Mind Your Language

It is doubtful whether there are many people out there who will take advice from gangsters or drunks, even less so if the person advocating caution was a drunk gangster. So I am not sure what the Western Cape Transport and Public Works department was thinking with this advert for their #BoozeFreeRoads campaign. See article by Robin-Lee Francke here:

http://www.dailyvoice.co.za/news/watch-anti-booze-is-an-insult-to-coloureds/

It seems that they don't see anything wrong with their "100% authentic" portrayal of drunk gangsters selected off the streets of Hanover Park on the Cape Flats. 

The stereotypes of drunkenness and violence associated with 'coloured' people is ingrained in the narratives which go way back to the 17th century, when those who were referred to as 'Hottentots' were described thus:  

... they are lazy, they love to drink, they swear and fight at the slightest provocation and are generally immoral... 

In his examination of the portrayal of ‘Hottentot’ characters in early 19th century theatre, Vernon February finds the same basic elements: their love of liquor, their irascibility, their moral looseness, and linguistic incomprehension. He remarks that by the early 20^th century, ‘coloureds’ were limited to certain roles in Afrikaner mythology – the labour syndrome, comic syndrome, Bacchus syndrome, incarceration syndrome, loud-mouthed syndrome, and bellicose syndrome.  The theme of alcohol is a recurring one throughout Afrikaans literature, enshrining the tot system and justifying alcohol as the ‘coloured’s’ greatest cultural heritage, he concludes. 

Questions of race continue to surface in South Africa more than twenty years after democracy, Albie Sachs, anti-apartheid activist and constitutional court judge, comments in his autobiography that we have to acknowledge the catastrophic effects of apartheid in human terms in order to move on. Not only do we need to acknowledge apartheid and repression, but we need to realize the social and emotional impact that it had. 

Unless we destroy the stereotypes which were used to oppress us and define us racially, we cannot move towards a post-apartheid society where 'black' and 'white' believe they are equal to each other. We need to create the optimum conditions on the ground in order for people to feel neither superior nor inferior to each other, but to view each other as human. 

Further reading:

February, V. 2014. Mind Your Colour: The 'Coloured' Stereotype in South African Literature

On race and culture

I am still processing the information that, somewhere out there are 2000 people who bought a book with the good intentions of navigating the diverse cultures of the people of South Africa.  Instead, I shudder to think, they were offered stereotypes of so-called ‘coloured culture. That someone could be bold enough to write a chapter on the subject is wrong on so many levels. Where shall I start?

Firstly, the very notion of a grouping of coloured people is an artificial construct of an apartheid government hell-bent on denying the rights and freedoms to 80% of the population of our country, for more than 40 years. 

Secondly, culture, “the arts, customs, and institutions of a nation, people or group”, by its nature refers to a fairly homogenous group of people to begin with. There is no white culture or black culture or coloured culture.

Gabeba Baderoon in her book, Regarding Muslims, notes that,

… in the racial hierarchy of apartheid, ‘colouredness’ formed the interstitial zone between ‘native’ and ‘white’… defined solely through negatives, imbued with ambiguity … ‘colouredness’ was the fluid middle of the hierarchy in South Africa …

Even the architects of apartheid had trouble deciding who fitted into this group of “leftovers” (as Marike de Klerk so famously referred to coloureds). The fluidity that Baderoon refers to was evident in the seven subgroups of coloured made provision for in the Population Registration Act of 1950:

Cape Coloured/Malay/Griqua/Chinese/Indian/Other Asian/Other Coloured

And as Mrs de Klerk observed, the people who were” left after the nations were sorted out, the negative group, the non-people” were classified coloured.  Conveniently forgotten was the rich diversity of people descended from Indonesian slaves, Europeans, Khoikhoi and San, with diverse art, music, customs, speaking Afrikaans and/or English.  Also ignored by Mrs de Klerk and others like her, were studies that showed that on average 7% of all Afrikaner forefathers were of “coloured” origin. 

The Act required every citizen to be registered according to his/her race group, with race determined by a classification board acting on information from family and friends; a person’s hair, eyeballs and cuticles could be examined for pigmentation if there was any doubt. This fluidity meant, for example, that my grandfather could change his classification from ‘white’ to marry my ‘coloured’ grandmother, even though she was fairer-skinned than he. My aunt, who married a "real" European (as in he really was born there and not as a synonym for "white South African") was not able to live in South Africa with her husband. When she visited with her children, she was not allowed to stay in her mother’s “coloured” home with her “white” children.

My aunt Hilda on her wedding day

Lastly, tough as it may be to comprehend, there is only one human race. We are 99% genetically identical. There is no coloured race, or white or black race for that matter. So let’s refrain from deepening divisions by assigning sweeping characteristics to artificial groups of people. 

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.