Apartheid: Through The Lens of Black Deaf Elders
The main objective of this project is to document the absence of history of Black Deaf and HoH Elders who have contributed to the attainment of Democracy during the struggle of Apartheid in South Africa. Many of whom have passed and their tales and encounters have not been told nor documented in any form. These tales and encounters will be accessible through a documentary in South African Sign Language (SASL) and in written form.
The first part of the project will entail interviews and focus group sessions with the Black Deaf elders. These sessions will be filmed and the footage will then be edited into a short documentary. The subject of the interviews and focus group discussions will centre around personal experiences of Apartheid, and in particular its impact on their personal lifelong journey.
The second phase will entail transcribing the visual content, editing, and proofreading the entire written version. After this process has been completed, we will seek a publishing company to come on board to start with the publishing process.
PROBLEM ANALYSIS
Majority of Black Deaf people experienced Apartheid and Racism. In the history of South Africa, there is limited information on how Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities were impacted by Apartheid and Racism. Redressing the imbalances of the past between the Deaf and Hearing up to this day, has been ignored in the public domain.
The most affected in this regard are predominantly Black Deaf elders who did not only experience substandard education but also did not have full access to “disability services” as opposed to their White counterparts.
Apartheid’s mission and vision was to segregate Black and White societies. However, in the Deaf and HoH communities, the understanding and perception of Apartheid is different regardless of race, because the Deaf and HoH communities were never recognised; their “disability’ was simply non-existent and Black Deaf communities were affected the most.
This book will strive to recount the visual history of their experiences in the struggle against apartheid, highlighting the lack of recognition of their existence as a community, and, by extension, the denial of their contribution to the liberation of South Africa.
They are a Cultural and Linguistic minority in South Africa even during the Apartheid Era. The relationship of this project to racial equity is to tell and capture the Tales of Black Deaf Elders who are forgotten, to source undocumented History of Black Deaf Elders, to preserve sacred visual History, empower future leaders and hopefully to start having community discourse about the impact of Apartheid.
Impact
The long-term impact and the main objective of the Apartheid: Through The Lens of Black Deaf Elders project, is to afford the Deaf and HoH youngsters/students who are the future leaders, a relatable and accessible visual history in the Primary and Higher Institutions of learning, in Community Based Organizations (CBO’s), and in community libraries. As such, this will introduce vital information that will capacitate young Deaf leaders to develop their own approaches of implementing and advocating for effective anti-Black interventions in their immediate communities.
This source of written and visual history will be in SASL and written form. This will lead to an everlasting positive impact in the Black Deaf and HoH communities of South Africa. Also, this book and the documentary can encourage social cohesion among Black Deaf and HoH communities and Hearing societies as they will all have access to the book and the documentary.
The direct and indirect impact will be visible in the communities which will result in the Deaf and HoH communities initiating discussion on the impact of past Racial inequalities vs. the current status quo in our immediate communities. Furthermore, young Deaf and HoH leaders will start engaging with their immediate elders in their respective communities about the impact of Apartheid and Anti-Black Racism. Through the work of the Foundation, we are also hoping to collaborate with Fellows globally who have also embarked on this nature of work and who share a similar vision.
