“If you want to get anywhere in this country, I recommend you invest in a good bottle of shoe polish”. This is a piece of advice I received more than twenty years ago. That this specific phrase should have impacted me is strange, since it conveys a sentiment that I have heard repeatedly throughout my life, one entrenched in the minds of many South African whites. This sentiment is behind their cries that this country is hostile to those of a paler complexion, and their chronic caterwauling has finally caught the ear of some notorious folks whom they trust will deliver them from evil. This present brouhaha deserves nothing more than a “Haha lol”, but behind the bullshit is a question that has long plagued me. Why are white people so damn terrified of black people? Why is there such an antagonistic assertion that we are all reducible to two incommensurate tribes requiring distinct (though not necessarily equal) domains? A full answer to these questions may be lost to the unwritten legacy of our forefathers, but our whiteness is inescapable. Within these dark days, then, it is worthwhile shedding what little light we can into the recesses of our psyches.

    People are often surprised to hear that I could not speak English until I started school. My earlier years were spent in a small Afrikaans town near South Africa’s border with Botswana, with my family emigrating to the latter shortly before I turned five. There I attended primary schools largely run by American missionaries, beginning my conversion into an English speaker. When I entered high school, we returned to South Africa, where I attended an old, British-style institution. By then, my Anglicization was well ingrained, with Afrikaans relegated to a “second” language. Nonetheless, the school was introducing isiZulu as an official subject, and I, feeling confident in my Afrikaans abilities, applied to be in the new cohort. But the adults around me had different expectations, prohibiting me from joining, and their justification was clearly communicated. As an assumed “white man”, learning isiZulu would be a waste of time because my future lay outside the country. What relation Afrikaans may have had to this imaginary future was never elucidated, but the message was one that has been reinforced throughout my life. There is no place in this land for someone like me and my efforts are best exerted in finding an effective and timely means of escaping. I was raised to part from my mother country, not be a part of it.

    Some months ago, I had the good fortune of visiting a few battlefields in KwaZulu-Natal. Of these, it was my visit to Blood River that was to have a profound influence on my appreciation of my own heritage. There were Smits who fought at Blood River, a battle of mythic significance in Afrikaner history. Whatever the truth of the events that unfolded around that day, the reality is that my ancestors fought for a privilege. They had trekked across an unfamiliar land into an unknown future with the hope that they would somewhere find a place to call “Home”. The dichotomy of their adventure does not escape me, for what they won they took at the expense of others, their place in the world gained at the expense of those who already lived there. But standing amidst those bronze wagons, trying to envision the impetus behind the bloodshed, a realization dawned on me. This world that I inhabit, in its beauty and vulgarity, was made for me by my ancestors. Whatever its worth, I cannot ignore the responsibility this inheritance imposes upon me. My ancestors chose to leave Europe for Africa, abandoning what they perceived as an inhospitable continent in pursuit of a promise that has yet to be fulfilled, for its fulfilment falls to me. Their expectations and anxieties, their achievements and failures, persist through me, and it is in light of this realization that I recognise that I was born to live in this land, not as a man apart but at one with it.

    The ambiguity of being white in Africa is obviously not a new phenomenon, but it is one I feel has not received the right kind of attention. There is a need for a more critical engagement, and I have found that this often is better provided by black thinkers grappling with the legacy they have inherited. In The Wretched of the Earth, for example, Frantz Fanon details the dehumanizing impact of colonization as he experienced it in Algeria, but his assessment bears out across the continent. At one point, he discusses the issue of dual citizenship, where white people exist with one foot in their “host country”, the African nation wherein they live, and another in their “mother country”, whatever European nation their ancestors arrived from. He is rightly reproachful of these fence-sitters, for in their fluctuating identification they lack commitment either way, notably never willing to ally themselves with the place they inhabit. There is, as it were, always a backdoor available should things fall apart. While I have never held dual citizenship, I’ve had friends who did, and every one of them has by now emigrated to whiter pastures. It was my encounter with Fanon, as well as figures like Steve Biko and James Baldwin, that confronted me with my split personality and forced me to decide: am I African or European? Well, I have travelled through Europe, from England to Holland and then some, and nowhere did I ever feel a sense of homecoming. Rather, my impression was that, in the eyes of my European counterparts, I was not even fully “white”.

    The ambiguity of my whiteness is not simply an academic matter but cuts deeply to my self-understanding. Having been thoroughly Anglicized by my schooling, my Afrikaans ethnicity has been overwhelmed by my English pseudo-culture, so much so that I am no longer recognized by my supposed kinsmen. They call me a “soutie”, a derogatory term Afrikaners have for Englishmen that roughly translates to “salty one”. The roots of this slur are based on an old assertion that Englishmen stand with one foot in England, another in Africa, with a certain appendage dangling into the ocean between, thus deriving its saltiness. As opposed to a true Afrikaner, “one from Africa”, a soutie is an outsider, salt of a different earth than that loved by the Boere, the Afrikaans farmers. Revelation of my Afrikaans roots and unwilling conversion to English offers no deliverance but only condemns me further. I am deemed a “verraaier”, a traitor who forsook his heritage. Who I actually am is obliterated by a single, ignorant word.

    I am African. I am so by birth and by choice. This land is my home; its people – whoever they are – are my kin. This is not some heroic proclamation but a statement of fact. As it rains on both the just and unjust, so will the manure pour down on black and white alike once it hits the proverbial fan. To speak of “white interests” as opposed to “black interests” is a fallacy, for there is no true inter-esse, an essential “in-between” which binds these respective groups absolutely. There are no “white interests” but only whites with interests, with ambitions personal to them that they seek to enforce upon others they consider to be like them. It is “these people” who are currently petitioning the U.S. government for sanctuary for the poor, persecuted whites perishing in South Africa. Groups like Afriforum and Solidariteit have been shoveling the same bullshit since the day apartheid ended, and that they should be getting so much attention now is more an indication of the U.S.’s deteriorating political sphere than ours. But when I see the photos of professedly proud Afrikaners kneeling in prayer in front of the White House, I am led to wonder: who are the real traitors?

    If you are unfamiliar with circumstances in South Africa and all you know is what these crybabies have been peddling, I want to assure you that these expatriates have little knowledge of the country they chose to abandon. If you are South African and still believe what they are saying, then I’ll say to you what Fanon said to me: “If you don’t like it, you can leave”. But if you are, like me, someone who simultaneously groans and laughs at the privileged petulance of these white naggers, then we can at least take comfort in the outspoken optimism of our compatriots who challenge their racist narrative. I do not know why so many white people are seemingly scared of their black fellows, but something in the history of my ancestors left us with a profound fear of this “Dark Continent”. It, however, also imbued a great deal of love. That we should continue trying to carve up this land in some perpetual re-enactment of the Berlin Conference is preposterous, and that some affluent Afrikaners should now strive for a slice of America is even more perverse. Frankly, I am glad that they have left Africa to the Africans, because it is we who are committed, not to some imaginary Volk but to a living reality, to South Africa as it really is and could one day be. Now, I ask you, dear reader, to whom are you committed?