Black South Africans are more European than African

Not too many years ago I used to call some black people, especially those of African descent, “coconuts”.

And, of course, this got me into trouble with people who felt insulted by this label.

It suggested that they were, essentially, white people inside who were cursed with black skins outside.

In practical terms, it meant that they had bought completely into the notion of white cultural superiority and allowed themselves to be brainwashed to believe that to be somebody they had to speak, dress, behave and think like white people.

Of course the notion of white people does not exist except as a social construct but that will be a matter for another day.

For the past 20 years or so I have been critically examining the way of life of so-called black people, especially in the urban areas.

In some way I have been privileged to gain access into the heart and soul of the black middle class. That is people who have a bit of money, position and power and have been able to move up the social and economic ladder.

Again, the notion of a black middle class is yet another misleading social construct to make us believe that blacks own property and the means of production when they are just workers.

But that, too, is another matter for another day.

For a very long time now I have found myself thinking hard about what constitutes the true identity of an authentic African person, if there is such a person.

What I have tried to do is bring together the prevalent Western cultural experience around me and fuse it with what could pass for African.

But my circumstances and realities have made me realise the impossibility of this effort or experiment in true cultural integration.
Of course, in no time, I was in some kind of collision without quite knowing it with the master language, culture, history and heritage of Western life on African soil.

There is very little that is African about this African country located on the southern edge of the African continent.

It would have been a truly meaningful and inspirational experience for me, as an African, to find the spirit of the African continent in my country but it does not exist.

Perhaps the very idea of an African country or experience is just a romantic idea that only exists in the ideal.

In reality it does not exist. At least, not here and now! This is something I have come to recognise without knowing that I recognise it or what it means.

Being on sabbatical in Washington DC, New York and London provided me with the opportunity to really examine what it meant to be African.

It was way back in 1992 when, for the first time, I realised that I have never lived in Africa except for the reason that my country is geographically located there. The assumption that South Africa is an African country simply because it is in Africa is wrong.

But this assumption was held by the people I was surrounded with, including leaders, business people, musicians, writers, priests, artists, teachers, activists and other professionals that I looked up to.

I have, at an unconscious level, come to accept that black South Africans are the “New Negroes” outside of America.

Black South Africans are a fatally different breed of dark-skinned people who are in deep trouble because they have thought themselves out of existence.

For the last three and half centuries, not only have they allowed themselves to be alienated from their own history, heritage, culture and languages but have collaborated in wiping out their identity.

Obviously, the conquering of African people by Westerners has not completely defeated the former but there is no way that any African who lived before 1652 can still recognise this country as an African country.

South Africans are the “New Negroes” because when you critically examine their identity, languages, heritage and history, there is very little that says they are Africans.

In fact we are … not just Americanised but too Western. We have become a loyal satellite of Europe. Obviously we now live in what is popularly known as the global village and are expected to do as the Americans do.

But I have looked at the historical mirror of my people and what I have seen looking back at me are the ancestors with eyes radiating great wonder and great contempt.

And I get scared because I cannot relate or identify with them because I have not upheld or promoted their languages or have done much to protect and preserve their culture, history and heritage.

Instead I speak, write and, above all, think in English like the increasing number of other progressive South Africans. Many of our children are beginning to understand and speak in English.

Of course, we have a history that produced John Tengo Jabavu or Pixley ka Seme, or which gave us many ancestors who were educated in America and Europe.

A kind of reconciliation that saw us sacrifice and abandon whatever is our history and heritage happened to make it easier to disconnect with Africa in the name of modernity. It was a very strange kind of advancement and progress that we 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: the kind of respectable and powerful ones who, essentially, are coconuts, who do everything as Western culture dictates and those who really try to keep an intuitive connection with Africa’s past and heritage.

But many of us live more in the Western world and culture than in Africa.

In a sense, we have lived up to the ideal that South Africa belongs to all who live in it but more white than black.

In a sense we have recreated ourselves, become African people who are proud of their Western identity, heritage and culture.

It is a very unique contribution to modernity.