Marching for our rights

By Arnia Kiara Oosthuizen

Today, we made history! We, as students, fought for our rights to be educated in our home language, Afrikaans and to have English and Tswana, as interpretation services.

Merieke and I at the march
Second poster translation "Media stoking anger, what about my degree?"

Our university has been receiving bad advertising from newspapers and television since the beginning of the year, making false accusations of the university endorsing a Nazi-culture, which is rubbish!

The university was forced to appoint a new Vice-Chancellor after all the bad media, but this Vice-Chancellor made promises that he will not change our language of instruction. So everyone was happy, until he made statements on TV that he had other motives. Yes, he was considering to change our language of instruction.

Now, here is the defense of the students and the university:

Since our country became a democracy in 1994, we had 11 official languages. Talk about a rich culture and traditions of a country! I absolutely love it! There are so many types of people here and each and everyone is individual. We all have different backgrounds and we are a Rainbow Nation. One of our rights in this Rainbow Nation, is that we have the right to be educated in our home language.

Why not go to another university to receive education in your home language?
Because we are the last Afrikaans university in South-Africa. All English and Tswana students have translators in EACH and EVERY class.
There are so many English universities, who provide interpretation services for all languages of South-Africa, except for Afrikaans.

Lizanne, me and Merieke

Thousands of students marching!

It will still take some time for the Vice-Chancellor to realize what he is doing to our student culture. He will cause the separation between students and friends, because of this. And Nelson Mandela, his hero fought so hard to prevent exactly the things that are happening now at the university.

How do you feel about this? Please share your views.

Working in a shoe shop

By Arnia Kiara Oosthuizen

Can we please have shoes?

As a student, we discover that money does, in fact, not grow on trees. Therefore, I got myself a holiday job to pass the time of a three month holiday and to earn a bit of money.

 I have worked at this shoe shop before and retail is not the best or most fun job in the world, but at least it's money.

Most of my co-workers are black and over this period of time that I have known them, they have taught me a lot. They are teaching me Zulu and Tswana, which is a lot of fun, because when I greet the people in their home language they immediately light up and talk to me, which is not so fun ( Because so far, I only know how to greet).

We are also trading food at work. They find my food very interesting. I have eaten chicken feet (which are not bad, it just doesn't have a lot of meat) and many other things I am still learning to pronounce and spell! WATCH THIS SPACE!

They always thought that white and indian people automatically have cancer, because of our immense hairloss (when sweeping the floors, there is a lot of hair lying on the ground).

Another thing they observed is the ring on my middle finger and asked if I was married. To them wearing a ring before marriage is a curse, which means you will never find a husband. And a ring on any finger means you're married or either looking for bad luck.

They are also trying to teach me to dance. Which in my opinion is a lost cause, because I have no rhythm and will never had. It seems that they automatically have the best rhythm!

These guys are making the job worth while and I am never without a smile when they are around.