Native tongue Bafana Khumalo
IF ever there was a darkie with a serious identity problem, it’s got to be yours truly. For all my life I thought that I was black and I acted black. I always insisted on being called black, something which some of my liberal acquaintances were not comfortable with. You see, they thought it was an insult to call somebody “black” so they came up with all sorts of euphemisms like “people of colour” and “non-white”, thinking it was less offensive.
I was so black you could not see me in the dark.
That was then. And now? I recently I discovered that I was going green. It started around the eyes and within a couple of days, it had spread to cover my entire body.
This new green streak I discovered on my trip to the United States. (Henceforth most of my conversations will contain some detail of “When I was in America”. Who knows, I might even get a job on the telly for having been in the US and I will be known as the Arsenio Hall of South Africa.)
Anyway, when I was in America and cursing the Americans for the way they were infringing upon my rights as a smoker, I realised that they may have something going here. For even though their streets were full of smog and their industries were belching columns and columns of smoke, the fresh air in restaurants or other enclosed areas was … was … I hate saying this, but I will say it all the same for I am a man of integrity. It was bloody beautiful to breathe good clean air, even if the air was being churned out by a machine which some scientist is going to discover is burning a huge hole on the other side of the ozone layer, the side we have not been looking towards.
This revelation brought about a chain reaction of conscientisation. A shaft of light appeared in the streets of New York. I thought that this truly was a miraculous experience until I saw that the light came from an overhead electronic billboard.
I watched as the huge American cars coursing up and down, stopping and going as the need arose. I watched those huge automobiles as they avoided exuberant young people on roller blades and bicycles. I saw that these young people who seemed to have a death wish had covered their nostrils with surgical masks to protect themselves from the fumes of the cars.
At that point “Dear me,” thought I, “what is happening to my planet?” If we are to have an environment that is healthy are we going to have to rely on person-made machines like air-conditioners? That is when I made the decision to do something for my earth.
When I was doing this I will confess, I was not different from the liberal of old who used to see a racist event and wring his or her hands and say: “What can I do? There must be something that I can do!” Thereafter they would go out and buy The Weekly Mail — when it was a real trendoid newspaper with substance — and feel that they were doing “something for the struggle”.
I might have been similar to them, but I was going to be different. I was not going to buy a environmental magazine or go to a play about the environment, I was going to take the bull by the horns as it were. No, I will not stop writing this column. Using bad language doesn’t qualify as an environmental hazard. So, unfortunately for you, my face will still be on this page.
I have decided that leaving environmental issues to white, ponytailed people who go out to the Tsitsikama forest and hug trees is not going to save my planet. No tree hugging for yours truly, those damn things are very scratchy. They are beautiful to look at and cleanse the air of some of the toxic gases, but they are scratchy. I will save them at a distance.
I am going to become an enviro-comrade. This should not be difficult to do for the enemy is the same as that of the other former comrades. The enemy is the same racist, fascist, capitalist class who are more interested in profit margins than the future of my planet.
I am going to be doing something practical and useful. So, the next time I go to buy shoes or clothing, the reams of paper they give to me I will politely give back to the sales assistant. If they think that I will buy their product and still take their garbage which they do not contribute toward recycling, they don’t know whom they are dealing with. This is a new me, with a calling. To save my earth from their greedy, mangy little paws.
The next time a company calls to say that they want to send me information about their new, environmentally friendly product, I will tell them that, instead of faxing me a copy, using paper from murdered trees — yes murdered, brutally murdered — they should rather recite the information for me. That will teach them I am an enviro-comrade and I call on all the people to do that.
Phambili, with the struggle of the environment What’s the other part of slogan again? Oh yes. Phambili!