Takunda Muzondiwa delivers her speech at the national Race Unity Speech Awards. (Photo: Ben Parkinson)
Takunda Muzondiwa delivers her speech at the national Race Unity Speech Awards. (Photo: Ben Parkinson)

SocietyMay 16, 2019

Yesterday I was African, today I am lost: A speech by Takunda Muzondiwa

Takunda Muzondiwa delivers her speech at the national Race Unity Speech Awards. (Photo: Ben Parkinson)
Takunda Muzondiwa delivers her speech at the national Race Unity Speech Awards. (Photo: Ben Parkinson)

The annual national Race Unity Speech awards happened in Auckland on Saturday, where six of New Zealand’s best high school speakers addressed how we can improve race relations. Year 13 Mount Albert Grammar School student Takunda Muzondiwa spoke about struggling to stay connected to her home in Zimbabwe, while trying to create a new home in Aotearoa. 

At the age of 7, my family immigrates from Zimbabwe to Aotearoa. I pass through Customs but my culture is made to stay behind. In the classroom, I am afraid my tongue will beat back to its African rhythm, be concussed by fear, have amnesia turn all its memories to dust.

Yesterday I was African, today I am lost. Maybe I was blinded by the neon sign of opportunity, failed to read the fine print that read: “assimilate or go back where you came from”.

I have been led astray, like Eve to the snake, like promises of wealth to the prodigal son. I am a child of the diaspora, a common thread amongst my people in the fabric of what displaces us from our homes. Sometimes it’s by choice, most often it is not. To be a child of the diaspora is to battle two tongues and be forced to trade one for another so much so that my articulation of the English language now tastes like the un-birthing of my country.

When I return to Zimbabwe to connect with my roots I feel I am a jigsaw piece in the wrong puzzle. Zvinochikisa kuva mhunu asinga ziva nyika yangairi yake pekutanga. It’s an emptying feeling, to become foreign to a country that was yours to begin with. I am beginning to forget the taste of my own language and home has become just a memory.

Home is a concept that feels somewhat elusive to me because while I’m a resident in Aotearoa, coming from an immigrant family, I’m in a position that pushes outside of my social and cultural comfort zone. Like most immigrant families my parents migrated in search of quality education and success for their children.

When I reflect about how race has affected me personally I realise that at some point I came to believe that the only way I was going to reach those aspirations that my parents desired for me was to assimilate to the culture and assume the values and behaviours of New Zealand, thus neglecting the qualities which were inherent to me as Zimbabwean.

Unfortunately, these same kinds of beliefs are common amongst ethnic minorities. I believe the power to re-empower those marginalised communities is in the hands of our educational institutions.

In Aotearoa, Māori students are falling behind on every measure of educational outcome including secondary school retention rate, school leavers achieving NCEA Level 2, and the rate of youth in education or employment. However, those who attend Maori immersion schools perform much better and achieve much higher in NCEA, university and employment. It’s clear that systemic bias and the enduring legacy of colonisation is behind this ongoing disadvantaging of Māori people.

It is an unfortunate recurring issue that students of minority groups tend to feel as though they don’t belong in an educational context because there are lower expectations of them. It’s time our educational institutions place a greater emphasis on language, culture and history. If educators were informed more on these topics they would come into the profession with a different perspective- one where they are less likely to hold racist or biased views.

It’s no secret that the more students feel they belong in an educational context the better they perform. I truly believe we can shift these educational inequalities if we cultivate culturally flexible minds and empower all students with the knowledge that they have both the responsibility and right to be there.

A powerful novel called Decolonising the Mind speaks of the writer’s time in colonial Kenya. He describes how at the time violence was the means of physical subjugation whilst language was the means of spiritual subjugation. Those who were caught speaking their mother tongues in the classroom they would either be physically tortured or publicly humiliated, and that was a critical aspect of the suppression process right? That the language of those being oppressed was dissociated from them. The scary thing is that these same patterns are repeating themselves today among our Māori community as they hold the fear of “what will become of their home when it loses its language completely?”

Takunda Muzondiwa delivers her speech at the national Race Unity Speech Awards. (Photo: Ben Parkinson)

Poet Pages Matam describes language as being both a tool for communication and a vehicle for culture. I find that to be such a beautiful description. Language is saturated with history, culture and memories.  Language and words are powerful tools to inform people of different ethnicities to better understand the world views and perspective of one another.

I believe unity comes from a better understanding of one another as people. The best way I know how to share the perspective of those I represent as a black immigrant woman is through my writing. I write my poetry and I send it to the man who sat behind me on the train last week who had the audacity to touch my hair without even asking.

“I guess the basic human concept of respecting personal space doesn’t apply to you?” I didn’t actually say that which is crazy because I almost always have something to say but in that moment like my split ends my mouth was too dry to speak.

But luckily my hair, my hair speaks volumes. Tangled and twisted there are stories in these in curls. Stories of a mother, father stamped with a number marked as objects sold for property. Stories of my ancestors shackled in cages displayed in zoos the same way you stroke me like an exhibit in a  petting zoo.

It’s twisted and tangled there are stories in these curls. A beautiful possession of my history’s oppression.

You look at me like I am Medusa’s child. Cursed. Making everyone blind to my self-worth. For years I tried to strip myself of this curse with a potion of chemicals despite the burn of sodium hydroxide on my scalp the smell of burning flesh that filled the room I was hypnotised by the prospect of having straight hair cascade around this broken body of insecurity.

Hoping to put myself back together with glued in weave tracks causing receding hairlines as I also mentally recede back, back in time to a time of my ancestor’s inferiority a time of no authority forever believing that I was the target minority.

You can’t tell me to tame this mane because in fact, you are the lion. And in this jungle where racism runs wild, I am your prey you are my predator devouring my history leaving me so raw that my own flesh builds a grave for me to lie in. I’m buried deep in my roots. And I understand I may be dead but God, can you re-humanise the systematically dehumanised?

That poem speaks of my experiences with internalised racism which is a system in which minorities are unconsciously rewarded for behaving in such ways that uphold whiteness and white supremacy. In the words of Dr King, “Somebody told a lie one day… they made everything black, ugly and devil.”  

These lies have people believing that lightening your skin and constantly chemically straightening your hair will draw you closer to success or the ideal standard of beauty.

It is time to replace the lie of racial inferiorities with the truth of a shared humanity. To change we need our media sources to provide a diverse representation of people, portraying people of colour as the standard bearers of beauty, professionalism and success along with their white counterparts.

So dear racism, I’m rewriting the history you gave me because I know the future belongs to those who prepare for it and you have been preparing me for centuries.

Takunda Muzondiwa migrated to New Zealand with her family when she was seven from Zimbabwe and is currently head girl at Mount Albert Grammar School.

Keep going!
(Photo: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)
(Photo: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

SocietyMay 15, 2019

CGT is dead. But there are other ways to thwart a raging property market

(Photo: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)
(Photo: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

Many people were disappointed about the government’s abandonment of the capital gains tax plan. But is there an alternative that could still open up the property market to those currently priced out?

I’m just going to put my cards on the table – I am a supporter of a capital gains tax (CGT). I’m an old-fashioned socialist whose predictable move to the political right as I aged still left me tickling the extreme left of Labour ideology in my early 40s. I can’t imagine I’m going to move much past ‘mid-Labour’ before I’m too senile to vote. And yes, before anyone asks, we do own property, and I’m happy to pay my fair share to help equalise the shitty situation many have found themselves in.

We reside in a market where families are living in garages and cars, unable to rent a whole home and paying tax on a low income or benefit, while those who invested in property in a more forgiving market are able to enjoy an increase in capital value, tax free. Even if you don’t support CGT (Winston! Here’s looking at you, kid), you’d have to be a cold, heartless bastard not to agree that gap needs closing.

Back in February, I was lucky enough to attend the New Zealand Institute of Architects In:Situ conference. It was a brilliant few days of cutting edge design, environmentally forward thinking, and projects with a social conscience. Nestled in amongst a golden line up was one absolute gem of a speaker – Wolfram Putz from Graft Architects in Berlin. He talked about how Berlin, in the early days of unification, became a trendy but run down urban mecca, with warehouse parties launching a whole new music scene, and cheap city centre workshops and business space allowing the growth of artisans and creative industries. Berlin, like many cities across the globe, has become a victim of its own success, and just like in Auckland, the majority of the young started to be priced out – and as a result, the character of the city began to change. Unhappy with this, the local government decided to take action. They decided to divorce property ownership from the land it is built on.

Apartment buildings at Gleisdreieck Park, Berlin (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images).

Okay, so let’s rewind a little. Why does land ownership matter? Because the actual cost of a property – what the bricks and mortar (or weatherboard and nails) are worth – changes only incrementally over time. I was talking to a real estate agent once about a house in central Auckland that was priced at $1.6m, way back in 2014. He said it was nuts, that the property itself – a former state house – was only worth $150k. The price of the property that the owners had bought for $325k in the 1990s was related to the desirability of the area and urban regeneration. We see examples of this all the time in New Zealand. You only have to go on a house removals website to see that the properties themselves sell for between $10k and $60k, depending on what is on offer. You can, I have been told, move a house onto a bit of land, get it plumbed in and connected up to power and internet and redecorate it, all for under $200k. But when you add the value of the land on top, the property could be priced in excess of a million, depending on where you dropped it.

It is the increase in the value of land, largely, that fuels capital gains in the property market. Coupled with the excellent tax breaks (like, no tax at all), it makes perfect sense that people should buy property to aid wealth accumulation. At the Auckland Housing Conference in 2016, one of the biggest discussion was how to separate the ownership of property from the idea of an investment portfolio – how do we stop people buying houses for business reasons, to allow more people to buy them for personal security?

The connection between property ownership and wealth accumulation isn’t new, but it is definitely reaching a crisis point. In his excellent public lecture at In:Situ (on Valentines Day – this is what I do for fun, people), lauded Dutch architect Reinier de Graaf made this very issue the central focus of his talk about ‘phantom urbanism’ – or, owning a residential building purely to make money.

“Are we dealing with urbanism as a consequence of economic growth, or are we dealing with economic growth as a consequence of urbanism?” De Graaf asked after discussing the incredible rate at which countries like China are building brand new cityscapes that don’t always go on to be inhabited – but continue to make money. “This is a recipe for building oneself out of disaster. It is a very prevalent formula.”

From the tax breaks in Greece that come from leaving a property unfinished, to the luxury apartments in Beirut that are not lived in but bought simply for their increase in value, De Graaf painted a bleak picture that is all too familiar in NZ. The most shocking example of phantom urbanism is a city for a million people in Angola that began construction in 2008 and has never been inhabited, but facilitates the transfer of wealth via oil between Angola and China (bypassing the local economy completely). But there are examples all over the world. In New Zealand, a 2016 news report found that 33,000 homes were uninhabited in overcrowded Auckland as people speculated on the tail end of the property market boom.

Suburban houses in Auckland (Photo: Getty Images).

Back to Berlin, and to Wolfram Putz, who has very clear ideas about how the model of property ownership has to change. “The system is broken,” he tells me when we got a chance to chat at the conference. “The neo-liberal economic cycle made us buy into property ownership, but we are reaching a limit of collective acceptance of what is happening to us.”

Putz explained that a bylaw in Berlin now allows the local government first refusal on any property that comes on the market. It is a democracy after all; this isn’t compulsory purchase for an outdated market rate. The Berlin city government pays good money for the property, retains the land ownership, and then sells the building – the actual living space – on the free market with a 100-year lease.

“The city buys the property at huge cost, but in the long run the value will still go up. This process is one of the tools to deal with the housing crisis. Private individuals will still make money on the buying and selling of leased property,” says Putz. “Public ownership, a careful redistribution of assets into long-term rental – this is the way the collective can regain control over property in a democratic society.”

Putz notes there are other models divorcing wealth accumulation from property ownership. He was involved in one such project in New Orleans.

“It was just in one district, [but] we gave returning property owners a forgivable loan to use alongside their government money,” says Putz, who managed to get some of his Hollywood mates from his time in LA (think Brad Pitt) to back the loans. “We said you don’t have to pay back this loan if you keep the property for a certain amount of time. We understood very quickly that if you insert money into the market you need to put a cap on the greed.”

Putz and his team hoped that by preventing a quick turnaround of property at an inflated price in a crowded market, this cap would allow a community to develop – and that when the time period ended, that community would prefer to stay together than to sell for a cheap buck. One to watch.

My preference is the Berlin model. I believe it could work well in the crowded inner city suburbs of Auckland and Wellington. It’s not a quick fix, like CGT could have been, but it also has the benefit that it’s changing the model without anyone missing out. Current property owners still get to sell their home at the current inflated prices. The city buys the property and places the land ownership in trust. They then sell a long lease on to a private owner for a total, upfront sum that is realistic and affordable. The house continues to accrue in value, just not at the same hefty rate. The property market in the long term is opened up to a larger number of people. The rental market slows as buying a house becomes realistic, and discourages investors. The increased security relating to owning a home at an affordable price results in less transient behaviour and stronger communities, which in itself will help reduce crime and social problems, and also reduces risks related to age and ill health because neighbours are watching out for each other.

It is not a standalone solution, it needs support from other initiatives. It also comes at a price – the price of time. But it is certainly worth exploring. Implemented properly, we could see a very different market develop over the next 30 years, and know that the adults of tomorrow could experience the housing security that was part of the quarter acre Kiwi dream of old.