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2013/09/27 10:17 AM
Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
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Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
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Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
Hagen Engler
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Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
First published by MFBooks Joburg, an imprint of Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd, in 2013 10 Orange Street Sunnyside Auckland Park 2092 South Africa +2711 628 3200 www.jacana.co.za © Hagen Engler, 2013 All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-920601-28-7
Also available as an e-book d-PDF ISBN 978-1-920601-29-4 ePUB ISBN 978-1-920601-30-0 mobi ISBN 978-1-920601-31-7 Cover design by publicide Set in Sabon 11/15pt Job no. 002084 See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za iv
Contents
Contents “It’s a fine line to walk”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Min whiteys in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 So how did you guys meet? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Racist Rehab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Elephant dongs, the quest for soul and the pistol in my mouth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 “Fish! I bet they’re talking about fish now!”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Have you thought of learning Xhosa? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Embrace the B, buddy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 New month, new girlfriend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 “Is that an engagement ring, or a quarter-jack of Richelieu?”. . . . 57 Playing touch rugby in the lobola minefield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Witness the whiteness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Stopping dopping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 “Baby’s Wedding Day”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Blue house in my blood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Life as a bungee-jumper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Pulled over by the cops. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 The flagrant fanny of freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Sex and the married man. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 The eye of the beauty beholder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Extreme Transformation: Home Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 “Farrah, please come to my desk for a pencil test”. . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Rich, entitled me, as spokesperson for the downtrodden. . . . . . 137 v
Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
Maxabis’wabelungu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Don’t you greet?!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Superbowl of Greeting: Me and the chief of Zanzibar. . . . The colour of blackness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The legend of Gaddafi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An open letter to the black women of Mzansi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Black babes at the business end of BEE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The other struggle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . So what’s the plan?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Garth the handyman and the time with the shelves. . . . . . . . . . . . Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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143 149 155 165 171 175 181 187 195 205 209
“It’s a fine line to walk”
“It’s a fine line to walk” That’s what she said. “It’s a fine line to walk,” my publisher said, nursing a Ricoffy. “Tell me about it,” said I, freshly shaved and confident. Confident because I’ve not so much walked that line, as I’ve had the line walk me. The same way a treadmill exercises your arse muscles for you. In the same manner, the concept of marrying black girls for guys who aren’t black was not devised by me. It was handed to me, like you get given those massive, soggy cartons of hot wings at the Chicken Licken drive-thru. It’s not a line you walk anyway. You live on that line. You camp on it, you dwell upon it, like an unemployed, homeless person. Or a freelance journalist at least, in a townhouse, quietly trying to write press releases for casinos while your black wife hurls Africanist liberation rhetoric at the television, which is tuned to Third Degree. I don’t need to tell you how uncomfortable that is. Casino work is an ethical challenge, no matter what form it takes. So here goes. Let’s try to write a book rather. Let’s make it one about marrying black girls if you’re not black. And let’s try to walk that fine line between observational humour and thinly varnished bigotry. Let’s try to negotiate that tightrope across the yawning lion pit of political correctness, the one strewn with the professional 1
Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
corpses of more than one columnist, writer, politician and socialmedia practitioner. The idea for this book had its genesis in a column commissioned for a Mahala magazine print edition by Andy Davis. That was relatively successful and the piece later ran in Afropolitan and the Sunday Times. The original lives on at www.hagenshouse.com, where it has – let’s just check – 16 178 views so far! It should be fine. If I can make travelling to Klerksdorp to visit a casino sound like a good idea, I’m pretty sure I can make marrying black women sound interesting.
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Min whiteys in Africa
Min whiteys in Africa This is Africa, after all. So, after a couple of decades of living in Africa, one starts to feel a little embarrassed to not be black. The embarrassment is preceded by a series of insights, realisations and epiphanies about the status quo. These make you wonder how you’ve managed to live a life of such utter, unleavened nonblackness for as long as you have. How, for instance, have you managed to be an English-speaking person, inspired by American movies, Thai food, German motor cars, English literature, TV and football, Italian fashion and Japanese gadgetry and yet have spent your entire life in the south of Africa? How, I ask you? How have you managed it? How do you not speak Xhosa? How have you managed to ignore the Premier Soccer League all your life? How have you not watched one nanosecond of Generations? You’ve also never really listened to Kaya FM. And how do you not know who Malusi Gigaba is? Also, how, for crying in a bucket of prawns, have you lived a life of such promiscuous abandon and not once kissed a black woman? Your ability to eschew black culture has clearly been an exercise in social engineering that would do The Truman Show proud. What kind of a ghetto have your white ancestors constructed for you that you have consorted only with white people and white 3
Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
culture all your life? Who do you think you are? David Koresh? Well, no, just your common-or-garden white South African, really. While we’ve yet to burn ourselves to death in a biblebashing hell of madness like Koresh, we have crafted a unique cult that keeps us blinded by our own ignorant conservatism, all while we proclaim ourselves radical, open-minded liberals. A large part of the blame for this certainly rests upon the pinstriped shoulders of our gold-mining, shop-keeping, farm-tending, law-making ancestors. But we ourselves are certainly not innocent. Apartheid was designed to have a generational legacy, and so it has proved. Privilege is passed on through the ages, in the same way disadvantage is. Take me. In the style typical of every white person you meet, I will deny that I’m rich till I’m blue in the face. But privileged? Well, I’d have to admit I probably am. As a callow youth, when it became clear I needed a job, I had the wherewithal to get one. I was comfortable speaking English, I was computer literate, my parents had paid for me to get a university degree and I had transport in the form of the HagenWagen, a second-hand station wagon. I also lived near the centre of my city, and my family had a network of contacts that could help me find a job. And lo and behold, word came that there was a job for a community reporter at Algoa Sun, where my friend Liezl worked in sales. Her dad used to take us surfing at Seal Point. The editor asked me in for an interview and he liked my face. He was Peter, a member of the Springbok Stein Club, a group of beer-drinking older gentlemen who convened at the Hume Park sports club. They remembered my dad from the old days. Rich? No. Privileged? Yes. Around that time I had a friend, Thembelani, who was much the same age as me. This being the dawn of our new democracy, Thembelani, aka Themba or Soul, enjoyed the same political rights 4
Min whiteys in Africa
as me. However, those rights were pretty much theoretical given his practical situation. He grew up in Silvertown in the townships of Grahamstown. His mom was a vegetable seller of limited means. He hadn’t seen his dad for a while. He attended township school, where he matriculated with an E average. His English was rudimentary. He had no car and no driver’s licence. He’d never used a computer. How do you even apply for a job if you can’t use a computer! Despite all this, Themba was an intelligent person who enjoyed the respect of his peers and often took a leadership role in social situations. He was proud and self-assured. But in a town like Grahamstown, where your job opportunities run to becoming a petrol attendant or minding a stall for two weeks during the National Arts Festival, proud self-assurance can be a hindrance as much as a help. Soul would consistently secure jobs, then get fired for “cheek” or for a “lack of respect”. Once I started working, I would invite him down to Port Elizabeth, where I lived, to see if we could find work for him there. I was surprised to find that when I brought him together with friends of mine who had businesses, he became either meek and deferential, or quiet and sullen. The proud self-assurance that had set him apart in his home environment seemed to vanish in the presence of white authority. Even if that white authority was my mate Chris who ran a handyman contracting business pulling leaves out of gutters. Me, on the other hand, well of course I was comfortable among white people. I’d lived among them all my life. I knew some of them, or at least they knew my parents via via. If I don’t know him by name I know him by face, is the vibe. Min whiteys in Africa. It would be ludicrous for me to have any issues around how I should act around whites. Should I be meek or assertive, sullen or militant? How ridiculous! This man interviewing me for the 5
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reporter’s job was Peter, a guy whose wife ran the eatery in the same shopping centre as Cassidy’s, where we went jolling every Friday. On my first day at work, my new boss took us for welcome drinks at the Blinking Owl in Cape Road, next door to Pelo’s, which was my first local café. My colleague Lance invited me to audition for his Shakespeare production at Mannville in St George’s Park, where John Gibbs and I used to play tennis, where I used to go watch Olympics play club rugby, where I watched Robbie Armitage score 144 for Eastern Province against Transvaal. I was so comfortable in this world that I felt entitled to a job. I knew I could perform, I knew the social codes backwards, the people felt comfortable with me and welcomed me aboard as the next in a long line of… well, in my case, journalists and newspapermen, but I’ll bet the same situation played itself out in numerous industries across South Africa in those years. The white culture bubble perpetuated itself through its spawn and its class culture and looked forward to generations of the same. Then democracy had to come and fuck everything up! Or save the day, depending on your perspective. But from these early days of the New South Africa, there came a growing sense of the end of an era, the fin of a siècle. The denouement of a plot. That white dominance thing was coming to an end. Sure, because of the entrenched culture of class dominance, it would take a couple of generations to unwind, but as inevitably as Jon Voight pegs at the end of The Champ, the whiteys’ dominance in Africa was sure to come to an end. For yours truly, and I’m sure for most white people, this wasn’t the end of the world, just a fact of life. Also, it didn’t seem quite real. There was Mr Mandela in Parliament, there was Mr Faku at City Hall, Mr Mhlaba in Bhisho, but in the Algoa Sun newsroom it was still me and Lance and Peter. Even when Thando arrived, there was no material change in our circumstances. 6
Min whiteys in Africa
I’d been raised to be perfectly civil to black people. K-bombs were a rarity at our braais, and one of my earliest memories is dropping our maid off in the township and being taken to the Progressive Federal Party fete. “Kies Kettlewell” was the rather optimistic PFP slogan at that time, when the liberal opposition were rocking six members of the South African Parliament out of 165. I was quite sure of my struggle credentials. But I’d barely finished high-fiving myself for going to Themba’s umgidi for coming out of the bush, for bravely venturing again into darkest Africa, when I started noticing blacks properly. They were different blacks. It was 1995, and these blacks had confidence. They were returned exiles, students, professionals... I was shocked at how little deference they showed me. Me! Handsome me, with my flowing blond locks, my youthful good looks as yet unsullied by, by… oh, booze, dagga, heartbreak and sleep deprivation, for instance. Those good looks counted for nothing for these people. That I was the scion of a dynasty begun at a service station in Port St Johns and now risen to economic respectability counted for less than fuck-all. They took my narrowmindedness for granted until proven otherwise. And I certainly skipped any opportunity to prove otherwise. I began to sense something. Not that they ever told me, these people. These assertive new black people. The Xhosa-speaking lady I met at Barney’s Tavern, who had been lecturing at a Berlin university until she could return from exile. Michael, in the thick spectacles, who might’ve been studying fashion design at Tech. They never said it in so many words, but the implication hung in the air every time I said, “Gee, you look a lot like Martin Luther King,” when I actually meant Malcolm X. When my only Xhosa phrase turned out to be, “Ndifun’ ukutheng’ intsangu,” and I was proud of it! Then, this look crossed their faces for a second, before vanishing. I’d seen that look before, though, and I recognised it. Was it possible that… 7
Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
Could it be that I was an idiot? Even worse, could I be an ignorant racist idiot? Even though my mom canvassed for the PFP in the Eighties? Even though I once sent my black friend money for a plumbing course? Despite the fact that we once gave our maid our old washing machine! It appeared plausible. Could it be, that you could be racist and not even know it? Had I been racist all along? Was I still one now, even in the throes of my epiphany? Good grief! Flabbergasted, shocked and ashamed at these intimations of my own ignorance, I put them to the back of my mind and commenced partying like a demon.
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So how did you guys meet?
So how did you guys meet? This is by far the most common question asked of a mixed couple. A biracial couple. A couple in a mixed relationship. Whatever it’s supposed to be called. The kind of couple who would both be in jail for pomping if this was 1983. “So how did you guys meet?” It’s asked as often by black people as white people. The implication is that black and white cultures are still distinct, and that we are therefore less likely to interact in a cultural milieu. Upon which implication I call a massive, screaming bullshit! You create your own reality, and these days the various white and black entertainment options are not exclusive. In even the blackest gatherings, at L’Vovo Derango concerts, at ANC rallies, at spokenword poetry nights… at all of these there will be a handful of intrepid non-blacks enjoying the proceedings. Likewise, at Bulls rugby games, social cricket matches at Joburg Country Club and ladies’ book club gatherings, there will be a sprinkling of darker complexions. I believe in the hippie, New Age ethos of visualising your reality and making it happen. Isn’t that what The Secret is about? You think really hard about something until it comes true? Or is that praying? Of course, you also have to actively go out and make it happen. 9
Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
So, in the case of beautiful black women, with whom South Africa is blessed to the point of embarrassment, if you want to meet one, you go to where the blacks are. It’s no big mystery. The catch, of course, is that where the blacks are, there are fewer nonblacks, so you’ll be outnumbered. But don’t be scared. The worst that could happen is you’ll lose your cellphone. And that could happen anywhere. Think of it as a massive, incredible opportunity to hang with the blacks and experience their vibe. Depending on where you go, you could learn to hlokoloza, listen to the best poetry you’ve heard in your life, behold their upscale fabulosity, find out how politics actually works, drink brandy and tonic, try ulusu, umleqwa, dombolo, umngqusho, magwinya, amanqina or even those deep-fried fish spines, if you get the urge. You could try all this and spark a conversation over a drink the same as you would anywhere. Meet the people. Just as they no doubt said about launching Po10c, go where your target market is. With Po10c they had to go to the David Guetta-blasting, pop-house tent at Matric Rage in Plett. For you, looking to meet black girls, I suggest Bassline in Newtown, Johannesburg. That’s where I met my lovely lady. Kwaito night at the Bassline. I think it was the oke who kept posing for photos with me who got my cellphone, but fuck it, it was a Philips. So there I am, one whitey amongst the blacks like a drop of Oros in a half-litre beer mug of water. Lebo Mathosa is on stage doing a rendition of Vumani Bo with a clutch of dancers, thighs working... There’s a version of line-dancing classic The Bus taking shape on the dance floor around me, and I cannot dance. Well let’s clarify that, I can do exactly one dance. In the course of my going-out-to-nightclubs existence, I have put together one single idiosyncratic dance that I can call my own. It is a simple dance of four steps in a figure eight, with handclaps and clicking 10
So how did you guys meet?
of the fingers. It is based on the movements of the guy from Jamiroquai in that one video. The Bus is not that dance. I have watched The Bus from a distance many times. Ideally I watch from above, on a balcony, somewhere safe, where there is no danger of me having to actually do the dance. I observe such dances from a distance, as an anthropologist, clicking my fingers and musing to myself, “Hell, the blacks can dance!” This time at the Bassline, I’m in the throng. It’s during the people, and the people are dancing. It’s a highly allegorical phenomenon that when an entire crowd is dancing, one person not dancing is destabilising. If you just stand there immobile in the middle of the dance floor like a rhythmless white person, you can cock up the entire line dance. You can crash The Bus! So much better to just stumble along, clumsily trying to copy everybody else. You half get it right, cock it up, get it a bit more right and gradually become acceptable. Look, you’re still embarrassing yourself, but less so all the time. And as the mortification dissipates, one finds a certain joy in one’s own ridiculousness. Soon after that, you start actually having fun. So that’s where I’m at, just about enjoying my own shambolic version of The Bus, when I spot Baby. She is leaving the dance floor to fetch a drink or visit the bathroom or whatever. She’s facing the crowd, and I catch a glimpse of her. Mmmm. We’ve been introduced before, we’ve been at the same events before, but this is the first time, how shall we say… This is the first time we’re both alone and unattended. I bus sideways three big hops so that I totally intercept her as she’s squeezing between a Rasta lady in an indigo headwrap and Sanza from Yfm. I engineer it so she’s right in front of me and our faces are about 13 centimetres from one other. So our eyeballs don’t so much lock across a crowded room as physically bump 11
Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
into each other in a tight queue for the Ladies’. Hey, she recognises me! She even smiles. She’s coming back now, but it looks like I’ve made some kind of impression, because on her way back she collects me and has me join her group of girlfriends in their dancing. And so we meet. We dance The Bus badly and I do the Jamiroquai. We bump hips. I meet Lonwabo, Lesego, Sibu, Zam, Thumeka, Tam-Tam and a couple of other girls whose names I instantly forget. I’m thrilled to note that Baby is not a particularly good dancer. Acceptable, sure. Better than me, of course, but she’s no Lebo Mathosa. For the first time I start thinking maybe we might be compatible. I start scheming. Visualising. Getting my Secret on. That is my How We Met story, and this is my book, so I’m sticking to it. Baby, though, has a totally different version. I don’t think she enjoys the version where we meet in a crowded, sweaty nightclub in Joburg’s inner city. The version that she goes with when asked is different. Her version fleshes out one of those times I mentioned – remember, where we’d been introduced a couple of times? She turns one of those introductions into the pivotal moment around which the subsequent whitening of her name would turn. So ask Baby where we met and she’ll probably tell you it was at a larney restaurant, at Browns of Rivonia. If you want to get technical, it was actually at the Port Elizabeth Cool Runnings that I first blessed mine eyes upon Baby. But that meeting has battled to become the stuff of legend. The legendary one is that sweaty summer night at the Bassline with Lebo Mathosa, Zola, Brickz and me doing the Jamiroquai. One of the min whiteys in the house. That version supports my thesis of visualising the kind of woman you want – like it says in The Secret – and then going out 12
So how did you guys meet?
to where she’s likely to be, and finding her. I was picturing a black woman with aquiline, almost Ethiopian features, curves, dreadies and a hypnotic smile that makes you want to give up all your secrets. Someone like that one girl we met at the PE Cool Runnings the night Kendal’s band played. According to my calculations, I was most likely to find such a person at kwaito night, ragga night, spoken-word poetry night at the Horror Café, or perhaps somewhere jazzy like the Blues Room. I figure it was better to be outnumbered, one of a minority of white faces in the crowd, than to retreat to some of my overwhelmingly white hangouts in the north of Jozi and expect to find my African queen there. Luckily, as I always say, there are min whiteys in Africa. It’s not difficult to throw away your white self-absorption and cast yourself bodily into the wave of blackness. That’s where you meet black people, not to mention a fair approximation of reality. Black people in a white-dominated environment – your office in Sandton, say – might be apprehensive, suspicious even. They are outnumbered, after all, and battling to overcome the systematic racism of an exploitive capitalist hegemony. You can debate this till the cows come home, chair your company’s transformation forum and invite every black colleague in the place for drinks at the Brazen Head, but in the pale, male cafeteria of your corporate headquarters is not where you’ll find interracial love. The love of the common people is to be found among them. Out there where reality sits, unvarnished, unprotected, integrated. Another tendency us lovers of things black tend to do is to fetishise that blackness. We’re sometimes guilty of loving something because of its black nature, not because of its essence. I do this all the time. You can call it racism, and I’d probably agree with you, since I believe all of us are a bit racist. But more of that later. Do you find yourself making a point of going across to talk 13
Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
to the only black person in the room? Is that because they’re the only black? Do you love the sound of spoken Xhosa? Love the way the blacks dance? Their whole manner, the way they seem so unaffected, so unpretentious. (Well, the ones who aren’t pretending to be American urban pop stars.) Do you find black women’s arses just so sexy? Their complexions, hey! Yoh! And the way they move. On the minus side, more black women tend to be knock-kneed in my estimation. Dibanisile Madolo, I believe it’s called. The meeting of the knees. Just look, you’ll notice. The minute you start doing that, observing black people anthropologically – that is your inner racist at work. You’re seeing your fellow Africans as cultural curios, as “other” than you. The implication is that you and your kind are normal, and that these other people are deviations from the norm, and fascinating because of it. Meanwhile, white people are in fact in the minority. If anything, we are the deviation from the norm. And what is a norm anyway? There are no norms. Every single one of us has something bizarre about us. Just open your eyes. Have you ever noticed how enormous white people’s ears are? They’re like fuckin’ hang-glider wings! Christ! Have you noticed how pink in the face white men become after they turn 60 or so? Greek women can develop chest hair! Indian women have sideburns and this thing in their lower back, where they’re always sitting up super straight, like they’re wearing a corset. Coloured people love to quarrel with each other… See? None of that is true. The one about knock-knees, especially. My wife will moer me. Crass generalisations are the very foundation of racism – even if generalisations are your basis for actually liking a certain group of people, and you condescendingly reach out to them because of it. How would you feel if you were white, and this black guy came 14
So how did you guys meet?
around to take your daughter to dinner and you asked him what he liked best about her, and he said, “That she’s white. I love how they’ve got such narrow hips.” That wouldn’t be so lekker, would it? Meidnaai in die vrugteboord, as Koos Kombuis termed it, occurred because the fruit farmers found their female workers attractive. But that didn’t make it any less racist. It was a shameless exploitation of power relations, by men who had fetishised the bodies of their servants. So, ja. Saying, “Jirre, but those blacks can run,” while watching the Olympics is not going to ingratiate you to your black neighbours. It is a racist insult clothed in a compliment. You are generalising. We try not to do that so much. Anyway. There’s me, just come back from the Bassline, where I’ve met this sexy black woman. And after getting a new cellphone and a bit of detective work, I know how to get hold of her. Whether I find her sexy because I’m fetishising her blackness, I’m not yet sure. All I know is, I’d like to see her again. She’s got those awesome boobs that some of the sisters get, but her nose is narrower than that of most blacks.
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Racist Rehab
Racist Rehab It is my contention that we are all racists, here in South Africa. It is the national pastime. And it is worth understanding that you can certainly be a racist without realising it. While explicitly not wanting to be a racist, it is still possible to be a racist. Saying, “I’m not racist,” for instance, doesn’t automatically mean you’re not a racist. One of the founding principles of racism is ignorance, after all. Colonialism, that most racist of undertakings, was founded on the assumption that imperialism was in the best interests of the colonised/conquered subjects. It was the white man’s burden to uplift the unfortunate savages. Slavery was excused as a commercial venture mainly aimed at bringing religion to the spiritually bereft peoples of the dark continent. Likewise, all modern white people have a stock reason why their racism isn’t racism. Why they don’t see race. They might say, “Oh, I was born in Botswana.” But this doesn’t automatically exempt you from our racist ranks. Sure, Botswana was freed from colonialism long before South Africa was. But if you learned non-racism between the ages of nought and seven, and then moved to South Africa and attended the most elitist private school in the country… In fact, one of those established to perpetuate colonialism and the idea that some people are innately better than others because of who they are... That was ample time 17
Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
to learn racism. Ample time. Racism can be learned, sadly. In the same way xenophobia can. I’ve even experienced that bizarre moment where an immigrant tries to bond with me – also a recent arrival – by blaming “the immigrants” for all the country’s woes! “I grew up on a farm,” is another common reason advanced for why someone couldn’t possibly be racist. Oh ja? But other farm dwellers were Eugene Terre’blanche, PW Botha and BJ Vorster – a man who hated the English so much that he supported the Nazis in World War II! After that he became an apartheid icon and eventually replaced Hendrik Verwoerd in systematically subjugating the blacks of South Africa. So don’t think a farm heritage precludes you from being a racist. Okay, so you probably speak an African language and well done for that, but you still need to check yourself for racism, as we all should. Another way of exonerating yourself from any question of racism – and one I’ve used myself – is to say you’ve worked with black people all your life. Just ask Mzwandile, who was your driver for two months on that contract in Graaff-Reinet? Or Sam, with whom you worked in the newsroom for six years and your best party trick was to ask him to remind you what “Your arse!” is in isiXhosa? One of the basics of workplace racism and exploitation is that the people are working together! Struggle credentials also don’t inoculate you against contracting the sneaky infection of racism. Life is a journey, and where you were in 1988 is not where you’ll be in 2014. Some highly prejudiced statements have been uttered by so-called liberals because they are disappointed by the current ANC government. Attending some marches in the Eighties doesn’t give you a free pass to evict farm workers, beat shoplifters or call corrugated iron “kaffir sheeting” with a little smirk. Also, just because your recent racist utterance was also spoken by a black person in a similar context doesn’t mean it’s not racist. 18
Racist Rehab
“Sentletse said the same thing on Twitter,” you might gasp. And he’s black! So it can’t be racist! Er, actually, it is if you say it. The same statement that is biting sarcasm uttered by a black person can become horrifically racist when spoken by a white person. You’re white, that means you can’t say Jacob Zuma’s current bedside reading consists of Hustler, Playboy and Penthouse. I know, it’s terribly unfair, but that’s racism for you. Same with the K-word, the N-bomb and anything to do with whether there were “proper blacks” at the Cape in 1652. Can’t say it if you’re white. I’ve spent my entire life utterly convinced I’m not a despicable racist. And consistently, every time I look back at the person I was three years ago, I realise that, okay, I was a bit of a racist then. Of course, one is in a state of constant improvement. A state of Racist Rehab, if you will. When things get messy on Facebook, and a bunch of us racists start dropping R-bombs on each other, I like to take the moral high ground and say, “I know. I’m also a racist, but I’m in recovery.” In fact, it’s hard to be anything else, having been raised in a country where race is the currency of any kind of success, where the class oppression common worldwide is so closely grafted to skin colour. The concept of racism is based on the idea that there are races. A fair case can be made for race being a figment of our imagination, seeing as all humans are genetically identical. Unfortunately, when it comes to doggedly inventing racial categories, South Africans are highly imaginative. For centuries, we’ve stubbornly clung to the idea that there are vastly different complexions, identities, cultures, languages, physiologies and more. Blame the settlers, the Voortrekkers, the Zulus, the imperialists, the mining cartels, the Afrikaners, the Africanists, the nationalists, the capitalists, the Youth League or the Freedom Front Plus, but all of us believe there are races. And the minute you believe that, you start making generalisations, comparisons and value judgements. Ta-dah! You’re a racist! 19
Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black
In countries like the UK, where everyone speaks the same language, with an overwhelmingly urban, first-world culture, similar literature and folklore, similar income levels and similar cultural reference points, to talk about racial differences seems churlish, childish, unsophisticated and, by definition, racist. To insist that, for instance, Chelsea footballers Ashley Cole and John Terry are of different races is to totally miss that point. They are millionaire footballers, Londoners and Englishmen first, and black or white people a distant eleventh or so. Distinguishing appearance characteristics aside, they have just about everything in common. Including, some would say, that they are a couple of massive cocktonsils. Of course, on the football field, John Terry can whip out the racial slurs with the worst of them. But an FA commission of enquiry found that despite calling QPR’s Anton Ferdinand a “f****** b**** c***”, he was not a racist. A twat then? He was supported in his case by the aforementioned Ashley Cole, who initially testified that he only heard Terry call his opponent a f***** c***. Later, he asked for his testimony to be amended to include the word “black”. En route he also tweeted that the English FA were “a bunch of twats”. Charming, no? A nation of twats, one might speculate, and who knows? But today the British are, generally speaking, not a nation of racists. Their distinguishing social categories are class-based, descended from the ancient “estates of the realm”, where social castes were determined by birth. Today one can rise out of the class of one’s parents, or sink below it, but it’s bloody hard. As Andrew Gillingham notes in The Telegraph, Britons today are far more likely to suffer from class discrimination than racism. So, for instance, British Pakistanis tend to be working class, poor or unemployed, but their fellow diaspora from the subcontinental 20
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colony, the British Indians, are often better educated and more affluent than whites. Why? Because British Indians are the descendants of traders and merchants, while Pakistanis and Bangladeshis came to Britain to work in factories. The class of the immigrants from half a century ago has largely determined the fortunes of their descendants. Working-class Pakistanis and blacks are joined in their straitened circumstances by millions of white people descended from the working classes of the industrial revolution and recently betrayed by the collapse of British manufacturing. Immigrants to Britain are also likely to join the ranks of the working classes, and these are as likely to be white-skinned Polish people, Portuguese, Czechs or Greeks as Africans or Asians. Any discrimination in Britain is today more likely to be against immigrants as a class, than any particular so-called “race group”. The think tank “British Future” found in a survey that most Britons see immigration as the biggest problem facing their society. But enough about Britain. Back home in South Africa, we certainly believe in the existence of race and we have let it shape the very destiny of our country for centuries. Despite the arrival of democracy 20-odd years ago, race and class are practically synonymous. To be black is to be poor, while to be white is to be, if not rich, then gifted with a set of social advantages unknown to most of our black compatriots. That would be the aforementioned set of circumstances that equipped me to type up this weighty tome of scintillating analysis, while my contemporary Thembelani today languishes in the same Silvertown township he grew up in eRhini. It’s a kind of systematic racism, where the system itself perpetuates the prejudice. There’s democracy and freedom of opportunities, technically, officially. But to take advantage of those opportunities – sending your kid to the best school, say – you need money. To get money you need a job. To get the job, you need 21
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education. To get the right education, you need to stay in the right area. To stay there, your parents need money. And where does that come from? From the past several generations of the same system being in place. You can change the legal system, but the economic one is slow to budge. Witness the case of me and Baby. My folks are white, Baby was raised by a single black woman. Both families are in Port Elizabeth. Baby’s mom and my parents have the same rights, and “opportunities”, but the reality is that after 20 years of that, a retired teacher lives in Motherwell township NU5. Retired civil engineering contractors live in leafy, affluent Walmer. When the oppression of black people has been in place for so long that it’s soaked into the fabric of the economy, you no longer have to legislate racism for it to still exist. The injustice persists. You do need to legislate to get rid of it, though. I guess that’s where Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) comes in. Systematic racism aside, though, I personally am a racist in recovery. We try to embrace the liberal values, or the Africanist ones, or whichever are the best ones. But every now and then, my PFP genes shine through. You know when you start a statement during a dinner debate and as it comes out of your mouth, you realise you haven’t quite thought it through and you’re about to say something so un-PC you’ll take months to come back from it? But it’s too late to take the sentence in any different direction, and everyone’s looking at you, so you just have to follow through and pretend you really do believe that? Well, that’s me. “I spend a lot of time in Alexandra township and the streets are just filthy. You’d think the people, well, you’d think they’d take pride. You know, they should do something about it.” 22
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To which my long-suffering wife will say, “Well, when last did you clean the streets here in Sandton where we live?” The truth is I never have. I don’t know why the streets of Sandton are a hundred times cleaner than Alex, which is two kays away. But I know it’s not coincidental that the people here earn more money. It could be that Ward 91 is a DA ward. But then parts of Alex fall into the same ward, so go figure. The black-led ANC has improved black people’s lives enormously, but not to the point where they are as good as white people’s. So there’s got to be some systematic racism at work, if a party geared to using all the levers of state power to reverse inequality still can’t do it. It’s the system, man. And the system is there for me! So I’m a beneficiary even though I have no clue how this thing runs. You cannot for love or money find out who exactly is running this thing. It’s not like there is a shadowy cabal of white illuminati holding monthly meetings where they discuss the management of the systematic economic racism system. Unless that’s what the okes at the Free Market Foundation do, but I don’t think so. So I’ve come up in a racist system, I’m a beneficiary of a racist system… My mindset and set of values were created in a racist system I benefited from… There’s no way I’m not a racist. The best we can do is accept that we need work and try to change. Until that happens – if it ever does – don’t be too hard on yourself. I’m a racist, and I’m pretty sure my black wife is too. I know Steve Biko would disagree. He said racism is discrimination by one group to enforce subjugation of another, and therefore blacks cannot be racist. But for our purposes here, I think everybody can be racist. Especially if it means copying someone’s accent badly. And I’ve heard Baby doing coloured accents big time when Ashwin Willemse comes on the TV. Or 23
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when we’ve just come from a comedy show. My coloured accent’s better than hers, though. That comes from hanging out with coloured people at jazz night at the Golden Fountain in Salsoneville. It has made me a better racist than her. But it’s a close-run thing. We’re both pretty bad. The lingua franca in our household these days is an ironic township patois. We sit in front of TV mocking the accents of every single person who comes on the screen. We totally believe in the creation of a free, democratic, nonracist and non-sexist South Africa. But until we get there, we’re a couple of racists and we deserve each other. If you’re a racist too, don’t be too down on yourself. Acceptance is the first step to changing. You can also date a black girl, marry her, and have a whole lot of coloured children. It might help you learn not to be so racist. That’s what I’m hoping happens to me!
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Acknowledgements
Other titles by Hagen Engler Life’s a Beach Water Features Greener Grass Magnum Chic Buttons for Gaia Comrade Baby
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