Sandile Memela on black matric failure

Everyone has been commenting the South African matric results lately, including the fact that whites outscore blacks in marks and distinctions.

One black columnist doing some soul-searching is The Sowetan’s Sandile Memela. He writes:

A FEW days ago I had a conversation with my niece Nomfundo about matric results.

She is a second-year science student at Wits University. She obtained one distinction at a private school in matric.

Nomfundo does not believe that whites have greater intelligence than blacks.

“It is not that whites are smarter. The fact of the matter is that black students are just lazy and uninspired. They lack focus, discipline and determination ,” she says.

It is a fact that in the post-liberation period, African students in matric hold the record for being the worst performers.

If you look at the faces of smiling and happy pupils who have obtained more than six distinctions in matric this year, they are mostly white.

Of course, that tells us something, not about who has superior intelligence but who is willing to work, work and work hard even if they go to parties.

Nomfundo says during her high school days, what struck her was what African students were obsessed with.

“Black pupils seem to be interested in hairstyles, designer labels, parties and, of course, booze.”

Read the whole article here.

What Memela argues, is that black failure and white success may be ascribed to a difference in attitude. But just like two individuals may differ in both attitude and ability, it is certainly admissable that races, too, may differ not only in attitude but also in ability. How much of the one can be explained by the other? After all, if I am a bad golfer and I find the game frustrating, I am more likely to give it up than pursue and practise it until I become a low handicapper.

What goes for golf, goes for maths and science, as well as school or university in general. Since The Bell Curve, not to mention many scientific studies published in peer-review journals, we all know that blacks have a lower average IQ than whites. In South Africa, the white IQ is somewhere around 100 whereas the average black IQ is about 70.

It could be that psychologists are right in that IQ might play a role in determining matric results, as well as the discrepancies we see in the pass rates of ethnic and racial groups in South Africa.

What government should do, is to bring back IQ tests in school like they used to exist under the old government. Research in this area should also be funded by companies and the National Research Foundation. Only when we have a better idea of South Africa’s cognitive and intellectual capital, will the debate about the matric results become meaningful and scientific, instead of vague exhortations to blacks to drink less beer and study more, as Sandile Memela is saying.

However, while ignoring race differences in IQ, Memela is quite right when he says:

“It is time black society accepted it is raising lazy and uninspired pupils who are encouraged to rely on false affirmative action.

In fact, black pupils have internalised a culture of entitlement that over-emphasises skin colour, worshipping at the altar of materialism and political connectivity over merit.

This marks the beginning of the end of black rule and self-determination as ultimate power, knowledge and intelligence will always rest with whites.”

The only problem is, South African whites have been so bamboozled by our liberal media and the ANC government’s propaganda that they are starting to doubt their own talents.

Except for those white matriculants, mostly girls who, year after year when school-leaving results are published, continue to surprise us by shooting the lights out. One Afrikaans girl from Hoërskool Florida, Wilmé Olivier, obtained a 100% pass rate in the more difficult and demanding Alpha Mathematics.

But what kind of future is there for her and so many other white kids who obtain brilliant marks but who will soon be demotivated by anti-white discrimination in South Africa?

Read the latest news on similar issues on Race and ethnicity.

9 thoughts on “Sandile Memela on black matric failure

  1. Zibber

    Ja die arme wit kinders het geen toekoms in die land vorentoe nie…GEEN… die TV, kerke en skole verkondig verbastering en dis wat ons jong mense nou al begin doen….saam loop, speel, jol, slaap, en dan uiteindelik trou en die nuwe bybel sê dis reg om dit so te doen….maar is dit nie ‘n gruwel in ons Skepper se Oë om te verbaster nie? Wat gaan van ons kinders word?

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  4. Mokoduwe

    Dear Dan,
    I had a look at your background trying hard to understand what informs your screwed thinking. I must admit that your background confirmed to me that education does not improve fools..but in any case you have a Ph D in Afrikaans may I should not consider you educated.

    You are trying very hard to swimming upstream my friend, many of the people you claim to speak for have long realised that flocking a dead horse wont take them anywhere… yet you still have not realised that the horse is dead! dream on, and maybe just a brotherly advice…Australia does allow disgruntled White South Africans still longing for job reservation, and the many whites only priviledges some space to go drool!

    Lastly, I would like to challenge u for a IQ test, and I am prepared to take it with you in Afrikaans…

  5. van der Kave

    I agree, as a scientist, that the average IQ for whites is higher than that of blacks. But I would like to interject that IQ, in it’s raw form, is not a good measure for itelligence. It is for this reason that the standardised test has been criticised iver the years, eventually eing dropped by the social sciences as groubds for measuring intelligence.

    I would just like to inform you that, it has been proven in Genetics (which is my field of expertise), that Africans are genetically superior that their Europian counterparts. Due to the millioms of years of genetic differentiation in Africa, which by the elimination of one amino acid gave rise to “you”- white person, there has been a far more superior genetic pool in Africa.

    This therefore means that, in terms of intellectual capacity, the smartest (and the dummest) person in the world must be in Africa. As is the case with all other extremeties as well, the shortest and the tallest, etc…

    I am not one to say that it is because of the past that blacks, or rather black south africans, underperform at scholl because of x,y,z… but I do assure you that, scientifically speaking, there is no evidence that would suggest that whites are smarter as you falsely claim.

    I can tell you now that I am a member of MENSA (if you are smart you would know what that is), as I fall in an “above average” bracket on the IQ scale and am a proud “black” south african. Although I do not subscribe to the notion of racial classification, as there can never be an accurate classification system. (I am not black or white or coloured or whatever else you might come up with, I am simply human)

    My grandfather, Wikus van der Kave, married a black woman back in the apartheid time. They had a “black” son, my father George and he married a “black” woman. I am as black as black can be and I am proud. Ther is nothing wrong with my skin colour and I have managed to live a normal, succesfull life. I am a Geneticist, and I hold a two doctorates in Neurology and Neurophysiology as well. (can you then say that you are smarter than me because you are white?) (FYI, I am engaged to a South African Afrikaner from Bloemfontein and she loves me to bits…)

  6. David Fourie

    Siestog, Van der Kave! Geen volkstrots nie! Of het jy nie ‘n volk waaraan jy behoort nie? Slegs ‘n people — wat nie volk nie, maar net mense beteken? Jy het geen begrip van die werklikheid nie!!

  7. Jaun Prinsloo

    I don’t think he’s a racist, why is it wrong to assume that more whites in general are smarter than blacks, when in so many cultures everyone sees blacks as being the best athletes. The reason why he is saying it is because he says what he sees, and what he sees is that more whites are passing with distinctions than blacks, and I would say the blacks are better at most sports like basket ball, running etc. But the stereotype that the world has is if a white South African says that it’s racism, but if a black man states that their better at sports then its just dismissed as a simple statement. You gotta look at both sides of the story too! But yet you stick with the one side which makes the white man look like a racist which is why the world shows it off like that, it’s really sad!!

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  9. Richard Raymondsson

    Gentlemen: Some try to deny abject reality with various silly appeals to pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook. To ascertain the reason for the historic failure of blacks one need only examine genetics, history, and most importantly what one sees with one’s own eyes.

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