Coconut Kelz creator Lesego Tlhabi: I’ve been stripped of my dignity trying to prove my 'blackness'

Satirist Lesego “Coconut Kelz” Tlhabi has opened up about her experiences trying to prove her “blackness” to people, explaining how she was often treated differently because she comes from the suburbs.

The star has won over South Africans with her alter-ego, described as  “a young white woman trapped in a black woman's body”, and recently weighed in on a theory that “suburban blacks are more acceptable and less scary” because “the gatekeepers of our culture are white”.

She claimed “suburban blacks aren’t less black than any other locale”. 

Kelz said it was irritating to have to deal with questions around a person's “blackness”, and said living in the suburbs also made people more “acutely aware of our blackness”.

“Blackness is way more complex and layered than suburbs versus the hood. To deny some people their blackness because of where they happened to grow up is anti-black in itself. Just because you don’t know someone else’s struggle doesn’t mean you get to deny its existence,” she said.

Kelz said she had been asked to “present evidence of my blackness”, including testing her vernac and being quizzed about what she eats and which townships she has visited.

She said black people who live in suburbs are often fighting from within to show they belonged there.

She also recounted how she was treated differently at work because of where she lived.

“At one of my first jobs somehow black and white people took lunch breaks at different times. When I went on 'black lunch break' I was told my break time was with the white people since I’m more like them.”

While at school she was called a "shebeen queen" and was told to not speak vernac.

“Our music teacher called us shebeen queens when we were talking excitedly (just the black girls). We were always asked what riot we were plotting when we sat together. We were told not to 'talk that nonsense here' and many more. Everything black was just wrong.”