When my son was three, I had to take him and the baby to Khayelitsha to do a job because the nanny was ill. After a longish silence in which he stared out of the window at the world outside, he remarked: ”Mom, I think most of the people here speak Xhosa.”
Typical of a parent born before 1990, I thought: ”How odd that he didn’t remark that they are black.”
It dawned on me that race consciousness is not as inherent in people as I had assumed. I was kind of proud of my little boy. I was also worried. Would he be able to accept the reality that in South Africa his being white would be a factor at some stage? That still-dominant stereotypes would demand that he is expected to not have rhythm, to enjoy playing and watching rugby and have the propensity to regard himself as superior by nature, and be good at maths? Could it be, I asked myself, that his generation would be oblivious to colour and, in the words of that great Africanist, Robert Sobukwe, live in a country where the colour of one’s skin was as irrelevant as the shape of one’s ear?
Having had time to reflect on things, I think it would be a sad day if my son forgot that he was white. I want him to embrace and be proud of his whiteness. To be proud, not because it makes him superior to other humans of other colours, but because white is the colour of a people who refuse to succumb to oppression.
I want him to know that white is still the colour of wealth, ignorance and opportunity. Colour and class are still indivisible in South Africa; and since when did white men become the new oppressed?
My son would do well to know that our celebrations of 12 years of freedom are not meant to pretend that we have slain all our dragons. Instead of being rightfully angry about the past, it would give me greater pleasure for Oliver to know that he is a citizen of a country where the majority of people refused to be defined by, or surrender to, those who had the guns and the jackboot.
Oliver, I hope, will know that his middle-class background does not make him less white, but that he is the fruit of the hard work of many — sometimes terribly misguided — people, as well as their skewed privileged status. These are the people who scraped out livings, while believing that trade unions for black people fighting for a living wage needed to be stamped out. People who — if they were still alive — would hate the waBenzi, and the dual fact that some blacks wear Hugo Boss, while others still knock on doors for jobs in badly washed jeans. People who, basically, hate the fact that most of their countrymen are not white.
It would be unfair if I hid from him that the residues of institutional racism will surface at some point and will want him to believe that his entire race’s contribution to a better South Africa was negligible. And that he will hear some poor sods tell him that had it not been for Jan van Riebeeck and his fellow sailors disembarking from the Dromedaris, which landed here on April 6 1652, black people would still be running around in loincloths chasing wild animals for their next meal.
I want him to know about the Timbuktu manuscripts, the Egyptian pyramids and, closer to home, the Mapungubwe site — evidence of African greatness.
I am happy that Oliver supports the Springboks and Bafana Bafana, but it would make me happier if he could one day play for either team knowing that every single member of that team — him included — was chosen for his ability and dedication, rather than the assumptions made about him, his ability and his dedication based on his skin colour.
That very English institution, cricket, would hopefully make him connect with the likes of the West Indies’ Viv Richards and Brian Lara to make him understand the issues of the black diaspora, such as slavery and the pan-Africanist movement. Ironically, maybe through cricket he would also learn that the colour of one’s skin, geographic location and social class are not determinants of destiny.
Even for whites in the new South Africa.
So what exactly is mlungu?
Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya’s opinion piece of April 28 was true, interesting and has reference.
The first line of the second paragraph was a question that grabbed my attention as it vindicated my own long unanswered question. Moya’s son Ntsika had asked the father what to many may look like a simple question: ”What is a lekgoa?” Moya said he did not answer because he did not know how to respond (lekgoa is Sotho for a white person).
My question to you, Moya, or whoever can oblige, is supposedly simple. I have asked many people and none has given me a satis-factory answer. Here it goes: What is the meaning of mlungu (Nguni for white person)?
I will tell you why I ask. As a country we are tackling misnomers and wrongly spelt names and are looking for correct origins, relevant meanings and spellings. The point is, if Ntsika can ask such a question of lekgoa, only 12 years after 1994, what will happen to the name mlungu after 82 years (when centenary celebratory profiles are written for April 27 2094) when the Ntsikas of the time would question the logic of the name, as it derives from ”goodness”. This could become controversial.
Lunga is to be excellently good. I foresee a time of great debate as other thinkers would question why the oppressors were the ”good” ones. Their indigenous lan- guage used an anthropologically positive term for them. Maybe this thing called apartheid had never taken place in the first place, they would probably argue — maybe denialists would polemic the point in a similar way to the way so-called Holocaust denialists are doing today?
I am suggesting no name changing here, but to me there are two prominent examples of whites who deserve the title of umlungu. They are Bishop William Colenso and Oom Beyers Naudé. This is no racial discourse but purely an anthropological exercise — period. — Khaba Mkhize, Pietermaritzburg