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It begins as a whisper, a small voice from the other side of the kitchen table, but the words land like thunder: “Mom, am I South African?” My son, a foundation phase child with a heart full of questions and a mind open to the world, caught me completely off guard. We live in a home where curiosity is celebrated, where a child can ask anything without being shooed away with a dismissive “go play.” We’ve always encouraged him to probe, to wonder, to ask the big questions that adults often file away for later. But this particular question, simple as it seemed, plunged into my chest like a sword. I felt it split something open inside me, because I knew exactly where it came from. He wasn’t asking about his nationality in a neutral, academic way. He was asking about belonging, about safety, about the strange and frightening tensions that had been swirling in our country. In the days before, Durban and Soweto had erupted in violence between South African nationals and foreign asylum seekers. Shops were looted, people were attacked, and fear echoed through the streets. My son, with his tender awareness, had overheard bits of conversation, caught snippets of news, seen the worry in grown-ups’ eyes. He was trying to make sense of a world that often doesn’t make sense—trying to find his place in it. And he knew, better than many adults, that the question wasn’t about a passport or a birth certificate. It was about whether he was allowed to belong, whether being South African meant he was part of that anger or part of the hope, whether his identity would be used against him or protect him. How do you answer that without breaking a child’s spirit? How do you explain hatred without letting it poison his heart? I took a deep breath, and I decided to start at the beginning—not the beginning of his question, but the beginning of the story that led to it.
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The story behind his question is complicated, messy, and deeply human. It began when the Department of Home Affairs announced that it would resume processing asylum seeker applications for foreign nationals, regardless of how they entered the country. On its surface, this was a bureaucratic decision—a directive, a policy shift. But in the social media echo chambers and street corners of South Africa, it became something else entirely. Misinformation and disinformation spread like wildfire, fueled by fear and the eternal craving for simple answers. Some posts claimed that every foreign national would automatically receive documents, houses, and a free ride. Others warned that crime would surge, that our country would be overrun, that our hard-won freedoms would be eroded. And then there were the truly malevolent posts—those that incited violence, calling on “true South Africans” to defend their land against outsiders. None of this bore any resemblance to the actual law. The truth, as dry and unexciting as it might be, is that South Africa has an obligation under its own Refugees Act and under international law to hear asylum claims. Processing an application does not mean approving it. It does not grant citizenship, does not promise a house, does not erase borders. It simply allows a person—a terrified, vulnerable human being—to have their story heard by a qualified official. That’s it. That’s the whole of it. But disinformation doesn’t do boring. It does fear. And fear spreads faster than any government gazette ever could, infecting minds, closing hearts, and turning neighbors into enemies. It was that fear, that manufactured outrage, that pushed people into the streets of Durban and Soweto, where they attacked foreigners, burned their property, and shattered families. I watched the chaos unfold on my phone screen and felt a deep, aching sadness. If adults—who supposedly possess critical thinking skills and access to reliable information—could be so easily misled, what were our children absorbing? They hear the angry voices, see the panic in our eyes, and feel the tension in our bodies. They don’t understand the legal nuances or the political context. They only understand that something is terribly wrong, and that some people are being told they don’t belong.
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Adults are confused enough by this directive; it’s no wonder our children are struggling to navigate a world they are just beginning to comprehend. They are trying to decode the society they will one day inherit and lead, but we hand them a jumble of fragments: a violent tweet here, a shouting match at dinner there, a whispered warning about neighborhoods to avoid. No wonder they ask questions with deep, frightened eyes. I remember Michelle Obama’s words, which I have repeated to myself many times: “We are not raising children but adults.” Adults who will one day show up in the world as such, and not as children. This reframes everything. It means that every moment we spend with our little ones is a lesson in how to be a grown-up—how to treat others, how to respond to difference, how to cope with fear and injustice. In our household, we take this responsibility seriously. We have made it our business to ensure that education begins at home. And by that, I don’t mean just the basics—cleaning up after yourself, saying please and thank you, learning to tie your shoes. We teach our children about our beautiful country and its history, its languages, its flag, its map. We show them the mountains and the oceans, the townships and the city skylines, and we tell them stories of the struggle for freedom. We want them to be active citizens who uphold our Constitution and love our flag, not in a hollow patriotic way, but in a deep, committed way that inspires them to protect and improve the nation. We don’t wait for the classroom to determine what is important for them. We bring the classroom home, and we turn the pages of our shared history together. But we are careful, so careful, about not taking away the joy of childhood or the excitement of learning. We want their curiosity to remain alive, their wonder intact. We don’t want to burden them with the weight of our national trauma before they are ready to carry it.
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The challenge, then, is to teach them about the world without instilling fear, anger, or hatred. I believe deeply in education beginning with parents, but I also prefer to approach these lessons in the comfort of my own home, rather than being pressured into them by what is going wrong in our country. Yes, there is crime. Yes, there is violence. Yes, there are conflicts that shake the foundations of our democracy. But I don’t want my children to first learn about these things through the lens of panic and sensationalism. I want to introduce them slowly, thoughtfully, in a space where they feel safe and loved. The upcoming local government elections provide a perfect opportunity to continue teaching our children about democracy and the importance of upholding it. We can talk about voting as a sacred act, about peaceful transitions of power, about how we, as citizens, hold our leaders accountable. We can explain that democracy is not a spectator sport—it requires engagement, vigilance, and compassion. Historical events can also help these lessons resonate more deeply. We can look back at our own painful past—apartheid, colonialism, the long walk to freedom—and show how ordinary people, united by a vision of justice, changed the course of history. We can connect those struggles to the present, helping our children understand that the work of building a nation is never finished. It is all well and good to hold one another accountable, whether as citizens or as those in leadership positions. We can take to the streets, protest, and make our voices heard about the issues that unsettle us. That is our right and our responsibility. But let us do so while remembering what our children are witnessing and what they will later discuss in their little corners, because children learn not only by hearing but by observing. They watch how we speak to the person who disagrees with us, how we treat the foreign neighbor, how we cope with bad news. They learn from our calm and our chaos, our love and our anger. If we scream and throw stones, they will learn that screaming and throwing stones is how you solve problems. If we speak with dignity and act with empathy, they will learn something far more enduring.
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When my son asked, “Mom, am I South African?” I simply answered, “Yes, that’s your nationality.” Then I probed further, gently, to understand why he was asking when he already knew his identity. He spoke of confusing things he had heard in the schoolyard, of fleeting images on the news, of a friend whose father had said “foreigners are taking everything.” He was not asking about his own nationality at all—he was asking about the nature of belonging. Was it safe to be South African? Was it okay to be different? Were we all going to be okay? So we had a conversation, the kind that doesn’t fit neatly into a lesson plan. I explained that some people, for many reasons, have to leave their own countries and come to South Africa seeking safety. I explained that our country has laws that require us to listen to their stories, and that listening is not the same as agreeing or giving everything away. I explained that sometimes people feel scared, and when they are scared they may say or do things that hurt others. I explained that misinformation is like a game of telephone gone wrong—by the time the story reaches you, it’s become something else entirely. And I told him that being South African means we have a choice: we can be people who spread fear, or people who spread courage. We can be people who treat strangers as threats, or people who see in them the same humanity we see in our own family. I did not shelter him from the truth—that some of our fellow citizens have hurt innocent people, that hatred exists in our country, that we have a long way to go. But I also showed him that acknowledging a wound is the first step toward healing it. By the end of our talk, he was quiet, processing. Then he asked, “Can we do something to help?” And that, I thought, is the best answer to any question.
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I firmly believe that, as parents, we should not shy away from uncomfortable conversations at home. The world will not wait until our children are ready—it will bombard them with images, words, and fears before they have the tools to understand. Our job is to give them those tools ahead of time, in a way that leaves them feeling informed, reassured, and equipped to engage with the world as responsible citizens. That means answering their questions honestly, but with age-appropriate nuance. It means admitting when we don’t know something, and then researching it together. It means modeling calmness in the face of chaos, empathy in the face of otherness, and hope in the face of despair. It means talking about the violence in Durban and Soweto, about the asylum seekers and the law, about disinformation and fear—not as abstract concepts, but as things that touch our kitchen table, our neighborhood, our hearts. It means teaching them that the Constitution, with its promise of dignity and equality for all, is not just a piece of paper but a covenant we must each uphold. And it means reminding them, every single day, that they are part of a story bigger than themselves. My son is South African. He is also a citizen of the world, a child of this continent, a member of the human family. He will grow up to be an adult, and how he treats others will depend largely on how we treat others now, in front of him and with him. So I will keep answering his questions, even the ones that pierce me like swords. I will keep choosing honesty over comfort, conversation over silence, and love over fear. And I will hope that, when he is older, he will ask a different question—not “Am I South African?” but “What kind of South African will I be?” And I will trust that he knows the answer.