There are a few things that define me as a person, and I hate to admit that a lot of those things centre on race. My race; the race of my parents and their parents; the friends I keep; the friends I don’t. I interact with the world wearing a special brand of the proverbial “rose-tinted glasses” – ones with a multi-coloured hue. It affects the way that I feel about circumstances, and the way that I respond to them. My sympathies and empathies can be manipulated based on the colour of a person’s skin, and my bias leans for or against dependent on pigmentation.
Is this something that I am proud of? Well, no it isn’t. But it is something that I can admit. I know that while this may not be the ideal attitude in a country that is trying to build itself up from the debris that is the apartheid legacy, I do also believe in the importance of being honest about our prejudices. Of course, in our honey-dipped rainbow nation, this is not the case. I am basically taking a Khoisan spear to the heart of unity, and roasting it on a smouldering braai. (I would, at this time, like to point out my clever inference to my heritage.)
Speaking of which, the concept of “Heritage Day” baffles me, somewhat. I can’t make out if it’s a slightly sadistic nuance, or if it’s the ‘Psyche!’ of the century. There really are only two things that I believe South Africans have in common: our genuine confusion, and our fighting spirit nd, much like an oil-covered penguin, the sight just isn’t pretty: in the tug of war towards anything meaningful, we are all hauling in opposite directions, and in the meantime getting serious rope burn.
On the one hand is the notion that we are all South African, and as a result of that one classifier – not identity (identity has a lot more to do with just geographical birthplace. More on that later) – we must have a shared memory; a shared sense of who we are. In my opinion, this notion is as useful as Justice Lamont’s ruling forbidding COSATU to sing “Dubula iBhunu” – lots of gravy but no meatball. Each individual’s experiences are vastly different to their neighbours’, so one can only imagine the gorge that exists between people from different race groups, religious groups, ethnic groups, class, working environment, school attended… etc, etc, etc. So while the idea that we can “all be one” looks as pretty as a rainbow, there is no substance to it, and the rainbow pretty much disappears in the thunderstorm. So if we’re meant to be celebrating our unity, surely Heritage Day is just a further reminder of our differences?
Ok, then you might say that’s the point. We’re meant to see our differences and realise that a rainbow is made up of many colours, and that is where its beauty lies. We must celebrate our differences so that we can better appreciate our country as a whole. Now this doesn’t make sense to me, because it seems kind of counter-intuitive: to celebrate and harp on our differences as a way of bringing us together is like trying to light a fire in the ocean. Who are we trying to kid, here? Shakespeare, the greatest social commentator of all time (granted, this is in my extremely biased opinion) proved in his classic romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet that there is no way of consolidating differences that will not end in destruction. The concept of difference presupposes an inability to be the same.
Identity is tricky, and historians still don’t know how to really define it. It used to be easy to say that our identity was found in our culture, but cultures have changed over the years, and a large portion of middle-class South Africans (myself included) don’t subscribe to their ancestral cultural identity. One can argue that identity is linked to history, but South Africa’s history is plagued with stories that most of us (whether correctly or not) would rather just forget. Besides, how much can we base our identity on history, if we cannot be certain if the history we know and are taught is the history that actually happened? We can’t say that there is a South African identity, because that argument would lead to the clearly improbable end that we are all the same. In any case, our Heritage Day celebrations clearly negate the legitimacy of that point. We can say that identity is religion, but that really only works for religions like Judaism and Islam, where laws are definite and membership is by birth. Every Hindi I know has different beliefs to the other, and there are so many various Christian denominations that it is becoming difficult to keep up. We marry cross-culturally, cross-religions, cross-race... and so our children cannot find an identity in those tangible constructs, because they do not exist for them. Perhaps the truth is that identity is as malleable and pliable as clay, and there no longer exists something called Identity.
Which makes me wonder why we as South Africans are so obsessed with finding ours. We somehow fear that without an identity to cling to, there’s no security. So we create a make-shift South African identity that is inspired by humorous anecdotes by Evita Bezuidenhout and sentimental speeches by Thabo Mbeki, which is absolute hagger. (Yes, I coined my own word, there. If Shakespeare could get away with it...) When we try to build on something that is not there – when we try to build tolerance on a fabricated identity – we delude ourselves to believing that the structure will stand. But it won’t, and the underlying resentment that South Africans have for each other is a clear indication that we need to get real about what we are as South Africans. We are different; we cannot change that, unless we pass a Bill in parliament similar to that of the Immorality Act, only this time forbidding anyone to marry someone of the same race or ethnic group (we’ll call it the Morality Act. And don’t think that this is a farfetched idea – our government's proposal of the new Protection of Information Bill sounds oddly alike to the apartheid Secrecy Bill). Yet even if we do this, class, religion, education, location will still be a hindrance in forging a unified identity.
My solution is not open racism (although I admit that I prefer this to silent patronising). Here’s what we need to do:
We need to recognise that co-existence does not mean assimilation and/or adaptation of others’ cultures. There is no need to share a common anything. We like the people we like, and dislike those we don’t. Whether it’s skin colour, hair colour, the clothes that one wears, or the accent they have – we all have prejudices. And as far as I am concerned, there is nothing wrong with prejudice in and of itself. Choosing Spur over McDonald's is a prejudice, because it all relates to preference. If you opt to not have white friends, or only to date black men from Umtata, opt away. Preference is part of who we are, and a right enshrined in our constitution. When things become problematic is when we apply hegemony to that preference, and treat people differently based on our partialities. Not liking McDonald's doesn’t give me the right to burn down every franchise I see. Preferences are subjective, and we need to learn that while we are different, and while we are entitled to have our opinions, we do not have free reign to assume that our opinion is The Truth By Which All Should Stand.
I don’t buy into a South African cultural identity. Enjoying the occasional braai doesn’t make me more South African than an Eskimo who cooks his fish on an open fire in Alaska. And being born in the southern most country of Africa does not make me obligated to believe in a Rainbow Nation. In fact, if your metaphorical nose scrunches up at the thought of particular racial or ethnic groups, scrunch with pleasure! What is important is that we must learn that the one thing that we do have in common – our humanity – is a good enough reason to treat everyone with equal respect and dignity. There needs to be an understanding that in as much as I am entitled to my prejudices based on my standing as a citizen of this country (the only part of our “identity” that South Africans share), so are the other people who also share their origins here. And so the same amount of respect that is afforded to me to have those opinions, is afforded to everyone else – even those that I prefer to hate. We treat people with respect not because we necessarily like them, but because we know that we want respect as well. Let's put aside this childish ambition to find tolerance in heritage and identity, but rather seek for it in the more attainable attributes `of dignity and respect.
When Juliet fell for the handsome - if somewhat fickle - Romeo, she made a very profound realisation. When considering Romeo's identity as a Montague, she bellowed from her balcony, "Thou art thyself, though not a Montague./ What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,/ Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part/ Belonging to a man." The conclusion that Juliet came to is one that would be beneficial for all of us to grasp: we are what we are, and not what are called.
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