Publications. Tutu, D. (2013) The man who changed my life. Cape Times,
https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/the-man- who-changed-my-life-1533199 [Accessed 10/06/19]. Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J.H. & Fisch, R. (1974) Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution. New York: W.W. Norton. West, C (2016) Goodbye, American neoliberalism. A new era is here. The Guardian https://www.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/17/ american-neoliberalism-cornel-west-2016- election [Accessed 10/06/19]. Wilkinson, S. & Kitzinger, C. (1996) Representing the Other: A Feminism & Psychology Reader. London: Sage. Wilson, J. (2007) The Performance of Practice: Enhancing the Repertoire of Therapy with Children and Families. London: Karnac. Wilson, J. (2017) Creativity in Times of Constraint: A Practitioner’s Companion in Mental Health and Social Care. London: Karnac. Wilson, J. & Parker, J. (2018) The Passion and Politics of Practice. Workshop presentation, AFT annual conference 2018.
Privilege and struggle:
oppressive and anti-racist p Pieter W Nel T is then is what the ANC is fi ghting. T eir struggle is a truly national one. It is a
struggle of the Af ican people, inspired by their own suff ering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live…I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and f ee society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities (Nelson Mandela, 1964). Privilege is the ability to ignore things that other people have no choice but to struggle
with every day (Combs, 2018, p.1). When invited to write for this special issue of Context, I considered what would
make me an appropriate person to contribute. In feminist arguments, we oſt en hear the expression “T e personal is political” to underscore the connections between personal experience and larger social and political structures. As such, in writing on this topic I can only do so from a position that draws upon my own personal context: my own suff ering, my own experience of growing up in apartheid South Africa, and my own proudly and humbly felt (white) African background. So, in writing this article, I have been deeply infl uenced in my thinking by both struggle and privilege, my own and that of others around me.
My story of struggle and privilege I was born into a white, working class
Jan is a systemic psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer, working in the NHS and independent practice. Email:
Janparker123@btinternet.com
family in South Africa. A few days before I was born, Nelson Mandela and eight other members of the African National Congress were sentenced to life imprisonment. I was almost 27 when Nelson Mandela was released from prison. His African name was Rolihlahla, which in colloquial language means ‘troublemaker’. He was, above all, a man who was tireless in his resolve to make trouble for all forms of discrimination, injustice and inequality. A man who never gave up on his dream for a socially just society. A man who, thankfully, underwent a complete metamorphosis from ‘terrorist’ to hero in my mind. While he was in prison on Robben Island,
I was growing up in apartheid South Africa. We lived in Vanderbijlpark, an industrial town where my father worked long hours in a steel factory to make ends meet. He was one of 13 children, growing up during the years of The Great Depression. In the wake of the stock market crash on Black Tuesday, world trade slumped and demand for South African agricultural and mineral exports fell drastically. It was during this social upheaval that DF Malan built the political appeal of the National Party by stressing the particular suff erings of the white Afrikaner people. Their economic problems had become especially evident during the depression,
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when the Carnegie Commission on Poor Whites had concluded in 1931 that nearly one-third of Afrikaners lived as paupers, whereas few English-speaking whites lived below the poverty line. To deal with this problem, Malan and his allies encouraged the development of an Afrikaner economic movement. When I was approximately two years old,
my father contracted an industrial disease and died a couple of years later. During his protracted illness, my mother received very little fi nancial support from the factory where he worked. She left school without any qualifi cations so there was no realistic prospect of getting a job with a steady income. To make ends meet for her and her two young children, she started a cake- baking business from home. We lived in a less-affl uent area outside of town in a house that my father built. The local authority divided the area in two, with the children in one half sent to a primary and a secondary school in the most affl uent area of town, containing some of the most extravagant and sought-after houses in the region; the other half of children were sent to schools in the poorest part of town. As luck would have it, I went to the primary and secondary schools in the affl uent part of town and this provided me with a high-quality education. After I fi nished school, I enrolled for a degree in accounting and so became the
Context 164, August 2019
Privilege and struggle: A personal journey towards anti-oppressive and anti-racist practice
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