The Wordless Wound: When a Child Has No Name for the Hurt

For Naledi Masopha-Msibi, the deepest scar from her primary school years wasn’t just the bullyingit was the silence. The profound inability, as a small girl, to find the words to tell her parents what was happening. “I was bullied in primary school. But I had no words to describe to my parents what I was experiencing,” she recalls. It was a torment compounded by isolation, a feeling that this was just something to endure, not something she had a right to report.

Today, that silenced child is a powerful advocate, the author of Playgrounds: Tackling Child-Bullying Through Story, and a guiding voice in South Africa’s urgent conversation about school violence. Her journey is not one of revenge, but of remarkable clarity and compassion, forged in the fire of her own past.

The Lifeline of a Story: A Mother’s Intuition

Her salvation came through a patient, intuitive mother who sensed the shift in her daughter’s spirit. At home, story-time became a sacred space. Her mother, weaving the tale of unogwaja ne bhubesi (the rabbit and the lion), gently asked if Naledi feared anyone like the rabbit feared the lion. That simple, playful question finally pierced the silence. Naledi revealed the truth: she was being bullied by both a fellow learner and a teacher.

Her mother intervened, but the solution was incomplete. The bully simply moved on to another child. No adult asked why. “Looking back now,” Naledi says, “I realised that my bully too, was just a child who needed help and assurance.” She saw a girl, older, displaced from Giyani, struggling with language and belonging. The adult Naledi now holds a profound perspective: “It was the adults around us that failed both you and me.”

The Trigger: A Headline That Demanded a Response

For years, she carried this story quietly. Then, a news report shattered her: a 12-year-old girl in Limpopo died by suicide after relentless bullying and humiliation. “I was deeply hurt,” Naledi says. The question haunted her: Where were the adults?

Soon after, she held her newborn son, and with him came a surge of protective fear. What world awaited him? This confluence of tragedy and new life gave her the final courage to write. Playgrounds was bornnot just a storybook, but a social toolkit. Through characters like Lethabo, an orphan, and Shaun, a bully shaped by home abuse, she mirrors the real vulnerabilities and cycles of violence affecting thousands.

Advocacy Rooted in Compassion, Not Blame

Naledi’s impact now stretches beyond the page. Through school roadshows and community talks, she has become a trusted figure precisely because she refuses to see the issue in black and white. Her advocacy targets the environment adults create. She speaks to the child hiding their pain and to the child acting out their own.

Her message is a clarion call to parents and educators: bullying is not a rite of passage. It is a threat to mental health and life itself, and it demands proactive, compassionate adult intervention. She transformed her wordless wound into a vocabulary of healing, proving that a victim can become the most empathetic of protectors. In giving her past a story, she is giving countless other children a future.