To be young, gifted and Black is where its at!

: An ode to Black youth Vanguard 06/02/2017, 11)49

To be young, gifted and Black is

where its at! : An ode to Black youth
Thato February 10, 2016

By Thato Magano

Thato Magano argues that the increased militancy by Black youth

throughout the world has excited Blackness in ways we havent seen in
the contemporary moment and signifies the thawing of a frozen moment
we have been stuck in for the past twenty years.

I dont know when it happened.

Perhaps it was the insistence of UCT students that Rhodes go down, or the
insistence of Wits students demanding that fees cease to be a consideration
in our education system or the increasing militancy from middle class
South Africans that has continued to shake at the foundations of the
negotiated settlement that is democratic South Africa.

Young people in South Africa are demanding their right to the fullness of
their humanity, they are upsetting the status quo in ways unimaginable in
order to challenge the construction of whiteness that continues to make

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white people fragile and worthy of protection while black people continue
to be relegated to the status of unimportance. They are challenging the
tenets on which whiteness has negotiated its comfort at the expense of
black people.

Perhaps it is the twenty years of subjugation that have continued into the
promised land or the injustice at the ridiculousness of freedom fighters
who are still locked up in our democratic prison system while perpetrators
of apartheid crimes continue to roam the streets, chair foundations and
lecture at universities whilst they have blood on their hands, armed with
the audacity to suggest that the militancy shown by Black South Africans
can be equated to acts of the mythical reverse racism, a figment of the
imagination only to exist in the minds of those who are seeing the base
shift, who are witnessing everyday their illegitimate power and sense of
superiority being stripped away and finding this reality unbearable to
comprehend.

Perhaps it is the energy and spirit of a shifting narrative of Blackness in the

world, that Black people in the North and the South have collectively risen
up to say no more, to say that the struggle for the emancipation of all Black
people in the world is one that will be fought together. That
#BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName or #FeesMustFall are all a continuum
of the same struggle, are a rallying call to every person of African descent
to declare boldly and proudly that they will stand up against a system that
excludes them from equally participating in it while the machinery and
infrastructure that maintains this system is built off of their backs and that
they are deserving of every bit of the dividends of this system as those it
has been captured to serve and protect.

Perhaps it is the realisation, finally that it is not deals where economic

transference of resources while the ownership structures remain intact that
will lead to the economic utopia we were led to believe would be the
ultimate salvation for the Black nation. That in South Africa, the

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To be young, gifted and Black is where its at! : An ode to Black youth Vanguard 06/02/2017, 11)49

foundation that was laid by the liberation movement and freedom fighters
was not the end of the road but rather the beginning of an entry point to
the fullest realisation of the ideal for the liberation of Black people.

Perhaps even, it is that in a time when we have been left feeling abandoned
by the arts, searching for a Miriam Makeba of our time, when we have been
nurtured by the likes of Simphiwe Dana in her invocation of Biko to move
us to this moment, that we have been left bewildered by Black artistry, the
world over, in that it has not been as vocal as it could have on the
conditions of Black people in the world, that it would be the biggest pop
star in the world to ask us to get into Formation so that we practise a
politics of resistance that is about asserting our presence and our worth to
the world.

Perhaps so, it is even that we are searching for a Bantu Biko of our times,
for the one who will take from the long history of proud Black men and
women, who will take from the traditions of Marcus Garvey, Assata
Shakur, Julius Nyerere, Angela Davis, Thomas Sankara or Nomzamo
Madikizela and ask difficult questions of our people while also advancing
us towards the project for total liberation.

That, perhaps, it is the many radical young black women, young black
queer persons, and young black non-binary persons who have taken on
these traditions and have resisted the oppressive systems of illegitimate
power that have been made possible by the racist, sexist nature of the
capitalist traditions throughout the global south.

That perhaps, our liberation as a people will not be the fruits of one man,
that the moment for a hero to save us all has passed and that collectively,
the struggle is ours and that we will only win it when we come to it
together, as equals.

Perhaps, it could be that young black people are finally realising the refrain
from Nina Simones Young, Gifted and Black that indeed, there are

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billion young boys and girls that are young, gifted and black, that there is a
world out there waiting for them and that there is a quest thats just begun
where our souls are intact.

But whenever it happened, whatever it is, whatever this energy and shift is,
whatever the combination of factors are that have led to its permeation
throughout the Black experience in the world, it could not have come at a
better time.

It could not have come at a more appropriate time than when the world is
searching for its meaning, for its relevance, when the systems that have
continued to uphold it seem to be falling apart, creating the perfect
moment for the marginalised of the world to stand up and reclaim the
reconstitution and construction of these systems and institutions of
relationality.

Whatever it is, whatever is emboldening young black people in South

Africa, in America, in the global South, whatever the energy is, as another
young Black person who has been emboldened by this energy to say that

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To be young, gifted and Black is where its at! : An ode to Black youth Vanguard 06/02/2017, 11)49

the expropriation of land without compensation is the mission of our

lifetime, I am most certainly grateful for it.

It has excited Blackness in ways we havent seen in the contemporary

moment, it is thawing the frozen moment we have been stuck in for the
past twenty years and making us realise that we did not win anything, that
1994 was not a victory but rather a pacification of the energies of our
parents and that here, in this moment, we will carry the torch forth and
never again allow whiteness to safeguard itself in that manner.

As Nina Simone ends her song:

Oh but my joy of today/

Is that we can all be proud to say/
To be young, gifted and black/
Is where its at

Indeed, to be young gifted and Black today is where its at!

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