DO WE SEE OURSELVES AS BLACK, WHITE & COLOURED BEFORE SOUTH AFRICAN?

Discussion of SAFm This Mornin

By Thando Sipuye

Was listening to this discussion on SA Fm on whether people in this country see themselves as Black, white or coloured before seeing themselves as South Africans. It was quite disgusting and pathetic to hear just how much people have bought into this false illusionary rainbow nationalism of Tutu and Mandela. It was even more nauseating to hear a whiteboy, a so-called Afrikaner, claiming that “we Afrikaners are African and we should stop this thing of seeing people with colour – we are all South African”.

I tried calling in with no luck, couldn’t go through. But these were my thoughts as I listened to the confusion:

We are Afrikan before we are South African; we identify ourselves as Afrikan people, as part of the Afrikan nation and family before anything else. It is the legacy of colonialism-apartheid-white supremacy which continues to perpetuate regionalist identities (such as South African-ness) in Afrika along the rigid lines of colonial borders created by whites (Europains). It is this very same thwarted sick mentality that is the root cause of Afrophobia, with Afrikans who have embraced the false identity and consciousness of South African-ness hating and killing their own kith and kin, simply because they come from across the fence.

South African-ness is a white supremacist colonial identity – not all of us accept being labelled ‘South Africans’ – we are not all ‘proudly South African’. South African-ness was engineered by British & Dutch settlers on the 31 May 1910. All the countries of Afrika constructed new identifies to define and identify themselves: Gold Coast became Ghana; South-West Africa became Namibia; Upper Volta became Burkina Faso; Tanganyika became Tanzania and Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. South Africa has remained with a colonial name and identity. We reject it. We detest it.

Mangaliso Sobukwe & Bantu Biko gave to Blacks in this country an identity – they referred to us as Azanians and called this country Azania. They coined this political identity – AZANIA – because they overstood the importance and value of constructing your own identity as opposed to sheepishly accepting an identity constructed and imposed on you by oppressors – Europains.

These whites who call themselves Afrikaaners (Afrikans) – these are primarily the descendents and the progeny of Dutch settlers who constructed a political identity for themselves –Afrikaner- thus indigenizing themselves. These Dutch settlers started adopting and referring to themselves as Afrikaners (Afrikans) after the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). Today, these people have convinced the world and some unknowing Afrikans that they are a ‘white tribe of Afrika’. Historical fact is that whites, whether of English or Dutch descent, whether English or Afrikaans speaking – they are all descendents of Europain colonial settlers. They are all responsible for the destruction of Afrikan identities and the construction of new false colonial identities for indigenous Afrikans, such as ‘South African-ness’.

Nations and identities cannot be built and constructed on lies and falsification of historical reality. We cannot falsify history and reality – racial differences are a reality inasmuch as gender differences are a reality; and in our context racial difference is a sour and bitter fact of life. We can never transform people or create a race/colour-blind society. It is only those who wish to distort, forget and/or erase history and historical reality that perpetuate this intellectual political fraud of race/colour-blindness.

WE ARE AFRIKAN BEFOFE WE ARE ANYTHING ELSE.