Cape Town – A young Cape Town girl has overcome many adversities in her short life.
The Grade 5 learner was rejected by her father when she was born 10 years ago because of her albinism, according to her family.
The child, from SST in Town Two in Khayelitsha, has recently been called names such as inkawu emdaka(dirty monkey).
She’s stopped going to Vusisizwe spaza shop, fearing some residents’ comments.
The child’s grandmother noticed the change in her behaviour when she sent her to buy cooldrink. The child refused and opted to go to another shop.
The family said the insults started when the girl and other children mistakenly hit a neighbour’s window with a tennis ball, even though the glass didn’t break.
“She told me that some people are calling her inkawu emdaka ezakuduka(a dirty monkey who will disappear). inkawu ayingcwatywa izakuduka(a monkey doesn’t get buried, they disappear),” she said.
When her aunt confronted the residents, they uttered the same words to her, telling her that indeed she was inkawu and there was no other word for her. During a visit to her home, the child was shy and spent most of the time playing with her 1-year-old cousin.
Asked about the treatment from the community, she broke down in tears as she described what happens when she goes to the shop with other kids.
She has only a few friends in her street. Other children once called her “Khwezi”, an albino character on the television drama Uzalo on SABC 1.
“They started calling me Khwezi, then laughed.
“When I asked them ‘who is Khwezi?’ they just looked at me and laughed again.”
The girl stopped watching the drama after some scenes of an albino family being attacked for their body parts for muti. She is afraid that the same thing may happen to her.
“I am like them and I’m afraid people may kill me for money, or I will go to school and never come back home.”
She said she enjoyed being at school, as most of her peers were understanding despite some calling her ihashe elimhlophe(white horse) after watching the same TV drama.
The Grade 5 pupil said she wished to be respected and treated normally by society, “like any other child”.
As for a relationship with her father, she was simply not interested in him any more.