It's not black and white

South Africa isn't Black and White. It's Grey. Foreigners have asked me numerous times for clarity about some or other issue (which never arises where they come from) and I find myself juggling wildly different responses in an attempt to explain the "local" viewpoint. There is no clear answer to many questions.

For one, how do you describe a typical South African to anyone? We are such a hodge-podge of cultures, religions, traditions and value systems and it is going to be a while before we breakdown into that "melting pot" that everyone calls our country. You may eat pap and vleis or curry, live in the country or at the sea, click or bray through a language, speak loudly on buses or genteelly drink tea at the Nellie. We once met a group of wealthy young Americans on our travels through Italy. They immediately assumed that we were of those South Africans who didn’t know how to use a washing machine because we have legions of servants. Wonder who they had been hanging out with.

And then there are more serious issues. Someone pointed out to me that nowhere in the world does the government provide free housing for people. I agree hat you value something more when you have worked for it, contributed to it and earned it. But on the other hand, we have such a huge backlog and people in such dire need of a basic roof over their heads (never mind an enclosed toilet) that we really need to just pitch in and get them housed. How else will we level the playing fields?

Similarly, I listened while a foreign friend had a little rant about why South Africans have to qualify people according to race as in "a Black guy came walking into the room". I'm afraid, this has been ingrained into our brains and vocabularies - a person's "race" put him into a box that described everything from the language he spoke, the place he lived, maybe even his job and the car he drove. 

So having come this far without a “Hotel Rwanda” or a “Holocaust”, I think that we should get on with making this a great country and find our own identity. We cannot be neatly boxed (in spite of the previous regime doing their utmost) – indeed we probably won’t fit into that melting pot without boiling over. But we will be proudly South African. Already the next generation is moving away from the labels. I have never heard my children refer to their friends as a white kid or a black kid; they seem to have little difficulty finding other adjectives.

The Human Race

Name. Age. Race. Why am I  being asked to fill this in? "We invite you to..." or "we know it is a sensitive issue but..." or "we need this for transformation purposes..." - these are some of the excuses I am being given. I say excuses because I do not view them as valid reasons for having to fill in race classification. Why after 16 years of democracy are we still so hung up on race classification? Is this not what we fought against for so many years - for non-racialism, to not be classified and treated in a certain way, based on that classification? I can understand that we need some way of addressing the enormous disadvantage of our apartheid legacy, but there has to be a more acceptable way of doing this.

Apparently we have Count Arthur Gobineau, a French diplomat in the 19th century, to thank for all this racial demography. He started writing about the 3 races (yellow, black and white) and laid the foundation for all the Hitlers who came after him. Of course, science has now proved that there is no such thing as different race groups, that differences in skin colour are an adaptation to climate and environment, but that will probably take another century to filter out. 

Racism is a learned trait and the sooner we can change the environment that we live in, the sooner we can change peoples attitudes. As long as we are still being asked to classify ourselves along racial lines, we are entrenching those ideas and have little hope of finding that holy grail, a non-racist society.

This issue also needs tackling at  a university admissions level where students have to earn points for admission. Different points are assigned depending on the student's "race". Surely if the university receives an application they can take into account the social circumstances, schooling and other background details of the student and make decisions on that criteria? The student from the poor township who attended the less than prestigious school, who has succeeded beyond all expectations, deserves a place at university without having to classify him or herself as "black". What about the "black" student who had the fortune of going to a top government or even private school - do they deserve to get a place at university more than  their fellow "white", "indian" or "coloured" students?

I remember getting my new identity book post-1994 - the last 3 digits had to be changed because they previously classified us as being of a certain race. My husband and I come from different "population groups". We rejoice that our children do not have to suffer the indignity of apartheid. Yet we are often asked to fill in forms that classify them. Now do we have to decide on what race they should be? Shall I say that they are "coloured" since they must be mixed to have parents from different population groups? Or is my husband's previous classification more dominant than mine, or vice versa?

My kids will tell you that they are South African and that is all the classification they need. Or their classification is H for Human Race - and that is how it should be. The sooner we start changing the seemingly small things, the less likely they will continue to be firmly entrenched.

Rest In peace Michael, King of Pop

We have been so immersed in the World Cup that I almost missed the first anniversary celebration of Michael Jackson's death yesterday. I clearly remember where I was when we heard the news. We were in Johannesburg for the Confederations Cup (believe it or not, I'm not always this immersed in soccer) when we walked into our hotel room and switched on the TV.

Michael Jackson was quite an inspiration when we were young. He was an amazing musician and performer and kept churning out the hits, earning the nickname, King of Pop. Here was living proof that you could be black and famous. And there was a whole family of Jacksons too. We pretty much spent our teen years to the background sounds of Billie Jean, Rock with You, Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough, and the like.

I found Michael Jackson's transformation very sad - after singing that it didn't matter if you were Black or White, and almost getting us to believe it, he seemed to have second thoughts. Like young girls who are bombarded by images of size 0 models and become anorexic, he was brainwashed into thinking that his hair had to be sleek enough for a pencil to slip through and his nose had to look like he'd slept with a peg on it. I'm not sure that we will ever learn to accept ourselves and each other, just the way we are or learn to respect and celebrate the differences?

I hope that he has found some peace, somewhere.

For a list of Michael Jackson songs, click here.