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Chapter 3C: The Illusion of an End

They say apartheid ended — but I laugh. Not out of humor, but the kind of laugh that comes from disbelief, exhaustion, and rage. Because how could it have ended, when the very roots of its poison still run deep through every institution, every classroom, every corridor of so-called “liberated” Africa?

They hand us calendars with Youth Day marked in red, parading remembrance like a badge of honor. But Hector Pieterson didn’t die for annual hashtags and public holidays. He died resisting the forced tongue of the coloniser — the very same tongue that still dominates every African classroom. Children across the continent still get scolded, punished, and even failed for speaking their mother tongues. A child daring to speak isiZulu, Shona, Swahili, or Twi in school is seen as rebellious — even stupid. Yet no one questions the insanity of having to master the language of our oppressors to be considered “educated.”

Black children are still made to feel small for their accents, for not being fluent in a foreign rhythm, as if intelligence is measured by how well you mimic the master’s voice. Be yourself, and you’re “ratchet,” “unpolished,” “ghetto.” Black authenticity is still an offence — punished in subtle, insidious ways.

And beauty? It is still whiteness. The irony burns: the same whiteness that once called melanin dirty now flocks to tanning beds, sunscreens with bronzing agents, and fake melanin injections. They used to call our skin primitive — now they covet it. Yet still, we are taught to bleach, to straighten, to shrink ourselves to fit into boxes that were never made for us.

And while they called themselves the clean ones — the “civilised” — history tells a very different story. Europeans once believed their skin was so pure it didn’t require washing. Hygiene was foreign to them. Their scent, embedded in history, lingered in every space they touched. And even today, the joke isn’t far off — how cleanliness became a performance for them, while for us, it was always sacred, a ritual, a way of honoring the body and the land it walks.

They still call us poor. As if their glass towers and oil empires weren’t built on the blood-soaked backs of Africa’s children. As if their wealth didn’t come from the rape of our land, the theft of our minerals, the bodies of our ancestors. Europe, America, even the Arab world — rich because of Africa, yet always mocking her. Always telling her children to leave her land, while they refuse to go back to their own.

And now? Now their empires are rotting from the inside. Climate collapse, spiritual emptiness, failing economies. Suddenly, Africa is desirable again. Suddenly, there are visa-free jobs and open borders — but only for Africans. They don’t say it outright, but we know: they want our hands, our bodies, our fertility, our strength. Not our souls.

They tried to erase us through chains. Then they tried through religion. Now they try through confusion. The same colonisers now push ideologies dressed in rainbow flags and surgical knives — telling us identity is fluid, that the body is just a canvas to redraw. Not for freedom — but for control. A new tactic to slow births, control populations, erase lines. They didn’t expect it to backfire. They thought we’d fall first. But their own children swallowed the lie faster than we did.

And now they whisper of extinction. The pale fear of disappearing. And maybe that’s the real reason they cling to us, even as they claim to despise us. Because deep down, they know: Africa is forever. And they are not.

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