A friend of mine from the US dropped me an email wanting me to explain the so called controversy of the "coloured" issue that got the government spokesperson, Jimmy Manyi, into trouble. Of course I had to first explain to him what I meant by coloured, since it ‘sounds like an offensive term' to him. In the end he asked why we don't just called them ‘mixed-race' people like everyone else in the world. I had to look at the recesses of both our history and my personal life to provide him with a satisfactory answer.
I often caution people to be very careful reading into South African parlance. Most of the universally accepted terms mean different things in this country. When, for instance, a South Africans speaks of liberalism, they don't necessary mean small statism, franchise reform, free markets, the usual stuff that is largely defended on Benthamite consequentialist grounds. Instead they mean a reconstructed white attitude that has undertones of racial superiority complex.
As far as I am concerned the word coloured in South Africa does not only mean someone of a mixed race, but one whose culture and language goes back to the arrival of occidental and Asian people in the Cape, as far back as Jan Van Riebeeck - perhaps even going back to the era the Arabs came to the southern Africa for gold but let's limit our argument to Van Riebeeck's era.
In most African traditions a child gets their lineage from the paternal parent, but when the occidental race started producing children of mixed race they mostly felt embarrassed by it and didn't own up to their parental obligation. Like in the American slave era, these children were products of their father's rapine nature. I think, the attended stigma of being coloured stems from this. This stigma further feeds to the complexity of a coloured identity in those who have no yet managed to emancipate their thinking from the mix of the so called ‘superior and inferior race'. To others it even give rise to the conflict/crisis of identifying with the superior race that denies them that right.
I doubt if my own children would see themselves as inferior or superior, or will be regarded as coloureds for that matter, even though they are of mixed race lineage. (In fact I consider them to be Xhosa.) My children are products of normal love relationship that mature to formal marriage, or permanent partnerships, through ennobling qualities of love. I am sure this is also the case with coloured people of the era following the colonialist encounter. Like my children they grow up in their respective cultures with dignity and pride that does not regard their identity as a burden. Why I do not consider my children coloured in particular is because, though they are of mixed race, they are growing up with Xhosa as their prime culture, and would slightly be at loss in the coloured culture even if they eventually mange to speak Afrikaans well.
The fundamental problem about some coloured people in our country is what I would term an identity crisis. What unsettles them is not the fact that they are mixed race, but the fact that their family history has been denied them, thus lost, or rather misplaced. This is why I think my children, though of mixed race, will not have the coloured identity crisis issue. They can trace their family history on my Xhosa side, and on the Scottish side of their mother.
Either way, what our ancestors did, or did not do, should not be a reason to be puffed up or ashamed. Who we are is informed by our own independent merit. Of course our background and upbringing does form some role in influencing who we become, but this is secondary and can be overcome by our own characters. I see no point then why the question of identity should be based on snobbery, the deeds of our ancestors, etc. Naturally our history informs our future but it does not control it.
To support this view my friend pointed to the fact that we are all descendants of a single ur-great-grandmother who lived long time ago at a crucial branching point. And she too was a product of a common protoplasm primordial blob. For me, as also to what his eminence, arch-bishop Desmond Tutu said about him being a coloured because of his gene code is too abstract. As an African I prefer to personalise history, to see my great-grandmother, for instance, as a small girl who made better choices the results of which won her the ultimate race of carrying her gene pole through. If I could get her photograph all the better, because it would give me a sense of pride that makes my own life even more palpable and vivid.
This, I think, is what goes to the root of the problem in the coloured factor and the complexity of the identity. Perhaps their identity crisis is brought by the lack of palpable and vivid factual material about where they come from, since at the beginning their grandfathers denied them the dignity of identifying with their authentic family history.
So the best attitude for me to take in our country is that of the philosopher historian, de Tocqueville, when he arrived to study the American psyche and history. He soon realised that that the vocabulary of political philosophy and science he had inherited was not adequate to describe the new reality he was seeing. He struggled to describe ‘the forms of domination, tyranny and unfreedom that he saw developing in embryo under forms of liberal representative democracy.' South Africans, especially the coloured people, in trying to define itself as a nation must take up this struggle to another level.
The philosopher, John Locke, argued that identity is a function of memory. If you cannot resolve who you are others would make you feel as if you don't matter, or are pliable material to be used and abused for their own purposes. The world is always trying to mould us to purposes convenient to itself. Individual character is disruptive to the conformist instinct of the world. The world thrives on rewarding conformity, but it is individuals, especially those with strong identities and radical ideas who changes the world for the better or worse.
I think for our purpose we can gladly disregard the minster in the presidency Trevor Manuel's vitriolic against Manyi, with most responses against Manuel for that matter. Because not only is the tone improper and plainly opportunistic, it did not add any real value to the topic, in fact it managed to derail the whole topic. The real topic/question, is what the coloured population of our country see themselves to be in the scheme of things. By scheme of things I mean identity, racial and otherwise. Sadly in this country racial identity tend to inform more people's politics for understandable historical reasons we cannot just defenestrate over night.
The racial law of our past regarded coloureds as blacks; most subsequently used this as a weapon of pride and struggle for liberation against white oppression. Naturally the house nigger syndrome, as a survival or weakness instinct, was/is prominent among coloured folks who feel somehow superior to other black people. This has been blamed for their voting for the National Party in droves, and now the DA.
It is also common to hear coloureds complain that during the apartheid era they were not white enough, and now they are not black enough, meaning they are permanently in the periphery. But the truth of the matter is that coloureds were better off than other black people during the apartheid years, and are still so now in most cases. But that is not the point.
The point is in engaging in an iteration designed to improve the coloured identity crisis where it exists, and consequentially, the public mental health of our country. Instead of reinforcing the negatives we could use this to combat them. In my thinking this can only be achieved by educating the judgement and sensibilities of individuals, not only of coloured people but our general public at large, black and white. That is the only way to provide with any chance of achieving a good society.
We can speak of the coloured factor, but to be productive let us do so by measuring it against the universal standards we want to achieve. For instance, does being coloured promote our moral values, our civil strife, our democratic intelligence, our political education, etc. Does it pitch the common good up high? Does it help with the improvement of our class/racial comprehension?
Does being coloured mean one should be bound by devotion to the past that is based on oppression or attrition, and shared collective values for the liberation of the black people? Anything else is just hot air.
In the end, in this battle, no one can sit on the fence, or run with the rabbits while chasing with the hounds. We all have to answer the question, which side are you on sir? And choosing sides does not necessarily mean that side is perfect, but that it is the one you can identify (closest to the nature of your identity) with, and is closest to one's personal vision.
*Ntabeni is Cope's researcher in the Western Cape Provincial Parliament. He writes this article in his personal capacity.
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