If you are a black guy who enjoys hissing sexually charged nothings at black women in public spaces, then I’m surprised that you are a reader of this newspaper. But read on, because this is about you. If you are not that guy, stay that way.
A few days ago, I decided to walk from my place to Rosebank Mall in Johannesburg, a distance of about 3km. In those 15 minutes, I was accosted and eye-raped by no less than 10 “Shellingtons” from various leagues. Shellington is a word my friends and I use to describe black men who shela women habitually. The word shela is a colloquial Zulu term that means to hit on or show romantic interest in somebody, a term that best describes the thing that too many black men do to black women in public spaces.
The first Shellington crossed the street so that he could walk on the same side as me. He seemed to ignore the fact that I was wearing headphones and that, clearly, I would not engage in small talk with someone who looked like a bergie. When I finally told him to stop pacing his walk to mine and leave me alone, he said: “Ugrh, you smell of chemicals anyway”, and walked off.
There were three others I’ll spare you the details about, but when the fourth saw me coming, from a few hundred metres away, he stopped to wait for me. He asked me what music I was listening to and where I lived. The fifth Shellington was a cop, the sixth, a man in a fancy Mercedes bursting out of a suit. The rest included a security guard, the butcher at Pick ‘n Pay and most of the guys behind the counter at Vida e Café.
I wear my earphones because they drown out the seemingly harmless advances of most black men I encounter on the street.
It’s obviously not fair to paint a large group of people with the same brush, but I can guarantee that every black woman who reads this will be able to relate to this invasive sexual objectification. And, yes, I’m sure that at the root of this issue — and the issue of abuse against black women in general — lie the things white people did to break down the black family structure in the past (think slavery, the 1913 Land Act, legislated apartheid — take your pick).
But I wish our culture could rid itself of the reactionary stance we take when talking about issues that affect black people. And even though it is accepted that some outrageously wicked people throughout history could be blamed for the ills affecting black society, I often wonder when we are going to take responsibility for our own and practise the ubuntu we preach.
Don’t let it be said that I think men of other races treat their women any better than our brothers do. I’m not saying all black men are like this and I know that there are plenty who don’t possess the qualities of a master Shellington.
The really “clever” ones, though, are probably out there somewhere asserting their right to shela the white girls instead.