OK, so introduce yourself, and also spell your name — that's important because the African names are harder for us to read. And then you can tell us where you were born and how you grew up. Remember you're talking to Canadian students, and you're giving them a description of your life.
My name is Sonwabo. S-O-N-W-A-V-O. My surname is Chandu. I was born in Venterstad in the rural areas, about 76 kilometres from Colesburg, in 1980. So I grew up on the farm there — my father and mother were staying there. I grew up like a farm kid. Then we moved from there in 1986. They intended to bring me to school here because there was no school right there.
Do you remember life on the farm?
I remember very much — I had some fun on the farm. I used to swim in the pools of white people. Though I was not allowed — I was doing that in my private time when they were not around. So I was not allowed. They were going to beat me.
In 1986, before I came here, my mother left. She went to work in Cape Town. Then I lived with my granny and grandfather.
Coming back to 1986, then I was transferred to Colesburg. My uncle was living here. I was taken to school, but there was no place for me at school because there was a specific number which was supposed to be filled. So I did not get placed by that year. I was taken back to the farm. There were no other schools — the farm schools were very far from where we were living. The white man was not willing actually to take me to school daily. So my granny decided that I should stay at home and wait for the following year.
When I came here — how I was introduced to the guys, so-called, the guys of my age — there were funny things, funny tricks, that they were doing to me. As somebody who comes from the farm, there are certain treatments you've got to go under.
Anyway, we managed to go through, and the year for me to go to school came. I got place in 1988 at Colesburg Primary — that's where I started my education, as I was in Standard A. By then I was eight years old when I was taken to school.
In 1992, a struggle came upon — when I was in Standard 3. The struggle was against the punishment, especially against the punishment, and some other things. Like the students wanted to know how much money was at school by that time. Seeing that from the older kids who were in high school by then. But it just took about a month, then everything was OK. I was still young by then.
In 1995, we went on the competition and they started to integrate in athletics. So we competed against the white people. Then I got a chance now to further my career in athletics. We went up to Kimberley, and I saw many guys there. I even discovered hammer throw, pole vault — I was just seeing that on the television. I was thinking that there was no one in high school doing that. Then I saw those things. Then I saw even triple jump. Then I took note of that.
Coming back to my home life — I'm living now with my mother and my stepfather. My granddad passed a few months ago last year. We're living now together with my younger sister.
Because this place is a rural area, people do one thing. They want to do one uniform thing. If I saw you drinking, being your friend, then I would also like to taste how it tastes. Then we go further and further and further. Such that many guys now — as I told you before — they are in prison right now. Some others are dead by now. Others are just there in the location doing nothing.
And something else is that youth around here are competing. Girls are competing by having babies. Girls of my age. Many of them already have. Some others are in the process of having them. They are practising that. I don't know where that idea comes from. But these are some other things.
Another thing about the security in this area is that policemen are not so capable. Maybe they are weaker than the community itself. They are not so capable to deal with the crime taking place here. There are so many victims of crime. In a few months that just passed in winter, another old man was killed at night by an unknown. He just brought a stone — a big stone — and put it on his head and crushed his head off. Such things are happening.
How do you survive in that situation?
You only survive by being known as somebody who's quiet. Or else if your family is some kind of family — known in some way — then you are going to survive, because they have a fear of your family. If you are not recognised — like the coloureds — most of them are dying. The coloureds who are living in the location right there.
They are recognised by the Africans as being in a lower class. So they are treating them very badly because of that — calling them Amalawu. Ilawu is somebody who doesn't have origins. Somebody who uses this and that. He accepts everything. He accepts himself where he is. He does not ask himself where he comes from. That is Ilawu. Somebody with no origins, with no backbone.
Looking at the situation in our education — in the past, you'll know that there was a separation. There was an education so-called Bantu education, and the education which was just meant for white people. Coloureds were medium to that — they had the capability to go to the other side. But that was allowed later on. In the past, in the 1970s, it was very difficult. So that is why you get black schools with only black kids, and very few coloured kids. If they are five, they are too many. Very, very few.
And even last year, when we had an athletic meeting with the white people, they were shouting things like — we are baboons. Seeing that we are left alone there. Because after the games, you go home — so you walk in groups or maybe alone. Then it's where they got the chance to tell these young boys that you are baboons. Because these young boys even do jokes and they are laughing very much. Now they maybe think the boys are laughing at them. So they gave them those words.
Life is quite changing now, and even our education — because they are now talking about outcomes-based education. I do not understand it clearly — they are just introducing it. They are training the Sub A teachers (Grade One) and even the Grade Two teachers. So I have not really seen the change in our education. Though they said there is a change, I have not yet seen so much change.
What do you see happening to yourself over the next little while? You're an athlete, you're bright. Where do you see yourself going?
Being an athlete and being in a rural area like this is quite problematic, because there are no sponsors around here, and I'm a black child, and I come from a very poor family which cannot assist me very well. So if I can go to these bigger towns or cities where there are many sponsors — but even if there are many sponsors, you have to work very hard. If I can work very hard, maybe I can have a brighter future through this athletics.
One other thing I think is a problem to us — we do not want to involve ourselves in healthy things for our minds, like politics. We do not want to involve ourselves because we are taking it as a risk being a politician. We've got that idea that politics are dirty. People are dying because of politics. Now I do not want to put myself in a position whereby I would die at any time.
- Venterstad — a small town in the Eastern Cape, near the Karoo border with Northern Cape; Sonwabo's birthplace
- Colesburg — Northern Cape town in the Karoo; site of the law clinic from Interviews 01, 02, and 04
- Mr. Jass — Sonwabo's athletics teacher and coach at his Colesburg secondary school
- Henry Brown — a white South African athlete, Sonwabo's age peer in 1997, who matriculated in 1997
- Bantu education — the racially segregated education system imposed on black South Africans under the Bantu Education Act of 1953; nominally abolished after 1994 but with long-lasting institutional residue
- Outcomes-based education — the post-1994 curriculum reform programme introduced under Minister Sibusiso Bhengu; widely controversial and eventually rolled back in the 2000s
- Amalawu (singular: iLawu) — Xhosa term for people of mixed-race / coloured background, with connotations Sonwabo describes as "somebody with no origins, no backbone"; used pejoratively in some contexts and reclaimed in others
- Dagga — Afrikaans term for cannabis, common across South African English
- Sub A / Standard A — the first year of South African primary school (now Grade 1)
- Matric — the South African school-leaving certificate, taken at the end of Grade 12
- The pools of white people (Section 2). "I used to swim in the pools of white people. Though I was not allowed — I was doing that in my private time when they were not around." The compressed history of apartheid in two sentences, in the voice of a five-year-old who didn't yet know what apartheid was.
- The father who went to Joburg and never came back (Section 3). "Then his coffin was not clearly traced. So we could not take the dead body from Joburg." No commentary, no anger — just the mechanics of a vanished body. A specific, devastating, unsentimental moment.
- Two years denied a school place (Section 4). The mechanics of racial gatekeeping at the school-admissions level in 1986–87 — the white farmer who wouldn't drive him, the Colesburg schools that were "full," the granny who had to wait.
- The 50-cents-in-your-pocket street economy (Section 5) and the stick-punishment in athletics training (Section 7). The interior hierarchy of the township, separate from the racial structure, with its own informal violence. The interior economy of the oppressed that doesn't fit into anti-apartheid narratives.
- The Amalawu passage (Section 13). Sonwabo's account of how the black African community treats the coloured community in Colesburg — calling them people "with no origins, no backbone" — is editorially extraordinary and almost entirely absent from English-language narratives of post-apartheid South Africa, which tend to present "black" as a single category. Sonwabo names the internal racial hierarchy within the formerly oppressed. Treat carefully — it's politically sensitive, but his testimony is primary and his moral position ("they are my neighbours … they are good") is generous and self-aware. Strong candidate for an Anabasis short-form piece on how oppression replicates its own hierarchies.
- The athletic meet — "we are baboons" (Section 15). The pure, ugly, casual racism of the post-1994 transition, captured at a high-school sports event between formerly white and formerly black schools. Pairs with the lodge-incident Chris Jali describes in Interview 04 (Queenstown, 1998) — same period, different settings, same moment.
- "After 20 years it is going to be like a battlefield" (Section 16). A 17-year-old's prediction for 2018 made in 1998. Treat with sober care — much of South African public life in the 2010s and 2020s has carried exactly the texture he is predicting. The forecast is partially confirmed by history, which makes it more harrowing, not less.
- The misused word transformation (Section 17). "They thought that if we're talking of transformation, tomorrow when the sun rises, this house will be on this side, the streets will be gold." Editorially crucial — almost the same critique Petr Scherhaufer made in his 1993 Brno interview about post-Velvet expectations (Interview 04 in the Czech series). Two young people in two transitions making the same observation about the same psychological mistake.
- The "politics are dirty" passage (Section 18). The disengagement from political life of a young man who is otherwise observant, articulate, and committed to his own future. The single most directly relevant passage for the studio's 2026 work on counter-disinformation — the audiences Through-Line Studio is designed to reach are precisely the audiences Sonwabo represents: not the politically active, but the ones who have concluded that politics is a way to get killed.