Apartheid, it seems, works. Nearly 10 years since racial segregation was abolished in South Africa, identity is still rooted in race. Or so it would appear from the case of Happy Sindane, the blond Ndebele-speaking boy who walked into a police station last month saying he had been abducted from his white family by their black cleaner at the age of six and brought up among blacks.
He asked the police to help him find his white parents. The story was presented, to the fury of black commentators, as that of a lost white boy who had walked, Tarzan-like, out of the jungle.
The courts demolished the fantasy last week after DNA tests established that Happy had at least one black parent.
Happy has become a national icon. A paint ad used his picture to promote a range of shades from white to dark brown with the slogan: ‘Any colour you can think of…’ Child rights activists have condemned it as exploitative and Happy’s newly acquired lawyer is seeking damages.
More DNA tests are being carried out and police have widened their search to Zimbabwe, where a boy said to be Happy’s half-brother lives.
The story is that he is the product of an affair between a Xhosa woman called Rina and her white boss. Shortly after, she got involved with a black Zimbabwean called Jabulani. After he left, Rina left Happy with a couple near Johannesburg, the Sindanes, and has since died. However, Jabulani says the child was born in 1984, which would make him 19. Tests have now established that Happy is 16.
The Sindanes appear to have been loving guardians. Happy rejected them only because he was due for a rite of passage into manhood, which culminates in the hacking off of the foreskin without anaesthetic. Every year, some boys die. The rites of passage of a white boy — getting drunk and laid — would appear more appealing. Meanwhile, the search for his true parents goes on. – Guardian Unlimited Â