Tag: apartheid

The White Guy

Grace by any other name2 Comments

So, we’ve had some work going on in our yard prompted by a variety of reasons. Firstly, I have ALWAYS wanted a swing in my garden for my children. I wanted one when I myself was still a child. My parents bought my sister and I one to swing on together where there’s push pull and the township children enjoyed coming to use it. I wanted that for my future children.

Secondly, our screamer screams when it’s time to leave the public park. Not nice when members of the public are around. She also is hard to handle, goes after other’ balls they are playing with, touches people’s bicycles…Our talkative twin also adds to the chaos when she argues that she needs “just five more minutes” after multiple warnings.

Thirdly and sadly, there are weird people hanging around. About a month ago, as the teen daughter and her three younger siblings walked, a man in a B class Mercedes Benz asked them if they wanted a ride. They said no. Then he asked if they wanted to go to the arcade at Century City to play. They kept walking and saying no. He asked if they were sure they didn’t “want to go have fun.” *shudder* At that point, I not knowing what was happening but knowing it was starting to rain, told my son -who had stayed behind with our refusing to walk twin child – to take her into the car (That she always loves) and go fetch the others before they got rained on.

As he drove up behind them, seeing talking to the man, the man put his hand out the window to wave him around his car. When he realised that the children knew the driver and were going to the car, he zoomed off. As my teen told her brother what had happened, he then tried to chase the car. (Don’t ask me what he’d have done.) They lost him at an intersection.

Very disturbing.

Two Fridays ago as the same children were walking, the man slowly drove up behind them. Our teen noticed but pretended not to but then the two middle children saw the car and pointed at the man, who then sped up. Now, they were scared so our girl told them to run to a corner where they would go in any direction and the man wouldn’t know. So my poor, terrified children – age 28, 9, 8 and 4, ran.

That image is haunting. And so sad. Makes me tear up even typing it! I hate criminals!

I bought her CS-gas (tear gas) to spray at him if he ever follows them and tries to lure them into the car. And booked people to come build a jungle gym in the yard so there’s less walking outside.

Snippets of the building time.

The Pharaoh hat has a strange rubber thing that has been eating at our girl’s hair, so I coaxed her into only wearing it on Wednesdays and when they go out in public. They won’t understand why she has a pillow case or skirt on her head, but they’ll understand THAT!

One man asked if she’s Cleopatra. She has no clue who that is but answered indignantly, “I’m Pharaoh!”😅

One wanted to use the loo but waited for me to finish explaining some school work to my son, then asked if I run a daycare centre. Haha. Never thought that that is what it would look like. Told him nope, these are all my children.😊

Yesterday they came to fix a few issues and he (White supervisor, Black workers as is the norm in our country) started talking about how the poor are getting poorer and how distressing it is. I thought not of ourselves or my employed friends whose salaries are affording less and less, but of those who have no job at all and agreed with him.

Then he says, “In the 80’s it was better. I mean, yes, I was a child, but there was less of this then. Poverty wasn’t bad back then but now, the world over, everyone is struggling more and more.”

I thought to myself, “Man, do you know who you’re talking to? I was also a child in the 80’s and it was AWFUL for US! Tear gassed in the ghettoes your people forced us into. Police coming in to find and kill!?? Police causing rioting and fear!? Me seeing stabbings and people being burnt to death. And our people were dirt poor. Starving poor because we didn’t ‘deserve’ much pay for the few jobs we were ‘allowed’ and legally trained to do- menial, cheap labour. Oh my! It was worse back then!”

It’s scary how White people either don’t know what life was like for Black people during Apartheid, or they forget that Apartheid was recent! They had fun in their safe suburbs. We lived with guns, fear and flames! Add the grinding poverty where we were forced to take jobs that paid peanuts, ‘Black’ hospitals that really were almost like badly run clinics, disappearing neighbours and relatives caught my police to be tortured, aunts fleeing into exile out in Germany and the US, and high birth mortality rate and you have a time when things were much worse than they are now for us Africans of Africa.

But, he also said I wouldn’t know as I wasn’t born yet. I was too busy laughing internally and wanting to tell him how old I am but then his staff called him and I couldn’t.

I wonder if anybody anywhere will ever guess my real age. Even at church there’s a newcomer who was shocked when a young man we once even counseled before his marriage referred to my husband as “old man.” But he’s younger than you! The man exclaimed! Oh my! I therefore bet he also thinks the man is younger than me too. Maybe if my husband looked HIS age, they’d know I too was older?? Or they’d just think I’m like those celebrity men who date women 20 years younger than they are…

So yes, that distracted me too as he spoke and I didn’t get a chance after he was called, to revisit that comment. But I live the reality daily. Life was not ok for us in the 80’s. At least now we have the chance to earn what they earned. And some of us do indeed earn it and can help others who are unemployed or orphaned.

As my nine year old said, “So..If you and daddy are also helping Aunty P” (her birth mom) “then dad had better not lose his job or they will starve even more.”

Yep, and so would another dear one waiting for the job she qualified for but willing to do the ‘menial’ work reserved only for us previously unskilled, un-educated by Western standards people of the soil.

Things are better but will never be ok till the kingdom comes.

I AM Apartheid

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As in, each time it’s mentioned, it’s not a story to me, it’s reality. From the leafy suburbs where I went to my White school, to the townships guarded by police officers on huge tanks as you ‘enter.’

I tried to join some neighbourhood WhatsApp groups where I live. It’s a previously White suburb. I left. They hanker after the good old days and for me, there is no such thing. They get angry about things that only Black people do. Like, selling vegetables on the pavement without a license. We don’t have that concept! We just have “trying to provide for my family” traditions. They get angry that the people didn’t apply for this and that compliance certificate..They get disgusted because one guy who was selling was picking his nose.🤣🤣They have time for loads of petty complaints. But all I see is, “Those Black peoples who don’t have the capital to buy or resent stores are an eyesore on our pavements.” (Sidewalks)

And there’s actually order. They group themselves in specific areas. It’s like an unplanned marketplace. And no, when I drive past I never feel like “they’re a danger.”🙄

So, that will be the background or context to this rant that I put up on my other social media place. First, I’ll post photos of Gugulethu. That’s the township I grew up in. Home size, home type, and area not of our choosing. Forced there by the apartheid government. Then below the rant, I’ll put photos of the homes in Simon’s Town. I’m sure you’ll understand the heartache and sadness of my childhood experiences.

I’m leaving the descriptions in the adverts on purpose. The difference between Gugulethu and there, is stark and sad.

My goodness!

I am angry and heartbroken in equal measure!

Periodically, we see updates on our Black and Coloured people getting keys or money for land in areas they were forcibly removed from.

This hits hard. Those triggers that the woke talk about?

Takes me back to junior school when I moved from Mickelfield Girls (Independent school. Rebel that took this Black girl when other private schools kept to the law) to Rustenburg Girls (ex-government school), where I felt the difference.

No, the WHITE GIRLS IN MY CLASS MADE ME FEEL THE DIFFERENCE.

During history, “Do you know Zooloo?” (Lessons on king Shaka)

“Do you live in a hut?”

And randomly, they’d ask, “Do you have a house? Do you live a shack? Is it stinky?”

One girl said that her father said “Gugulethu is an eyesore.”

This morning’s news about the Gugulethu people receiving keys after being moved from Simon’s Town hit hard. I had no idea Black people used to live there. It’s such a “White” area!

They took us from beauty and dumped us in squalor.

They took us from the coast, from the mountainside and shoved us where there was nothing to see, none of God’s beauty.

Then the racists have the audacity to long for “the good old days” in the white neighborhoods of theirs!?

Which good old days?

The ones BEFORE they invaded our land, took us from our property and colonized OUR neighbourhoods while forcing us to live where they then mocked us for living??

Or the more recent ‘good old days’ when they smugly lived on stolen land and only saw us when they needed our broken bodies to wash their stolen toilets and weed the grass that was ours?

I’ve never rejoined any neighbourhood WhatsApp group. People don’t think before they type. And my own life is painful enough without reading their dark thoughts.

I Like All People

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You can tell when someone is White, or a Born Free. They think what my country is going through is awful, catastrophic… They’re the ones who like my old White rheumatologist ask, “Aren’t you scared of the way the country is? Aren’t you scared for your children?”

I looked at him and didn’t know what to say. I had two bones to pick with him. “Firstly, I don’t care about politics when you haven’t even told me what my disease is!! Who cares about politics when I’m here about my BODY and you don’t even have the courtesy to tell what tablets you’re expecting me to put in it every day for the rest of my life?”

Secondly, “You obviously didn’t live through what I lived through.” People complain about loadshedding (The government’s euphemism for “We don’t have enough electricity so we are conning you and telling you we are loadshedding -turning the grid off for hours per day so we don’t fully run out of electricity and have no power on any day- when what it is is black outs. Power cuts. Power outages. We are so inept that we can’t keep the country running. The rich guy solar panels and inverters. The semi rich buy generators and diesel. The rest of us just plod on. No power for hours at a time. Food spoils. Frozen food becomes mushy and gross and also spoils. Shops can’t operate. Small businesses have shut down. Those using online schools can’t teach/learn.

But I grew up with power disappearing. I had a rich uncle in Transkei who had a generator. I hated the noise it made and dislike it even now. But, we had no power AND often, no water. Well, we Black peoples in the townships had no water. The other folk in the stolen suburbs had water and electricity. (I think. Every time I visited, they had both.) So this, this is nothing compared to that. And at least now we know when we won’t have electricity. Back then we had no electricity and no voice and no hope. No choice and no freedom. No apps to tell us when to expect lack of electricity. No warning. Give me today. I prefer today to yesterday.

Wow. Nap time has ended and I don’t remember what I was going to say! My ADHD two are running around like headless chickens and I’m waiting for my busy three year old to come bang on the door any moment now. That’s what happens when I prioritise marking past exam papers (prep for real exams starting next month.) and ironing and dispensing reduced Ritalin doses instead of blogging during my free time.😉

Ok. How does this all come together? I titled it “I like all people.” But I’m distracted my eight year old yelling outside my window and stomping. “I said ‘I am Goliath!’” she rants.

Somehow, my rheumatologist topic was meant to segue into racism and to how I didn’t grow up hating any race. I just viewed us all as God’s children. Yes, the teachers were racist. But my headmistress wasn’t. She broke the law actually. Nkosi Sikelel’ I Afrika (God bless Africa) was banned by the apartheid government. But that’s the song we sang. My school was a ‘White’ school. An independent school. And they are the only ones who agreed to take me. The other private schools my parents applied at refused to take a Black child. And as you know, government schools were racially segregated. With Black schools being underfunded, with the education being given to Black people only enough to make us tea girls and garden boys, my parents had no choice. And in their words, “Coloureds were more racist than Whites.” True. And I heard it from a Coloured man in 2016 too. “We Coloureds hate Black people. Especially Xhosas.” (Which is what my mother is.) Coloureds and Indians were allowed to get superior education to what we got. But not as superior as White petiole. You don’t want them to become TOO uppity.

But you see, I didn’t see race. Which was interesting given my first racial attack was when I was only three years old. And weird given how racist my teachers were. I don’t know if I was unconsciously trying to protect myself from feeling less than when it was out of my control or what. But I just didn’t give in to the hate they were spewing at me. I didn’t let it affect me.

Not back then, at least.

For years, I viewed myself as a Christian.

I was a Christian. I was open to dating any race and was shocked when a White friend lamented the lack of Black boys for me to view as potentials in the school choir we were singing with. Why wouldn’t ANY boy be a potential?

In high school, more Black children started attending my previously White school. One girl in a lower standard (now called a grade) reprimanded me! She told me I thought was all that, busy having only White and Coloured friends. Don’t ask me who I’d have befriended given there was only one black girl in my class at that stage and I’d gone up from junior school with the White girl and knew the Coloured girl from church! (Her mother was Black. My friend was the product of an illicit affair between a married Coloured man and a Black woman. She was being raised by her Black family and didn’t know her father. She was Black (internally and culturally.) But all that angry Black girl saw was my being a sellout.

I seem to have made all races angry just by being me. I’ve been called the k word by an adult who was in the wrong. My children have been pelted with stones by Coloured children. They invited a White boy to play and his mother made sure he never got close to our yard ever again. People have turned around when approaching us just so they don’t have to pass us. We’ve had police called on us just because we were Black. (Too many times we’ve been uppity and lived where only White people are apparently meant to live.) We’ve been followed and stopped by police. Just because we are Black.

That’s my country. My husband asked some Coloured colleagues if it was true that Coloureds hate Black people. He is from a different country and he got along with all races too. His colleagues told him that it actually was true. Many of their relatives expressed great hatred of Black people.

It’s scary and sad.

I like everybody until they give me a reason to reject them. I wish we could all be like that. Don’t hate just because of what my skin is like. Love. ‘Hate’ me if I do something evil. And then pray for me to do right.