BAD NEWS

According to the racial statistics of Apartheid South Africa, I am a second-generation Coloured: the fruit of miscegenation and of an in-between existence; the appendage of black and white. There are approximately four million other people like me – twilight children who live in political, social and economic oblivion and who have been cut off from the mainstream of direct interaction with both black and white people. But many coloured people, especially adults, have looked to the whites for their survival and security. There has been a rapid move by the younger, more radical people towards political and social integration with blacks because of the success of the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa.

After the removal of people from cosmopolitan areas such as Sophiatown, the Verwoerdian protagonists – political scientists and academics – obviously with the collaboration of many coloured quislings, have created a middle-class among the Coloureds. And, employing the swartgevaar (black danger) slogan, they have drawn many twilight people closer to the white laager (exclusive haven). Closer but not into it. Just close enough to serve as a buffer between white and black, and the latter are slowly beginning to doubt the bona fides of their lighter-skinned brothers and sisters.

It is only in this mad and frightened portion of the world, bedevilled as it is by race consciousness and pigmentocracy, that human beings are categorised and classified under the law into sub-tribal and sub-human units. Consider the Coloureds. The Griquas are the so-called descendants of an aboriginal chief called Adam Kok whose land was first seized by the British colonialists and later the Boers following unsuccessful uprisings against both the occupying forces of his day. Adam Kok’s territory inside the borders of South Africa is still known as Griqualand.

Then there are the Cape Coloureds – the name denotes a direct genetic link with the so-called Bushmen and Hottentots – preferably known as the Khoisan. What the segregationists could not escape was that so many of these Bushman and Hottentot offspring had blue, grey or green eyes with straight blond hair. The other Cape ‘mixture’ is known as Cape Malay. Although a large section of this grouping has traces of Malayan blood, many thus classified are very light-skinned, with European features as well as Khoisan characteristics. The original Malay slaves were brought into South Africa by the Dutch East India Company settlers, the majority of whom did not bring women with them. The other lesser known coloured ‘tribes’ are the ‘Maasbieker’, the name being derived from the word ‘Mozambique’ and meaning ‘a type of Mozambique Coloured’. There are the ‘Basters’ or Bastards- half-breeds, mainly found in South West Africa/Namibia and in parts of the Northern Cape Province. The Mauritian Coloureds, most of them light-skinned and long-haired, are chiefly based in South Africa’s Natal Province and choose English as their language, unlike their counterparts in the Transvaal and the Cape who mostly speak Afrikaans. Perhaps the most obnoxious and the most hated label is ‘Other Coloureds’ – referring to ‘mixtures’ that possibly arose out of relationships outside the white group, such as the offspring of African and Chinese, African and Indian, and African and all the other aforementioned Coloured varieties.

Where did it all begin for me?

We stood in a long queue inside a state-owned courtyard waiting our turns to be classified or reclassified either as ‘pure’ Coloureds or as ‘Natives’ – as Africans were officially dubbed in the forties and fifties. As a flower or tree would be classified into a certain species, so were the Coloureds grouped and regrouped, until they stopped believing they were just humans. For it is in the nature of men to create pigeon-holes. When I left the classroom at the Vrededorp High School, in the company of several of my standard eight classmates one day in August 1955, it was by order of an Act of the white parliament which decreed that all ‘Coloureds’ or even so-called Coloureds were to report to specially set up reclassification courts to determine our ‘race’.

William ‘Lovely Boy’ Bokera, a very yellow-skinned boy, who like me, had an African mother and a coloured father, tugged nervously at my jacket sleeve. The sweat of the fear of the unknown glistened on his forehead like oil.

‘Hey Don, are we going to tell the fokking Boere that our old ladies are darkies? I mean it’s not their bloody business who our damned mothers are; I mean we didn’t tell our toejappes (fathers) to grab darkie ousies (girls).’ I didn’t answer. There’s no way I was going to reply; one never knew who else was in the yard, keenly watching and recording speeches and events.

‘Hey, are you listening, bra? Are we going to tune them about our old ladies?’

‘I don’t know, Lovely Boy but it shouldn’t really matter because as I understand it you are what your father is, and in our cases, both our fathers are half-white and they have not been classified Native or African,’ I said, trying to allay his fears.

‘Never! In this country you are what they think you should be, what they want you to be, and all that through the stroke of a pen. Since this reclassification shit, everyone is changing his surname.’

I nodded. This conversion of surnames was widespread. Sonnyboy Letlapa (‘Stone’ in Tswana), who was a fair-skinned Morolong, changed his surname to ‘Kleppers’ derived from the Afrikaans word ‘klippe’ (stones). Direct adaptations were ‘Maybee’ from ‘Mabe’; ‘Radbee’ from ‘Radebe’; ‘Cummings’ from ‘Khumalo’ and ‘McKwenna’ from ‘Mokwena’; the list is endless.