Children's Movement - South Africa

On the 15th of June we had a workshop on racism in the office. It was attended by 5 Afrikaans-speaking members from Portlands Primary school in Mitchell's Plain, an area in Cape Town mainly occupied by afrikaansspeaking people. At Portlands Primary there are 650 learners out of which only 50 are Xhosa- speaking. The Workshop was supposed to be attended by 5 Xhosa-speaking members from the same school as well, but due to communication problems unfortunately they couldn't come. We discussed different topics like: What is racism? How do we experience racism? Do we experience racism at school, from teachers or other learners? What are the reasons for racism? How can we fight racism?The members remembered some situations, in which they experienced racism in their community, when people of another skin-colour looked at them in a way that wasn't nice. They also mentioned that adults often make racist remarks, especially against black South Africans and Africans from other countries. They like to say things like: “all blacks are criminals” which is a generalization and not true. But at their school they haven't had any of these bad experiences so far, there learners are friends no matter what their cultural backgrounds are. In the following Newsletters you will find regular information on Workshops on this topic with members from other schools. We also ask you to discuss about racism and related issues in your groups and report the outcomes to the office, so that they can be printed in the next Newsletters.