Finding myself

Along with about 300 other Capetonians, I have started a process of establishing my heritage.

I was one of the people invited by the African Genome Education Institute, in partnership with Ancestry24, to take a test that would determine my family’s geographical origins. The event took the form of a town-hall meeting at Bishops High School on Saturday.

The test is simple and painless: it involves taking a cheek swab, and after four months I should know whether my family lineage involves the Khoi Khoi or whether I have roots that come from the East or West.

The event itself was fairly simple, with the Genome Institute’s Dr Wilmot James explaining why it is embarking on this process. The purpose is to “create a genetic map of migration patterns of the different population groups that settled in South Africa throughout history”.

James outlined what is known about modern human’s origins, saying that studies show that 150 00 years ago, our geographic place of origin was in East Africa.

He said that 60 000 years ago, we had left Africa and reached Australia. About 2 000 years ago, most of the people living in Africa were the forefathers of the Khoi Khoi and the San people.

As far as skin colour is concerned, this changed over the years in some cases to get used to new environments. “It takes 11 000 years for skin colour to change.”

After the short speeches, we were told to line up at 12 cubicles where “each test should take one-and-a-half minutes”, according to James. Of course it took a bit longer, but that was not an issue.

Once you reached the cubicle, you sat down, a helper checked the form that you had to fill in and asked you to roll a swab inside your cheek, almost like brushing your teeth. You had to use two swabs, one for each cheek.

The swabs were put into little plastic containers and then you were free to go. Like they said, painless. Everything was over in less than an hour-and-a-half.

What was not so painless for me was the process I went through before taking the test. I found myself thinking about what I had been told about my heritage while growing up.

Because of our divided history in South Africa, it was very common for us to denounce or heritage or, at the very least, not to pay any attention to it.

All I know is that in the “coloured” community in the Western Cape, most people talk about their European heritage and I remember many households having pictures of Great Britain’s queen in their lounges. This was an indication that that specific family traced their heritage to Great Britain. Whether this was proven was not the issue. The issue was that the family identified with Great Britain, probably more than they did with South Africa.

It was easy to understand why they did not want to identify with apartheid South Africa.

But I always felt that these families who so openly identified with Great Britain did themselves a disservice by distancing themselves from their South African roots, which could have been Xhosa or Khoi San.

Or if you were Muslim, your roots could have been in the East.

Even in my own family, I was always told about my European roots but never about the other parts of my roots. In fact, I don’t even know whether I have any European roots.

At least now I have something to look forward to. In four months I will have evidence of my roots.

Obviously I do not know what the findings are going to be, but I can imagine the shock and horror on some of my family’s faces if I have to tell them that, contrary to what they believed, their roots are not in Europe but in Africa.

Irrespective of where my roots are, I will remain proudly South African and African. At least I know already, as James pointed out, we all started off in Africa.