OTnews October 2023 | Page 32

Black History Month

Feature

My journey - a minority , even in a majority

Mapule Masemola-Ralehika reflects on working as an occupational therapist in South Africa and the UK .

Mapule Masemola-Ralehika

I feel that I cannot explain my background or journey without mentioning apartheid . Apartheid in South Africa is a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race . This means that for some of us who grew up during that era , we were not allowed at certain areas after certain curfew . There was no access to certain facilities , such as whites only bathrooms , and so forth . This went as far as we were not allowed to study certain courses after school .

Apartheid was ‘ abolished ’ in 1991 and South Africa had its first democratic election in April 1994 . I was near the end of my primary school education at the time and one of the very few people of colour attending what was referred to as a white school ( a majority in a minority school , yet a majority country ).

Fast forward to application to university ; I wanted to go to the university where most of my friends attended . I received an acceptance letter stating that while I met the requirements , however , I must start with a BSc course ( which is usually a three-year course ) in order to do the course that I applied for , which at that time was speech and language and audiology .

I wrote back stating that I have what it takes to go straight on the course – I mean , I am multilingual , attended a white majority school and was even a prefect at that school ( which was very rare for a Black person ). I also met the basic requirement for the course .

I was disappointed with the response letter from the university , stating that they only reserve around 1 % ( give or take ) for Black people on the actual course and they have filled this percentage . I was not about to do a four-year course in seven years , so I decided to look elsewhere .

Still a minority in a majority ( but this time in a majority )

I feel that fate got me into doing an occupational therapy course . Medunsa ( Medical University of Southern Africa ) accepted late applications and I decided that I was going to do a four-year occupational therapy degree there .

What was special about Medunsa was that it was the only university at the time that accepted the majority Black people . I thought , perfect , I will fit in very well .

I remember being mocked about how I spoke ( I had a serious ‘ posh ’ accent back then ), used certain words and it did not help that I was light skinned . I loved and still love dressing up and I remember some lecturers stating that my treatment sessions were very white – even though I had taken the client ’ s functional levels into consideration – and passing comments about my clothes , making me feel like I was on top of the world .

One of the comments given by a lecturer during an exam was : ‘ Wow , you look nice . I hope you do as well in this exam , as the effort you put when dressing up ’. Needless to say , I completed my OT qualification on record time and developed another layer of thick skin .

Working as an OT ( back to being a minority in a minority , both in the majority )

One cannot deny that occupational therapy is a white dominant profession , both In South Africa and in the UK . For the one year and three months that I worked in South Africa , all the heads of department in the province that I worked in were white South Africans . I think that things have changed since then .

Towards my fourth and final year of the occupational therapy course , we had various agencies from the UK to try and recruit us . At the time , I may have been one of the only OT students who showed no interest in coming to here . However , a year or so later I packed my bags and left for the UK .

My first locum work ( which I had no orientation to ) was as a senior occupational therapist and I failed dismally , to a point that they had to let me go after two weeks .

32 OTnews October 2023