We need to reach out to others
Africa was born in me – Kiru Naidoo
“I AM an African.” Powerful words. “My heritage.” Beautifully put by President Thabo Mbeki, when he captured the spirit of what makes up our South African nation.
The occasion was the adoption of the Republic of South Africa Constitution Bill on May 8, 1996.
Empty words if we were not to claim that heritage.
Last Saturday I listened intently to Thembinkosi Willies Mchunu, deputy chairperson of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal. He related the story of recently burying their Inkosi in their ancestral grounds. Among his clan, he was Mchunu.
His political identity was not important. He had an affinity with his kinsfolk and they with him. It did not undermine his South African identity.
Nor was his identity affected by the fact that his ancestors had migrated centuries before from Central Africa. Macingwane (the Mchunu praise name).
In a poignant way, he set everyone at ease. Touching the shoulder of his long-time comrade, Yusuf Bhamjee, he stressed that his origins in the distant lands of India did not compromise his South African identity. Similarly, the Koranna among us who claim their Khoisan heritage were set at ease.
That kind of sentiment from among the senior-most leaders in our country is heartening. What it needs to strengthen it is a corresponding gesture. My kinsfolk are in Chatsworth. Before that we came from Magazine Barracks. Before that we came from the sugar plantations. We have no ancestral village.
The grandmother of my grandmother abandoned that village when she left India under British colonial indenture. Whether she did that by choice, by coercion or deception, we will never know.
What we do know is that the offspring of her loins were born on African soil. This is where she is buried, where her children are buried and where my parents’ ashes are scattered.
I want to convince my kinsfolk in Chatsworth that our Indian origins are important. We draw on a rich cultural heritage in language, faith, music, dance and culture. That makes us an accidental clan knitted together by accidents of history.
The bigger prize is to reach beyond the walls of Bangladesh Market, Higginson Highway and Chatsworth Centre. Hemming ourselves in prevents us linking with the generosity of the heart and spirit of the Mchunus and the rest of our compatriots.
In spite of 21 years of democracy, the remains of divide-and-rule still colonise our minds. This is not peculiar to Chatsworth. Mitchells Plain is hemmed in. Houghton is hemmed in. Chesterville is hemmed in.
Unless we reach out individually and collectively, we are doomed to have the Verwoerd of separate development laughing from his grave.
There is a great deal that could unite us – South Africans have a great deal in common.
The ancient Tamil phutu of my Tamil grandmothers is cooked and named the same as the Zulu version.
The worship of the ancestors – “dead people’s prayers” – is common among communities across our continent.
The chemise of the French Huguenots is the same as the shimmies that my granny sewed from Nyala flour bags.
The stylised animal figures in rock paintings worshipped by the Khoisan resemble very much the Garudan and Gandharva of Hindu mythology.
The local language of my brothers in Chatsworth, from gazi’lam to tata to xosha, all derive from the languages of our bigger South African family.
Let’s not over-romanticise the things we have in common. Relationships don’t happen by accident.
They are the product of deliberate effort. Veterans of the freedom struggle tell of how relationships forged at the coalface of resistance to colonialism and apartheid endured over time.
Umkhonto
The late Reggie Vandeyar, soldier of Umkhonto we Sizwe and decorated with the Order of Mendi for bravery, who was buried at the weekend, shared a cell on Robben Island with President Jacob Zuma.
Phyllis Naidoo was mother to hundreds of children who fled into exile after the 1976 Soweto Uprising. Billy Nair, HA Naidoo and George Ponnen trekked from factories to plantations from the late 1930s and into the 1950s to get workers from all backgrounds into the trade union movement.
AKM Docrat, who would have turned 100 this month, was among the organisers of the All-In Africa Conference, which was the last public meeting to be addressed by President Nelson Mandela before his arrest.
It was that kind of unity in action that gave strength to the 1946 Passive Resistance, the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1956 Treason Trial. Paul David, Jerry Coovadia, Albertina Sisulu and others mobilised across race and ideological lines to form the United Democratic Front in 1983.
The democratic state that we now enjoy does not call for struggle of that sort. But it does call for unity in action to tackle the challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment.
Organisations like the Ramakrishna Centre and the Divine Life Society do quiet work building crèches, schools and frail care facilities that serve our poorest communities.
These organisations reach over the artificial barriers of race and faith. So too does the Gift of the Givers. Working in organisations like these would be the corresponding gesture to Willies Mchunu’s reaching out.
If you insisted on braaiing on Heritage Day (September 24), hopefully you invited someone who has never before eaten in your home. We must each make a deliberate attempt to reach out. My colleagues in the office, Nozipho Mpungose and Jurie Thaver, exchanged and wore each other’s traditional attire as they have done before.
Theirs is a beautiful example of being enriched by each other’s cultures. I am not an African because I was born in Africa. I am an African because Africa was born in me. Kiru Naidoo is on the advisory board of the Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Centre at the University
of KwaZulu Natal, which holds records and artefacts
of the diverse cultures of the people of the province.