NELSON MANDELA'S CONVERSATIONS WITH MYSELF

“In real life we deal, not with gods, but with ordinary humans like ourselves: men and women who are full of contradictions, who are stable and fickle, strong and weak, famous and infamous.” NELSON MANDELA

OBJECTS OF RIDICULE

To go through life haven’t had somebody who loves and cherish the ground you walk on, somebody that loves you for who you are, somebody that reciprocate your acting-love in a way that makes you feel and know that you are appreciated. Some individuals are fortune to find such love and relationships that carter to them such emotional maturity; however what happens to an individual that is viewed as an object of ridicule in every relationship that they venture into.

When does an individual know that they are an object of ridicule in their relationships? It does not matter what anyone says or do – in any relationship, you are an object of ridicule when your friend (s), spouse or relative (s) expects you to always supply them with what they want without ever thinking about your needs and how you feel when they demand things from you. You are an object of ridicule, when you constantly have to nag people around you and in your life to appreciate you and distinguish you as an equal in how you perceive life. You are an object of ridicule, when your opinion does not matter to the people you perceive as equals and respect in love and in any work environment. You are an object of ridicule when you always have to compromise, when no one is willing to meet your compromise halfway.

When your partner sees you as object of bodily and oral abuse, an object that is vocally lambasted, emotionally bastardized, psychologically raped from its inner self and outer façade. You are not only an object ridicule but, an insignificant person to them and everyone in your social standing that allows such violent nature take unsolicited control over your existence. You are an object of ridicule when emotional, mental and physical social vagabonds think and treat you as an object that is subjected to rape, incest, sodomy, and spiritual-bodily-torture.

Recently, young children in Pretoria were allegedly used as objects of sexual ridicule, when they were reported as being abused in an repulsive pornographic manner, by adults that were supposedly expected to nurture, protect and guard them as children.

When any individual, for all else that matters, sees you as a good for nothing human object, except as an object of psychopathic orgasmic pleasure, similar to the porn videos that are popular with sex addicts around the world, or are expected to an ATM machine whenever you enter into any conversation with your ‘friend’ (s), or family members; then you are not in relationships that will give you emotional sustainability, and growth that is needed to bring you inner and outer fulfillment in your life.

You are an object of ridicule when you are beaten, overused and misused, without being shown any gratitude for who you are and what you are to those you appreciate and fraternize with. A man that picks up rubbish, is as important as the man that writes the law of the land and as important as the man that implements, delegates that same law. A woman that bares you children is more important and more opulent as the diamond and gold you place in her finger.

There comes a point in your relationships, when and where you have to stand your ground as an individual and demand to be respected and loved as much as you give respect and give love – demand to reciprocate emotionally and physically what is ricochet towards you.

No woman, no man are objects of ridicule to any individuals that walks, breathes, and lives as they do. Eliminating destructive tendencies that ridicules other people should be every person’s ultimate goal to aid in ministering a path of self-sacrifice, self-love and transcending-love. Transcending love that is love and light, emanating from within - growth that knows that you can only maintain who you truly are without destroying the world around you or treating others as objects of ridicule.

WORD TO A NEW HUMANE OBJECTIVE REVOLUTION

By Linda Sakazi Thwala

RESILIENCE WITHIN THE SELF

An individual’s resilience within their own Self begins within themselves. Emotional negligence does cannot be exclusively be attributed to your parents, or to people that brought you up. Mental and emotional breakdown can be traced to an individual’s inability to comprehend and acknowledge the events or emotional situation that led to their emotional trauma, and the role they had to play for them to be in that situation.

It is undeniable that Psychopathic Tendencies are taught over a period of constant abuse, and emotional negligence by people that an individual perceived as their guardians, or loved ones – where an individual is constantly assailed with negative psychological and physical abuse. A child has no control over what happens to their livelihood and their living environment.

Psychopathic tendencies are malevolently entrenched during the fragile years of infancy and teenage years. When irresponsible adults impose their immoral, filthy habits upon youngsters, that do not have an inkling on how or what life entails. It is during these fragile years that a future abuser or pedophile is magnetism by the forces of abuse, dictating what they will be to society in the future; however during the teenage years, peer-pressure does play a fundamental psychological role in shaping a young person’s mental and behavioral aptitude and approach towards others and towards life.

An abuser kills the little resilience that a youngster has by constantly showing them the dark side of life, through remittent psychological disillusionment that was taught to them by other abusers. Through peer-pressure, youngsters want to be recognized and accepted by the fellow peers, therefore go out of their own moral belief to try and please their friends, hence conform to how their friends perceive life to be. It is through peer-pressure that youngster become abusers of drugs, and show signs of promiscuity, which does lead to a premature infection related death.

Life is immersed with positive things that can build a youngster to be an self-accountable, self-dependable, respectable and self-restraint individual within their community. It is through accountable, dependable, respectable individuals that youngsters learn to be a moral fabric to society. On the other hand, life is full of individuals that think that treating others badly is a normal thing to do. Life is a pendulum between goodness and wickedness.

To teach Self-resilience in youngster, adults need to know the limitations between good parenting and bad parenting. Adults need to know when to institute Tough-Love that is loving and not destructive Tough-Love. Adults need to know their own self-restraint and their own self-resilience. To eliminate unwanted emotional, mental and physical social environmental impacts, such as rape, verbal abuse, alienation, and physical abuse in any form – that do contribute to weakening ones spirit. That help in shaping a youngster’s perception, thus their personality. Adults/Guardians have to be uncompromising nurturing individuals to self-resilience to their children and for their children.

Self-resilience begins with you as an individual, however that resilience needs to be taught from a young age – meaning, physical and psychological nurture and protection for a youngster from infancy through to their teenage years. Self Destructive and Self Positive Criticism also contributes to Self-resilience. And builds Self-restraint for an individual through their adult years. Self-restraint needed to eliminate abusive tendencies.

WORD TO A NEW SELF-RESILIENT REVOLUTION

By Linda Sakazi Thwala

A CREATIVE NATIVE

In the bleak mist of confusion
This man toils in constant action
As uncanning ripples of life affect
Like the womb that borne with fact
Impregnated with the realistic mission
A speed with a purpose in passion
Seeking liberation in education
A lyrical verse that flows in ocean

Better recognize!
A creative native
That strides with motive

Forfeiting the riches of pretense
In faces of brethren with lost tense
An ideal aspiration shinning a promise
As beauty does to a man's heart amiss
Mankind's woes felt in the veins of homage
When the treads of experience a tale of age
In the oracle that promises insight
Within the ignoble actions left on site

You better recognize!
A creative native
That strides with motive

This creative native will walk with pride
In the minds of honor, conviction will ride
Ride on to infinite inhibitions of breath
As the kiss of wealth rotates mother earth
A native that beholds a persona of own
In the breeze of privileged time’s loan

Do you recognize?
A creative native
That strides with motive

This creative native will voice
An accrued finale of traveled choice
A ululation of gifted veins in grace
In ancestry that celebrates color in race
Word to this Creative Native!

By Linda Sakazi Thwala

TRANSCENDING SELF - WHEN IS TOUGH-LOVE NEEDED?

Instituting tough-love is a difficult parenting tool that is essential at times to enable your child/children to prepare themselves for the tough, enjoyable, cruel place that is life. A child needs tough-love because of the obstacles of peer-pressure that they will have to overcome during their teen years; and the choices that they will have to make to determine their growth and contentment in their will have to reach in their adult years. Parents can at times become too compulsive in instilling moral values, which they themselves find hard to practice, therefore filter values of hypocrisy towards their children to append in their destructive immature immoral ways. When is tough-love needed?

When implementing tough-love as a parent, it is important that you have your own moral foundation intact. It does not help implementing something that you, yourself does not believe in. Playing double-standards with your own life and the lives of other people, particularly your child/children can and will produce dreadful consequences. Discipline is not just plain and simple discipline.

There are two constituting types of tough-love: The first is referred to as ‘loving tough-love’ and the second is referred to as ‘destructive tough-love’. Loving Tough-Love is the type of a parental disciplinary mechanism that enables your child to reflect at their surroundings, home environment and their parents’ behavioral pattern, attitude towards life and how they treat others; meaning friends, neighbours or strangers and their next of kin. When implement tough-love as a parent your words must be in queue with your actions, to enable your child to learn from you. Tough-love means, knowing that your child has flawed and knowing when to reprimand their errs in the right time and place, appropriately within character building means.

Loving Tough-Love understands that their child’s characters is different from theirs or others children, thus tries to view things from the eyes of their children. It does not help shouting at your child/children when they do something wrong - all they will know is that problems are solved by playing the shouting game, which will most likely lead to violent means. Be the acting-love, talk to your child and understand what they want and why they want it, show them the ways of acquiring without destroying others and themselves, because you should provide all they need until they are matured enough to take care of themselves. Loving Tough-Love understands the way of the world – it is informed.

Destructing Tough-Love is the type of love where parents do or act totally, morally incorrectly and expects their children to not emulate their destructive ways. Destructive Tough-love expects a child/children to bring themselves up without any parent acting-love and essential nurturing support. Destructive Tough-Love does not monitor what the child is doing, how they do it, when they do it, with whom they do it with, at what cost they do it in. Destructive Tough-Love disciplines violently without any meaningful conversations with its child/children. Destructive Tough-Love always blames the child and kills their inner Self. Ultimately, Destructive Tough-Love, destroys your child’s self-esteem, self-worth, self-consistency, self-love and their transcending growth. Destructive Tough-Love does not understand the ways of the world – it is ignorant.

There is no guide in being the perfect parent, everyone does morally err, as a result no one is perfect in this world. At times parents themselves are children that were not given ‘Loving Tough-Love’, therefore have no expertise in implementing that type of love to their own children. Playing the game of tough-love becomes a dangerous affair to both child and parent.

It does not help implementing something that you, yourself does not believe in. As parents we need to teach our children to be morally viable, by doing morally viable things right in front of them. This aids in the proficiency of being the right parent and implementing the right type of Tough-Love needed to bestow character building, Growth and Transcending-love to your children.

WORD TO A NEW TOUGH-LOVING ENVIRONMENT REVOLUTION

By Linda Sakazi Thwala

SOUTH AFRICA’S FLAWED PROMISES OF O.B.E

South Africa’s flawed promises of Outcome Based Education (O.B.E) and its Outcome based Assessment (O.B.A), which is soon to be eradicated, that was implemented a decade ago, in the year 2000, after several years apartheid education policies were abolished and the new political dispensation with the birth of South Africa’s Democracy and the Constitution was formed.

The Mandela and Mbeki era heralded a review on our system of education and how educators imposed new education standards and its impact in the classroom, as oppose to apartheid, segregationist Bantu education policies and classroom principles; blamed for not producing enough free-educated-thinkers within the system. However over the years, it proved to be a flawed education system of learning both in implementation and acquiring learners with an excellent learning tool.

Outcome Based Education and Outcome Based Assessment was introduce to change the learners’ school environment, awareness to what is being taught and teacher’s assessment proficiency, respectively. The then new, teacher to learner interaction, under the Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) together with the Department of Education, aimed to enhance individual learner techniques with specialized attention given to; Critical outcomes, Specific Outcomes, Assessment criteria, Range statement and Performance criteria, from each learner. B. Malan in a review conducted in 1997 said that “one of the aims why O.B.E was introduced in South Africa was to create opportunities for life-long learning to all South Africans. At the ultimate end of the learning process, the child must be able to do something to demonstrate that he/she has learned something.”

The philosophy of O.B.E is base on that “All learners can learn and succeed, but not on the same day, in the same way”. This technique was to encourage the learner’s authentic external behavior, their social reconstructive or transformation skills, critical thinking skills and pragmatic knowledge. With the learner taking charge of their own education, with the teacher mainly playing a role as a facilitator, and Education Department providing Provincial and National, quarterly and final examination papers. Aimed at doing away with the forceful devastating learning segregationist style of teaching, which commanded students that they had to know their learning material now and know it well.

The failure of the system of Outcome Based Education and Outcome Based Assessment, according to Mr. Noko Ramoroka’s extensively documented assessment dissertation of Outcome Based Education, conducted in 2005, for the Department of Curriculum Studies Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria; is attributed to firstly by, the educator’s, teacher’s or facilitator’s indecisiveness and lack of knowledge at implementing the Outcome Base Curriculum to the learners, due to various teaching methods to cater for different learning methods or styles and avoid boring lessons, therefore enabling individual learner attention. Secondly, to its contribution to the National drop of good literacy levels amongst youngsters during the phase of Outcome Base Education, thus aiding to cultivating a generation of young people who cannot read or write or calculate properly. Thirdly, its failure to increase National Matriculation result levels and failure to produce expected University standard students entrance.

According to the Department of Education’s Facilitator Manual in 2002, suggestions were made that educators should make clear, what will be assessed by the end of the learning process and plan how assessment will happen. The education department and facilitator were expected to determine the educator pupil ratio (number of pupils in the classroom), the impact that it has on O.B.E implementation by teachers; To determine whether the way in which learners are seated allows learners participation and whether a conclusive learning space is created; To determine whether educators follow different teaching strategies and have changed from direct instruction to a facilitative role; To determine how educators assess learners’ work and whether they follow multiple strategies when they assess learners work; to determine whether educators still dominate in the teaching-learning situation; To determine whether educators use relevant resources to help learner to achieve outcomes; To determine whether there is evidence that the educator accommodates O.B.E premises and principles in the classroom practices.

Outcomes Based Education incorporated South Africa’s National Qualification Frameworks (NQF), which has three broad bands of education: General education and Training, Further Education and Training, and Higher Education and Training.

It has been extensively documented that since 2007, South Africa has in the range of about 12 million students, more than 360,000 teachers and 28,000 schools. School-goers are expected to attend school for at least 13 years with the “exceptions of grade 0, 10, 11 and 12”. Traditional universities offer degrees that are more theoretically-oriented (University of Cape Town, University of Pretoria, University of the Witwatersrand). Universities of Technology on the other hand offer degrees in technical fields that involve various practical applications (Central University of Technology, Cape Peninsula University of Technology).

During the tenure of Professor Kader Asmal as Minister of Education, Curriculum 2005 was already in its helms. Professor Asmal’s greatest challenges was to oversee the merging in of O.B.E into both GET (General Education and Training) and FET (Further Education and Training) systems of learning for further education starting from grade 10. A listening in campaign, to hear the views of society, was one of the resources that the Minister of Education utilized to strengthen the course to Outcomes Based Education or Curriculum 2005. A different curriculum in subjects such as mathematics, physical science, life science, technology and communication were approved and circuited Nationally.

Some rural areas of our country are still littered by a shortage of teachers, classrooms, in some cases a whole school, text books, proper sanitation and a desperately needed transportation system to ferry distant based pupils to and from school daily. These concerns have for years contributed to many rural school-goers dropping out, and some succumbing to a destined dry life in their remote villages.

Recently, government and the education ministry was bombarded with teacher salary increment demands, which led to union affiliated teachers, and none union affiliated teachers, from all provinces of our country downing pens, pencils and chalk to strike on their grievances. Some teachers called for an improvement in the implementation of education system, and the challenging conditions that teachers are faced with daily, including disobedient children in their classrooms.

The system of O.B.E has failed South African school-goers, their teachers, their parents and the South African Government and Department of Education. Products of Outcome Based Education are not only appalling at syntax, constructing well formulated sentences, they cannot solve complex mathematical problems and have proved to be unemployable in the job market. Most parents blame this shortcoming of this system of education to technology, at how youngsters use abbreviated messages not only outside the classroom, but also in their classroom written work and forgetting the culture of reading and writing.

The education system needs improvement in implementation, and drastic changes over the coming years and many educators have reiterated the need for such a change – others argue that oversees the education system of the Republic of South Africa. If the system is to be changed and how effective the proposed system will be, remains to be seen.

WORD TO A NEW SYSTEM OF EDUCATION REVOLUTION

By Linda Sakazi Thwala