Foreign flags on rear-view mirrors: more messed-up-identities

Someone please tell me what is “so cool” about having an American or British flag in your car dangling from your rear-view mirror day in, day out? No, I have nothing against those two former great powers. I think some people need help knowing who they are.

Why are you wearing another country’s flag as a bandanna on your head? Do you know what a flag represents? Not to mention the coat or arms? What are you trying to say? Besides the fact that there is very little left in your head! Are you telling everyone that you are fully subservient to Uncle Sam, or an eternal subject of the Queen?

OK, we are a free democracy, I know, and you may wear whatever you want, but come now, after all the globalisation battering, and where we are coming from as a country and a continent, you surely must at least have a semblance of patriotic fervour left in your bones. Or am I assuming a lot and expecting rather too much here? Who knows, maybe you are one of those among us yearning for the right opportunity to pack up for the Aussie, American, Canadian or British shores. Then by all means stick your other country’s flag right up your … gate … (!). And learn its national anthem while you’re at it.

The essence of that open display of admiration of what is foreign is that just about everyone wants to identify with something that is regarded as “better”. Therein lies the biggest challenge in our midst: What is better? Better than what? Some of us have adopted confused and confusing foreign identities, and cannot relate to the beauty that is within us, individually and collectively. The journey for moral regeneration and self-rediscovery is one long trip that we will all have to take. Many of us are oblivious to the fact that the change we yearn for in fact starts and ends within us. The damage that was done by the social engineering of the past runs deep, and we continue to reproduce it in how we train our kids in social and relationship skills.

There is a movement towards appreciating what is local, what is ethnic and what is indigenous, and we have to capitalise on that. Let those of us who look down on what is local run along to wherever; they will come back, but we will not be waiting with bated breath. Every place in the world has its own troubles. Let us deal with ours, together. That includes crime, HIV and Aids, poverty, confused identities, (lack of) economic transformation, unemployment and 2010 facilities. Let us grab the opportunities that are around us.

We all want to belong somewhere, to identify with something, to have a place of refuge, a home for the heart that we are proud of. But few of us would like to be classified, grouped-up, boxed-up or pigeon-holed in any way.

At least not by someone else.

Identifying oneself with something, or with a group, is individually determined, but classification is more of an imposition from outside. Hence it is rejected as labelling. How do you get to decide who you are and where you belong? How do you do that when in all aspects of your life you are so intricately linked to the next person? You could think of it as a direct consequence of global trends towards common perceptions of our different realities, or just dismiss it as a failure to define where we are going as a people in a global village. Either way, the result is messed-up identities galore! South Afrika is one of the leading developing societies regarded as fast-changing boiling pots of social change and self-rediscovery.

Again, a sense of belonging is at the centre of the search for self-identity. This is an identity that is deeper than the flag from your rear-view mirror, and certainly far deeper than your love and yearning for good old biltong, umnqgushu (samp), Mrs Balls’ chutney, or anything typically South Afrikan when you are not at home. Some South Afrikans’ self-identity today is not only unclear, it is varied, and just as well it should be.

Why so?

It emerges from the diversity that characterises this country’s history. There are many different South Afrikans unable to define or place themselves today. There are a lot of people dying to be heard, seen or read about. And that is because there are many manufactured and imposed expressions of self-identification. If many ordinary people could write their life histories, especially the rich tapestry of their life stories, South Afrika and the world would be hugely enriched, and many of our identity-challenged young people would be rescued. They would learn to build a strong case of who they really are.

Just think of what kids learn at school … in some cases, they learn that it is better to speak in English than in their own languages. Tragic! Why? This is because one’s language resonates with one’s customs, values and cultural foundations. Without one’s language, one’s sense of who one is really is diminished. One starts to relate to oneself through another medium of expression, and starts to lose some of one’s “self”. But, again, this is a separate discussion topic altogether.

How do we shape our own identities? In many cases what we do is dip ourselves into the huge pot of a dynamic mix of global and local cultural traits and pick what we can, what we like. We use this to try to define ourselves with that, and through it. Not everyone will get it right.

So it is OK, you can take off your American flag from your car now. Or off your head, if you’re really that messed up! We will all understand the sudden “transformation” (that word again! It is not a swear word, it describes a process, OK?). We will pat you on the back and tell you it will all be fine soon. You see, we all grow up sometime, eventually. You are on your way to self-discovery. It would be great to see your own national flag dangling from that rear-view mirror, though. That is if you must dangle something there …

What really gets to me often is the appropriation and ownership of what is proper, what is good or bad, what is right or wrong. When you have one group (black or white elite) of people playing the role of guardians of morality, etiquette, ethics and measurements of human worth, value and respect, then you have a big problem in your hands. We have that in the whole of Southern Afrika, and one can say that it is a global phenomenon. It is not a good feeling when you are on the receiving end.

The freest of people among us are those who do not conform to another’s definition of what is OK and what is not, and those who do not care what the self-appointed guardians of “the proper way” say or think about it.

We must constantly ask our youth: Who are you, and who or what are you going to be?

Or, even better, where do you think you’re going?