The announcement by Disney, of R&B singer and actress Halle Bailey being Ariel in the upcoming live action of The Little Mermaid has sparked a lot of conversations around black girl magic on social media, and we are here for it. Halle is not only just a great singer, but she is also a greater actor having been an actor for most of her life. She’s just nineteen, and she has managed to have the world stop right on its orbiting tracks.

Whilst there is a lot of positivity around Halle Bailey’s new role, white people have decided to make it about them, once again. The negativity made me root even harder for Terry Crews for pitching himself to be King Triton, Ariel’s father. The dispute is that The Little Mermaid, whose name is Ariel, is a white redhead in the original film and it is because of this that she cannot be portrayed by a black actress. It gets even deeper; people are even being “scientific” in explaining their claims and say that there is no way that Ariel could be black.

We are faced with another Game Of Thrones situation where white viewers through a huge fit when it came from the HBO tower that they are working on a Game Of Thrones prequel series that does not only just take place ten thousand years before “A Song of Ice and Fire” but this prequel will feature black actors. The likes of Naomi Ackie, a British actress who played her first role in Lady Macbeth. This is the very same role that got her nominated twice in the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) and even took a BIFA home in 2017 for the most promising newcomer. Of the other names that were mentioned to be joining GOT as Game Of Thrones is affectionately known was Ivanno Jeremiah, English actor in the series Humans and Sheila Atim, an English actress, singer, composer, and model born in Uganda.

Besides the fact that what these people are missing is the fact all of this is just fiction, there’s no science and truth to it, they are also missing the fact that black artists have been excluded for so long and it’s about time that they are included. I fail to understand why white people are being racially over territorial over something that is not based on any truth, that was just meant to entertain people and that includes black people. Art is art and black people have every single right to see black representation in that art.

These kinds of television shows go beyond than just being entertainment, they also shape the world around on things such as beauty, identity and race. Young black children have grown up surrounded by Barbie and Rapunzel with beautiful long blonde hair, a stomach that’s sucked, make up and feathery eye lashes. Their childhood has been overloaded with fairy tale characters that look nothing like them and they are supposed to resonate with them.

So before you take swings at how having black actors take on characters of cartoons that you grew up with them as white, before you talk about it ruins your childhood memories of the characters, before you talk about how the character should represent its true self, before you say that your Ariel could never be black because there’s not enough sunlight underwater, before you say that your Ariel could never be black because even the original fairy tale was written by a Danish author, before you say that the people and the rulers of the medieval era were majority white and that is what Game Of Thrones is based on, before you say that the show will have displeased passionate fans; the core audience, for the sake of hiring actors because of their skin colour to please the sensitive, before you say that accurately portraying a book  or art is important, before you say that politics don’t  belong in entertainment, before you say that there are way too many things to worry about getting right in a television series for a director than to worry about how many blacks he hired in place of already designed for white characters… think about all young black children who grew up and continue to grow up with severe identity issues, lack of self-confidence and self-hate.

The arts have had a big impact in the liberation of black people. Arts continue to make impressionable beings of all of us, and engrave messages into our heads, that’s the most powerful and amazing thing about it, but can also be dangerous.  Black people need to start to feel acceptable and not short of beauty. Black people need to start feeling they can conquer the world and that they are not the visitors of this world, and white people are the merciless hosts. Black people need to start having a seat at the table. It is more than a black Barbie; it is more than a black mermaid. It is about the exclusion that black people have suffered for so long. For the longest time black people have been made to feel that their rich in melanin skin, their flat noses, their thick lips and their kinky and nappy coiled hair was not good enough, let alone good enough for television. It is time for black people to have a seat on the table and eat with the rest.

Not that all those things would matter to white people who concern themselves with getting a series right than the damage done to the mindsets of black children and black viewers as a whole.

The North-West University (NWU), and what South Africa (SA) was in the year 1976 is no difference at all. In 1976, SA was characterised by the unjust law that all black schools should use Afrikaans as a primary medium of instruction and the Bantu Education Act that enforced racially separated educational facilities. Meaning, white people or students received the best services and black students received poor services. Similarly, this Act entailed white schools being of “western” standards, having proper infrastructure, electricity, running water and a substantial amount of government funding. As for black schools, the infrastructure was inadequate, no electricity, no running water, a low amount of government funding and black teachers getting extremely low salaries compared to white teachers. Therefore, the aim of teaching black learners in Afrikaans and subjecting them to inferior educational facilities of Bantu Education was to direct them to the unskilled labour market.

Now, there are remnants of the historical events above at the NWU’s two out of three campuses, namely Potchefstroom campus (a historically white university) and Mafikeng campus (a historically black university). Firstly, at the Potchefstroom campus, the way Afrikaans was used in 1976, during the Apartheid era, is used on this campus as well. Afrikaans is still the primary and predominant medium of instruction. Majority of the classes are in Afrikaans and black students who do not understand Afrikaans have to use interpretation services. Therefore, Afrikaans is used as a tool to exclude black students.

In addition, white Afrikaner students are prioritised at the expense of black students. Moreover, given the demographics of full-time contact registered students on our campus being predominantly white students, white Afrikaner students for that matter, this exclusive language system perpetuates a situation whereby Afrikaans is being used as a tool to exclude, marginalise and isolate black African students.

This language policy of predominantly having Afrikaans as the primary of instruction and interpretation services for those who do not understand Afrikaans gives an unfair special recognition to Afrikaans and white Afrikaner students at the expense of black African students. Potchefstroom campus as it is kept as a harbour and bastion for white Afrikaners and Afrikaans.  

Secondly, at the Mafikeng campus, there are remnants of Bantu Education. In 2019, there are grievances of the black students there that remain unresolved. There are poor library facilities. A dilapidated and inadequate infrastructure as far as residences are concerned. A less supply of teaching and assessment materials, high fees when the services on the different campuses are not the same, and victimisation of students who raise their concerns. Decisions pertaining to Mafikeng campus are taken elsewhere (by a Council dominated by white Potchefstroom campus staff members), maladministration, outsourcing of workers and the university employing lecturers who are not qualified to teach students. In a nutshell, there is a disregard for black students and black lives at the Mafikeng campus.

In 2004, as part of the higher education merger process, the then Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (and its campus the then Vaal Pukke) and the University of the North-West merged and became one university with three campuses (Potchefstroom, Vaal Triangle & Mafikeng). However, emphasis is on Potchefstroom and Mafikeng to illustrate the racial white-black inequality that exists between the two in terms of resources. This merger was meant to ensure that racial injustices of the past are eradicated and there is an equitable distribution of material resources to the institutions across the board. However, from 2004 – 2014, first ten years of the merger, the merger did not achieve what it was meant to achieve. Even today, the merger has not thoroughly achieved what it was supposed to. The merger was only a merger on paper and practically it was a myth.

What’s more, Professor Nhlanhla Maake in his book Barbarism in Higher Education: Once Upon A Time In A University, states that: “What is remarkable is that most of the gormandising universities, euphemistically referred to in the parlance of incorporations and merger process as “receiving institutions,’ were mainly former Afrikaans universities: Pretoria, Potchefstroom for Christian Higher Education, Rand Afrikaans University, University of Port Elizabeth and University of Free State. The incorporation process was therefore a sadistic oxymoron, where black universities or their satellites were handed over to their former antitheses.” This means that the Mafikeng campus is black and inferior and Potchefstroom campus is white and superior. Mafikeng is the student and Potchefstroom the lecturer. Mafikeng cannot impart knowledge. Mafikeng should only receive knowledge. Potchefstroom imparts knowledge and is the giver of knowledge. This is the racism that is happening.

Furthermore, to further highlight the differences in quality between the two campuses is that in 2017 the Council of Higher Education (CHE) wanted to take the NWU’s LLB accreditation status because of the following reasons it found:

1. There is significant evidence of inequity between the two sites of delivery in Potchefstroom and Mahikeng in terms of access; provision of curriculum delivery, teaching, learning and assessment; the profiles of staff in respect of seniority, qualifications and scholarly reputation; the quality assurance of the programme; articulation between the sites; infrastructure and other learning resources. Institutional restructuring aimed at addressing such issues has not yet manifested itself in the Faculty of Law.
2. There is a lack of substantive integration, in the programme as a whole as well as on the Potchefstroom Campus, between students of different racial groups, and a sense of alienation felt by students of particular groups. At Potchefstroom, a group of mainly black students receiving tuition through the medium of interpreting from Afrikaans to English, felt “accommodated” rather than fully accepted and integrated in the academic space.
3. Throughout the programme, relatively low admission requirements are not supplemented with adequate student support.

In light of the above, this goes to show that there was never a successful merger between the two universities as purported by the council. Hence, the view remains that there is no difference between the NWU and SA 1976.

Consequently, there has been a perception among students and staff members at Mafikeng campus that the council favours Potchefstroom campus and is not interested in significantly resolving problems on the Mafikeng campus. Again, for as long as the University Management Committee (UMC) and Council are predominantly staffed by people from Potchefstroom campus, white people, Mafikeng campus will continue to be treated as a step child of Potchefstroom campus and the NWU will never achieve any meaningful transformation.