South Africa is a very exclusionary country, ACCENTS are one of the ways to exclude people. We use accents to determine your intelligence & class position. An English or “White” accent is currency because it means your proximity to whiteness and privilege is significant!

All ACCENTS matter but not all accents are equal. When we speak English and aspire to sound white, it’s assimilation into a power structure, we are not mocking or appropriating anything, the inverse however is not true, when white people speak with a comrade accent it’s mockery

I also want to highlight that South Africa is a very xenophobic country, so whether you like other Africans outside SA or not is not the point, you speaking in an accent that’s not yours is actually mocking them for laughs or whatever. You are punching down, whoever you are

I remember how UCT students, both white and black would constantly complain about not hearing the “heavy” accent from lecturers who come from Nigeria or Zimbabwe, they would involve HODs and deans and even write in evaluations. You can’t act pick this accent when it suits you

Accentism is a big issue in our country and we can’t act like we value people equally or we can’t be bigoted because we are black. Black South Africans treat other Africans like crap yet we like their clothes, food, fetishize them, mock their accents and mete out Afrophobia

I need to write a longer thread but I’m busy working so I can’t engage anymore, it’s a pity that the people arguing about the accent issue are doing it to settle scores and most of them honestly don’t have the range outside of regurgitating what they heard other people say

I see people are tagging certain people on my thread whom I didn’t mention, yes this was triggered by the drama on the tl but I don’t wanna be part of that mess hence why I didn’t mention anyone but knuck if you buck. We need to do better and be reflexive in how we oppress others