Us - Thought Leader

Somebody who was not us asked me what it means to be South African:

We are a motley crew – not the girly glam sham metal band, but a family of incongruity. We were knotted from many threads in all kinds of tension.

Our forefathers were variously: heroes and villains — settlers, locals, warriors, runaways, visionaries and troublemakers and we could be talking about the same individual from different perspectives of the rainbow. Perhaps this explains our colourful appearance to outsiders.

We are a raucous, gutsy bunch, tempered in a furnace of adversity, isolation and change. Beware of us, we can win your world cups.

And despite semantics, posturing and quasi-political rhetoric: we are all African – most of us spent youth barefoot, being raised by black women. Then later the concrete of our harder fathers began to set and walls cured in our skulls, spreading to the perimeters of our gardens, our neighbourhoods and when we really grew up: golf estates.

From a young age, I remember that The National Party made the white people Punch and Judy, for a time we stood by and laughed at the incompetent horror, enjoying “braaivleis” blindfolded by our own circles. We had joy, we had fun, we were lazy, hateful racists in the sun.

Evolution came, people cheered and cried, some forgetting their votes cast only days before. Our honeymoon was glib and many lighter folks took it to be forever – not the idyll before the work. The “making of it” work. The brief warmth was banked, thank god, they’ve flicked the switch, we’ll be fine … “oh, god, when will you people stop blaming apartheid? You can have lattes now and we said we’re sorry … Christ … “

The past notwithstanding, we can be an intimate bunch – indeed, we have loved each other from the first meeting of the flavours on a Cape Beach. There is proof aplenty on the Cape Flats of that love for all to see. Is Manyi the root of all evil?

We pre-free South Africans forge on, a diluting but toxic logic running in our veins. We form vague pacts, digest fibrous truths: understand each other from beer adverts and old servant/master programming – it is imperfect, our shared world, but brilliant in the sun. Our blood shines in it.

And then there are Mandela’s children – not the ones in the newspapers negotiating his funeral rights as He patiently waits to one side, smiling. Our generously, perilously gifted children, handed tomorrow’s key by his great spirit.

There are the plump business men, not joined by colour, but by their gleaming scalpels, slicing close to the nation’s bone, a lunch where flesh feeds fat and too much is taken. Once respectable, their jowls barely conceal their yellow fangs … takers who talk about how fucked this country is …

My daughter is nine – she asks: “Why do you call that man black? Is it because of his skin? He’s not even black, Dad – he’s brown.” She’s right – if we’re going to be specific, we should try and know what we’re talking about at least.

So, we’re a gang, a savage, sexy gang. Our police are capable of playing cops and robbers by themselves; our president is determined to take a third of the female population as wives — whether they like it or not — and we allegedly have cocaine dealers — right under their husband’s ministerial noses — running municipalities. Our gangsters lay down the law, we rape our children in the open here and sport is how we love.

That said, I wouldn’t worry about it all – George Bush has handed his gang to Obama – North Korea’s gang has pulled knives and guns on its brother gang South Korea, France’s gang is attacking Muammar’s and Osama’s gang has told us to sleep lightly.

We may be outlaws but we’ve come a long way, baby …