Being an Afrikaner on the first day of September

The first day of September used to hold great memories for me growing up as a child. When I was in primary school (age 7-13) it was the one day we were allowed to wear "siwwies" otherwise known as casual clothes freeing us from our hideous, warm and contraceptive uniform (no one would touch you when you were wearing that thing). We would all go to the school hall where we would sing songs in Afrikaans and about being an Afrikaner and we would lock arms and sway to the rhythm of the old piano on the left side of the stage. Good times.

When I went to high school that was the one day I was really looking forward to (my birthday and Christmas were during the holidays so they don't count), but to my utter dismay the first day of spring came and gone as unnoticed as a streaker at a nudist camp.

When I asked my mom about it that day she just gave me her usual children should be seen and not heard response which meant I'd either have to wait and ask her about it when I was considered an adult (I'm still waiting for that day to come) or I could go ask Pule our gardener that had been mowing our lawn with me holding the electric chord behind him all the way and teaching me how to trim roses since I could remember.

I could never tell how old Pule actually was. He had too many wrinkles to determine an accurate age.

It's suffice to say that he wasn't 21 anymore.

To me he was the wisest man on this side of the world because obviously Einstein or Goethe already claimed that role in the northern hemisphere. Pule had little posessions, but it never seemed to bother him. Nothing could break his slow, steady stride and come to think of it: I had never seen that man run. Ever. Not even the time when he found a beehive in the wall below the bathroom window. I, on the other hand, would've given Forest a bloody run for his money that day, so to speak.

Now, Pule was black. With post-apartheid or post-segregation still in diapers people felt the way someone feels when he spots a spider (that he is weary and kinda afraid of) in the bathroom while taking a wee and he watches the spider not knowing what to expect: is the spider going to jump him and bite his weener leading to infection and having to get it amputated? Or is the spider going to move retreat down the basin into the drain and allow the man to run to his phone and call Pest Control? You get the picture.

But I didn't really know all about these things. All that mattered to me at fourteen were shoes called Jelly Babies, the latest Roxette cassette (or what we used to call "tapes") and trying not to push the pimples on my face whilst strapping my emerging boobs down with bandages. I had early onset cupsize-syndrome: when my friends were still as flat as an ironing board, my chest area looked like molehills.

The infamous Jelly Babies. They may not seem that fabulous NOW, but ten years ago they were like Jimmy Choos to teenagers here. Upon finding an image of these shoes, they called them "vintage." I am oficially old. Shit.

I asked Pule if he knew why we never sang our traditional Afrikaner songs at school that day.

Pule took a puff from his pipe, tucked on his old Northern Transvaal cap(these days know as the Blue Bulls rugbyside: the best in the country by far and even winning the Super 16 twice now thus being the only South African side able to accomplish that) and then he said:

"If you came to my house and we only spoke Sesotho (which I didn't understand back then), would you feel comfortable?"

What was he going on about? Of course not. The only thing I could say in Sesotho back then was what way is the police station? and I doubt that phrase would have been appreciated at Pule's place.

I just shook my head.

"How many black children are there in your school now?" Pule asked.

An image of me and my brother playing that video game Othello came to mind.

I was always white (repeat after me class: white equals good) which meant my brother had to be the black side (repeat after me class: black equals bad). I kicked his lily ass in that game time after time; I could always feel victory approach as my white dots slowly but surely turned his black dots over to my color until the board looked like evenly spread out snowflakes followed by me rubbing salt in his wounds and then having to run as fast as I could from objects coming my way at amazing speeds. His aim was usually fairly true.

Schools during the nineties seemed a lot like that Othello board with about 90 percent white kids and the rest consisting of black, brown or Indian children.

"The black kids in your school grew up hating Afrikaans. Some of their brothers and sisters died for standing up against that language. Do you think they would be happy if they had to sing songs about spring and the Afrikaner in that language with those memories in their hearts?"

The famous picture of the dying Hector Peterson in the arms of a friend with his sister running beside them.

I remember that conversation to this day. Especially after the whole District 9 movie that'd been released worldwide recently. The movie is set in that very place where Hector Peterson lost his life in 1976 when a nervous, young white policeman accidentally pulled off a shot when the children came too close. The children were toi toing (protesting) against the fact that their primary language in school would be Afrikaans which they couldn't even understand, let alone speak.

District 9 is about the recent Xenophobia-episode we had here in South Africa and it's about apartheid (segregation) and how the oppressed eventually had enough and rebelled against the government. I have mixed feelings about this film because it brings back those old grudges and the bitterness and the unforgiving hatred of losing a child, a husband, a mother, a loved one.

I have mixed feelings because I'm tired of saying I'm sorry for something I had no part in.

I'm tired of feeling guilty for something I didn't do, but which the color of my skin ties me to.

I'm tired of feeling angry because the language I dream in, the language I pray in, the language of my soul must now be taken away and killed like a rabid dog.

This country drenched in blood is the only home I know; where would I go if I had to leave? Where could I feel the sun on my skin every day even when it's winter, where I can see the Big Five wander about their daily routine less than ten metres away from where I'm sitting (in a Land Rover with a guy holding a f*cking HUGE gun), where I could eat biltong (almost like beef jerky), pap en vleis (porridge and meat from a BBQ), drink mampoer (think the strongest drink you've ever had and multiply it by 400: hello hangover my old friend) and tell a joke about Koos van der Merwe in Afrikaans? I have been abroad and I just never had the same feeling than when I'm here in the land of the sun. Times are uncertain and they're are pretty tough now in South Africa, but this place is under our skin and in our hearts. Maybe it's the contaminated water we drink that make us this crazy by wanting to stay here.

So happy first of September wherever you are: be it the beginning of autumn with the promise of cooler days and fireplace-nights, or the beginning of spring with the promise of new blossoms and sweaty sheets. At least now people can have sex again on top of the covers without freezing the passion off ' their arses.