Shedding light on us darkies

Fred Khumalo: "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds ..." - Bob Marley, Redemption Song

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds ..." - Bob Marley, Redemption Song

IT'S a case of South Africans speaking past each other, or of a section of the population deliberately patronising others, or simply of political correctness gone utterly wrong.

Crawl into my skin, I'll crawl into yours, dear reader. We are talking about matters of colour today. Matters of an evolving South African consciousness which is very easy to misunderstand, distort or dismiss as "irrelevant" or "backward" in these oh-so-benign times of Rainbowism.

I am speaking of the non-debate over the word "darkie". Is it derogatory to black people? Is it is appropriate to use it in a public forum, especially parliament?

For me, the issue did not start this week when Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande said in parliament: "If the matric results are bad, this is taken as proof that this government of darkies is incapable. If the matric pass rate goes up, it means the results have been manipulated by these darkies."

For as long as I have been writing this column, whenever I use the word "darkie", I receive letters of admonition. "Tut, tut, tut, Fred, that word is inappropriate in this non-racial society we are building."

Not one of these letters of complaint came from an offended darkie. They came from do-gooders who wanted to define me to myself. Wow! I am reeling on the floor in contrition.

Anyway, when DA MP Lindiwe Mazibuko raised an objection in parliament this week, it wasn't the content or intent of the minister's utterances that she found distasteful. She objected to the word "darkie". The irony is that the person who raised the objection was, on the face of it, a darkie. Except that she is not.

Contrary to what some commentators have said, not once did Nzimande call her a coconut. He said in Zulu: "Kuyahlupha ukungakhuleli elokshini (That's the problem with not having grown up in a township)."

My own children, though they can speak Zulu, did not grow up in a township, which is why they do get lost when we elders venture into township lingo. But that does not make them coconuts.

Had Nzimande called Mazibuko a coconut, it would have been an insult. A coconut refers to a self-loathing black person who looks up to white people to validate his or her self-worth. Mazibuko is not that.

Coconut is almost as hurtful as "kaffir". Perhaps even worse because it says, "Look, some time ago you were a kaffir, but then you got some education and moved to the suburbs, but the bush still resides in you. You are wallowing in that twilight zone where your fellow kaffirs don't understand you, and the whites you are trying to mimic do not want you. They only tolerate you." That's how venomous the word "coconut" is.

But we are not talking about coconuts today.

Nigga, please (as US blacks will say when they are exasperated), where do you come from if you think black people take offence at being called darkies? At least not the darkies I know. We are not looking for benign aunts and uncles to protect us from ourselves.

You see, being a darkie is not all about melanin content. That's why Ms Mazibuko is not a darkie. It's deeper than that. In the dark days of this country's dark history, no one bothered to protect us from the dark insults that were thrown our way: bantu, native, plural, kaffir, black, hotnot, coolie, etc.

Black Consciousness, the philosophy that made us take pride in who we are as a people - culturally, socially and politically - taught us a long time ago that being black was a state of mind, the manner in which one viewed the world and claimed his or her space in such a world.

In the lexicon of the time, the likes of Lucas Mangope, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the Matan-zima brothers and others who supped with the masters were appropriately called non-whites - by their own people. They inhabited that twilight area where they were the masters' surrogates. At best, they were apologists for the status quo; at worst, they were the violent enforcers of the masters' regime to deepen the black community's state of wretchedness.

But we are not talking about non-whites today. We are talking about darkies.

Darkie was a term that my people used among themselves. In KZN, where I was born, we even had a famous soccer team called Dangerous Darkies. I suspect it still exists.

I hear some people saying, "Ah, labels, labels. Forget the past, let's move on!" Of course, we've moved on. That's why we are deciding what works for us and what doesn't. Yes, we are Homo sapiens, we are persons, we are human beings even. But, hey, what's wrong with darkie, especially if said darkie insists on being referred to as such?

After all, you get Brahmans, Frieslanders, Ngunis, Jerseys - but they are all cattle. I can imagine that, in their bovine language, they remind each other, "Look, I am a Brahman, and I am proud!" And they mean no harm.

I was on John Perlman's show on Kaya FM the other day, and almost every black person who phoned in laughed at insinuations that the word darkie was offensive.

Unlike our cousins in the US, who reserve the right as to who can call them niggers and when, all the black people who called, as well as those that I know - friends, colleagues, acquaintances, members of my extended family - would rather be referred to as "darkies" in informal set-ups than "black people" (or abantu abamnyama, or batho bantsu). You use the latter appellations in formal settings.

Some people who phoned in said they could tell by the tone of the speaker, regardless of his race, if the use of the term was meant as an insult or simply a description or term of endearment. When I phone a friend for a favour, I am likely to say, "Hola, my darkie, can't you help this poor darkie with this and that?"

If the term is offensive to some people - or was meant to be offensive at some stage - let me hazard a suggestion that the darkies have taken what was a bayonet that was being plunged into the heart of their self-esteem and fashioned it into a ploughshare.

We use the term not as a celebration of our sustained mental slavery, but as a ploughshare to plant and nurture a new consciousness.

Nigga, please, we have so many unresolved issues around identity in this country, and I won't allow you to patronise me. Don't define me; I will define myself.