Unmute Your Voice

Shasha Network
4 min readMay 5, 2019
Author: Dionne Kanyowa

Dear Student,

I remember my 16 years old self, feeling so inferior at a workshop hosted by the American Embassy at their Eastgate Mall office in Harare. The workshop was attended by students from different schools, most of them came from private schools and I recall just admiring their confidence and accents. I decided to intentionally keep quiet and excuse myself from the conversation thinking my ‘sho-ngrish’ accent would embarrass me. I believed my English accent blended with my deep Shona (which is my mother tongue) wouldn’t be convincing enough for the audience. It is only now that I look back and realise the inferiority complex is nothing but a limitation we give ourselves mentally and convince ourselves to be true.

Honestly, no one could have cared less about how I sounded. If they did, that would not have been my problem because the goal is always to ensure you communicate effectively and not to sound a certain way. Fast forward, I then challenged myself and started taking participating in the debate and public speaking society, which I became passionate about. My eye-opening experience was when I participated in the Books Botswana Public Speaking Competitions in 2015 after being a National finalist in public speaking. This was a regional competition and my first exposure to different ethnicities from mine, the result, I was mind blown. I remember this was the first time I never felt conscious of my uniform or my school, the first time I was never conscious of my accent because boy did I not hear almost a thousand of different accents!

In that particular moment it dawned on me that it is not about how my accent sounds, it is all about how effective and articulate I present my thoughts and ideas to my audience. What matters is the relevance of your contribution to the topic under discussion and whether or not people understand you. I engaged in conversations with people from different countries and not once was my accent or where I learnt the topic of discussion. The most important thing was we could all understand each other. After that experience, I became a national finalist for public speaking and this time I had a different mindset towards interacting with my peers from different schools.

I am currently studying Law at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. It is a very diverse institution by virtue of being located in South Africa, a ‘rainbow’ nation with so many students from different countries learning there. Now, you can imagine the different number of accents I hear in a day. None of them sounds good or bad, they are just different and we are all able to understand each other. My background or were I learnt is not something I mention anymore, at some point, you will only be identified by your nationality and not your former school. I now conduct class presentations, participate in workshops especially concerning democracy with that same accent I had when I was 16 years and my voice is still being heard.

Therefore, dear student feeling inferior because of your current school or accent, I hope my experiences will help you. I hope you realise after High school no one cares about where you learnt. This are all false stereotypes that are created by society. I attended a rural boarding school and I am proud of it, my outcomes were not determined by where I came from or how I spoke. You shall only be identifiable by your nationality and identity as an individual. In the global sense, no one cares how you sound when you speak because we are all different. I encourage you to be unapologetically yourself and practise your oratory skills as much as you can because that is the skill you will need most, now and forever. Participate in extracurricular activities because that is where you will get all the exposure you need to prepare you for life after high school. Do not silence yourself, the world needs your opinion, thoughts and contributions. To the student who isn’t a native English speaker, always remember English is not your first language, do not be too hard on yourself. Trivial matters should never dim your light.

Keep well and never mute your voice because it matters to the world.

Kind regards,

Dionne

Dionne is a 3rd year Law student at the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. She is passionate about reformative justice and democracy. Her goal in future is to be a Chief Justice. Dionne is a SADC region and Zimbabwe public speaking finalist. She also works with the Zimbabwe Camp Association. She enjoyes African literature and story telling and would like to write a her own series of books on African democrary and justice in the future.

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