Jesus is the perfect human being: he’s white, blue eyed, and speaks in God’s own tongue, English. Right?
If you have glowing brown skin like Azola Joe, this assumption makes you far from perfect, but that’s what the posters on the walls of Farmer Field Intermediate School in the Eastern Cape illustrate.
Jesus is the perfect human being: he’s white, blue eyed, and speaks in God’s own tongue, English. Right?
If you have glowing brown skin like Azola Joe, this assumption makes you far from perfect, but that’s what the posters on the walls of Farmer Field Intermediate School in the Eastern Cape illustrate.
While many have made Jesus their own (79.9% of black South Africans are Christian), children like Grade 3 learner Azola continue to be damned by English, which remains the language of instruction in the Eastern Cape and a “major problem” according to provincial Education MEC Mahlubandile Qwase.
Their sin is that they are Xhosa, and the government, media, business, and commerce demand a language that is spoken at home by only 10% of the population.
“What I want you to do is write as many English words as you can,” instructs Debra Hulme from Manchester, a volunteer teacher at Farmer Field.
It’s an odd accent to hear at a farm school in the rural Eastern Cape, almost as out of place as the blue gum trees that laager the church and lord over the local vegetation outside.
This place has been invaded, and if there’s benevolence in Hulme’s patient warmth, the 51.1% matric pass rate of 2009 betrays her.
The sun-beaten earth is cold and hard here, and many of these kids will be soon displaced with family friends to the cities, where they will seek employment or further education.
The Eastern Cape’s 32% unemployment rate recalls the child I saw kicking the soccer ball against the wall until it hit him in the head.
But they’re really trying here. The classroom rules at Farmer Field are placed above the door, out of reach even for the teacher.
The chairs are precisely numbered, and an anonymous white sheet of paper placed on the church has the principal’s handwriting and a hasty stamp, manufacturing officialdom and order among faded carpets and tattered HIV/Aids posters.
There is no naughty nattering skittering through these corridors, only singing. “It’s not easy. It’s very difficult,” says Nomathemba Lungile of Masakhane Primary School, “But we are here.”
She’s right, and in the right place. For those who believe in Jesus, she and the Eastern Cape’s Education system should be in our prayers. In Xhosa.
