The Cost of Being a Coconut

I was born in 1998 as the youngest of four children. My father was pedi and my

mother tswana so naturally, upon their marriage, they compromised... and we spoke

seTswana at home.

My two siblings directly above me are 10 and 14 years older than me. While others

enjoy referring to me with cute nicknames like “the laat lametjie” or “the baby”, my

true designation is “the accident”. But what this gave me was a childhood that I could

directly place in contrast to my siblings who were born during the era of “the groot

krokodil”.

My father was a successful man...by the time I was born. He fought tooth and nail to

become an attorney. His struggles, alongside my mother, gave me the opportunity to

be the fruits of progressive democratic policies. My parents bought a beautiful home

in a predominately-white area. They sent me to public and private schools in this

white area and encouraged my integration (or rather assimilation) into the activities

of those around me.

South Africa is a nation where the racial majority make up the cultural minority. Since

the 1990’s, black children were allowed into previously white-only schools. Which,

alongside other progressive policies such as BEE, gave black people access to

education and opportunity previously reserved for white children. For all its dreams

of multiculturalism and non-racialism, what this entails is the accidental (or

purposeful) cultural homogenisation of a significant portion of the population in order

to achieve what we deem “equality”. The causes of this may seem innocuous or

even fairly minor but mistakes are only as small as the consequences they result in.

For example, recently the Legal Practice Counsel, the regulatory body for legal

professionals, released a notice stating they would no longer be providing their

competency-based examinations (i.e. board exams) in languages other than English.

On the face of it, having a standardised test paper across the country logistically

makes sense and the linguistic discrimination may seem like a small oversight, but

what it results in, is that you may struggle if you aren’t exactly like me. So the solution is

simple: be like me and things will be easier.

With my siblings chasing me away (because who enjoys dragging their baby brother

along on their teenage escapades), I was left to make friends at school. The only

issue being that the deeper I ingrained myself with them, the more alienated I felt at

home. Whereas every December my classmates flew to Italy to visit their

grandparents, I spent mine driving to a village two hours outside of Rustenburg. I

spoke English to my friends but Setswana to my family. Until one day I no longer did.

I am fluent in English. With it being the primary business language in the country, I

have found my niche as “one of the good ones”. But that has left me feeling a deep

sense of insecurity whenever I encounter another black person who I should,

theoretically, share a language with. I discovered that I was suffering from a

condition called passive bilingualism whereby I understood seTswana when it was

spoken to me, but could not express myself in it.

White people make it incredibly easy to assimilate almost completely into their world

but by not attempting to engage with yours, you are forced to leave that portion of

yourself at the door when you enter. And the fact that I can continue to thrive without

engaging that portion of myself, without, in this instance, learning my home

language, makes me even more shameful of myself. It elucidates how culturally one-

sided South Africa has become. Eroding the heritage of young black children and

othering them by denoting them as less black and “coconuts” when they do not meet

the arbitrary standards of blackness we have imposed on ourselves.

Navigating these two worlds, between my home life and my external one, has

resulted in an identity crisis where I feel as if I am not easily able to be my authentic

self in any of these spaces. Too white for black spaces and too black for white

spaces. This is nothing new, but 30 years on, I thought it would be better.

To reference the late Eusebius McKaiser, in order for there to be true multicultural

cross-pollination, black people must not only experience the world of whites, but

whites must venture into and experience the world of blacks.

I currently live a moderately successful life, on the road to being an admitted attorney

while studying a second degree in journalism but since I cannot speak to my mother

in her home language, there is a part of me that I cannot connect to. I have started

learning seTswana, but I still mourn who I could have been.