Lefatshe LaRona

Lefatshe Banake, Lefatshe La Rona.

[Urban Farmette @SavannahSamas]

The black middle class, freshly arrived at the gates of economic stability, is pouring its children into elite, multiracial schools. Spaces once designed without them in mind. And at first glance, this seems like progress. The uniforms are crisp. The school fees are a declaration of victory. The accents are polished. The English is fluent. The world applauds. But, taste is never neutral. It’s a system of distinction. It decides who belongs and who pretends to. If you must erase your story to access the room, it was never a room worth entering.

Cultural capital is more than education. It’s a form of social weaponry:
* It's the way you speak,
* The books you quote,
* The food you prefer,
* The way you frame an idea,
* The subtle mocking of what’s “too African,” “too rural,” or “too loud.”

This plays out ruthlessly in elite schools, boardrooms & brunches. A child fluent in English but tongue-tied in mother language. A young man who can break down Shakespeare but flinches when his Gogo speaks. A daughter ashamed to bring her mom to Speech Day because “she doesn’t fit in. This isn’t just a loss of language but,it’s a loss of self recognition. They taught you how to speak English with dignity but forgot to teach you how to carry your name with honour.

Social capital ~relationships, networks & trust is another form of invisible currency. Those with inherited networks often don't have to be the best they only need to belong to the right circles. In African schools:
* White learners inherit professional networks through parents and generational affluence.
* Black learners, despite academic excellence, often lack these relational bridges.
* They graduate with knowledge but not access.

You have the degrees. They have the invitations. The black child is taught to master the system but never invited to redesign it. Language is a hierarchy. It is not merely communication, it is legitimacy. Prestige. Access.

Africa's black middle class often enforces English only households, not just for fluency, but as a perceived weapon against poverty. But the child grows:
* Fluent in grammar, but illiterate in lineage.
* Educated in Science, but disconnected from Spirit.
* Comfortable in coffee shops, but anxious at ancestral ceremonies. They are fluent in the language of the system but stutter when speaking to their own soul.

Social elevation without cultural anchoring creates orphans of identity. Many black children of the middle class now exist in a liminal space:
* Too “black” for white spaces.
* Too “white” for black spaces.
* Belonging nowhere. Floating everywhere.

And what is worse this exile is wrapped in applause. It looks like success. It smells like progress. It tastes like inclusion. But it feels like displacement. The goal is not to be accepted into elite systems. The goal is to build sacred spaces where your full self is honoured without apology.
1. Remember the Codes
Decode the tastes, languages, and behaviors that rule the elite but don’t become seduced by them. Study them to master the system, not to lose yourself in it.
2. Reclaim Your Cultural Capital
Celebrate your mother tongue. Relearn the proverbs. Bring your ancestors to your future. The man who forgets his language forgets the map back home.
3. Rebuild Your Own Institutions

Build schools where African languages are mediums of science. Build think tanks where ancestral wisdom sits with artificial intelligence. Create spaces where success is measured not by assimilation, but by alignment with purpose, heritage and dignity.

Victory is not when your child gets accepted into a private school. It’s when they walk into that school, fully African, fully excellent and never ever forget where home is. The most sacred success is not upward mobility. It’s rooted mobility.Not merely having more but becoming more without losing yourself. Because if you trade your soul for a seat at the table, you haven’t won. You’ve just learned how to disappear… politely.

[Nthanda Manduwi 🌍 @NthandaManduwi]

Hurts me to say this: Africa will not be saved by entrepreneurship. We cannot vibecode ourselves into the 4th industrial revolution. We still need to industrialize. To achieve this, we need stronger and better public institutions. We need extremely competent leaders at the helm.

[Libriscent @libriscent]

have you ever noticed how beautiful people compliment, happy people celebrate other people’s wins, multilingual people don’t mock someone’s accent, educated people share what they know, and confident people don’t feel the need to compete? secure people inspire instead of trying to make others feel small.

[Typical African @Joe__Bassey]

Speaking fluent English while your grandmother's tongue dies in your mouth is not progress. It is the most successful colonial experiment in human history.

They didn't just take your land. They took the language you used to name it. Every time a child grows up fluent in English but mute in their mother tongue, the colonial project wins—silently, generationally, completely. This is not about rejecting English. It is about understanding what was stolen before you decide what to keep.

There are over 2,000 languages and dialects spoken across Africa. Linguists predict that by 2100 more than half will be extinct—not because Africans forgot them, but because Africans were punished for speaking them.

This was not accidental. Lord Macaulay said it in 1835 in his infamous Minute on Indian Education, but the same blueprint was applied across Africa: create a class of people “Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, opinions, morals and intellect.” Replace the mind. Control the continent forever.

Here is what they never taught you: African languages are not primitive. Yoruba has a tonal complexity that English cannot replicate. Xhosa uses click consonants that modern linguistics still struggles to fully map. These were not simple tongues. They were sophisticated systems of thought.

When you lose a language, you don't just lose words. You lose a way of seeing the world. Concepts, medicines, histories, philosophies—entire civilisations of thought—exist only in those languages. When the language dies, the knowledge dies with it. Permanently.

The most disturbing part: many Africans today voluntarily finish what colonisers started. Parents refuse to teach their children their native tongue. “It limits them,” they say. This is not practicality. It is a trauma response dressed as ambition.

Some will say English opened doors. And they are right. But ask yourself—who built those doors? Who decided which language unlocks opportunity and which one marks you as less than? Accepting that system without questioning it is not intelligence. It is submission.

You were not born ashamed of your language. That shame was installed through beatings, policy and generations of conditioning that told you the coloniser's tongue was civilisation and yours was noise. Thousands of Africans today cannot hold a full conversation in their ancestral language. That is not a coincidence. That is a designed outcome.

Ask yourself: if your language disappeared tomorrow, what exactly would be lost? And who benefits from you never asking that question?

[Mak @mak_aura]

We really don’t hate colonialism enough.

[Dad @achiever4L]

It's 6 am, you wake up to the sound of rain without worrying about school or work because you're in a mental hospital

[🥷 @_iamhabeeb]

One of the cruelest things poverty takes from you is the freedom to make mistakes. Every decision has to work.

[my book is better than my tweets @MichellCClark]

Your relationship with yourself cannot be built entirely around improvement. At some point, you have to become someone you are allowed to enjoy being. You get to be proud of who you are. Present tense.

[​𝐥𝐲𝐫𝐚 @sunnkssdseraph]

You'll regret it if you get married, you'll regret it if you don't get married. You'll regret it if you have kids and you'll regret it if you don't. Kierkegaard said this 200 years ago as follows - whatever you choose, you'll regret it, because the problem isn't in your choices, it's in romanticizing your life. A person always finds an untravelled path alluring and mysterious. That's why the issue isn't making the right choice. It's choosing and deciding which regret you'll live with. In life, we must choose our regret.

[Luna M ✨ @tiredfeminist_]

I repeat, anyone who tells you ideology doesn’t matter is setting you up! Ideologies influence the policies your leaders create, who they protect and who they prioritise. Redistribution policies? Ideologies. Social welfare programs? Ideologies. Equal Service delivery? Ideologies.

[Karim Wafa-Al Hussaini @DrKarimWafa]

They say books won’t change the world. Tell that to every colonizer who burned them. To every enslaved person who was punished for reading. Literacy is resistance. Literacy is liberation. The library is a battlefield.

[@Africa @SingilaElihle]

Guys be honest do you believe in your Ancestors?

[ً @artfuIchaos]

If i had the mindset I have now, I wouldn’t have made those mistakes. but if I hadn’t made those mistakes, I wouldn’t have the mindset i have now.

[ChiefHerbalist @HerbalistChief]

You have to be extremely wicked to purposely remove SEEDS from fruits and vegetables to keep people from growing their own food.

[Wisdom Kaye @modsiwW]

The world cup, but if it was high fashion

[S★ @xxyllinn]

I don’t want to "download the app" to pay for parking. I don’t want to "create an account" to see a menu. I don’t want to "provide feedback" on a 30-second interaction. I just want to exist in the physical world without a digital leash.

[King Roy @RoyIsThaTruth]

Just saw a video saying capitalism and slavery are so intertwined that we’re still describing what “fields” we work in… goodnight

[Mzwandile Zulu @Father_Of_Geeks]

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[𝗠𝘂𝗵𝗲𝗲 ♛ @muheediva01]

The wildest part about POVERTY is how much time it steals. Waiting for buses. Calling assistance offices. Comparing grocery prices. Fighting insurance. Sitting at laundromats. Being poor is a second job nobody pays you for.

[ً @artfuIchaos]

don’t let your empathy rob people of experiencing the consequences of their actions.