‘So which part of the Eastern Cape are you from?” I have come to accept this and “Why have you got a girl’s name?” as questions I will never stop having to answer.
They are a constant reminder of how much is assumed from names.
My Xhosa double-barrelled name makes it “obvious” for some people that I am of Xhosa stock. From eKoloni, as that part of the world is fondly called.
I resent the assumption and refuse to confirm or deny it. My roots are in Dobsonville, Soweto. True, my grandparents could trace their ancestral homes back to what was the Cape Colony. I cannot.
Influx Control laws and the bantustanisation of South Africa ensured that Africans could look at urban life as a temporary encounter that would soon be over as soon as the baas had had enough of us.
We were never allowed to forget our “roots”, so that we would happily pack up and go once our time in “white” South Africa was up.
After a decade of freedom, I surely have the right to say where my roots lie. Ekasi is where, as the Zulus would say, my umbilical cord is buried.
There is something subliminally racist in the question. Nobody ever asks city-based white people where their roots are and whether they intend returning there at Christmas or Easter. They are accepted as naturally belonging where they are.
The constant questions about my and other black people’s roots are a determined plot to deny that our society’s evolution has created a new construct — urban black.
I am one of that new breed. We are more likely to show loyalty to a football club and its supporters than to people who speak the same language or share the same surname.
I belong with those youths whose traditional garb is All Star sneakers, Dickies pants and spotty hats. I am not to be confused with the darkie who thinks nigger-speak and all that represents black America is cool.
I belong with those people who only remember the rituals and customs of “their” people when they are in trouble with the law or have had enough of a windfall to find “someone” to thank for their good fortune. Otherwise, they are at ease with the norms of a secular society.
We are a people who, even if descended from the proverbial Jim who came to Jo’burg and was blinded by the city lights, have cut their rural roots.
My parents’ ethnic origins are not enough to make me honestly say that I belong to the same community. Speaking a language or having a name that suggests a certain ethnic lineage is just not enough for one to become a member. Johnny Clegg is accepted as a Zulu not because he says he is one but because he has embraced their way of life.
The life I know is that of other urban blacks whose identities have little to do with ethnicity.
The stories of my people are those of Abubaker Asvat, Tebogo mRamble and Des Backos, as well as of June 16 1976. It is neither better or worse, it is our experience.
Africans with their rural roots firmly in place will continue to exist and flourish. I am happy for them and often envy them, if only for the fresh air they can call their own.
But that does not mean that those of us who have no “ancestral homes” to speak of are any less African. Nor does it mean we are less in tune with our national identity or that we have necessarily forsaken our solidarity with our kith in the diaspora.
Don’t ask me about my roots again. I am urban and black, finish and klaar. It does not make me any better or worse. It just makes me — me.