In the movie Mr Bones, the lead character, a white guy who for some reason ends up as the chief traditional healer for some black tribe, gave some insight into our fascination with race, particularly regarding white kids who are raised in black communities.
Towards the end of the film Mr Bones, the white sangoma, is called on to help a black woman in labour. He helps bring a bouncing white baby boy to Earth, much to the amazement of the locals, who had assumed that the chief was the child’s father.
The sangoma explains that he slept with the chief’s wife because the chief was too ill to do so. The community accepts his explanation and its members get on with their lives.
Not so for Happy Sindane, the teenager who claims he was abducted from his white family by a black woman many years ago.
There is widespread belief that were Happy a black street child who had emerged from rural homelands to search for his true parents there would not have been the same public interest or media attention. So why the fascination?
For some South Africans the events surrounding Happy’s life bear the hallmark of the Tarzan story, but with the additional dimension of race.
Happy’s drama erupted when the fair-haired ”white” boy walked into Bronkhorstpruit police station and declared, in fluent Ndebele, that he had been kidnapped from his white home by a black domestic worker 12 years earlier.
The police have found no evidence of Happy’s proclaimed abduction. Instead, the statements gathered over the course of the investigation have convinced them that the domestic worker, who Happy referred to as Rina, was most probably his mother.
The police findings, however, do not spell the end of Happy’s story.
Since his emergence from a rural backwater into urban society the media have leapt at various angles of the story and the police appear to have invested an uncharacteristic amount of resources in their effort to track down the boy’s ”real” family.
They even wanted to scale the borders in an effort to find his father. This in a country where thousands of children grow up without knowing their real parents. So what was driving the South African Police Service to carry out such an unprecedented search?
According to police spokesperson Superintendent Morne van Wyk the police’s role in the search for Happy’s biological parents has now ended with the magistrate’s conclusion that ”on the balance of probabilities” the late Rina Mziyaye was his mother.
Van Wyk said the case was now solely in the hands of the Gauteng department of social services and population development which could continue the search for Sindane’s father if it wanted to.
Department spokesperson Panyaza Lesufi denied that government agencies had prioritised Happy’s case above those of other children in similar situations. He said all 6 000 children under the department’s care were given the same treatment.
”It is the media that has treated this as a special case. But I don’t blame them because it challenges the race relations issues and, as we all know, South Africa’s history is characterised by race,” said Lesufi.
He said that Happy would remain in a place of safety until his case was finalised and he was returned to his family. The case resumes on August 19.
Dr Chris van Vuuren a social anthropologist at the University of South Africa believes the attention that Happy’s story has received is indicative of the South African social situation. More particularly that of the white community, which, he said, is caught up in a Tarzan-like fascination with white children being raised by families of another race.
”There have been numerous Hollywood movies made about tribal Indians raising white children in the Amazon jungle. Deep down in the minds of white people especially, there is perception that it is strange or abnormal that a child from a so-called civilised society could be raised in darkest Africa or the Amazon.
”In the South African case, apartheid made us believe that it is inconceivable that a white boy could be raised by black people. They ask themselves what type of morals and values he will have. What they forget is that the kid will grow up just like any other [child] in that community,” said Van Vuuren.
Media specialist Graeme Addison said Happy’s case was a ”very South African story”, but would probably not have received as much attention had Happy been a black boy.
Addison said the attention given to Happy’s story could be positive if it manages to highlight the problems of child neglect and abduction.
”The media will always see a good human interest story. Provided they turn it into a social issue, I’m all for it.
”It should be the media’s social responsibility to realise that this is one in hundreds of thousands of cases and then ask what is to be done.
”The issue should be a syringe to inject a new awareness. It needs to be a political issue.
”Child kidnapping and abduction for muti needs to be a major issue used to tick the consciences of politicians.
”There is no distinction between a black and white kid but a white kid tends to be 10 times more newsworthy than a black one,” said Addison.
For older South Africans Happy’s story might be reminiscent of the ”shame” brought on the Free State town of Excelsior in 1971.
The international media descended on the dorpie, about 100km north-east of Bloemfontein after the discovery that the town fathers, many of whom were leading lights in the National Party, had been running a sex ring involving their black domestic workers.
Some of the disgraced men committed suicide rather than face charges under the Immorality Act, which criminalised inter-racial romances or liaisons.
Bond SA’s Professor Jennifer Wilkinson, who co-authored Sexual Harassment in the Workplace, believes that if Happy’s case is one where an employer took advantage of his mother the story deserves the space it received.
”What this has done is to throw issues such as maintenance, married men impregnating women and then denying it and the shame and psychological effects attached to this problem into the spotlight,” Wilkinson said.
Addison believes Happy’s story ”needs to be dramatised”. If this happens it could very well turn out to be a winning formula in the league of Mr Bones. Leon Schuster’s film grossed R32-million locally before appearing at cinemas across Spain and Germany.