When August Speaks to September

From Left-Handedness to Deaf Community: Expanding Our Circle of Solidarity

By: Mandla Simelane, African Left Handers Foundation

Mandla Simelane is a South African peacebuilder working across educational institutions and non-governmental organisations, with a particular focus on marginalised communities. His scholarly and practice-based work sits at the intersection of embodied marginality, inclusive practice, and humanising pedagogies, contributing to approaches that centre dignity and social justice in education and community engagement.

I was thrilled to be part of a recent student conference. I woke early in my hotel room, looking forward to the conference and its opening keynote. By the time I took my seat with the other speakers and dignitaries at the main table, the arena was already filled with more than 200 students and guests.

When the speaker approached the podium, he began to speak. Moments later, I heard a car horn outside, sounds drifting in from the back of the arena. My mind wandered to my flight back to Joburg, to my daughter telling me about her upcoming basketball tournament and how I needed to be there. I stressed for a moment, then returned my attention to the room.

Suddenly, I heard, “Thank you, everyone,” followed by a rustle of movement and applause as the speaker began making his way back to the main table. Then the voice that had never been spoken, only heard in my head, suddenly went quiet. I glanced down at my wristwatch. 10:45 am! My thoughts froze. It had been 9:00 am two minutes ago. I realised I had spent the entire time listening to a voice so loud, yet only I could hear it. Then something shifted.

For a moment, I stopped looking at my own difficulty and began looking at the room. Nothing about the conference had been deliberately designed to exclude anyone. Yet the way information was presented assumed that listening to the spoken word was the most accessible way to receive and process it. The room worked effortlessly for me-even while I had been somewhere else entirely. That realisation led me to a question: “What happens when we enter spaces designed around ways of listening, seeing, reading and processing that do not necessarily include everyone?”

Perhaps inclusion begins in such moments not when we are told someone has been excluded, but when we notice how a space can work effortlessly for some while creating barriers for others.
And it made me think about August.

August is a significant month for the Left Handers community. It gives us an opportunity to acknowledge left-handed experiences and notice how environments, systems and everyday practices can overlook those whose needs do not fit the dominant norm. But August should not end when August ends.

The awareness month changes. The responsibility doesn't.

If our experience has taught us what it feels like to encounter a world that does not always account for us, perhaps that awareness can extend beyond ourselves.

As August gives way to September, the question becomes where that awareness takes us next.

The Realisation-Difference and Solidarity

Our experiences of difference can teach us to notice difference beyond ourselves. The Left Handers movement is not about left side versus right side. It is about recognising the normalised forms of exclusion that can become almost invisible when a world is designed around what is considered the norm.
But acknowledging our own experience does not mean claiming someone else’s.
Being left-handed and being Deaf are not equivalent experiences. They carry different histories, identities and realities.

The connection is more modest: an experience of difference can make us more attentive to others.
I know what it means to experience difference. That does not mean I know what it means to experience every other form of exclusion. But perhaps my own experience gives me a reason to pay closer attention.
There is a danger that our experience of being different becomes a wall around our identity—a boundary that draws our concern inward and makes our own experience the measure of what exclusion looks like.
But it can also become a doorway.

September-The Deaf Community

September therefore offers an opportunity to turn that attention towards the Deaf community.
Not to compare experiences.
Not to suggest that one struggle can stand in for another.
But to recognise that the world is experienced differently by people who do not always encounter spaces designed with them in mind.
To stand with the Deaf community is not to speak in their place. It is to stand beside them, with respect for their lived experience, identity and rightful place in society.

Solidarity does not require sameness. It requires humanity.

Perhaps that means remaining open to what is unfamiliar, rather than looking away.
Perhaps this is what August can give us as it speaks to September: not a comparison of struggles, but a widening of consciousness. The Left Handers movement stands with the Deaf community in that spirit—not because our experiences are the same, but because awareness of difference can invite greater attention to others. As August comes to an end and September begins, perhaps the most important question is not simply what differences we have learned to recognise.

What if the greatest exclusions are the ones we have learned not to see?