The South African Promise

She qualified to be a teacher in 1996, around that time there was a teacher hiring freeze in this country.  Teaching and nursing were traditionally the main careers for black people who aspired for a semi-middle class lifestyle.

Having been an intelligent third eldest in her family, nobody doubted she would excel at school and go on to be a wonderful teacher. He mother fantasized about the house her daughter would build, she pinned her hopes on her child.

Her first mistake was falling pregnant during her first year at college. Had she been able to continue with her studies while pregnant, she would have qualified a year earlier, thereby completely missing the hiring freeze. But then, her story would be different.

Today, 15 years later, I watch her lurch from tavern to tavern, drinking anything she can lay her hands on, just so she won’t feel another day slip by. From 1996 to the early 2000s, she tried. We watched her photocopy and certify her qualifications, applying everywhere. She also volunteered in the hopes that when hiring began again she would get preference. But even as we watched we saw the despair set in. Her daughter grew up, with the help of a mother who felt both disappointment (in her daughter) and pain (for her daughter).

It was gradual and, she hid it at first. An occasional drink, just because there was a party or it was the weekend. No harm done. And then she would not come home, days would pass. Her mother became blind, needing her daughter at home, to take care of both she and her child. She came, could not stay long because she couldn’t freely drink at home. And so she would abandon them at the mercy of an uncaring maid, often a maid who would leave before the month was over because it was a challenge to look after a blind old woman.

She hasn’t lived at home in five years now. A plaything for men who would use her body for temporary pleasure, she lives in squalor and her life passes in oblivion.

“I’m a qualified teacher!” she slurs, as she naps on a pub table surrounded by empty liquor bottles.

In a South Africa where we were promised so much, where is her share?