by Ufrieda Ho
My grandad was one of the only old people in the flats who ignored the
general hype of the election. It was not something he felt connected to, he
did not know what all the electioneering was about and he did not get into
the minibus.
I could not get to my gran in time, though, and Unisda and I still had
to vote. We had decided to go to the voting station together and later that
morning we arrived at Hofland Park recreation centre, not far from our
home. The excitement was palpable; I was glad we had gone bold with our
outfits. There was the sense that something special was happening and we
were going to be part of it.
The queue was long, though, very long and as the minutes ticked by
we realised that we were not going to get anywhere for hours; people had
already stretched to the perimeter of the park. We decided to return in the
evening. In the end, it was third time lucky for us and we came back for
a third time, on the extended voting day of the 28th, to finally make our
crosses.
People lined up to make history. All the burning tyres, flying stones and
armoured vehicles had not crushed the hope of this huge snake of people
waiting patiently, smiling a little and shifting their weight from one foot
to another.
I missed my dad so much that day. The paper son, ruled by pieces of
paper all his life, was not to take ownership of a ballot sheet. His identity
was made up on a piece of paper; someone’s stamp of approval and
signature on a piece of paper declared my father ‘a gentleman of good
standing’; and it was an A5 piece of paper that held his death certificate.
Each April, as autumn starts to give way to winter, it clocks up another
year without my father. Just as the weather chills, I feel the frost of loss grip
my heart all over again and I am taken back to the April night when things
did fall apart, when the centre did not hold and Yeats’s blood-dimmed tide
was loosed upon my world.
But that April day in 1994 I could not help being moved. A cross on
a piece of paper mattered to all who stood as links in this slow-moving
meander of humans.
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18
The Under-catered
Party
One of the biggest social sins you can commit is to under-cater at a Chinese
function. Chinese are not shy about eating and enjoying their food, lots
of it.
There are eight courses plus dessert at a wedding. The tables must groan
with symbolic luck, fertility and happiness for the couple. The number
eight is chosen because it is auspicious and guests leave with a reciprocal
box of biscuits from the bridal party.
An appropriate present for someone celebrating their 80th birthday is
noodles and whisky, presented in pairs, and half of the gift is returned to
the guest. The unbroken strands of noodles symbolise long life, and the
alcohol represents abundance and enjoyment.
For a baby’s mun yut, its ‘fi rst full moon’ or full month party, there are
dyed red eggs and parcels of ginger as take-home gifts.
It is all about celebrating with food as well as sharing the bounty and
prosperity presented at a dinner table. At any function, you want people
to say the food was good, the ‘mushrooms were so silky’, ‘the pork was
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unbelievably crispy’ and, of course, a resounding ‘I have had way too
much to eat’.
The new South Africa started out excitingly enough. Like a happy
wedding, everyone was given an invitation and just about everyone RSVPed.
They all wanted to witness it, to be there to cheer on the new union, to
celebrate for all the right reasons. Like any party, a few disgruntled uncles
and aunties stayed away; they never spoke to anyone anyway. Some guests
fought to sit at the head table, some were drama queens and sulked on a
stool at the bar. But mostly, an extra chair could be pulled up and an extra
place setting could be made, even at the head table.
South Africa’s reinvention as a democracy saw everyone arrive in their
finest high heels and aired-out suits. We found our seats, the music played
and we clapped politely through the many speeches. Then came the part
that should have crowned the occasion: the food. But in the new South
Africa, there had not been enough to go around.
The head table had grown bigger than we anticipated and they kept
calling for more heaped plates. Some tables had received their food and
they were tucking in. But other tables were still waiting. All the time
fresh plates headed to the top table and the tables tucked in the corners
stayed empty. And when their plates did arrive, the kitchen had done some
creative plating-up and there was more garnish than meat. Those at these
tables were going to eat what little had been offered but they were going
to leave the party with hollow tummies, while the top table and those near
to them were calling for another bottle of whisky.
The Chinese South Africans felt they were among those who had not
eaten well at the South African party. They knew others had gone hungrier,
but they thought of themselves first. Someone had withheld the crispy
duck from them and given them stir-fried bean curd instead.
Under apartheid that was what they expected – they knew that even
scraps were hard to come by – but the Constitution in the so-called
rainbow nation promised that if they came to the party they would get a
bite at something else. The Chinese still felt too black for some, too white
for others and economically, socially and politically they were still pushed
up against the margins.
Years before, when there was a census in 1991, I was young, aggrieved
and ignorant of computer data-capturing techniques. There was no box
for Chinese where it asked for race. There was a box for white, black,
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UFRIEDA HO
Indian, coloured. I did not feel like I fitted in anywhere, so I drew in my
own box and wrote ‘Chinese’. For so many official documents, for years I
have had to tick the ‘other’ box, whatever that means.
I looked at interviewee comments in Yoon Park’s A Matter of Honour.
One comment reads: ‘I call myself a South African Chinese because I see
myself as South African first and then Chinese.’
The more accepted way to identify yourself is with your ethnic origin
first and then your nationality, like African American or Chinese Canadian.
But in South Africa the Chinese who are South African have inverted this
deliberately to show where their identity and their allegiance lies. There are
even those who call themselves ‘SABC I’ or ‘SABC 2’ or ‘SABC 3’. It stands
for South African Born Chinese, first generation or second generation and
so on. It is a deliberate and sure way to avoid confusion about where you
place yourself. And, ironically, it is so aptly South African, playing on the
names of the national broadcaster’s TV channels.
Through the years I have caught myself saying, ‘I am a South African
Chinese,’ also feeling that the soil under my feet is wh
ere home is and so
I should state that bit first. I do not belong to an imagined motherland of
China. Home for me is not the place where my grandmother remembered
the pears to be so perfect they collapsed with tender juiciness in her mouth.
She often told us this as she lamented the ‘dud’ pears that showed up
again and again in our supermarkets. As a child, I did wonder about these
scrumptious pears; they were like magical fruit. But eventually I realised
that it was not about the pears or the homeland they were supposed to
represent, but the lush fertility that springs from memory and nostalgia.
Now I have lived long enough myself to remember some things to make
comparisons and to reflect a little, too. I remember when things seemed
like they were right, but only because a sinister order of being became our
brainwashed normal. Shopping centres’ metal detectors were symbols of
anxiety and fear of the terrorist that lurked behind every black skin. You
would never see a black woman driver on the roads and the only Sotho we
learnt was from the dubbed version of Spider-Man, Rabobi.
At the same time, I feel duped and stupid that I believed the spin about
equity, diversity and tolerance. Instead, we are in George Orwell’s Animal
Farm. Every day more pigs are at the trough, there is more rewriting of
the rules and more people are discarded like old horses sold off for cheap
pet food.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if my parents
had headed off to another golden mountain. If they had ended up in
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Melbourne or San Francisco, would they have worked off their label of
migrant more quickly? Would they have been able to run a noodle den or
a Chinese takeaway and not stress about having to find someone to front
for them so they could register their business with a surname like ‘Ho’?
When they saved enough money, would they have been able to move into
a better neighbourhood without having to consult with neighbours first?
Would I have been raised to say ‘I am an American’ or ‘I am Australian’,
unlike in South Africa where I say ‘I am South African’ and then have to
tag on an explanation.
I am exasperated sometimes by having to present a CV of belonging
before I can be considered South African, or African. If skin colour is the
marker of belonging, how shallow and insincere, but also how convenient
for those closest to the feeding troughs. I met an artist a few years ago.
He was born in Cameroon, grew up in Paris and now lives in Switzerland.
He speaks French and English mostly and declared, ‘I am an African.’
There was no hesitation as he claimed his identity without a burden of
explanation. But eyebrows are raised and there are derisive snickers when
lighter-skinned South Africans or white people claim the same affirmation.
They are born on this continent, they know where the Southern Cross will
appear in the night sky. They even know the Southern Cross has other
indigenous names, they know the time of year the rains will come and
when the sardine run will hit the Durban coastline. Yet they do not belong,
because their skin colour is not dark enough.
Of course, my rational mind reminds me that our racialised present
is a by-product of our history of segregation. Years of isolation from a
bigger world picture made us all wear blinkers. A lack of access to quality
education and the opportunity to cultivate critical thinking must be
factored in. Then it is easy to understand why assumption, pigeonholing
and stereotyping for this nation waving a frayed and faded rainbow flag is
valid and logical to so many people. One day, far into the future, when the
rainbow nation flag has faded sufficiently, maybe then we will find a truer
colour, all blended into one colour, one unity for one country.
The Chinese community in South Africa has not remained static either.
Change and adaptation is the natural human condition, just like tweaking
those public and private portrayals of themselves.
The South African Chinese mostly fight off too close an association
with newcomers who make up the recent waves of Chinese immigrants to
arrive on Africa’s shores.
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People in the community repeatedly complain to me: ‘Please Ufrieda,
you have to write in your articles that we are not like the daai lok jays.’
It is a loaded term for the newcomers from the mainland, meant to imply
someone who is uncouth and uncultured: the kind of person who does not
lift her feet properly when she walks, shuffling instead; she talks with her
mouth full and shouts across the street to get someone’s attention.
‘They are the ones who spit in the streets, they push you out of queues
and they are so loud,’ I am told.
Other people will tell me that they are pulled over by cops and the
cops automatically start the ‘What can we do about this problem’ routine,
which is a code for bribe money for a licence disc that is no longer valid or
because a driver’s licence has been forgotten at home.
‘It is because “these people” always give bribes, just like they cannot
be bothered to put up a curtain in their homes and they will just make do
with stringing up a sheet across the window. Because of them, all Chinese
people must suffer.’
The local community has short memories. Just a generation ago they
were bribing their way in and out of a system to which they did not belong.
Only by tempting someone into the realm of illegality did they have some
agency.
I know the scale of things is different now. These days, the crimes where
migrants are concerned make headlines. I also cringe when simply because
of my skin colour people think I am somehow responsible for poaching
rhinos, smuggling perlemoen, running brothels and prostitution rings
with trafficked women and for flooding the markets with fong kongs, the
knock-offs of every big brand out there.
The newcomers do things differently. Georgie, the local Chinese fahfee
man who showed me around his banks for my anthropology research, also
told me this.
‘It is not like in your father’s day. There are no gentleman’s agreements
about territories or banks. These people [the ju fah goungs from the new
Chinese communities] use this.’ He made his hands into fists and crunched
his face into a snarl.
I know in my dad’s day ju fah goungs stuck to their banks; you did
not go muscling in to other people’s territories. Betters were free to bet
wherever they wanted to, and many played with a few ma-chinas in their
areas every day, but you did not take over entire banks. If you did sell a
bank, there would be a proper negotiation, a fee and a handshake at the
end.
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The newcomers do not abide by any of these established codes. They
do not have to face anyone at a social gathering or a family do and they
cannot be identified as so-and-so’s uncle or cousin. They exist outside the
community web
and therefore outside the circle of common courtesy.
‘You should hear how some of these guys treat the betters; they shout
at them and treat them like rubbish, they talk down to people. It is not the
way to do things, you do not have to scream at people like that, especially
not when you also rely on them to play your banks,’ said Georgie.
He mentioned the armoured bakkies that are now used in the
townships. The fahfee men do not take any chances and there is none of
the ‘buy cooldrinks for everyone’ from my father’s day or even the attitude
of Georgie whom I overheard offering more seedlings from his garden
to one of his runners who had moved into a new Reconstruction and
Development (RDP) house. This no-nonsense fahfee man who told me you
had to be made of hard stuff to survive was talking about new sprouting
flowers that he could share with his betters.
When I have covered stories in the townships as a journalist I have seen
the modern armoured trucks with their plated bodywork and windows
that do not roll down. There is just a small circle cut into the opaque
bulletproof material, just big enough to pass through a bag full of fahfee
wallets and for a few curt words to be exchanged.
‘There was a really sad story we heard some time ago,’ Georgie told
me.
‘One of these guys [the newcomers] had parked his armoured bakkie
to do his round at the bank. When he finished he drove off as usual and
returned at night for his evening round to be surrounded by cops. He
thought he was being bust for the fahfee but he had actually killed a child
earlier in the day. The kid had been playing around the car and he ran
over the child without even knowing it because he was in such a tank of
a car.’
Georgie felt little kinship for the newcomers. He did not trust them.
While the locals, even the fahfee men and the shopkeepers, worked to
be accepted and to raise the generations of SABCs, the new migrants could
not be bothered to be South African was what he felt. And why care when
you are not a tiny minority, relying on what you are given because you
can take all you can grab? They are part of the fiery breath of the mighty
Chinese dragon and they are scorching the African soil as they like.
In 2007, when I interviewed an official embassy spokesperson, the
