By now everyone knows someone who’s a coconut. But what’s a Milky Bar? A Johnny Clegg? A litchi?
Fourteen years into democracy, South Africans are over the rainbow nation and growing up fast. And nowhere is our transition from ”colour-blind” children to sharp-tongued teenagers more evident than in the jingle of fruity, rooty names we’re using to describe ourselves and one another.
The rainbow nation, coined by that wise flame-douser Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was a satisfactory way to describe the way we were in the dawn of democracy. Like aliens at an intergalactic tea party, we were stiffly polite, keen to please and anxious not to give or take offence.
The comedians were quick to note that the ”colours” black and white don’t exist in a rainbow’s spectrum. But irony and omen were lost in the winds of merrymaking sweeping the new nation, and trifling differences of pigment were waved away.
But now we’re teenagers and have come storming out of the rainbow closet to experiment with our multi-culti freedoms and liberating new stereotypes.
In a coconut shell, if blacks can have ”formerly white” accents and wear blazers, whites can (try to) dance like the ”previously disadvantaged” and chug homebrew.
This week’s ruling by the South African Human Rights Commission made it official: calling someone a coconut isn’t hate speech. In the spirit of this mature result, here are some fun new words that describe the opposite of the coconut classes.
Milky Bar: White on the outside, smooth and brown on the inside. Class-A converts. Female Milky Bars wear wooden accessories, often with historical significance, Sun Goddess skirts and Drum T-shirts à la Stoned Cherry. When aroused they are likely to burst into the vernacular and some can even speak with a black accent — bundu, not coconut.
Top Deck: Two chocolates on top of each other, one white, one brown. These are your B-listers who merely date outside their race, but we love them too. Think Mr and Mrs Tokyo Sexwale.
Johnny Clegg: These are legends beyond any list. They down Zulu beer, do the Zulu dance like, er, a Zulu, and defy the rest of their race by being able to stamp hard enough to raise dust. They often live among black people and speak an African language fluently. Both they and the black people around them have forgotten they’re white.
Litchi: An earthy fruit, a bit rough around the edges, but sweet inside. Behold the soul sisters and brothers and borderline Rastafarians. They hang out in Newtown and Yeoville and love the arts. They wear earth-coloured clothes and often grow dreads that may lock, but look helluva dirty. They speak softly to show they’re one with the self and are fully in control of their spirits.
Wiggas: white niggas, cool, hip-hop-loving American life admirers. New-generation mraphas, somewhere between Eminem, 50 Cent and Diddy. They wear baggy jeans that start at their knees, love ”bling bling ain’t no thing” and idolise Jay-Z. The cast of Step Up2 the Street, a movie that shows white folk can dance, are their role models.