have had quite the week ne! Going viral. Again. And this time the story has paused with your protest supporting a teacher who slapped one of your peers. You guys reckon she's not racist. Fair. She's your teacher. You like her. Even your favs are problematic but ke as'kho lapho.

I'm curious about what happened before the video was taken. What's the nature of the relationship between the teacher and the student who slapped her. Had she taught her last year? I suspect (and I could be wrong) that there's residue from last year's issues. At least I'm hoping that's the case; otherwise your teacher's behaviour is more troubling than you think.

The thing is no teacher should talk to you guys like that. Ever. There's a history of white women yelling at black girls and black 'girls' (domestic workers, oomama bethu, white women insist on infantilising; to this day). That picture would have looked very different had your teacher been a white male teacher behaving in the same way. You would have understood his bullying tactics because male bodies are dangerous. But because she's a white woman, she's still seen as the victim at the hands of a violent black girl. This is a trope as old as time. White women being victims and black women being the problem. All the time. There's a special kind of socialisation of white women we haven't spoken about in South Africa where women like your teacher are raised to believe that they can speak that way to problematic black people and will be super nice to other blacks who don't challenge them. But maybe you'll see that as you get older.

Also, why is she yelling so much? I'm worried that y'all have been yelled at so much by these white women you think it's normal. It's not. When I was at school we could clearly see who was the target of the yelling: it was always the noisy brood of black girls. Now that your student body is majority black I doubt you can make that comparison. Those of us who sat in schools like your school and were in the demographic minority in the 90s know the pitch and timbre of that yelling. It's reserved for special occasions when the teacher has "had it" and "reached their last tether...at her wits end". A good teacher would have walked out the classroom to calm down. Or asked the student to step outside to have a chat while the rest of you work quietly (coz you seem like a nice bunch of girls who can be trusted). Or maybe she would have asked the student to make notes on another piece of paper. Or she could have ignored her because maybe she'd been doing this for the 100th time (but also it's February, term is still fresh for people to be wilding out). Or maybe she could have given her a demerit. Or written her name down so the grade head can get involved. etc etc. What I'm trying to get at is that your teacher had many options available to her. So many that the last thing that should have happened is her slapping a child. Also she slapped her then tried to grab her neck. Seriously guys. Seriously!!!

I used to be a teacher not far from your school (Claremont High School in fact; just up the road) and I guarantee you, the kids used to drive me nuts. Apparenetly that's what teenagers do when they're in school. I once walked out of my classroom in the middle of the lesson and went to the Deputy Principal to tell her I needed a break. I probably looked like I was ready to burst into tears. If I had stayed in the classroom I knew I would have said and done something I would have regretted. I didn't walk out because I'm a good teacher; I walked out because I'm human and walking away is one of the ways you can preserve your sanity. I also had a kid in my class who drove EVERYONE crazy. His name was Fisher. He used to drive me nuts. Completely and utterly nuts. The saving grace was that he was smart and I knew he was smart so every time he walked into my class I reminded myself that he's being a kid and he's not the sum total of his behaviour. So that's the thing with being a teacher; we have to make choices all the time; especially when we're having a bad day. My kids used to drive me so nuts I would restrain myself from saying to them "do you know who I am?" (I was googlable and thought I was a big deal) because I knew they would mop the floor with my attitude. So the biggest lesson I learned as a young teacher was humility and also making the right choice in split seconds moment. That's what working with teenagers requires: a sense of humour and sound judgement. I could share more stories about the number of times I got it wrong but made choices. Sometimes the right choice is simply to laugh and walk away from the situation. And that would have gone a long way in the interaction we saw. The point is: good teachers know when to pause and collect themselves. I know I'm being Judgy McJudgy but our profession is on the line here. Your teacher has costed all of us.

If your teachers are yelling at you on the regular and y'all think that's normal, your school is in deeper trouble than you think. You are in deeper danger than you think. The psychological effects of white-woman-yelling mode seep deep into our psyche in ways you will only understand with time. Another equally dangerous tool that goes hand in hand with yelling is passive-aggressiveness. Now that we're older and woke we call this psychic violence. It is one of the ingrained behaviours whiteness has to undo in order for white people to become more human.

I'm really worried about you girls and the treatment you've had to endure over time in the name of being good girls. Sihle Ntshokweni's blog post, Model C Schools: Corridors of violence & Assemblies of Assimilation  captures what you're going through. The trouble is your parents are probably not in a position to support you and march into the school every time your white teachers are wilding out because they are at work dealing with their own white people white-peopling. Or they are so grateful that you are receiving the kind of education they perceive to be the best because they did not have what you have. Or they don't know what's happening in your school because some of you can't quite articulate that something is amiss so you tell them everything is fine.

Everything is not fine. Thoses of us who have walked the hallowed halls of whiteness walked away with a semblance of dignity not because we received a good education but because our mothers insisted we go to black church on Sundays or go to family gatherings so we could remember our humanity. After the dust has settled I hope your parents will demand that your humanity become part of your education. I hope you will demand more from your teachers who are now probably scared shitless because y'all have phones and can take videos of them when they wild out (don't let them take your phones away otherwise we won't know what's happening in your schools). Take more videos of them. Record every single lesson if you have to. If that's the only thing that will stop them from yelling at you or treating you like you don't belong there.

I haven't even spoken about the bogus language rules in your school--apparently y'all get demerits when you speak isiXhosa-- but maybe that's a letter for another day.

Nizoba rite wethu. Right now we're all triggered but knowing the South African news cycle Twitter and Facebook will forget about you in about a week. But you are not alone. You have each other. See each other beyond the caricature that the Sans Souci culture is trying to make out of you. Here's a poem by Alice Walker that I keep returning to when whiteness rears its ugly head but I'm too stumped to call it out because whiteness is relentless:

Be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.
Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.
Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous
Fools.

Make a merry gathering
On the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.

But be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.