Local girl wins national writing competition

SHE does not only write what she likes, she also speaks her mind. Seventeen year old Nia Louw from Sydenham and a Ridge Park College learner, says: “racism is an insidious presence in society; it runs deep in the roots of every culture, etched into the scriptures of all history books. Some think that it will be too great a task to remove something that is so deeply rooted in history, but I believe that as long as racism has been around, the defiance of racism was omnipresent in its company.”

Louw, who attends Ridgepark College, recently became the youngest person to win the South African Youth Essay Writing Competition Against Racism, run by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, with her essay entitled, Problem Child. The national essay-writing competition is aimed at tackling racism and encourages young people to share their views. A collection of the essays is expected to be published in a booklet which will be distributed to high schools across the country.

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For someone who is born in a free South Africa, Louw says she does not relate with the term “Born Free” and believes that there is still a long way to go for the country to be completely free.

“I think it will take time for us to get a free South Africa and that is why competitions like these ones are important because they give us an opportunity to speak out. It also encourages people to think differently. I know that my grandparents and parents had a far worse time than us. I am however, grateful that the country was able to get out of that situation, but in the real sense we are not completely out of it. The apartheid root legacy runs very deeply and for children to be born free of discrimination they should not have to be exposed to an ignorant mentality,” said Louw.

Her essay also touched on the topic of natural hair, a subject that made news headlines in 2016 when a group of Pretoria High schoolgirls protested over the school’s code of conduct relating to hairstyles, which black girls claim discriminates against them.

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“There is a form of racism that many schools and teachers still fail to acknowledge; the moderation of our hair. We are constantly told by teachers to tie our hair, or cut our hair or tame it. Natural hair is not encouraged at school, when girls arrive with afros, they are told to tie it up. Teachers are unaware of the pain they inflict with this command. They are not aware of the work it takes to flatten our hair simply because our hair is not meant to be flattened. We are not taught to embrace our hair, but rather taught to despise its coarseness, the frustration we feel when we are forcing our hair into ponytails, slowly morphs into a bitter self-hate and a strong envy for the type of hair that is praised. We begin to long for the type of hair that can be guided effortlessly into a ponytail, the type of hair that is easily flattened, the type of hair that is not ours,” concluded Louw.

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