Foreword: Born free is a term given to people in South Africa born after Apartheid or close enough to it’s end that they don’t remember consciously living during it’s era. Race demographics in South Africa are as follows: 80% of the population in South Africa is made up of Black people, 9% of the population is White. Other races such as Indians, Asians and Coloureds (descendants of Malaysian slaves and of mixed race ancestry) have been left out, because I chose to deal with the two extremes. The most privileged compared to the most marginalised.
“I want to become a doctor, so I can make lots of money and live in a big house like white people” wrote a Black girl in the 6th grade living in the Alexandra Township. My current school went to teach Maths and English to township children at their respective schools for a day. It obviously doesn’t do much to change the standard of education the kids are receiving, but what better way to reduce White guilt than for them to take selfies with cute township kids and feel like they’re adding to a new and better South Africa? We innocently asked them to write an essay on what they wanted to be when they grew up and that was a little girl’s answer. Short and innocent but brimming with subtext.
I spent my first 4 years of school in a lower middle class public school, where being Black wasn’t being rebellious or a deviation from the norm, it was the norm. Black kids openly felt they could speak Vernacular. If we didn’t have a soccer ball, we would squash a coke can and play soccer with it on the porch of the school’s pavilion. If we did have a ball, we’d use dustbins as goal posts. I don’t remember us scrambling for Sunscreen because we all thought we were dark already, what’s the worst that could happen? A proudly Afrikaans, conservative teacher took it upon himself to learn Tswana (an indigenous Southern African language) so he could better relate to students. I never had to tell anyone to pronounce my name properly and never had to compromise my identity for the comfort of white people, because the thing and beauty of that space was that Whites had to adapt to us. They had to understand our colloquialisms and mannerisms. They learned to pronounce the ‘hl’ in Sihle, the ‘X’ in Xhosa and the ‘Q’ in Umqombothi and they did it with humility.
Then came Grade.5, my family decided it was time to move to the more suburb-ier suburbs, the “White suburbs”. Where being black isn’t just an achievement for your previously disadvantaged family but also an achievement for the rest of the White liberals who can point at the Black family down the road to indicate that transformation is alive and kicking within our country. I remember walking in with my parents at my new school and took a glance and at my new class mates and crying.
THERE WERE SOO MANY WHITE KIDS, HOW COULD I FIT IN? After a few days, I immediately felt uncomfortable in my identity. The ‘hl’ is Sihle became an ‘sh’, the ‘X’ is Xhosa become a ‘K’ and the ‘Q’ in Umqombothi became a regular q, . Tsogo became TK. Being Black became the “other”, the part of you that was designated to the 30 minutes of Zulu a week, compared to the 4 hours of Afrikaans. I became a part of minority, in a grade of around 120 kids, approximately 30 were Black. I couldn’t speak my ‘clicky language’ because I was at an English school. Black kids had their names brutally mispronounced and they were so accustomed to it they mispronounced it themselves around white people, and they knew exactly what they were doing.
Your blackness was always metered. Don’t be too black for the white kids to be afraid of you, but be black enough for the black kids to be friends with you, but not too black or else they might be embarrassed to be around you because all they’ve known is that an unabashed display of your ethnicity made people feel uncomfortable and threatened. Your Zulu grades didn’t matter but your intelligence was based on how good you were at Afrikaans. You felt embarrassed of your parents because the type of Vernacular inflected accent the White kids assimilated with stupidity were the same accents your parents had. You wondered why both your parents worked long hours, while all the white kids had parents that were always there. They had special cliques and a PTA with only a handful of Black parents because most Black families didn’t have the privilege of having a parent who singularly earned enough money to support a family.
Was this new school unique? No. Private schools and middle class public schools in Johannesburg share the same social and economic structure. Where from the moment you walk in you feel that by being Black you’re a minority in their space, they’re letting you in here. It’s a privilege and you should be happy with being able to eat a slice of their cake and not demand more than what you’re given.
At grade 6, I had just finished reading the Harry Potter series. In grade.6 at the township schools some kids could barely read. Only three quarters of the class could write a paragraph and almost every group designated to each of the township schools encountered children that couldn’t speak English. These kids don’t have the same opportunities I do, or the multitude of white children do. If a white child can’t speak English, there’s a multitude of Afrikaans schools for them and facilities in Universities that still use Afrikaans as a mode of instruction due to the legacy of Apartheid. This doesn’t exist for Black students with African languages. English remains the language of instruction across the country and situations remain where Black students in certain courses are forced to attend lectures in Afrikaans at previously English and Afrikaans orientated Universities. If a child growing up in a township achieves the miracle of passing their final year with grades able to be accepted into University, he/she most like can’t afford fees. The #FeesMustFall student protests last year were based around this sad reality. Black people can’t be expected to break out of poverty created by Apartheid and earn jobs and degrees like white people have for decades if they can’t even afford to get a simple degree even after overcoming harsh tribulations.
Our latest census revealed that only 0.9% of White people were below the poverty line, compared to 63.2% of Black people. The average White headed household earned more than R300, 000 more than Black headed households. 40% of Black people are unemployed compared to 8% of White people. 80% of our land is still owned by White people. Black people directly own 3% of the top 100 listed companies on the JSE (Johannesburg Stock Exchange.) To quote from the stellar documentary ‘The People vs The Rainbow Nation’, “That’s really what we did in ’94. We didn’t change anything really, we just added Blacks”
Now, imagine after I’ve told you all of this and you somehow felt that everything I said was false because you’ve never directly dealt with any of these realities. That you feel that being white and a beneficiary of Apartheid is a burden on you, so you try your best to avoid this ‘burden’. You refuse to acknowledge your privilege and systematic superiority based on the marginalisation of a great many, so you inadvertently uphold your privilege at the expense of that great many. That just because you have a black friend (whose name you don’t really pronounce properly but he/she is tired of correcting you) you’ve absolved yourself from being a racist. Imagine thinking it perfectly normal to live and grow up in an African country and not learn a single one of your country’s 9 indigenous languages. That your base understanding of Apartheid was that a black person and a white person couldn’t sit on the same bench or ride the same bus and not that your token Black friend’s grandfather sustained injuries that caused his death because he was walking while Black during Apartheid. Imagine telling someone to simply “get over” that, while not acknowledging your complicity in perpetuating it. Imagine believing that over 300 years of colonialism, 182 years of slavery and 46 years of Apartheid should’ve been dissolved within 22 years and that Black people should’ve educated themselves by now.
To understand that this sentiment is shared (including but not restricted) by the majority of Whites in South Africa, and these sentiments are what I and most Black born free’s face on a daily basis and more. Is to understand mine and many other’s experience of race in the new South Africa
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