It’s Freedom Day, Stupid!

Ah, a white girl writing about 27 April. Cue for the cooing and gushing over the rainbow nation? Nah. I’ve always thought that notion to be simplistic PR for the New South Africa, invented by the same lot who came up with SA Neutral and think Helen Zille is the best mayor in the world. If you’ve driven on the N2 or through Grassy Park, you’ll find that as odd as the lack of emotion in her botoxed face.

Still, you can’t be too harsh on people who want a beautiful dream without the harsh reality. I was like that once… when I was 9. But nothing is black and white unless you’re Malema at a press conference.

The funny thing is how few 9 to 18 year-olds actually give a toss. I sometimes feel like my generation was the last politically aware one (and many of them don’t care either). Some might think this is a good thing, moving forward and all that, but just look at the way Julius subverts history and politics to suit his own agenda. If the teenagers he was targeting knew the real story of how we got here, they might not be singing “Kill the Boer” with him.

You’ve got to understand the roots of hatred and resentment before you can overcome it. Otherwise everything is just rhetoric.

White tendencies

Funnily enough, the first time I experienced hatred and resentment wasn’t in South Africa, but another famously racist country.

We moved to Australia when I was five. Even though my parents were Zimbabwean, most Aussies assumed they’d been killing black babies and using their blood for paint. Neighbours wouldn’t talk to my mother. I was made to stand in the Brisbane sun for hours by a particularly sadistic teacher. Down Under was a pretty but miserable place.

We came back in 1988, at the height of the emergency. We could have stayed. People (white people) thought my parents were nuts to return, but their family was here. Blood is stronger than fear.

Soon after arriving home, we went to Muizenberg. I was 7 years old and didn’t really remember anything before I was 5. My earliest memory is still hiding under the bed in Brisbane so I wouldn’t have to go to school. There were no black people there. The only black person I knew was BA Baracus.

So I’ll never forget the first time I saw a black woman on the beach with some pasty white guy. She was gorgeous and dark against white sand. I remember people staring. We think kids don’t notice but they pick up on everything.

I very excitedly grabbed my mother and pointed, “Look Mommy, it’s a black lady, like BA in the A-Team!”

Long walk to a real education

I went to a government school, which had recently become Model C. There were a few coloured girls and eventually black girls too. I was too preoccupied with trying to catch up academically to notice. The Australian education system was abysmal compared to ours. Everyone else was writing and I barely recognised letters. My thick Aussie accent also meant nobody understood a word I was saying.

I sensed big things were happening outside, but they were completely removed from the realm of blackboards and netball. The first time I realised there was a whole world I didn’t understand was the day Mandela was released.

Sitting with my mother’s cousins in a facebrick townhouse in Somerset West, we watched our future president walk free. The adults were saying things along the lines of “what now?” I just remember how exciting it all was. I had no idea why, but I wanted to know. Obviously someone had treated this man unfairly. My idealistic sense of justice kicked in.

Being a precocious and politically aware kid between 1990 and 1994 was certainly interesting.

I’d been completely insulated and disinterested until seeing Mandela but after his release I started to learn as much as I could, reading the newspaper every day and asking the teachers awkward questions. What was happening? Why was this so important? Why had white people done bad things to black people? Why did people hate each other so much? Who was this guy in khaki on a horse?

I knew there were important talks and violence. I knew people were dying. It was still far away though. In 1992 our drama teacher scared the shit out of my class by telling us to make sure our parents voted “Yes” in the referendum, otherwise there would be civil war.

I frantically phoned my mother from the tikkie box, “Vote Yes Mom! Vote Yes!” Completely pointless since she wasn’t a South African citizen. I think she would have voted yes though; she was enjoying the cricket very much and didn’t want it to end.

Of sunset clauses and bombs

I gradually started piecing together who was who and what was happening. I developed a highly idealistic world-view. I thought most people should be like Mandela and didn’t understand when they weren’t. I saw the world in black and white. I made jokes about it mixing and everything becoming grey (the teachers didn’t laugh). CODESA had collapsed and everything was uncertain, but I believed it would all work out in the end.

A year later two friends died in the St James Church attack. Their parents still place memorials in the classifieds section every July 25th. 100 metres down the road from my parents’ business, four people were killed inside the Heidelberg Tavern. I realised then that it would never be a question of just forgetting the past and getting along.

Soon afterwards, my uncle and his wife emigrated and didn’t return until a visit 16 years later. Sometimes blood is not stronger than fear.

In 1994 I began high school. Our teacher taught us Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika. She said it would be our new national anthem. I didn’t even know we had one. For some reason our school never taught us Die Stem.

The run-up to 27 April was a blur of euphoria and violence. There was a bloody state of emergency in Natal, Jan Smuts Airport was bombed, the IFP pulled out of the election (then in again), AWB men died on TV in Bophuthatswana. But on the day, everyone was happy. Our domestic worker wore an exquisitely beaded ANC skirt. My parents voted for the first time. We got the rest of the week off school. And I was relieved (no, not about school).

I never voted for the Nats

When Chris and I visited the Apartheid Museum last year, I was surprised by my visceral reaction. I know all this stuff, I read the books, so why the hell am I crying? Because years of accumulated knowledge doesn’t compare to a concentrated four-hour journey. And as these new ads for the museum indicate – a history forgotten is a future lost – the brightest of the “freedom generation” don’t seem to get it. Maybe they never can.

Still, I won’t raise my kids in ignorance and just let the history syllabus take care of their knowledge. Our past is both shameful

Graffiti on the wall at the Regina Mundi Catholic Church, Soweto.

and extraordinary, but at least it’s out all there (I certainly never learnt about the lost generation of Aborigines in Australia). And if you don’t understand it, if you don’t know what people endured so we can go overseas without being hated and relax on a beach no matter who we are, it’s a lot easier to buy into the bullshit-baffles-brains sensibilities of a Malema or Visagie.

South Africa was built on hatred and fear. But there is a commonality. We may not be bloody agents, but we’re all bloody-minded. We carry on debating, arguing, laughing and working, because despite our whining and misgivings, we actually give a shit. It’s that warped, fatalistic hope that keeps us going.

1. 

   Tracy Todd says:

   April 26, 2010 at 4:08 pm

   What a beautifully written article with some powerful words.

   And yes, I agree, we actually DO give a shit! Besides, what would life be without hope?

   We do not only live in one of the most beautiful countries on the planet but we are surrounded by people with the most beautiful hearts. And I speak from personal experience.

   Thank you Amanda!
2. 

   Amanda Sevasti says:

   April 26, 2010 at 5:07 pm

   Ha, thanks Tracy. At least it’s always interesting.
3. 

   Rian says:

   April 26, 2010 at 9:39 pm

   Hi Amanda. Thanks for this article. I remember doing a school project on the referendum when I was in Std. 6 (What’s that now? Grade 8?). It was grandiosely called “Suid-Afrika: Quo Vadis?” Even then I guess I realized that our country started a shaky and dangerous, but determined journey into democracy.

   Fast forward 15 years, and here I am – back in Cape Town for a month now after 8 years living in Australia and the US. I couldn’t be happier about being home. What you say is so true – we might argue with each other all the time, but we do it because we love this place. So even though it may look like just a whole lot of pessimism to others, we’re actually just talking about how to make things better because we are so relentlessly optimistic about what our country can be.
4. 

   Chris says:

   April 27, 2010 at 6:27 am

   hey Rian, I’ll pass this on to Amanda. Thanks for the (optimistic) comment.
5. 

   Nick says:

   April 29, 2010 at 3:00 pm

   That really touched me – on my studio.
6. 

   Anton Marshall says:

   May 10, 2010 at 12:58 pm

   I pity the fool… who tells BA Baracus that they saw a woman on the beach who looked just like him. Pain!!!