Wakkerstroom is on the Rise, UThaka Shines, UBPA Leads the Way

THINGS TASTE NICER WHEN THEY HAVE SIMMERED

Who could have thought it possible that at one time UThaka Secondary School would have its learners entering and graduating in some of the finest tertiary institutions of the country? Who could have believed that it could happen? Indeed things taste nicer when they have simmered.

Wakkerstroom is on the rise and UThaka Secondary is producing the goods. That is the feeling we former students of UThaka Secondary are getting every time we meet. Wakkerstroom and UThaka Secondary are so small that it does not take an effort to know who is where and doing what. For the past few years now learners from UThaka Secondary school have been invading the corridors and the lecture halls of tertiary institutions like a bad rash.

We have organized ourselves into what is known as UThaka Brain Power Association (UBPA) just to support, guide and counsel one another. UBPA said at the outset that it wanted UThaka Secondary learners in each and every university in the country not just to make up numbers but to perform. We see this as raising the profile of UThaka Secondary and representing Wakkerstroom and her people on the highest stage. We walk in the premises of these institutions with our heads held high knowing that it is not by mistake, fluke or luck that we are here, but because we deserve to be here. We do not hide the fact that we are from Wakkerstroom and everybody else asks where that is.

The point we are telling the world through our tertiary institutions is simple, it had always been simple and it says despite the many challenges we face at Wakkerstroom as blacks generally, here we deserve respect. We do not expect special treatment from our institutions because of where we come from; when we are here we compete on the same level as everybody else. Our students contest for student leadership positions like the Medical Students Council, the leadership of SASCO and win. Why must we then feel any lesser of human beings as if we were in Wakkerstroom, why must we feel we do not belong in these institutions? When we are here we feel alive, we feel we are on par with even the white of the whitest people, a feeling we do not necessarily experience at Wakkerstroom. How can we when our mothers are stripped of their human dignities by the exploitative wages they get as domestic workers, how can we when our fathers call boys our ages ‘baas’ or ‘klein baas’?

In places like the Universities of the Witwatersrand (Wits); of Johannesburg (UJ); of Pretoria (Tukkies); of South Africa (UNISA) and even the Medical University of South Africa (MEDUNSA) just to name but a few, where we currently at, we look at these boys in the eye, they are our ages after all, and say to ourselves ‘at home you may be my father’s or my grandfather’s klein baas but here you are no better than me’.

It is true that when Grade 12 results are announced at UThaka Secondary, we may not make the front pages of national newspapers nor are we likely to be interviewed by radio and television stations for the distinctions we get but that does not mean we are not good enough. We do not even know how schools like Volksrust Hoer and Ilangwane High where everybody runs to, do in their matric and university entrances marks. All we know is that UThaka Secondary is not any lesser of a school in a bigger picture of schools. The fact that currently our names are called frequently and restlessly in graduation ceremonies of some of the best higher education institutions in the country is testimony to that fact and to the fact that Wakkerstroom is on the rise.

Just as of late the name of Bongani Mntambo, the Secretary General of UBPA was called for the degree of BACCALAUREUS EDUCATIONIS (B.Ed) at the University of Johannesburg. Mntambo graduated on the 4th of March 2010 at UJ. Some have been called before him and there can be no doubt that others will be called too in due cause. The most important thing after graduation is that people from Wakkerstroom get employed. We may not be employed in Wakkerstroom but wherever we are, because we are as good as the next person (black or white) we get employed by some of the finest employers.

Alister Sparks in his book ‘Beyond the Miracle’ properly warned that if nothing was done about the unemployment crisis in this country then the children of the unemployed risked the possibility of being unemployable themselves. As UBPA we also warned that if nothing was done at all levels in Wakkerstroom the ‘baas’ and ‘klein baas’ mentality would continue. Our parents would continue being stripped off their most basic human rights. This is where Wakkerstroom is at but we are glad to report that we are addressing that intergenerational poverty, that mentality and that culture of accepting oppression by using education as the only known key out of poverty. Wakkerstroom is on the rise and UBPA is on the shine.

Thulani Nkosi
Chairperson and Co-head of the Education Cluster at UBPA, 2010