Recreated in whiteness

The most depressing feature of the black girls’ hair issue is not the mean spirited attack on white school authorities nor the spineless silence of black women, especially feminists and activists. Rather it’s the schizophrenic identity of African people in general, and the refusal to admit the fading impact and teachings of Black Consciousness.

There is a low level of cultural discussion about the disappearance of African identity in South Africa. It seems the black girls’ hair issue has forced society to pause and reconsider.

The point is, authentic African people, if they exist, need a crude discourse to engage their identity, culture and heritage which they have rejected over decades and centuries. This failure of so-called African identity to assert itself is now so manifest that little 13-year-olds are expected to wage a struggle to love themselves and be true to who they are.

Over the last 22 years we have had a phenomenal rise of “coconuts” – black children who seem more white than black in lifestyle, culture and accent. They have borne the brunt of criticism about a lack of authentic African identity and image, if there is still such.

Of course, this got the detractors into trouble with people who felt indignant and insulted by this label. African people don’t take kindly to being called “coconuts” – essentially white people trapped in black skins. The implication is that they have bought completely into the notion of white supremacist cultural superiority and have allowed themselves to be brainwashed into believing that in order to be somebody, they have to speak, dress, behave and think like white people.

Of course, the notion of a white race does not actually exist except as a social construct, but that is a matter for another day.

For the last 22 years or so I have been critically examining the way of life of so-called black South Africans, especially in urban areas. In a way, I have been privileged to access the heart and soul of the rising black middle, that is, people who have a bit of money, position and power and have been able to move up the social and economic ladder due to government connections or corporate success.

Again, the notion of a black African middle class is yet another misleading construct to make us think Africans own property and the means of production when they are, largely, just white collar workers. But that again, is for another day.

For a long time now, I have found myself thinking hard about what constitutes the true identity of an authentic black African, if there is such a person in a globalised, diverse society. I’ve tried to bring together the prevalent Western cultural experience happening around me and fuse it with what could pass as African. But circumstances and reality made me realise the impossibility of this little experiment in cultural integration. In no time I’d collided with the master language, culture, history and heritage of Western life in Africa.

The fact is, there is very little that is African about this African country on the southern tip of the African continent. It would have been meaningful for me, as an African, to find the spirit of the continent in my new democratic country. But it does not exist. It is not in government nor pervasive in business, society in general, let alone in schools.

Perhaps the very idea of an African country or experience is a romantic notion, a nostalgia that exists only as an ideal. The reality is that it does not exist. At least, not here or now, especially not if you use the successful as a measure of African achievement.

Years ago, sabbaticals to the US and UK provided me with a chance to really begin examining what it means to be African. It was on my way home in the 1990s that, for the first time, I realised that barring the geographical location of my country, I’d never lived in Africa. Instead, my intuitive connection to things American was almost natural. The assumption that South Africa is an African country simply because it’s at the tip of Africa is wrong. But this was the assumption of people who surrounded me, including political leaders, business people, priests, artists, activists, teachers and other professionals I looked up to.

Nevertheless, I have come to accept that black South Africans, especially the privileged, are the New Negroes outside of America, if not thoroughly globalised citizens. We identify and relate to Barack and Michelle Obama more than President Gedleyihlekisa Zuma.

Black South Africans are a different breed of dark skinned people who are in deep trouble because they have continually thought themselves out of existence in the name of globalisation or progress. Presumably this is the post-black age where your skin colour does not determine identity, history or heritage.

For the last 350 years, not only have privileged black Africans allowed themselves to be alienated from their history, heritage, culture and languages, but have collaborated in wiping out their identity.

There is no way that any African who lived before 1652 would recognise this country as part of Africa. If they were to visit SA today, supposedly under black African rule, they’d wander around the way I do and think what I do which is obviously, a dangerous way of thinking.

If you critically examine the language and behaviour of black South Africans there’s very little – except for small pockets in rural areas – that says they are Africans. In fact, we are … er, not just over-Americanised but recreated in the image of white people from the West. We’ve become loyal satellites of Europe, all in the name of progress or globalisation. Obviously, we now live in “the global village” and there is an expectation to do …er, as Americans do. But I’ve looked into the historical mirror of my people and what I saw looking back at me were the eyes of ancestors radiating with great wonder and great contempt. They too, are confused and bewildered by this “globalisation”.

I don’t imagine pan-Africanists such as Anton Lembede, Robert Sobukwe or Steve Biko would be delighted to see what they’d see today. It’s not the Africa they envisioned.

I got scared because I could see I too do not exactly relate to their vision. I too, do not uphold and promote their languages or politics and have not done much to protect or preserve African culture and heritage, even social etiquette, cultural conduct, ideological thinking and orientation. Instead, I speak, write and, above all, think in English as do an increasing number of other progressive South Africans. As do our children! Many are starting to understand and speak English exactly like white people do and better than their indigenous languages.

Of course, our history produced the likes of John Tengo Jabavu and Pixley ka Seme and gave us many ancestors like the seminal thinker WEB du Bois who were educated in America and Europe. But a kind of reconciliation saw us sacrifice and abandon our history and heritage and disconnect with Africa in the name of modernity.

It’s a strange kind of advancement and progress that we have attained. But I think, in one way, it explains a lot about South Africa’s disconnection with its indigenous linkages. As a result, there are two kinds of Africans. First, respected powerful ones who, essentially, are coconuts, and do everything as Western culture dictates. Second, are ones in rural areas who really try to keep an intuitive connection to Africa’s mythical past and heritage.

But many of us live more in a Western world and culture than in an African one. In a sense we’ve lived up to the ideal that South Africa belongs to all who live in it – and it is more white than black, if you like.

We’ve recreated ourselves, out of conquest, to become, for the first time, African people who are proud of their Western identity, heritage and culture. We have, to a large extent, recreated ourselves in the white European image. Consider for example, our constitutional democracy, the most renowned in the whole world.

For this reason we are what the American singer, Billie Holiday called a “strange fruit”.

Sandile Memela is a journalist, writer, cultural critic and civil servant