Straddling two nations: Neither black nor white enough

IN “Whose Land is it Anyway”, Benjamin Sibangani Sibanda captures the complexity of race in land ownership in both colonial Rhodesia and independent Zimbabwe through reflection on both legality and social justice.

Peter Lawrence, who is Coloured, is caught up between two nations; the European nation that says he falls short on whiteness, and the African one, which considers him not black enough.

He has “never known his father”, save for the fact that he could probably be Chikwepa, “a white farmer whose land was adjacent to Mhondoro African Reserve” for whom his mother, Rudo, once worked.

But Rudo, also known as Loveness, is not sure whether Peter’s father is Chikwepa or not.

She says: “Sometimes Chikwepa would ask me to sleep with his friend, whose name I do not know”.

Whatever the circumstances behind his conception, Peter Lawrence is considered “nationless” when it comes to claiming heritage.

Unaccepted to the white community, he is now “banking on his black heritage”, hoping that his “uncles” would accept him as “one of their own”.

Whites pretend to love him, and tell him that he “deserve(s) better”, because they do not want him to associate with blacks, who are said to be inferior to him. From an early age, he suffers an identity crisis that begins with his surname; Lawrence.

Upon arrival at a “better” school for his kind in Plumtree, Peter soon realises that he is “part of a race called Coloureds and they were not supposed to speak Shona”, but “English like their white fathers”.

His mother’s surname, Chimuti, which has become part of his identity is now an abomination. He has to drop it, and “find a suitable surname”.

Thus, beginning his journey to “nationless-ness”, for surnames cannot just be picked from nothing and nowhere.

He cannot use his white “father’s” surname, because he doesn’t know him, and the said “father”, wherever he could be, doesn’t want to hear anything about him.

Yet, he cannot use Chimuti, which he knows to be his uncles and mother’s surname, since it will make him an African, and Coloureds are not “meant” to be “seen to be mixing with Africans”.

When others were translating their Shona or Ndebele surnames to English, and adopting them; or using “the month in which they arrived at the school as their family name”, Peter adopts the name of one of his uncles — Lawrence.

Henceforth, he becomes Peter Lawrence, a crooked identity that neither fits into the European nation, because he is not white enough; nor the African nation, for Lawrence, as an alien surname, cannot claim the indigenous peoples’ heritage. And, as a person he is not black enough.

The Rhodesian constitution does not recognise “nationless” people, like Peter, when it comes to land ownership.

He cannot buy land in areas reserved for whites, for he is not white. He is also ineligible to acquire land in the Tribal Trust Lands for the same reason of race; he is not an African.

In terms of heritage, he has no birthright to anything, not even the English language; yet whites insist that he is superior to Africans.

The only thing he can inherit is the stereotyping of his kind: “You Coloureds aren’t farmers”, and “We Coloureds are not farmers”.

Chung (2006) confirms the ambiguity of Rhodesia’s racial laws, which were meant to buttress colonial hegemony, and keep Africans, Coloureds and Asiatics off the red soils.

She notes: “With a peasant’s attachment to the land, he (grandfather), came to Africa in search of land, but his ambition was thwarted by the racial laws instituted by the colonialists.

“The laws forbade the sale of the best land to anyone but whites. The worst land was reserved for blacks.

“Those who were neither black nor white were not catered for by the land laws. Grandfather was never able to buy the farm he yearned for” (Chung, 2006:27).

The foregoing citation raises three crucial points pertaining to heritage and colonialism, which Sibanda is privy to, and highlights in “Whose Land is it Anyway”.

The first point is the confirmation that Africa was considered a land of opportunity with vast open spaces for the taking.

Chung’s grandfather, who “had come to Rhodesia in 1904 as a youth of 17”, wanted to build a heritage for his family through “his peasant’s attachment to the land” (ibid).

As a peasant, he felt attached to the land, the same land that Africans were robbed of, and were devoted to. It was their heritage, which they also looked up to spiritually and physically to sustain their livelihoods.