With just under six weeks away before the final deadline for my thesis dissertation – it is indeed safe to say that the stress levels are indeed high. I’ve written countless of essays before as political studies major – but somehow this one seems to be the most daunting of all. Daunting because for the first time – in my entire four years a political studies major – the personal is about to become political. I’ve often heard people use this expression before, “the personal is political” but somehow I’ve always tried to separate that in my writings for politics. This time around it’s not the same: my thesis supervisor and I have decided to tackle a rather complex topic and one that is quite unexpected in the conventional environment that is the University of Cape Town and the political studies department.

The topic for my thesis is titled, “The dialectic between being black and violence and settler colonies”. Those who know me would say that this is a topic that I could easily tackle as it ranges in my area of interests – yet I have not been able to. My undergraduate experience is one that separated the personal from the political meaning it was very easy to interpret text and write about it from an academic standpoint. This time around however, my thesis supervisor has challenged me to think beyond the realms of what it means to be a conventional academic – but to factor in the ideas of race, class and gender and to write from a perspective that is not reflective of my identity. A huge part of this is the reading of literature written by the likes of Can Themba, Louis Nkosi, Toni Morrison and Bloke Modisane amongst others and to interpret. This in theory sounds great but in terms of its practicalities, it’s rather stressful. I am uninspired to write - and exhausted from nine months of constant work. For anyone who enjoys research and writing as much as I do, can then understand the frustration that comes with experiencing a blockage. Writing has always been spiritual for me whether it be an academic paper or personal writing and right now the space that I am in is not conducive to do so - but rather busy days moving from one task to the next. Somehow in the complexity of life we forget ourselves and in the process forget our humanity. I think this thesis is almost forcing me to do so - write from a personal perspective - yet simultaneously have to continuously work like a machine to get through the day. Coming to this realization I just hope that this discomfort eventually ends not just to hand in my dissertation on time - but also graduate!