It is exhausting work to try and prove that you belong
The greatest burden I carry into work every morning is not my wheelchair. It is the quiet, exhausting work of proving that I belong. For years, I thought this was simply the price of having a disability. I accepted it the way that I accepted inaccessible entrances, broken lifts, steep ramps and the sideways glances that quietly asked, “Are you sure you should be here?”.
I learned to phone ahead before meetings to ask whether there was a ramp. I learned to memorise which buildings had accessible toilets. I learned to calculate whether asking for help today would make me seem less capable tomorrow. I learned to arrive early so that I wouldn’t inconvenience anyone.
I learned to smile through awkward comments because correcting people every day is exhausting. Eventually, I became so good at carrying these invisible burdens that other people stopped noticing they were there. Perhaps I stopped noticing them too.
Then I became a researcher. As part of my Master’s research, I spent months listening to black women with physical disabilities from across the Eastern Cape speak about their experiences in the workplace. I thought I was going to collect data.
Instead, I found pieces of myself in every interview. One woman carefully measured when to ask for assistance because she feared being seen as a burden.
Another described arriving at work every day determined to outperform everyone else because she believed one mistake would confirm every stereotype people held about employees with disabilities. Others spoke about inaccessible offices, delayed accommodations, opportunities that quietly disappeared and the emotional exhaustion of constantly having to explain themselves.
As I listened, one thought refused to leave me. The greatest burden these women carried was not always their disability. It was the relentless effort of trying to belong.
That realisation changed me. Not simply as a researcher, but as a woman with disabilities in the rural areas of South Africa; as someone who had spent years believing that if I just worked hard enough, adapted enough and proved myself enough, belonging would eventually come.
But belonging was never something we were meant to earn. It was something every human being should have been given from the very beginning. A ramp may allow me to enter a building, but belonging allows me to enter without wondering whether I must justify my presence.
South Africa has some of the strongest laws protecting the rights of people with disabilities. Those laws matter. They were hard won and they remain essential. But legislation, no matter how progressive, cannot make someone feel that they belong. People do that. Workplaces do that. Communities do that.
The women I met during my research were never asking for extraordinary treatment. They were asking for something profoundly ordinary. The freedom to arrive at work and simply be seen as colleagues. To contribute without first overcoming unnecessary barriers. To be recognised for their ideas before their disability. To belong without having to prove that they belonged.
The older I become, the more I understand the wisdom I grew up with in the Eastern Cape. Umntu ngumntu ngabantu. A person becomes a person through other people. Ubuntu is not measured by the speeches we make, the policies we draft or the promises we publish. It is measured by how we make one another feel.
Do people leave our workplaces feeling respected? Do they leave feeling valued? Do they leave believing there is a place for them? Because the opposite of belonging is not simply exclusion. It is the slow erosion of dignity. It is waking up each morning knowing that before you can contribute your skills, your knowledge or your leadership, you must first convince someone that your presence is justified.
No one should have to carry that burden. Not because they are people with disabilities. Not because they are black. Not because they are women, but because every human being deserves to know what it feels like to arrive somewhere and think, “I don’t have to prove that I belong here”.
Perhaps that is what inclusion has always been about. Not ramps alone. Not policies. Not employment statistics, but creating a South Africa where belonging is no longer something anyone has to earn.
The greatest gift we can offer another person is not access to a building. It is the certainty that they were always meant to be inside.
