Which is why he sometimes avoids his parents when they call him from home. He doesn’t know how to explain to them that daily he’s reminded of the fact he is temporarily inhabiting a space that was never meant for people like him — not just black, but poor too — and that, as a result, he constantly feels like he’s there on borrowed time.
There were the gut-wrenching moments that confront every black person. Like the October afternoon when the police had pelted him and other protesters with tear gas, and he’d rushed to shelter in another building. Two white students dashed in ahead of him. When he reached the entrance to safety, Tjie realized a man was blocking his way.
“Where’s your student card?” he recalled the man asking him.
He hadn’t asked the white students.
At BuzzFeed, West African correspondent Monica Mark reports on the South African students of color who have organized to try to improve the conditions of education in a country that, twenty years after apartheid ended, is still rigged for the white minority.
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