All posts by Claire

About Claire

Wandering (and wondering) development professional and aspiring aid worker. Contact me on anticipationofwonder[at]gmail[dot]com

Being South African

Ideas, Travel

Dis ‘n bitterbessie dagbreek, dis ‘n uitroep komma-punt
Mabalel is huistoe, want sy mis haar eie kind
Ek wens ek kon jou teken met ‘n koukie of ‘n kwas
Ek wens ek kon onthou hoekom ek so bewerig was
Ek wens ek kon jou oopskryf, met my balpunt pen behaag
Ek wens ons kon saam wakker word in ‘n youth hostel in Praag

Liefde uit die Oudedoos, Koos Kombuis

Ek lewe
Gemaak om na liefde te strewe
Op vlerke van vriendskap to swewe
Sonder vra, sonder sorge
Dag vir dag dreun ritme om my heen
Voel die ure vol, en tog alleen
Maar jou blik verslaan my vrese
Son, saffier, lag in jou wese
Bring geluk wat lank verlore was

Ek lewe, Karen Zoid

South Africa is a beautiful country. A kaleidescope of different beauties.

Like frost on the veld on a winter morning, icy-white on the dry, pale grass, in a valley surrounded by sweeping mountains dotted with trees and blood-red aloes.

In Autumn, the winelands of the Western Cape are spashed with colour: the yellow and orange and brown of the Autumn vines, darker evergreens on the slopes, the blues and browns of dams thirsting for the rainy season, empty blue skies and changing-colour oaks.

The moon rising over the Cape Town city bowl, the mountain rising from a haze of pinks and purples and blues, from where we sit on a gently swaying boat in the bay, the chilly breeze off the atlantic, the spray salty, the bubbly sweet

So many beauties. Grahamstown sunsets and cold beer. Highveld storms. The empty freedom of the Karoo. Evenings in De Akker and Springbok. The soaring Drakensberg. Mangroves in KZN. Long stretches of untouched Wild Coast beach.

Last week, the ANC presidential candidate said that Afrikaaners are the only whites who are truly South African. At the time, I didn’t pay too much attention; just another outlandish comment from someone who will say anything to please the audience to whom he is speaking. Today, reflecting on the NPA decision, I found myself retreating into music that I realised how angry his comment made me.

My comfort-music, the music that makes me feel whole again, is Koos Kombuis (with the fading echoes of ‘n SoutPaddy), Chris Chameleon, Klopjag, Karen Zoid, etc., etc. It’s ironic: the only subject I have ever failed was Afrikaans (in Std 2). My soul is Afrikaans. Die ‘taal van my hart’ is Afrikaans. But I’m not Afrikaans. I’m an English-speaking white South African.

I am angry, offended, impotently raging at the idea that anyone, anyone, questions my identity as a South African. When white South Africans go overseas they are often asked how they can be white and still come from Africa. We put up with it and laugh it off because they’re foreigners. It stops being funny when it happens at home. People joke and laugh about it but so many of us who were born here and who lived through the the transition and were part of the emergence of this new democracy remain fiercely attached to this country. No matter where we go, and many of my generation, many of my friends, are scattered across the globe, we remain fiercely, devotedly South African. And none of us is comfortably with anyone questioning that identity. I suppose heightened by the recent happenings just across the border in Zim with the strong suggestion that white Zimbabweans are not welcome.

It is not okay to me – and to many others I know – for anyone to question or throw doubt on my identity as a South African. I don’t care whose parents’ parents’ parents’ came from somewhere else (and everyone’s did), this is home –

There is a saying in Zulu: ‘If you were in my flesh, I could tear you out, But you are in my blood, which cannot be divided.’ Recessional for Grace, Margeurite Poland

I am an African. I am a South African. Wherever I happen to wander, on the earth and intellectually, I carry with me the red soil of the karoo, the soaring Drakensberg, the snow on the mountains around Worcester, the winelands in Autumn, Table Mountain from the bay at sunset, bright red aloes in winter-white grass and a million other moments that are my anchor. My identity is complex and multiple and complicated and no-one, particularly not someone who purports to be a leader of all South Africans, has a right to question the South African-ness of it. I’m not much of a fan of fighting but I would fight for this.

An afternoon in the forest and worlds half-forgotten

Friends,

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Anais Nin

I spent the afternoon and evening with two old friends. Two friends who I know differently, separately but who have subsequently found each other. It was a special afternoon, I suppose party because it’s really the first time I’ve been out with friends for that long in over a month. It was also fun. Just sitting and chatting and walking up to the waterfalls and just sharing the moments, the laughter. I realised how much I’ve missed it.

These two friends are also particularly special. I first knew each of them a long time ago. Our paths have diverged significantly in the intervening years, occasionally crossing from time to time. I didn’t even really know them at the same time. So much has happened in between. In all our lives. In many ways these are people I shouldn’t really even know anymore. Yet we can sit and share moments and have real conversations, annihilating space and time.

That possibility of connecting in some way, despite the everyday differences, built on common history, was a gift today. I don’t think I expected it. I forget that common history can do that. Shared memories of people and moments and times make things easier. And there is something secure and comfortable about spending time with people who knew you before you were cynical and grown-up and jaded.

Friendships differ. There are some friends I see very seldom with whom I must become acquainted all over again every time I see them (although that is entirely worth it with some people). With others there is some desultory conversation continuing all the time – no matter how far apart or how different our lives, the common people and situations mean that we are somehow part of a shared conversation all the time, so meetings are simply picking up the thread and updating each other on the latest shared knowledge.

With old friends, or perhaps just with particular people there is a sense that all we have experienced in the intervening years, in the time since we last talked, is just another part of us; that somehow the selves we bring to the conversation, though richer and wiser and sometimes sadder and more cynical, are the same people as before. With those friends, there is no need to get reacquainted – to tell every little story and share each detail. It isn’t necessary.

Just a few days ago, a friend was talking about how she wished for all her friends the love of someone who can be completely supportive and who can make you a better person. I ask only friendship of people like that. I sometimes forget that I have it. Sometimes from those I don’t see for years at a time. Sometimes even from those I have almost forgotten are friends since the last time our paths have crossed.

It’s terribly easy to withdraw into yourself when you spend to much time alone. It was really good to reconnect and to be reminded of worlds within and between us that I’d almost, half forgotten.

Bring it

Friends

I have a friend who is super-fantastic. She really is special. She keeps me going quite often despite the fact that we live on almost opposite sides of the globe – although at least in the same hemisphere just at the moment. And if I head off as I’m planning to soon (assuming no outbreak of war – grumble), I’ll be a whole lot of time-zones closer.

One of the reasons she is so fantastic is that she sometimes post the most fantastic get-you-out-of-bed, kick-ass music. I still often find myself wandering around humming defying gravity. It’s one of those anthems of the non-conformists, the songs for those who won’t play by everyone else’s rules. (e.g. “everyone deserves a chance to fly and if I’m flying solo, at least I’m flying free…”)

This is super-awesome, too :)