What about the Ancestors?

I remember that day very clearly. An excited call from my partner, Leon, saying “We have got a child”. I went into panic mode. I had made my position very clear, both to him and into Social Welfare. I wasn’t going to have just any child thrown at me. I wanted to be sure that I could “bond” with the child first – not that I had the vaguest idea of what that might mean.

So I went to see this child, which they thought would be right for us. He was lying quietly in his cot at the far end of the room, sucking his finger. I looked at him. He looked at me. After a while, I put out my finger and he took hold of it. And at that moment – that instant – I knew that this child was mine. I knew that I was his father and he would be my son.

When we adopted our children, the legal wording of the adoption order was, for me at least, very important. It said that this child was now “as if born to you”. The ancestors of that child (and the state) for whatever reason, handed him over to me and my partner. Our children were not “abandoned”. They were consciously and lovingly handed over. Those children are now mine - “as if born to me”. These two black boys now have two white fathers.

And it happened quite naturally, fairly early on, when I was asked by one of them about the identity of an old white lady in my photograph album, that I explained that she was my mother. “Your grandmother”, I explained, “she died a long time ago”. And we moved on to the next set of pictures. “And that is your Aunt, and that is your cousin…” and so it went.

Both the children refer to Leon’s parents, who are much more to them than pictures in an album - as “Granny” and “Grandpa”. And Leon’s parents make no distinction between our children and the children which his brother has produced biologically. Our ancestors are now the children’s ancestors. They have no others.

Of course besides anything else, the question of culture has also come up fairly frequently. Just because of the fact that these children happen to be black and me white, do I need to start doing a course in gumboot dancing? Should I rush off and get myself circumcised? Should I have a regular supply of Mopani worms in the house to make them feel secure? This is as crazy as it is bizarre and it reveals, I am afraid, just how far we are away from a really non-racial society, where colour is the least significant thing about a person.

No, we are not there yet. And yes, I have no objection to “exposing” my children to cultures other than my own. I also have no illusions about the difficult path they will need to tread. They need to be secure, not in some fantasy culture from somewhere else, but in their own skin, for who they are. And force-feeding them Mopani worms will not make it easier for them. It may make it a whole lot worse.

Does the worm inevitably turn?

Pic: A dam just outside Worcester - where the meeting was held

“To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?
Not to the beast that would usurp their den.
The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.'"
Shakespeare Henry VI Pt. 3.

I am interested to note, these days, how quiet the media is, (and more interestingly, the white public is) about Jacob Zuma. Just a matter of months ago, you could have sworn that the sky was going to fall, the earth was going to heave and we whites would all be swallowed up in the disaster which would follow the victory of the ANC at the polls and his ascendency to the Presidency.

I note with further interest, a recent newspaper report about a meeting which the leader of the opposition and Premier of the Western Cape, Helen Zille had with the President. She came away from it saying that it is “hard not to like him”. She went further and said that this was all the more remarkable, seeing she had run a specific and individually targeted campaign to “Stop Zuma” during the election.

I also see how silly former President Thabo Mbeki is seeming these days and I can’t help seeing some kind of vague similarity between him and “Die Groot Krokodil” – former apartheid President, PW Botha. When he, in his day, was kicked out by FW de Klerk and the new breed of Afrikaners (who were seen as crazy reformists in some circles) and the ANC, Communist Party and other Liberation movements were unbanned, Botha continued to breathe fire and brimstone, never seeing the wood, for a forest of trees.

And some whites, many whites, perhaps even the majority of whites today, are still breathing the same fire and brimstone. I hear them all the time, all around me. The other day I was in a meeting in a rural area way out of Cape Town. There were a total of five whites in a meeting of about 20 people. At lunch, being fairly early in the queue, I happened to sit at a table with no-one else at it at that point. I could not fail to notice that within a short while, all the other whites in the meeting had gathered at my table. And then it started…

They simply assumed that I was one of them and would therefore agree with their reactionary position on things in general. They spoke about “them” and they spoke about “us”. They lamented the passing of the old days. I chewed on my salad and said nothing. Not because I am shy. Not because I am slow in coming forward, but because I was totally gobsmacked!

These were four people I had never met before in my life. They work in significant, public interface related jobs. They deal with black people on a daily basis. But their minds are twisted and distorted and their understanding of South African reality is profoundly skewed. The world which they apparently live in is monochrome and diseased. And here is the tragedy – they have no idea that this is their reality!

The tragedy is that they position themselves as liberals – as people who “never supported apartheid”. Now they are merely observers. Now they are the experts on democratic government. Now they are the victims of affirmative action. They chose to ignore, I could not fail to notice, the fact that three of them were actually employed in the state itself or para-statals!

It is this killing, whinging mindset which is so totally reprehensible. Crime is “their” responsibility – and “they” don’t have a clue how to solve it, because “they” are either criminals themselves, or stupid – or, of course, more probably both.

And what does this kind of attitude do (besides making the bearer into a bitter, twisted human being)? This is what I think. I think it infects everyone – the good and the bad, the criminal and the victim, black and white. It sets up a societal dynamic which corrodes and insinuates itself into every aspect of life. It is there in the shopping centre, the gym, the Church, the street, the airport. It feeds on itself. It grows fat and it spreads. It is insidious. It is contagious.

But here is the issue. It is not just a “white” thing. There is nothing genetically involved here. It can equally become a “black” thing. In the Western Cape, it is undoubtedly now a “coloured” thing.

I see yesterday in the press, the African National Congress in the Western Cape issued an apology to the Western Cape Province, for its previous fractious, inefficient and nepotistic government. It was a government which was fairly trounced at the polls, bringing the Democratic Alliance to power again.

I think the apology is well intended and it is a desperate attempt to salvage some level of credibility. But I do not think it will work. It is not the case, after all, that previous Democratic Alliance governments were wonderful. In fact, they were disastrous. But the ANC has managed to completely alienate vast swathes of the Western Cape population – a population which is already deeply conservative, racist and divided. What the ANC has managed to do is to compound fears, prejudices and racist beliefs. It has done so by ignoring people, by marginalising people, by arrogance and by greed. This is the consequence of its actions.

So, whatever good President Zuma may achieve - through openness, or accessibility or through tight controls on corruption – it won’t matter a damn in the Western Cape in my estimation, for a very long time to come. Because the party he belongs to seems to have forgotten the primary matter of race in the equation. Race isn’t an issue which can manage itself and in this country it isn’t going to just go away. And as long as there are some South Africans who feel more important than other South Africans, we have all the ingredients we need for a profoundly depressed and diseased society.

Are my black children white?

I was pleased to be invited to a colleague of mine’s family ‘do’. “Exactly what kind of a family ‘do’ was it going to be?” I asked. “Oh”, he said breezily, “we will be introducing my youngest son to the ancestors”. I looked seriously at him. “Are there going to be any animal slaughters on the front lawn?” I asked as lightly as I knew how. “Because if there are going to be, then I’m not coming”.

He assured me that the hapless goat had already been killed, and that all that was required was for us to gather round and perform some kind of ritual or other. I thought that would be good, and so, with the aid of my GPS, ventured for not the first time into Gugulethu – (or, as some locals refer to it “Sjoojoolehtois”). Without a GPS, I have to tell you, it would be an impossible exercise. There are no street signs. And the streets themselves are named “NY121” and “NY122” etc. Why NY? Oh, it was explained to me, that stands for “Native Yard”.

Anyway, my two children and I – my two very white children with black skins – arrived. The men were in the garage, being men - and the women were in the living room. I seemed to be an honorary woman, so that is where I stayed for the while. I had noticed on the way in, (as did my saucer-eyed children) that there was the head of the hapless, slaughtered goat, lying next to a small fire that was burning on the front lawn. I noticed too, by the by, that the ground of the front lawn was so waterlogged that the house seemed to be floating. Such is normal, I understand in the Native Yard area.

At some point, a grass mat was produced and mother and child sat on it, were smeared with something red (I didn’t ask!) and all of us, sitting in a circle around them, were asked to take with our right hand, two small beads from a bowl and hold them in our left hands. Then the bowl collected the two beads from everyone’s left hands. These were the same beads that were made into a necklace and placed around Junior’s neck. The string of the necklace was bits of rubbed together Achilles tendon of the hapless goat. I was told that he would wear it until it fell off.

Just prior to this, the hapless goat was brought into the lounge in which we were all sitting, boiled, cut up and in a very large enamel bowl. My children looked at me with very large imploring eyes and said, very definitely, that they were not hungry.

When, later, I asked one of the elders, with whom I was sitting (by virtue of my age, I suppose, and the greying colour of my hair), what the bead ritual had all meant, I was told that the right hand takes, and the left hand gives, and so we are all involved in what that child is, because we all add something to him – to his life, to his being.

That, it seems to me, is a pretty important – fairly dramatic sort of statement. I’m not completely sure how it works out in practise, because obviously, the proof of the pudding must be in the eating, but it is a serious enough, laudable enough sort of principal. And it sure isn’t the way my culture deals with children! There is no way in hell that I could call anyone else’s child mine – and there is very little that I could do influence the way that child grows up. I see this in my own family. It is almost as though other people’s children are some kind of sacred domain. I can’t (and don’t) say when I disapprove of their behaviour, nor would it be expected that I should take any kind of responsibility for them, if they got themselves into serious trouble. And if I did get involved, it would not be because I see the children as mine, but because I would have some sort of connection with the parents.

So, I asked – what did Tata Mkhulu (grandfather) think of my adopted children? Are they white or are they black? Should I be worrying about whether or not to slaughter a goat for them, or not? Predictably, he said that they were not genetically mine, and that culture relates to genes. I said nonsense, in the nicest possible way, of course. And that they are as much my children as if they were conceived by me. And, to cut a long discourse short, we agreed to disagree – because our cultures are so completely different.

It all took me back to when I was living in Lesotho, with the dominant culture so vastly different from my own. With me feeling like I was on Planet Zog, and the Basotho behaving like I was just someone who had, over a period of centuries perhaps, just lost my way.

So, should I be slaughtering goats for my kids? And making bead necklaces for them to wear? I think not. Mine and my partner’s are the only ancestors around – and you know what? That’s what these kids have landed up with. And in my culture, ancestors don’t interfere. And to my children’s great relief, the goats are made of plastic.