What should have been a joyous ending to high school for a brilliant, transgender pupil, has left him disillusioned because he is writing his final exams in the wrong name and gender.
The 17-year-old Johannesburg pupil was born female but identifies as male.
He applied to have his first name and gender changed on February 10 last year but because of delays at the department of home affairs that has not happened.
“Because I am not writing as who I am, I can’t force myself to properly care about the exams. It’s not easy and I can’t get myself to be motivated,” he said.
Parents of two other pupils told the Sunday Times of their frustration over lengthy delays by home affairs in processing their transgender children’s applications.
The Johannesburg pupil, who bagged seven distinctions during tests written online, is writing matric exams set by the South African Comprehensive Assessment Institute (Sacai), one of three assessment bodies.
About 4,177 part-time candidates have registered for the exams conducted by the institute. These began on Wednesday. About 898,000 pupils are writing matric exams conducted by the department of basic education, the biggest assessment body.
Said the trans pupil: “I am definitely struggling to get myself to study. Exams are very stressful but there is also the stresses of dealing with home affairs.”
The pupil, who scored 90% in design and visual arts in the internal class tests, said he was “not giving of his best” while revising for the exams.
“I try but the thing is that I don’t get a lot done really while studying. Writing the exams hasn’t been a pleasant experience.”
He was confident he would not fail, but he would have put in an extra effort if he had been writing in his chosen name and gender, thus being true to himself.
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His father, Mark Thompson, said the family took him out of a private school in Johannesburg two years ago after, among other things, a teacher told their son to use the girls’ toilet “because he doesn’t have a penis”.
“We wanted to make sure he will write matric in his right forename and gender and that’s why we started the process 20 months ago. Our concern is why it has taken home affairs so long to tell us there’s a problem,” said Thompson.
A transgender pupil attending a private school in the Western Cape said she was not prepared to write matric next year under her birth name “because I don’t want a certificate in the wrong name”.
She is still waiting for her application for her male name and gender to be changed after applying on June 25 2019 at the home affairs office in Wynberg.
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The mother said her daughter would not want to write matric exams in her old name “because that person doesn’t exist any more”.
Another transgender pupil, attending Curro Vanderbijlpark High School, south of Johannesburg, is “living in absolute fear” that she may not get her new identity document by the time she writes matric next year.
Her mother discovered that her daughter’s application form, which was lodged on June 10 at the home affairs office in Vereeniging, had not been processed when they were called there on October 16.
“Her biggest stress is not knowing whether the application to home affairs is finalised on time because she will not want to write the exams in the incorrect name.”
In a letter that the mother shared with the school community last year confirming that her daughter was transgender, she wrote: “When my child was five he told me, ‘Mom, I know I’m a boy on the outside, but I feel like a girl on the inside’.
“She has spent 17 years in the wrong body and it is now time to change the outside to match the inside.”
Lucky Dityaunyane, a spokesperson for Umalusi, the body that certifies matric exams, said candidates applying for re-issue of matric certificates have to first legally change their names and description of their gender at home affairs.
Home affairs spokesperson Siya Qoza did not respond to questions sent on Wednesday, despite undertaking to.
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