I’m 17 years old and in my final year of high school. This was a prospect that made me excited about my future, at least before I came across the other side of Cape Town. It was during the exam preparations when my teacher asked me to help some guys in township schools who were struggling. How she posed the question made me want to learn more about myself.

“Sipho, perhaps your people in the township could use your help. I mean with the kind of facilities they have they sure find it difficult to get by,” she said with a smile.

It was the way she said it that had me filled with eagerness to learn more about my blackness. “Your people” – the term made me angry. If strangers I haven’t met are my people, did this mean Francois, Benny and Daniel weren’t my people although I spend most of my time with them? I asked myself.

The fact that she thought every black person resided in a township – that also made me angry. As did the fact that I had to bear the responsibility of educating strangers. Strangers I thought, until I met the other side of Cape Town.

What also made me very angry was the fake smile she wore, the one she’d been wearing ever since she first met me. The one that most teachers in the school wore, the one that people in my neighbourhood wore every time they came across me.

“Do you guys see me as your blood brother or just a black dude?” I asked my blood brothers on our way home.

“Dude, where is all this coming from?” asked Benny.

“I just want to know. I’m curious,” I said.

“Bro, you are nothing like most black people I know. You are like one of us,” said Benny.

I knew not what he meant by that. Blame it on the way the other side of Cape Town had raised me. It had raised me to be colour-blind, to not see blackness and whiteness. It had taught me not to put much emphasis on politics but on working hard and perhaps I’d be successful. It had taught me not to question why success had a white face, not to question why they ran the economy.

“OK,” I said.

I walked quietly on my way home, looking around me and all I saw was prosperity. That prosperity had a face, however, and that face was white. I saw beautiful houses I always saw but had never viewed the way I had started to. These houses belonged to white people. I saw swimming pools and beautiful cars in their yards. Some houses owned five to six cars.

I walked thinking to myself, where do I fit into the whole picture? Which side of Cape Town do I belong to? The white one, because of my family’s affluence, although whiteness constantly rejected me? Or the black one due to my skin colour and race, although they constantly labeled me a sell out or a snob? I didn’t understand the complexities of either of these sides until I got to know “Black Cape Town”.

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Tell us what you think: What do you think Sipho will discover in his journey to find himself?