Long Live the Wisdom of Sobukwe

How do I get Ryland Fisher to come visit this space and share some of his ideas and participate in some of the debates this space seek to promote? Ryland is a South African writer whom I discovered through the Sowetan newspaper. He also has the privilege of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu write the foreword to his book, Race. The book sets out to deal with the issue of race in South Africa. I confess, I have not read the book but I intend to. From the excerpt reproduced in Sowetan, the book makes some valuable points, points worth pursuing. Archbishop Emeritus in fact invites all of us to read the book and then debate among ourselves.
The issue of race is one that has always fascinated me. I grew up in a small township called Ikageng near Tlokwe or Potchefstroom depending on which side of the De La Rey song fence you sit. There was in the true apartheid style a small township for coloureds and another for Indians. Except once or twice, to play football or visit with my mother, I did not go to the coloured township. You see, whenever darkie children went to the coloured township, the coloured children would attack and assault them and that, I did not like so I avoided that township. It was interesting that whenever coloured children came to our township the favour was never returned. Another memory I have from childhood relating to coloured-black relations is OK bazaars. I always enjoyed the trips to town with my parents and other older members of my large family. I noticed even at the young age that all the cashiers and other floor attendants were coloured people. The cashiers were either white or coloured ladies; those sweeping or mopping the floors were black women; those carrying boxes and packing the shelves were black men. My dad worked for OK, packing the toiletries’ shelf. My view of coloured people was never positive with exceptions of course; like Leon, we made alter-boys together; and the Drifts, family friends.
All this was turned on its head when I got to the University of Cape Town. The coloured people I met there were more radical than me. I will never forget the funeral of Colleen and her comrade whose name I am ashamed I cannot remember. There is a part of me that thinks his name was Robert. My time in Cape Town opened my eyes to coloured people like I had never seen before – they were poor, they worked the menial jobs, they asked me for food, most importantly they were involved in the struggle. I so wished that they would go back home and teach those coloured folks that they are being duped by the white man. I was in high spirits about my fellow black people until I got lost driving around Heideveld or some such place and I stopped to ask an elderly gentleman how to get back to campus. He was very patient with me and did give me directions back to campus. In between all of that he told me that I would have to drive through “there where the kaffirs live man”. And then there were those uncomfortable conversations during which I was told by a well-meaning fellow student from Mitchell’s Plain that he has always had black friends.
The project undertaken by Ryland is not an easy one. It is one that has to be taken on though. I am not sure that I am completely on the same page as Ryland on the reference to black people as Africans. This is how he distinguishes between darkies and other blacks so to speak. I have always jokingly said that everyone knew who black people were and there was general consensus among South Africans who these blacks were. That was the case until FW De Klerk started campaigning for votes in the Cape. He distinguished between the coloureds and blacks and we let him. Things have never been the same since. Where is the wisdom of Prof. Mangaliso Sobukwe when one desperately needs it? I can appreciate how the distinction may work as between Indians and Africans, it does however breakdown when it is applied between Coloureds and Africans. Coloureds (the term I shall use until we find some consensus on what other term to use) are not from any other place but this here Africa – therefore no less African than all other Africans. The only basis for the term Coloured is as distinction between two groups of lesser beings – lesser than the whites, that is. You take the need for this distinction away then we is all African, the distinction serve no purpose. The term “Black” was concocted for the same reason. To designate a class of human beings who will not be entitled, by virtue of their blackness, to the basic amenities of life, like running water. This term was during the 70’s positively appropriated by among others Bantu Biko. Then followed (or did it come before) “black is beautiful”, “black power” and so on and so forth. Given this background, is it not time we lost “black”, “coloured”, “indian” and “white”, and to replace them with good old African? Prof has long time ago seen through the minefield of the nomenclature of racism and oppression and focused on the most important people - the Africans.