Not all white people bought into apartheid

A RESPONSE to the letter by Mfezeko Bunu from Khayelitsha.

Your letter was partially influenced by the disgusting shallow utterances by former president FW de Klerk and his foundation adding to the insensitive reasoning of people who had perhaps pragmatically made the required changes to face up to reality.

But by heart? That is a different matter.

We all need to be aware of the danger to analyse subjectively. For one, I want to refer you to his late brother Willem de Klerk’s stand on the brutality of apartheid. Wimpie de Klerk, as he was also known, had integrity to the bone. He fought for a humane South Africa and he did not have white or black consciousness in mind. He had suffering people in mind and heart, and he had the morals to treat all as the human beings they were. Wimpie, Bram Fischer, Van Zyl Slabbert…

There were also women like Helen Suzman and then there was Neil Aggett.

There was in the Great Karoo a town clerk who one day almost shocked himself to death out of stupidity. As he was lying in bed, a rather sorry figure (he had never been sick until then), droves of black municipal workers gathered at his home and went to the town clerk’s bedroom to pray for him.

In retrospect, a little the wiser now in the fading of time, I know what happened there. They went because, caught in the one-sided politics of the time, the white man without real power had shown them inherent kindness.

Mfezeko, I learnt from him. Kindness, inherently, is colour blind. I prefer to deal with people as they come up in my vision. They are all human beings. The real test is not in the talk, the real test is in the walk.

I dare you to ask any black person dealing with me whether they experience arrogance or any form of superiority. I dare you to have coffee with me in my favourite coffee shop, and then you watch the eyes and the smiles of the black skin waiters and waitresses to see whether anything other than extreme human togetherness is in honest play.

I respect this. The pain of being handled like something sub-human, something to cold-heartedly structure for your own benefit and advantage, lies deep in the remembrance of the exploited black, brown, not white body. But times change. Cruelty can, too.

But we cannot forever regress to caved-up cultural enclaves. I will respect you pursuing the essence of being black, but I want to be part of it. I, dealt with a pale skin, damn, it is just too bloody pale, want to see, experience the soaring of people with black skins, I want to see the darker coloured eyes glitter with joy, vision and meaning.

And with a deep-felt sense of what true humanity entails.

And my friend, nothing in this life comes easy. We still have to fight like Don Quixotes, Bram Fischers, Steve Bikos, Robert Sobukwes or Nelson Mandelas for the day humanity can become colourless, or rather, with sensitivity for diversity and complexity, walk proudly down all streets of life. | Bellville