On Thursday’s I usually have my English language and Linguistics tutorial, and it so happens that this term we are discussing the notion of texts and how they relate to ideology. This last Thursday though, was special in a kind of way, I already have the date marked on my diary: 01 October 2009, the first day of the month and already remarkable occurrences are evolving...and so I am looking forward to what this month has in store for me.
We were doing chapter 2 on how to analyse text mainly looking at the functions and stylistic transformations. We get to the usual of discussing the week’s workpoints (something more like homework). In coming to question 2, taken from a newspaper article dealing with unrest during the apartheid era. We had to identify any stylistic transformations and describe how they inform us about the ideology that underlies each passage. This was the statement from extracted form the newspaper.
“In an explosion of unrest at least 14 blacks were shot dead in Uitenhage today. A significant number were wounded. Between 3000 and 4000 ritous blacks were on their way to white suburbs in the town when the violence broke out."
While other tutlings were analysing the text for stylistic transformations such as passivation, adverbial fronting and agent deletion. I was too busy analysing the text for the meaning it contained. One word that stroke me was the use of ‘at least’ in the first sentence. Me and my friend sitting next to me were so perplexed. At the thought of the word ‘at least’ and all the connotations embedded in this one word. Did the journalist mean there needed to be more ‘black people’ dying? That there were not enough deaths regarding the fact that there was unrest and only a few blacks died in it. ? Then I read on, only to realise that another derogatory term had been used, ‘riotous’ blacks and now this term required the use of a dictionary. The meaning of this term I came to realise is, “ involving wild and uncontrollable behaviour” and then the question arose, is this the picture the journalist is trying to convey? Wild people, angry citizens, uncontrollable individuals?
What ideological terms arise from the word ‘blacks?’ ...evil? Insane? Stupid? and violent? Why can’t we be put as positive in the eyes of a society that consists of diverse cultures? In a book written by our own freedom fighter, Nelson Mandela titled, “the struggle is my life” on page 222, in an address to rally in Durban that happened in 1990. One of the opening paragraph states, “In Natal, apartheid is a cancer in our midst, setting house against house, and eating away the precious ties that bound us together. This strife among ourselves wastes our energy and destroys our unity. My message to those of you involved in the battle of brother against brother is this: take your guns, your knifes, and your pangas, and throw them into the sea. Close down the death factories. End this war now!”
I re-read this statement and I realised that it has now been 19 years since Mandela has been stating words of encouragement within different races to get along with each other hole heartedly. Throughout the year, for Journalism, we have been touching on the issue of race. One can get the tendency to become bored with it by now, but we really need to talk and discuss this issue thoroughly. Yes, most people are not racist but when you come to think of the past you fill like digging a hole and putting yourself in it. It is a sensitive issue and the fact that it is still sensitive means we have not come to the root of the problem, as the more we talk and express and understand each other-it will become less of a sensitive issue. Firstly, Journalist’s through their articles get the privilege to achieve their view point even if they are not allowed to enquire their subjective opinions within the article.
Within society the ideology behind the notion of black people is still viewed negatively( you and I both know it) even though there might be slow progress into changing this notion...we do have white friends who understand and love us and we do the same right?
In actual fact the world may have come to peace with apartheid for now but black people, deep down still have troubled hearts that yearn for lives that once mattered but now to be remembered and mourned for. I have come to know that even though the skin to all of us, when cut, the same striking red blood is shed. This is the same skin that can have detrimental effects on a human soul, heart and life. How life can be so miserable and unpleasant when the past is bought forward, to a young black girl even post-1994. Though the rights given to us dimly exist, it is not something within the surface that matters but what is deep down. That is still difficult to talk about, troubling enough to speak about and difficult to hear about. As Albert Einstein once said, “It’s every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.”
LET US EMBRACE THE COLOUR DIFFERENCES AS ART, LET US NOT LOOK DOWN ON EACH OTHER! so what do you think...are you in or not?
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