Thought Leader

Many arguments have risen out of Gillian Schutte’s “Dear White People” perhaps the most progressive provided by Jackie Shandu in “Black people, fight your own battles”. Shandu argues that because Schutte’s letter is addressed to white people, it ought to be dismantled and dissected primarily by the white community who it seeks to engage in…

Well before Gillian Schutte’s letter to white people calling on them to reflect on their whiteness, its invisibility and centrality in the reproduction and edification of white power, the very experience of blackness has been characterised by this same demand. Yet, as is wont to be the case, it would be Schutte’s, a white woman,…

By Sipho Singiswa Almost 19 years after the 1994 election, institutionalised racism against indigenous African people has remained intact and largely unchallenged. The majority of Africans still live in poverty with very little access to land, housing, basic quality education, clean water and decent primary healthcare. All this is in violation of the much-praised South…

I was most perplexed to read fellow Thought Leader Sarah Britten’s “What are vile white practices?” written in response to Gillian Schutte’s “Dear White People”. Let me begin by pointing out that Britten was correct to say Schutte showed no sense of humour in the post. As a person who has actually experienced racism, there…

By Jackie Shandu Was Steve Biko over-optimistic when he said ”blacks are tired of standing on the sidelines and witnessing a game in which they should be participating”? It seems to me black South Africans do not want to be involved in the struggle for their own liberation. How else does one interpret the frenzy…

Forgive me for only waking up to this now. I’ve been away in a place where it was hard to find a 3G signal, so missed the opportunity to spend the tail end of the festive season arguing about the same thing we argue about the rest of the year, the incurable condition known as…

By Sekoetlane Jacob Phamodi Yesterday morning, on my breakfast online media trawl, I ran into Gillian Schutte’s latest epistle to white South Africa. “Dear white people,” it opens, “[I] implore you to wake up and smell Africa with a fresh white nose.” Intrigued by what Schutte might have say to whites following a year of…

I have decided to start the New Year with a letter to you all. It is a letter that implores you to wake up and smell Africa with a fresh white nose. Before you get angry and defensive, think of this letter as a crash course survival kit for navigating a new reality, and please…

Over this past year I have written a series of essays that attempt to deconstruct the “discourse of domination” and have provided the links to these articles in this piece. These essays were written in response to a series of racialised events that happened in South Africa in 2012 — occurrences, which I posit, are…

I was invited to be a Thought Leader blogger in the same half hour that I gave our vet the go-ahead to euthanase our big German Shepard, Chow mix – Sphinx. He was an epileptic and had experienced multiple chronic seizures the previous morning. While my heart contorted with pain and tears streamed down my…