‘I had no words for what was happening’: Naledi Masopha-Msibi’s story of surviving and fighting bullying | Don’t Look Away
As a little girl in primary school, Naledi Masopha-Msibi carried a weight far too heavy for a child to bear. She walked the corridors of her school in fear, silenced not only by the cruelty of her peers and a teacher, but by her inability to name the experience.
Today, she stands as the author of Playgrounds: Tackling Child-Bullying Through Story, a powerful voice in the national conversation about school violence, and an advocate determined to ensure that no child endures what she once did.
Her transformation from frightened pupil to outspoken campaigner has made her an inspiration to many South Africans.
Masopha-Msibi’s earliest memories of school are marked by confusion. She remembers the ache of something being wrong but lacking the vocabulary to identify it.
“I was bullied in primary school. But I had no words to describe to my parents what I was experiencing in school.”
For many children, this silence is familiar. Bullying is often misunderstood as a simple playground problem, yet for a child who doesn’t understand their right to safety, it becomes both isolating and paralysing.
“I did not even know that this was something I had the right to report to adults.”
Her lifeline came in the form of her mother, patient, intuitive and determined to understand the child whose spirit she sensed was shifting. At home, story-time became a sanctuary.
“My mother spent a lot of time with me, and she used story-time to reach the depth of my heart and to create a safe space for me to tell her everything,” she said.
One evening, her mother narrated the tale of unogwaja ne bhubesi, the rabbit and lion and gently and playfully asked Masopha-Msibi a question that pierced through her silence.
“She asked in a light note if I feared anyone like nogwaja feared bhubesi, that’s when I revealed that I was bullied by both a fellow learner and a teacher.”
Her mother intervened swiftly, protecting her daughter in the way the school environment had failed to do. Masopha-Msibi was finally safe. But the situation exposed a deeper problem: her bully simply moved on to torment someone else. No adult sought to understand the root cause. No one asked why a child felt compelled to harm others.
Years later, she carries not resentment, but clarity. “Looking back now, I realised that my bully too, was just a child who needed help and assurance.”
Her bully was older, displaced from Giyani to Johannesburg, struggling with Sesotho, older than her classmates, and desperate to fit in. Through adult eyes, Naledi now sees behind the aggression, the insecurity, the humiliation, the loneliness.
She has reached a profound place of compassion: “If I were to see her today, I would tell her: ‘The adult in me today sees the child in you back then. I get you. It was the adults around us that failed both you and me.”
This perspective is what drives her advocacy today, a belief that both victims and bullies are shaped by the environment adults create, tolerate or ignore.
For years, Masopha-Msibi carried her story quietly. But one case, reported widely, left her reeling: a 12-year-old girl in Limpopo who died by suicide after being bullied and humiliated at school.
“It was a story of a 12-year-old from Limpopo who had died by suicide, reportedly as a result of bullying and humiliation she endured… I was deeply hurt.”
The case haunted her. Night after night, she thought of the girl’s final moments, of the classmates who witnessed her humiliation, and of the adults who should have intervened. She asked herself the same question South Africa continues to grapple with: Where were the adults?
At the same time, Masopha-Msibi was preparing for a new chapter in her personal life, motherhood. In 2022, she held her son for the first time, and with him came a surge of fear and responsibility. What kind of world would he grow up in? What kind of schools? What kind of protection?
“Prior to this, I had been thinking about writing a book about bullying, but it was the birth of my son that ultimately gave me the courage to write.”
Playgrounds is more than a storybook; it is a social commentary woven through the lives of fictional children who represent thousands of real ones.
In Lethabo, the orphan raised by a farm-working grandmother, she captures the vulnerability of children growing up in poverty.
In Shaun, a bully moulded by an abusive uncle, she exposes how violence is often recycled from home to playground.
She wanted the book to be a companion for children who feel alone and a practical tool for parents and teachers who often miss the signs. It is also an urgent plea, a call to take bullying as seriously as any threat to a child’s life.
Masopha-Msibi impact goes beyond authorship. Her lived experience, her reflective compassion, and her willingness to revisit her wounds have made her a powerful figure for many parents, teachers and children.
She has taken her pain and turned it into prevention. She has taken her silence and turned it into storytelling. She has taken her trauma and turned it into advocacy.
Through school roadshows, community engagements and interviews, she is becoming a trusted voice, someone who understands both sides of the bullying cycle and insists on addressing the root causes, not just the symptoms.
She has overcome what once threatened to silence her and has become an inspiration for families seeking guidance, for children who feel unseen, and for adults who wish to do better.
Her message is simple but urgent: children’s lives depend on adult action. Bullying is not a phase. It is not harmless. And it is not inevitable. Through compassion, awareness and early intervention, we can break the cycle.
Masopha-Msibi is proof of that, a reminder that a wounded child can grow into a powerful protector of others, and that stories, when told with honesty and heart, can save lives.
