Skip to main content

Discrimination

Image
By
Makwerekwere is a Setswana word that means (as far as I can tell) foreigners from Africa. On a side note, Asian foreigners are called "Chinas," while white-looking ones are "makgowa." One of the teachers at my school mentioned it in the context of Zimbabweans that are coming "to steal our jobs." With the continuing economic cataclysm in Zimbabwe, something like 25% of the population there has fled to South Africa, where they are widely resented for starting businesses and prospering.

This came to a head more recently when I was teaching English in Grade 7. I had just started, and was still trying to learn their names. One face that I hadn't seen last year turned out to be a new girl from Pretoria. Here's how the conversation went:

ME: What's your name, again?
NEW STUDENT: Palesa. I am come from Pretoria.
ME: Oh really? Were you born there?
ZANE (a boy): This girl is from Zimbabwe. She talk Xhosa.
ME: Xhosa is from Eastern Cape, not Zimbabwe. [to the girl] Are you from Eastern Cape?
PALESA: I am from Kay Zed Enn [Kwa-Zulu Natal]. I speak Zulu and Xhosa because my mother is Zulu and my father is Xhosa.
ME: You speak Tswana too?
PALESA: And Sepedi.
ZANE: She must go back to Zimbabwe.
ME: She's not from Zimbabwe, silly. Don't you know where KZN is? [I doubt he's ever been past Kuruman.]
ZANE: They speak Xhosa in Zimbabwe.
ME: No they don't, they speak Shona. Do you know Shona?
ZANE: What?
PALESA: Batho ba Zimbabwe ba bua Shona jaaka batho ba Northwest ba bua Setswana. (People from Zimbabwe speak Shona like people from Northwest speak Setwana.)
ZANE: Eng? (what?)
ME: Shut up, Zane. It's time for English now.

Reasonably educational, I suppose.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept?

By
So Reality Winner, former NSA contractor, is in federal prison for leaking classified information — for five years and three months, the longest sentence of any whistleblower in history. She gave documents on how Russia had attempted to hack vendors of election machinery and software to The Intercept , which completely bungled basic security procedures (according to a recent New York Times piece from Ben Smith, the main fault lay with Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito ), leading to her capture within hours. Winner recently contracted COVID-19 in prison, and is reportedly suffering some lingering aftereffects. Glenn Greenwald has been furiously denying that he had anything at all to do with the Winner clusterfuck, and I recently got in an argument with him about it on Twitter. I read a New York story about Winner, which clearly implies that she was listening to the Intercepted podcast of March 22, 2017 , where Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill expressed skepticism about Russia actually b
Post a Comment
Read more

The Basic Instinct of Socialism

By
This year I finally decided to stop beating around the bush and start calling myself a democratic socialist. I think the reason for the long hesitation is the very long record of horrifying atrocities carried out by self-described socialist countries. Of course, there is no social system that doesn't have a long, bloody rap sheet, capitalism very much included . But I've never described myself as a capitalist either, and the whole point of socialism is that it's supposed to be better than that. So of course I cannot be a tankie — Stalin and Mao were evil, terrible butchers, some of the worst people who ever lived. There are two basic lessons to be learned from the failures of Soviet and Chinese Communism, I think. One is that Marxism-Leninism is not a just or workable system. One cannot simply skip over capitalist development, and any socialist project must be democratic and preserve basic liberal freedoms. The second, perhaps more profound lesson, is that there is no s
6 comments
Read more

Varanus albigularis albigularis

By
That is the Latin name for the white-throated monitor lizard , a large reptile native to southern Africa that can grow up to two meters long (see pictures of one at the Oakland Zoo here ). In Setswana, it's called a "gopane." I saw one of these in my village yesterday on the way back from my run. Some kids from school found it in the riverbed and tortured it to death, stabbing out its eyes, cutting off its tail, and gutting it which finally killed it. It seemed to be a female as there were a bunch of round white things I can only imagine were eggs amongst the guts. I only arrived after it was already dead, but they described what had happened with much hilarity and re-enactment. When I asked why they killed it, they said it was because it would eat their chickens and eggs, which is probably true, and because it sucks blood from people, which is completely ridiculous. It might bite a person, but not unless threatened. It seems roughly the same as killing wolves that
4 comments
Read more