APART(heid).

I know that I am trying to saddle a dead horse here, but I really just find it so fascinating, so Im going to hash it out again.

So we all know that there is a lot of interracial tension- but I guess I always simplified that in my head by assuming it was blacks vs whites, and somewhere in there, the coloreds have a dynamic of their own. And yes, certainly there is counterculture existing beside each other, but it’s even deeper.

Let’s start with this term colored.  Now absolutely everyone has something different to say about the origins of the colored race, but its unanimously agreed that this is distinctively South African.  Essentially, colored means mixed race, so the closest thing that we would associate is mulatto peoples.  So sometime in the very distant history, there was some intermingling, and this new generation emerged, and became a separate community.  Different traditions, different histories, different language. APART(heid)

Fast-forward, under the old Apartheid regime, the Group Areas Act said that only “like” people could live with each other, so as intended, this perpetuated the separateness.  The goal? Because colored people had slightly better rights than black people, a lot of fairer skinned Xhosa people took up to being reclassified as colored.  They would go in, have their noes with measured, have a pencil put in their hair to check the nappyness, and their complexion tested.  They would give up the Xhosa language, and speak Afrikkans, and claim there has been some mistake.  Families were torn apart (APARTheid).  Heritage was abandoned.  Lots of feelings of non-belonging. So now- 30, 40, 50 ,60 years down the line, these communities as still APART(heid),

Let’s complicate this scene a bit more.  There are people from Indian decent, Malayan decent, and a hundred other nationalities. (And cultures—I’m really not sure what word to use, as each everything is intertwined).    And religion. And language. And employment opportunities.  And education opportunities.  APART(heid).

I think I have adequately complained that this was/is a complicated society.  And the apartheid worked brilliantly!  The goal was to keep people APART, and so it did. Well, South Africa is often called a Rainbow nation.  It is!  But the burning question is how intertwined are these bands of color?  The short answer is not.  So the Apartheid has been over for 20+ years, but funny how APART we still are.

Ok, one more twist to this story.  Xenophobia.  We have become home to lots immigrants from within Africa.  Many are coming from nations where strife is far worse than our issues.  Zim, DRC, Somalia, Nigerian, ect.  And hate crimes! Whoooooohft, the jargon that is used to dehumanize these people is criminal.  Unemployment is absolutely an issue, and lots of these African nationals are working, maybe for less than the local peoples.  So naturally there is battles about employment, and rights.

Well a few weeks ago, in my New Brighton hood, a teenage boy went to a Somalian owned shop to buy airtime for his phone.  There was a scuffle about the product sold, and the boy was shot.  New Brighton was a war zone!  Every shot was looted, and every Somalian was chased out of the area.  Their homes burned, their businesses gone, their lives destroyed.  And this didn’t stop in New Brighton; the xenophobic hatred creped into neighboring areas.  My students even boasted about taking part in the “Toy Toy” to avenge their own fallen.

I’m told that this is by no means the first time that this has happened, and with time, the Somalian businessmen will come back, and the cycle will repeat itself.  So even as the official Apartheid is no longer, we are quite apart. 

So I usually end my blog posts with some sort of uplifting feeling that I am having- or some sort of hope- but Im struggling today.  The only thing that I can think of is comparing this whole mess to the civil rights struggle at home.  It took 100 years after “freedom” for the right to vote to come.  And 50 years later, we battle with disproportionate education levels, and we absolutely are not free from the racial tension.  It will come.  I keep telling myself, it will come.