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Valenca, Portugal

My friend Elmie posted something about the student riots this morning that touched me deeply, and caused an avalanche of emotion to come to the surface. The posting was about the stupid remarks of some white students regarding the behaviour of black students. And then some further comments from a (white) person about how he also had to pay for his own tuition, and “why don’t these people go to a Technikon” etc.

I paid for my own studies, at the age of 50 I am stuill studying and still paying for it myself. Yes I found a job to help me pay for my studies when I was at UCT. In fact I baked chicken pies for Cafe Paradiso, getting up at 04h00 in the morning, roilling out pastry, deboning chickens, delivering before Varsity started in the morning. BUT – I lived in a nice house in Tamboerskloof that had a stove, electricity and running water. I was poor, but I had money to run a (clapped out) little car, to go home to my parents on weekends where I had a room, love, wonderful home-cooked meals and my Dad filled my car with petrol to get back again. My parents were poor, but I had a house to go to, not a maid’s room in some white people’s backyard. My Mom a nurse and my Dad a mechanic, they were still earning at least a 100% more in salary than our domestic or Koos who worked in the garden. And on a Sunday when I went back to Varsity, the car was packed with rusks and jams and preserves from my Granny (who lived in a council flat paid for by the municipality). Because we were white.

And I went to a school where we had teachers who were trained, had the privilege (although I hated every second of it) to be in a hostel, sang in the choir, went on choir tours, could do music as a subject, had a career counselling teacher (who in my opinion was braindead and useless). My family had two cars, plus my Dad a motorbike and my Mom a scooter. We were “poor”. When I had to go and study for the first time in Stellenbosch, I had to apply for a student loan through Volkskas, which I got. Because we were white.

I was bullied because I was “different”. Gay, queer, a moffie. For the first 18 years of my life I had to be on the watch – who is going to tease, hit, slap, joke, humiliate me because I am different. At hostel in Oudtshoorn, I used to lock myself up in the toilet for hours on end to just get away from the relentless bullying. I know what it feels to be ostracized, marginalised. In my second year of Varsity at Stellenbosch, it all became too much. I was enrolled to study theology, in a desperate attempt to redeem myself before God for the evil person that society made me out to be. Again, because I was white I was in a hostel, with electricity and water and food. But my emotional state prevented me from any form of focus on studying – I was too angry. The day I dragged myself to the dean of the “Kweekskool”, Prof. Willie Jonker, sitting right up there next to God and all the apostles, I was told in a cold, clinical tone of voice “maybe this is not for you. Maybe you should go..”. (He was a “Pastoral Psychologist” I think). He could not hear me, he could not understand my existential crisis. His advice was “to go…”. Where? Any suggestions? Any hole deep enough to go and hide myself in?

When I look at the students protesting, I can totally identify with their rage against the system. Generations of “bullying” – of mothers in maid’s rooms, fathers working on mines, hereditary alcohol abuse, being told “you are not good enough because you are not white”. Go to the Technikon. Let the white students at least write their exams.

Was I angry? Would I have burnt things down and killed people? Hell yes! If at the age of 20 someone had given me an Ak47, I would have walked into the church in Heidelberg on a Sunday morning, I would have shouted the worst possible profanities to the congregation, to the white men sitting in black suits as “elders and deacons”, I would have shouted things that no one had ever heard in church, about their *****ing in the “coloured location”, about their bigotry. And I would have emptied a few rounds seeing blood splatter on the white walls. I would have walked out and burnt the place to the ground. And then I would have most probably shot myself. But, because I was white, I could go into therapy, where I spent 25 (yes, twenty five) years trying to undo the harm that mindless, stupid people caused. And I also paid for that myself, at times having to steal empty cold drink bottles that the neighbours had put outside which I returned for money at the cafe. How many students raging with anger can go into therapy? And when they do, can they do so in their own language? Us white people are astounded that African people say our universities are eurosentic, yet how many psychological tests and assessment tools have been developed in South Africa for non-western indigeous people? Zero. My diagnosis in therapy? A “homicidal rage”. And I was only bullied…

I have never been exposed to racism. I do not know what it must feel like to have been brought up in system where you are not good enough. Where your mother, as a Char, must try and find money to help you to get an education – university or technikon, whatever. I do not know what it must feel like to not have a home with a bed and electricity and food to go to. I have never had to watch my Mother climb over a wall on the N1 highway to go and find wood to make a fire to cook something for supper, God knows what. Or to see my Father standing next to the road begging for a job. Or to remember a time or just to hear stories of a time called “Apartheid”.

So I understand, and am deeply moved by the protests. And whatever ******** people are using to rationalise or to blame, whether it is apartheid or Zuma, I understand. And I feel a deep sense of sadness crying for my beloved country.

And then this morning, Sophie, our char, friend, mother, housekeeper, the love of Frikkie and Frummel’s life resigns. Because she can no longer carry on supporting a jobless husband a two children on tik. She want to go back to her family in Namakwaland “where people care about her”. God knows she tried everything in her power, studying, taking on extra work. But the system failed her. She is now giving up. And I am so sad for Sophie, and for everyone person in our country and in Syria and Palestine and Israel who were ****** over by the system for so long. Because I feel their homicidal rage. And I was only bullied….

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