{"id":1380,"date":"2022-12-12T12:59:40","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T10:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/?p=1380"},"modified":"2022-12-13T18:36:25","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T16:36:25","slug":"the-fear-of-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/the-fear-of-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"THE FEAR OF DIFFERENCE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Ayanda Ngunda<\/strong>
My nerves are shattered. All of a sudden there is silence in my soul, I have become
a fall leaf under frost . I feel the chill in my blood, coldness bringing the synapses of
my brain to a standstill. My feet are dashing above the ground leaving no trace of my
appearance as tears trickle down my cheeks.
My mother has always taught me not to discriminate between black, white or mixed,
nor where someone comes from. Instead, we should embrace what comes along
with them. Their culture, beliefs, understandings and the greatest stories of their
history. But this doesn\u2019t seem to apply to me.
Ever since my family and I moved to a foreign land, my world has changed into the
unknown in a way I could never have imagined. Today marks five years since I came
from my home country to the land of Afrikaans and isiXhosa. Life wasn\u2019t easy back
home: poverty, corruption, and underlying political arguments. Home wasn\u2019t always
like this. I grew up in my home country in the norms of my culture, traditions and
tribe. I was raised in my cultural norms and moulded in the foreign land. This is my
journey.
I\u2019m used to running along the back streets of the ikasi. I’d rather run during sunset
than sit and enjoy the comfort I don\u2019t want to settle for. I’m in the foreign land \u2013 I
suppose staying alert is the only way to survive here. In a flick of a tongue I could
lose my refuge.
Life is tough here, just as it is in my home country. Running in the evenings and then
reading books survivors wrote keeps me off the streets. In my home country, I wasn’t
lucky enough to have access to the best reading school programmes, so now I
spend most of my time learning how to read and write\u2026 I dream of becoming a poet.
Thanks to my mother helping to shape my mind towards reading, it has always been
a passion of mine. I escape into my mind to wander in my thoughts, hoping one day
I’ll be free from the land of horror that I live in.
Reading is my escape from all the trauma that roams around me. \u201cAlert!! Run !!! The
gumba gumba (Home Affairs deportation truck) has arrived!\u201d The truck takes you to
prison. I\u2019m not afraid of it but I am afraid of what will become of me if I let it take me.
I\u2019ve heard rumours that life is harder in prison than life in the foreign land itself, but in
my opinion, my place of education is harder. Not academically, no. It\u2019s hard because
I am called by names I could have never imagined. \u201cKwere kwere\u201d is just one of
them. People my own colour discriminate against me.
No, being a foreigner isn’t as easy as it sounds. Xenophobia has destroyed many
lives \u2013 they identify you as an alien because in their eyes you’re no less than an
animal.
They fear my difference, and their fear breeds my fear. I’m afraid. This is not a cry for
help, it\u2019s my everyday reality.
Fourteen years ago I lost my uncle to a xenophobic attack. It was horrible and
incredibly horrifying. His death is one I\u2019ll never forget because it\u2019s part of who I am
today. On a vibrant evening in May 2008, my uncle was heading home from his
afternoon shift at a nearby construction site he guarded. He came home to find his
shack in shambles; it was completely wrecked and all his belongings were looted. He
tried to get the police involved but failed miserably. Later that night, a friend of my
uncle\u2019s called my grandmother on the landline to inform her that her son had been
burned alive, they poured paraffin and tied him to a tyre and set him alight.
It was hard to accept that he had left us with only our memories of him before he had
left for the foreign land. My family and I couldn\u2019t pay our last respects to him as no
one dared to step foot into the foreign land to get his lifeless body back to its home.
Whenever I remember this incident, I\u2019m reminded of what could happen to me.
They\u2019ve hurt hundreds and burned many of my people to ashes mercilessly. And it
doesn\u2019t end there; they\u2019ve done so much more.
I live with my mother and I fear for her and my siblings lives. We only have each
other and it\u2019s not by choice. My father was taken away from me two years ago by the
gumba gumba. He didn\u2019t have all the required legal documents as he was a refugee.
I haven\u2019t seen him since that day he was taken away. I had never seen my mother
more hopeless than the day my father was sent back to my home country. The
thought that I might never reunite with him again haunts me.
Since my father left, life has been hard \u2013 there is not a day that goes by without me
missing his presence in my life. He understood me and I felt at peace whenever he
was around because I knew he would not allow any harm to come to me.
\u201cThat’s life, my daughter,” he would say to me with a sharp whisper when I told him I
have been robbed of my peace. How can the world be so cruel?
There’s a little light coming from the streetlights across my home, spiking under the
door heading behind the lounge chairs. That’s my comfort place, it’s the safest hiding
spot. I can sneak out from here and no one can see me unless I come out. I
discovered this hiding spot a few months ago just after I heard about Operation
Dudula (a xenophobic organisation).
I am afraid; my world has turned into a hurricane of fear. Every light but one has
been switched off: A little light of hope is left in me. I have been gifted with a spirit
majestic enough to bear the emptiness of such a life. I am powerless to draw back
now. I have decided to stay in the midst of it all, even though the fear of difference is
a home to crime and war. Perhaps I\u2019m alive under all that frost, a leaf waiting to
unfurl in the warmth of the sun<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ayanda NgundaMy nerves are shattered. All of a sudden there is silence in my soul, I have becomea fall leaf under frost . I feel the chill in my blood, coldness bringing the synapses ofmy brain to a standstill. My feet are dashing above the ground leaving no trace of myappearance as tears trickle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":1210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[44],"tags":[105,116],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1381,"href":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions\/1381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathradafoundation.org\/essay-competition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}