what is a south african?

Below is my response in the form of a Letter to the Editor to Ivor Chipkins' article in The Times of 11 May 2010:

Ivor Chipkins’ comments “What is a South African?” (May 11, 2010) touches on an area of deep national significance: the present social crisis in our country. What are we celebrating sixteen years on from 1994? We should be celebrating a society driven by our Constitutional norms of tolerance, respect and equality; but we are not. This points to massive failure of political leadership, and it is not the fault of Apartheid any longer.

One of my most painful experiences after voting for the ANC in 1994 was filling in a government form that required me to define myself by race, and sixteen years later I am still required to do so. I objected to being classified this way during Apartheid, and the fact that I continue to be classified this way means that I have not yet experienced freedom in the land of my birth. I accepted in 1994 that race classification may be necessary for righting the wrongs of Apartheid, but after sixteen years I am only convinced that it has sustained racially negative perceptions and classist attitudes.

When will I be allowed to forget that I am “White” and be allowed to remember that I am South African? I may be, in Max du Preez’ words, a “pale native”, but I am a native none-the-less.

Government needs to take our Constitution seriously, and lead from the front. Our leaders, from Mr Zuma down, need to renounce the present essentialist focus on race and culture, and focus our society on the essential principles of our Constitution: tolerance, respect, equality.

It interests me that, despite the debacle in Mr Malema’s disciplinary hearing (May 14, 2010), he was pulled up for his lack of respect. Perhaps there is hope here that the ANC has not truly lost its heart, and that our confidence shown in the ANC in the 1994 elections was not in vain?

Mark R D Long, Pretoria

i am home

I have just completed Max du Preez' book, Pale Native: Memories of a Renegade Reporter, Zebra Press, 2003. As an Afrikaner Max touches on the complexity of being African and pale (page 5):

I am a native of this land, but unlike most other natives, I am pale.

This statement launches Max du Preez' narrative, one that touches regularly – and disturbingly – on events that have been as formative on my existence as on his. I, too, am a pale native (born in Johannesburg), though I lack the roots in Afrikaner identity that plays backdrop to Max’s story. I am a product of the British Empire, but no less connected to the African soil. Like many of my composite tribe, my heritage is a patchwork of belonging: my maternal line bequeaths me a third generation African heritage (and a second generation Scottish!). My adopted paternal line allows me second generation African status, and my biological paternal line a second generation English heritage. All this taken into account, I am more African than English; not Afrikaner, but African none-the-less.

My siblings, perhaps more African than I by birth, have abandoned the African soil, preferring the nourishment of England. They are not alone, a part of the “pale native” Diaspora of this generation who find nourishment on other continents, but whose souls never quite settle, never quite inhabit their adopted cultures. There is a thirst for home, for the African soil – sometimes acknowledged. Unlike them, I remain. What keeps me rooted?

There is much in the New South Africa that makes me feel uncomfortable in a pale skin, even unwelcome. A greater part of that discomfort lies in history, an awareness that we have contributed to the oppression and rape of Africa, the heritage of our Colonial past and the more recent evil: Apartheid. It is an ancestral guilt, not always personal but collective.

Pale Native addresses much of this discomfort, and in so doing creates a new space for belonging. Max du Preez, as he shares his own struggles as an Afrikaner who seeks to break with the traditions of his tribe, brings me to a new place of certainty, a renewed assuredness that I, too, belong. The African soil is my home. With Max I am able to proclaim – proudly – that,

My soul is not the soul of a bywoner … I call myself a native of Africa: pale, but no less native. (pages 5 and 274)

I feel the passion as I read,

The energy that I feel gushing from the soil, my African soil, through my foot soles and into my spirit tells me who I am. The ancient mountains and valleys around me whisper to me that I am where I belong. Forces much greater than loud-mouthed politicians and my own fears and insecurities have placed me exactly here at this time. I am who I should be and where I should be (page 5).

I am home.

Rennie D
2 January 2007