White boyfriend challenged

By the time I was finishing high school I have developed strong anti-racism sentiments, and learned to see black peers as friends and equals. I would go into university quite sensitive to the strong undertones of racism in the first residence where I lived (Sonop), and very comfortable with the mixed racial environment at the second one (Taaibos).

But my transformation was not finished. I fell in love at this stage, and no, not to a black girl (not that that would have been a problem in my eyes). I fell in love with the girl that would years later become my wife: Maryke. In the early years of our relationship she challenged me in a number of ways, but the two I remember most clearly was:

1. I learned from her that I couldn’t think of God as male. That this was a male construct (without her having any feminist training, she was just being a woman, and sharing the honest experiences of being a woman).
2. Although my friendship with Tsidi teached me that black people was equals, I felt like I must be a racist when I met Maryke. She wasn’t only willing to have black friends and think in terms of equality. She was totally comfortable in relationships with black people. I knew black people. She seemed to know the name of every black girl in her year-group! She seemed to be colorblind!

In the years following she continued to challenge by just living a life of total and absolute equality. It was some of the most amazing experiences the few times I went to the movies of to functions with her friends. Catolic, Protestant, Atheist, Hindu, Buddhist. White, Black, Indian, Oriental. Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Mandarin, and a host of other languages I don’t even know. All of this were found in a group of maybe 10 or 12 people. They weren’t making a statement, simply living life together, and finding more in common than that divided them.

Some of these friends still visit us from time to time, and we keep on being enriched by there uniqueness.

White teen transformed

In 2000 I attended an Evangelism Explosion training course at Rhema Bible church in Jo’burg. Yes, I really was a fire-preaching evangelist at one stage, proud of it, certain of it, and I could sum up all you needed to know in 15 minutes. 5 minutes if in a hurry, and 25 if I really told the stories in detail and mentioned a lot of Bible verses. The life-transforming experiences I had in this time will probably always make me wary of totally demonizing this group of people. I remember where I come from.

It was a typical thing. Bunch of American evangelists coming in with their winning recipe to teach us South Africans how to evangelize the world. Rhema did the altar call the Sunday, and we were doing the follow-up during the week.

Rhema was an interracial church, and most of the people we visited that week was black, as far as I can remember, On the afternoon of the last full day of the course, I got a call to say that my grandfather had died. This was the grandfather I have been named after. I was really, really sad. My father offered to come and pick me up, but I preferred staying and finishing the course. That night we visited Tsidi, who had made a commitment with the altar call the Sunday. We spent some time chatting and asked about the commitment she made. She said it was just being swept up by emotion, and that actually she was a Christian for a long time already. But I offered to share the gospel anyhow (use every chance you get, right?), and did the little presentation. Swept up in all my own emotions of the day, I experienced an extreme emotional high at that stage. I felt extremely close to these people. And even though I can explain this in all sorts of ways, spiritual, psychological, or whatever, the reality is that on that evening I saw a black girl, same age as I was, as a total equal. As a friend. We exchanged email addresses, and were writing to each other for a long time.

I remember knowing distincly that I cannot go back to school in the same way, that I will have to change the relations I had with my black peers. And it did happen. I remember Shimon, Amir, Mavela and others. Friends I made in the last few years of high school.

White kid in a white school

When I reached the age of 6 or 7, it was time to go to school. So started some of the most formative years of my life (obviously). Where the community in which I lived was mostly black, and I had a lot of interracial experience, although it might not have at that stage translated into amazing friendships, the school in which I found myself was all white. Race was not an issue, since we never dealt with it.

I was in grade 1 in 1991. Before the referendum of 1992. I remember my parents voting, and I remember that the outcome was good. I can’t remember Apartheid being discussed much in the house, but I had no doubt about my parents’ position on whether blacks may vote etc. I think it must have been around this time that the black lady that worked for our family, her name was Eniy, did Bible study with us in the mornings.

But somewhere around this time I must have picked up some implicitly racist ideas. I remember singing a song at primary school with these words:

Strawberry lippies, die kaffers gooi klippies

Mandela’s ‘n kaffer en nou moet hy suffer.

Kaffer is the most oppresive term white people ever used to refer to black people under Apartheid. The rest translate as follows:

Strayberry lips, the kaffers is throwing rocks

Mandela is a kaffer, and now he must suffer.

If ever I was a white man toi-toi’ing against the struggle, it was when we were singing this song. I do remember that it was with some discomfort though. This wasn’t how we were brought up. But although the school would never have propagated Apartheid ideology in those years (remember this was very close to ’94), and since I was living in Swaziland I never knew about all the Apartheid issues (I heard about pass laws only while in high school), the system in which I was finding myself was strengthening the idea that black people were somehow lesser humans than white people. It’s not something we argued about, and about which people made explicit cases for, but in our jokes, in our talking, somehow as if it was in the water, in our blood, we knew that we were better, and that black people were dirty.

In about 1995 I remember the fights for transforming the schools. I know my father was taking a leading role in our school to have them open up for black kids. Eventually they did. But I remember the day when we were driving to the high school to pick up the high school kids that were living in Swaziland, and seeing the march of armed white men who was fighting against the first black kid that was allowed in the school.

Some black people were different though. We had a child from the kingly lineage from Swaziland, a Dlamini, in our school who was our fastest athlete. Somehow he was considered to be touchable. I remember Chester Williams (Invictus reminded us of him), he was a hero of sorts. And I guess there were others as well. Some called them “good kaffers”, which in a brilliant way describe the experience that some had when they realized that there were black people that was really just better than white people in something. Usually sports was a good first place to notice this. How do you recognize the fact that a person is truly contributing to the school while still being inherently racist? But even when black students performed, you’ll find the jokes like “he can run so fast because he used to run away from the police”.

There was good coming out of this system. We were getting to know black kids, but usually we remained divided along language lines (actually if I remember correctly the school was mostly divided along language lines even before 1994). But 5 years later, by 2000, I was even more of a racist than before. And if I still wonder if I was a racist as a preschool kid in Swaziland, I know I was one by early high school. Even though still in a reserved manner. I was well-trained by my parents never to speak of maids or kaffers or openly discriminate against black people. None of my friends would have considered me a racist though. In most circles I would have been considered very open to black people. It took an “other” to help me realize my own inherent racism.

White kid in Swaziland

I grew up in the southern part of a small country called Swaziland. It has less than a million people living in it, and most on them living in the north. My father was a pastor in a black congregation there. The people of Swaziland are poor, as is general for the most of Africa. We lived in a 600m2 house owned by the church, across the street my father’s black collegue was living in a much smaller house with his family.

I have many good memories from this place. Typical child stuff – playing, climbing trees, riding bicycle. But I also remember the black congregations in which my father was working. I remember the singing, and even today still remember some of the songs, and recognize them in black congretions in Mamelodi when I visit. I remember the ways in which they collected the meagre amount of money on a Sunday, with singing and dancing.

But I never had black friends in Swaziland. Well, apparently I had as a very small kid according to my parents, but I can’t remember them. My friends were white. Blacks were the other. They played by themselves. We played by ourselves. When we had birthday parties, it was the white kids from the small white community in South Africa, and the white kids that we went to school with in Piet Retief, the white town on the other side of the border.

I do remember some of the black collegues my father had, with some of them I can remember not really noticing colour. Not caring to be touched by them. Easily talking to them. Especially Baba Gama, who always checked to see if I could recognize his voice when he was calling and I would answer. I remember black people sharing the table with us at our home, and we with them at conferences. I had much of the inter-culture experience that kids of missionaries have. I treasure that.

But I know this: the black people living across the street, the black people in town, even the black congregants, I weren’t looking at them as equals. I don’t know if I were racist at this stage of my life, but I definitely had a sense than the black people among whom I were living weren’t “on the same level”.

Introduction: White experiences in Africa

I’ve started many blog series over the past few years, and didn’t finish many of them. So when this series started bubbling up in my head I decided to first write everything, and then start posting. I think it might have been Jonathan Jansen that kicked these thoughts into creation by saying words which became part of my white experiences in Africa at the South African Missiological Society meeting in Bloemfontein, on 13 January. On this experience I will reflect later on.

In the days after this experience, I had the urge to write down my stories, and reflect on them. Several stories from my life was crystalizing as formative moments for who I am today regarding race. Many more than those I write here, obviously, but in looking back over my life so far, these experiences stand out as radically changing the way I think about my own whiteness in South Africa. I wrote these stories down on 14 January 2010. I spent some time reflecting on these, at some point thinking that maybe I’ll write reflections on them as well. But I’ll leave the reflections and comments for the rest of you..

The series will consist of seven stories. These stories open up wounds, I am aware of this. The stories may ignite lots of emotions from different people. And you might reflect totally different on these stories than I do. Please take part in my journey.

I am a white male. An Afrikaner. I am 25. We only moved to South Africa permanently on 19 July 1994, yet Apartheid is part of me in ways I am still discovering. This is a story of stories which made me who I am today. It will continue for a week or so.

on race and sex. a long quote from Jonathan Jansen

OK, if you have followed my tweets the past few weeks you’ll know I’m reading Jonathan Jansen. A lot can be said, but his book is brilliant in my opinion. This story was one that really caught my attention. I just quote, make of it what you want.

Knowledge in the Blood. Page 138-139:

Just before I stood down as dean and resigned from UP in 2007, I held my final lunch with the ten designated first-year students. For the first time, those organizing the logistics for the dean’s lunch made a mistake; instead of sending five white and five black students, ten black students showed up. Initially I was disappointed, for the purpose of these events was to encourage integration by modeling these ideals early on through the planned lunches. But having ten black students was an unforseen blessing, for these bright and articulate young people said things they would probably not have volunteered if white students had been in the room.

After formalities were over, I opened the discussion as usual with the question about how they were experiencing the education campus of the university and what we could do as the leadership of the Faculty of Education to strengthen the quality of those experiences as undergraduate students. Immediately to my left sat a strikingly beautiful young woman, her hair in braids. She spoke clearly.

You know professor, we really enjoy being here, and we must thank you for everything you and your staff have done for us as first-year students. But you know, where we live in Res [residence], it’s so artificial; I would really like to date some of those white boys.

I nearly fell off my chair in shock. Date white boys? I was expecting the usual concerns about enough parking spaces for students, the unlit areas of campus needed lights, limited access to the Internet, the restricted library hours, the odd lecturer who is unfriendly, and other familiar student complaints. But dating white boys was completely unexpected. I was still stuttering, and unsure what to say, when a handsome young man to my right, brightly bald, chirped in: “Prof, I agree with Thandi, I would really like to date some of the white girls on campus.”

This was too much for my black consciousness state-of-mind, and I remember saying to myself: “Damn, the goal of the national democratic revolution was not the date white folk!” But I dared not utter this sentiment. As an experienced teacher stumped for a response, I again played for time. “Well,” I said to the now eagerly awaiting audience of ten young black students, “tell me more.”

As the students spoke during that lunch time, I cringed at the clear but gentle criticism coming from my black students. As university leaders, we had created the architecture for change and integration on the education campus, they said, but in reality the black and white students continued to live separate lives. What was natural among college students, the act of dating, took on severe and rigid racialized forms. When dancing was organized between two or more koshuise, it was white students going with white students, and by language. The students, though physically together in the formal arrangements, lived light years apart. If there was one act of social interaction that was never discussed, but in which the lines were firmly drawn, it was on this matter of dating.

It took me some time during this extended period of listening, on my part, to realize that this criticism had little to do with dating per se and everything to do with the artificiality of social relations between black and white students. What would come completely naturally to young people, the act of dating, was the one firm line that nobody would cross on this race-divided campus. Nowhere was this racial distancing between girls and boys more acute than at the former Afrikaans universities.

… No knowledge has been more forcefully transmitted from parents to children before and after Apartheid than the knowledge of racial and ethnic purity that must be maintained at all costs. Something about race and sex drives white South Africans into a state of madness.