THE THEFT OF TIME - By Silondile Ndhlovu

Written By: Silondile Ndhlovu

Category: Essay

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Silondile Ndhlovu presents "THE THEFT OF TIME," a thought-provoking essay featured in Hashtag Kalakar's Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. This reflective piece delves into the profound impact of colonialism and its enduring legacy on personal and communal identity. Through a narrative rich with personal insight, Ndhlovu explores themes of theology, endurance, and the critical need for self-discovery amidst systemic constraints.

About the Work

In "THE THEFT OF TIME," Silondile Ndhlovu examines the intricate ways colonialism has stolen time and identity from marginalized communities. With poignant imagery and a reflective tone, the essay critiques the imposed deification of a "white" God and its implications on the psyche. Ndhlovu eloquently argues for liberation from the relentless cycle of economic survival, advocating for a reclaiming of time and the space to dream and self-actualize.

THE THEFT OF TIME

Original Submission by Silondile Ndhlovu

THE THEFT OF TIME

God was a white man most of my life. I studied His face long before I could read scripture. He was a wood-panelled wall decoration in my grandmother’s living room. In that painting, He had sharp symmetrical European features, golden-brown hair that swept freely, peaceful blue eyes that appeared to see me no matter where I was standing in the room. He did look benevolent, but He seemed entirely foreign. None of my family had ever told me about colonialism or apartheid directly. They didn't have to. The theology was visual, subdued and unyielding. In putting that picture on her wall- the most sacred spot in her home, my grandmother, like millions of other Black women, was handing down a lesson she had been forced to internalise. The world had implicitly encoded a damaging truth, that white men were created in the true image of the divine, while the rest of us, were just variations.

This cosmic hierarchy trickled down into my daily life. If God were white, then power, authority, and structural sovereignty over the real world, would certainly not be mere injustices, but holy attributes. Worshiping a Saviour who looked like the demographic that kept our community at the bottom of the economic ladder, did something strange to our collective psyche. It handed us a theology of endurance instead of liberation. It whispered that our suffering on this earth was an obligation of spirit. We learned that if we want to live, we must work ourselves to the bone, because our true treasure was in heaven, away from the bills and the exhaustion. This is where we learned to run. Our lives were ensnared in an eternally high-speed chase among those of scarcity; rent, utilities, emergency expenses, and essentials. We ran so fast and never made a point of stopping, sought to understand ourselves and never had the luxury of lounging still. Self-discovery, I’ve come to understand , requires unstructured time. Yet, the white male God we were bestowed only required our endurance.

I had been thinking about that weight when I stood in the basement fellowship hall, after a three-hour service. The air was thick with fried chicken, fried cabbage and maize meal pap. We stood in a slow-moving line with paper plates in our hands, waiting to land on the long tables where the food was offered by church mothers. I was then attracted to two stressed young ladies who were all matriculating in the same year. One looked at me and asked, “So what are you up to?" I said I was an aspiring writer and was working on writing a book. She smiled, but her smile did not reach her eyes. On the contrary, there crossed an expression of deep anxiety, as if my words had set off a calculation machine in her brain. She glanced at me, dropping her voice lower than the chatter around us. "But what if you don’t make money out of it?" Do you have a second option? Do you plan to go back to school, in case writing does not work out?" "This is a passion," I told her, my voice steadying. "I'm going to see it through, but yes, should this not work out for me, I am more than ready to humble myself, go back to school, and study Physiotherapy." She stepped back slightly, her expression shifting from anxiety to a strange distant awe. "Wow!" she whispered, her voice laced with a bittersweet envy. "You're lucky to have that kind of luxury. People our kind don't have the luxury to 'figure things out,' you know." She paused, shaking her head faintly. "It's either you're a white person trapped in a black body, or your parents must be really rich." Her words anchored themselves in my mind long after we finally reached the front of the line, accepted our portions of food, and parted ways to find seats at the crowded tables. "It's either you're a white person trapped in a black body, I wondered to myself.” I was deeply offended by her statement. I was proud to be a black woman. It also didn't help that she mentioned that during my devout process of unpacking the harm colonialism had done to my spirit, body, mind, faith, and relationships. “Your parents must be rich.” My parents were, by and large, not rich.

But beneath the offence, the young lady’s equation was flawless, according to the brutal logic we had all been taught since birth. In our world, a passion is not a gift, it is a dangerous, irresponsible liability. To pursue something simply because it feeds your soul is an act of economic defiance that our community had been conditioned to believe we could rarely afford. This is the quiet, devastating victory of what I call: God's white tactics. The tactic does not always arrive in a police uniform, a court document, or a predatory loan agreement. Sometimes, it arrives framed in gold leaf on a church wall, subtly conditioning how a marginalised people view their very right to exist. Colonialism is rarely understood for its most devastating theft. We are taught to look at history and see the robbery of physical things: the conquering of land, the extraction of gold, and the violent capture of Black bodies. But the deepest, most enduring victory of colonial power was not the theft of geography. It was the theft of time. When a system hooks a community to a permanent generator of economic panic, it commits a form of temporal colonialism. It traps an entire demographic in a relentless, high-speed present tense. You cannot look backward to heal, and you cannot look forward to dream, because the immediate demands of the current hour are too loud. You are locked in a 24/7 loop of crisis management - paying the immediate bill, soothing the immediate exhaustion, securing the immediate meal, and caring for families.

The pale, serene Saviour hanging over my grandmother’s wall didn’t just bless the home - he blessed the clock. He transformed the systematic obliteration of our time into a spiritual duty. The message itself, cruel in its perfection: Do not ask for your time back now. Do not demand the space to rest, to create, or to know your own mind on this earth. Give your time wholly to the machine. This divine justification is why the young lady at church viewed my writing pursuit with profound anxiety. Unstructured time in a community where time has already been colonised, thoroughly, is considered a hazardous, volatile substance. To take a long enough step away from the treadmill of survival, to write, to paint, to sing, to do something you love is to pose an intolerable risk, especially because there is no generational wealth or systemic safety net in place to catch us if we fail. The white tactic very carefully convinces us that our value is completely linked to our labor output. This turns our bodies into capitalistic fuel and tells us self-discovery is an expensive luxury reserved for the children of the wealthy.

I watched the young woman scrounge her food from the other side of the fellowship hall. I wondered what she had given up, just to come to the church, or be able to serve in the choir. What stories, paintings, scientific discoveries, businesses, had been buried under her overwhelming need to find a “safe” career with a high-pay ? In the Black community, we are raised with a sacrificial diet. We watch our parents, brothers and sisters, or even friends, find work at corporations who view them only as throwaway metrics on a spreadsheet. We see them swallow their pride, suffer daily micro-aggressions, complain, and give up their knees and their spirits - all for the holy grail of a steady pay-check every month. We call it Black strength. We call it resilience. But if you examine it a little closer, through a lens untainted by the white tactic, it is a tragedy. The real tragedy of this stolen time is revealed the moment you step outside the church doors and enter the city centre. At nearly every street corner, the human toll of the white tactic is on full display. I constantly drive past town and see my people stand on the road with cardboard signs, making the almost helpless sound that they want to paint a fence, mow a lawn, clean a house, something. I look at them and that deep, heavy grief hangs on my chest.

The world sees a man standing in a corner with a paintbrush, and only looks at a simple statistic about unemployment. But in the light of our history, I see a graveyard of buried genius. In those men and those women, I am forced to wonder who they were really supposed to be or become. Imagine if their time wasn’t systematically colonised with raw panic of survival, some of those who beg for manual labour are not in need of it - they’re thinking people, geniuses, creative people ,who have the capacity to hold high office in government, amend unfair law, design new technology or perform art that shifts culture. But the immediate daily need for food or shelter compels them to exchange their genius for a pittance. This is the ultimate victory of the white tactic. It guarantees that those who experience oppression never have the time or continuity to break for the rooms where power is held. If you’re spending 10 hours a day inhaling paint fumes or scrubbing someone else’s floors to buy groceries, you have no energy left over to run for office, to build a community, or to write a manifesto. We learn to feel self-praise for surviving, completely forgetting that we had a right to be born, be fully recognised and to realise our power.

Freedom from the gravity of this tactic includes an act of radical and dangerous imagination. We have to arrive at the collective understanding that the breathless and frantic speed of our lives is not a spiritual necessity or a divine decree. It is a sanctified cage. When we start to call back time for ourselves - to think, create, heal, repair, and sit in complete silence, we are making a very necessary rebellion. An arresting quote that is also a battle cry for those hellish individuals struggling to survive this situation: Rest is a form of resistance. In a world that considers Black bodies simply to be machines for infinite labour, choosing rest is a revolutionary act. When you take a break, you’re actively refusing to let what you produce be your value. You are making clear that your humanity is non-negotiable. What we don’t need is a theology that insists our reward is in heaven if we endure patiently. We need a theology that redeems our time, asks for our freedom on earth, secures for us radical and sacred rest, and the space to dream, self-actualise and to know exactly who we are.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious platform celebrating literary talents worldwide. It encourages participants to explore themes of identity, culture, and creativity, providing a global stage for voices to be heard. The competition fosters an environment of artistic expression and intellectual discourse, underscoring the transformative power of words.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Silondile Ndhlovu for sharing "THE THEFT OF TIME" with us in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Your insightful contribution enriches our understanding of identity and liberation. Thank you for your courage and creativity in addressing these vital themes.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.