Native tongue Bafana Khumalo
WHY do these things happen to me? I must be cursed. Of all the billions of people in the world, I am the only one who will encounter an alien and the alien will not say anything profound like “take me to your leader”. To other people, yes, he will say something like that, but not to me. To me he will probably ask something inane like “where did you buy your shoes?”
I am rambling about aliens — not Mango’s aliens, you moron — because I am convinced that white folks are aliens. Sent from a different dimension to make life difficult for me. I came to this conclusion after I carried out a detailed study of the Caucasian species. My representative sample of two white males is adequate, I believe.
The first one I came across in one of those great laboratories of human behaviour, a restaurant. I was sitting with a few friends, bonding. My blacker than thou, overly self-loving, self-righteous eye spied a travesty across the room; a black woman sucking the face of a white man, his hands travelling a journey they should have been shy of in the glare of the public eye. I lit a cigarette and started humming the tune from Jungle Fever under my breath. One of my friends muttered: “Mind thine own business, dear friend of mine.”
I shot a glance back at her and, keeping with her manner of speaking, spat out: “‘Tis mine business when I spy a black child lost in the Sodom and Gomorrah of Yeoville.”
She coolly looked at me, with a certain wisdom in the eye, and continued: “‘Tis none of your business, dear friend, for the gentleman of Caucasian extraction possesses a palm that is two times your visage. Glasses are expensive …”
In revolutionary zeal, I had neglected to look at the size of the offending whitey and thought only of my self- righteous blackness and how I could stop this woman from being involved in this sick relationship. I looked at the man and I realised that he was big, nay immense. Worse still, he was gigantic.
He must have sensed what was going through my mind for he decided to walk over to our table and, as his shadow, cast by the candle behind him, loomed over me, he uttered: “Hey chief, do you mind if I borrow your matches?” Now, usually, if a white person were to come up to me and call me chief, my icy, seething response would be: “Can you see an Indian feather headdress on my head?” I would then proceed to tell them that, “I am not a chief, I don’t look like a chief and please don’t call me chief!!!”
Not in this case. Even before I could utter a word, he had grabbed the box of matches off the table, walked away and lit his face- sucking mate’s cigarette. A few seconds later he came back, dropped them on the table and walked away. I had a choice here. I could shout at this white beast to come back and apologise for calling me chief and also thank me profusely for using my matches, and risk the possibility of having his palm wrapped around my face, or keep quiet and lose my reputation as a brother who can stand his ground, no matter the consequences. I chose the latter and I still haven’t had to replace my glasses.
I then decided that the time had come for me to offer my profound goodbyes to my friends and go home. I decided that in the future I will have to come up with a response that will leave both my dignity and looks intact. I found that. I was sitting at a bus stop and a white man came up to me and asked me if I could do him a favour. I smiled wickedly as I thought of the drop-dead beautiful babes, who looked revolutionary, who were also waiting for the bus. “Is it possible for you to come and help me push my car, it’s got a problem with the starter and …”
I looked at him and I said: “No!” I was ready to harangue him and tell him that white people think of us black folk only as their gardeners and chars, but he did not indulge me. He merely said, “OK,” and walked away. I sat back in the little bench and said to myself, “Yeah, I got the white motherfucker …”
I was satisfied with myself until I heard a female voice come from behind, slightly above me: “Why don’t you help him?” it asked. Now, being a person who spends a lot of time with black nationalist feminists, I am constantly hearing the refrain that God is a black woman. Usually I disregard that as the ravings of demented black females. For a second on this day, hearing this voice come down on me, with such feminine authority, I thought that perhaps they knew something I did not know. That is until I looked up behind me to find the question coming from one of the revolutionary babes I was trying to impress. She asked me again why I was not helping this poor white man who had asked me so nicely.
I was astounded. Here I was thinking that the women around me were the Winnie Mandelas of this world and they turn out to be tanned Mother Theresas of this world.
My research was complete. White people are indeed aliens, sent to torment me. I did not want to fight her, so I smiled at her. She thought I was brain dead.