Sorry, Not Sorry

by Haji Mohamed Dawjee

  In Veer-Zaara, the prosecution opens with a pretty solid case. The twenty-two-year-old fabricated evidence has managed to stand firm in what is supposed to be a democratic Pakistan. Saamiya can taste loss. Her tongue is tied with hopelessness. She puts on shoes of desperation and, without Veer’s knowledge, travels to India in search of someone who can prove prisoner 786’s true identity. She runs into a dead end. Veer’s aunt and uncle died many years ago. But then …

  At the girls’ school in Veer’s village she finds Zaara, who fled to India after she was told that Veer died on his way home. She lives in his house. She runs his family’s school. And she goes back to Pakistan one last time, to clear his name.

  The movie ends with Veer and Zaara bidding farewell to Saamiya at the Wagah border crossing in Pakistan. Veer kneels when he steps over it and greets the sand of his homeland with his hand, holding on to each grain as though he will never let go again. Then he takes Zaara’s hand and they return to their village together. A victory in more ways than one.

  And this is where Bollywood leaves life behind and the paths of fact and fiction disconnect.

  Bollywood movies always have a happy ending. Closure is a trademark that features in every single story. A definite end is compulsory. Life only has a definite end in death, but if it must close – and it must – then let it close with this: eventually, love wins.

  The curious case of the old white architect

  All systemic racism gets its way eventually. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. It’s not as perverse as it once was. It doesn’t stare you blankly in the face, look you up and down, and spit at your feet. But it’s there, at the frontlines. Winning. All the time.

  It’s in the little manual that companies release every year to prove they have met their equal opportunities numbers. It’s in the questions and answers that turn the brown heads filling office space into little beads on an abacus. Rattling around while white corporates, who still own the majority of capital in the country, shuffle and shake their standing in order to ‘balance’ the scales. How many black (in the constitutional definition) people do we employ? Where do we need changes so we can check those boxes? How can we manipulate these numbers in the boardroom when management sits down so that the round table looks equal?

  The doors of the institutions that hire us are still made of misery. The turnstiles at the entrances are fuelled by systemic racism, and every time we pass through, our legs turn to jelly. The imbalance in our strides is intensified by a persistent historical power.

  The power of white-owned media organisations, for example, still has a hold over me. The power of systemic racism is dark magic. The institutions themselves are a horcrux. Their magic is so powerful, so supreme, so ‘whitely supreme’ that these organisations house portions of the souls they steal in order to remain immortal. Or that’s at least what it feels like to me. A piece of my soul still resides there.

  I spent a year at a popular weekly magazine, and I spent about three trying to forget the memories of that place. I clawed at sanity and tried to maintain some degree of enthusiasm for the craft of journalism. I spent a lot of time convincing myself that working in media would not always be a slow death, a prolonged suicide of my mind and a continuous existential crisis.

  Working there made me world-weary. It sewed my opinion of the media into a blanket that muffled my ambition: the media was a dog show and people of colour would always be the mutts. Panting after white editors to get a byline bone thrown at them or sitting in corners, punished because they refused to submit. Untrainable cage dogs. I fell into the latter category.

  Now, I will happily, proudly even, admit that I am untrainable. I am rebellious in the face of authority, I do not like being told what to do by people dumber than I am – as a life rule – and I am oiled by way too much independent thinking to be a yes-woman. This I will fight to the death for: I am not a freakin’ abacus bead. I am not a head to be counted and forgotten. Sometimes the bead in me rears its monstrous, worn face, but I am getting better at slapping it from my thoughts. I am not a bead. I’m sure of that now. And I get more sure every day.

  But in 2012 I was not sure at all and my place in the world made no sense to me. When I finished my honours in journalism at Stellenbosch in 2011, I entered a competition run by a major media house. The winner received a fairly good cash prize and a year’s paid internship at one of their magazines.

  Journalism students from all over the country entered, and quite a few were from my class. There was supposed to be one winner, but three white Afrikaans students joined me as winners. I was the only one who got the money – in exchange for fewer bylines than the rest of the winners, as it turned out.

  The first thing that entered my mind was the numbers game I spoke about before. I questioned my skills: Should I not have won? Was I only there to maintain a good BEE demographic while keeping the place appropriately white? Was I the box they would tick on the employment-equity form? Was I just a statistic while the other three were the pillars of institutional perpetuation?

  Do you know what this feels like? These thoughts? They feel like possession. They feel like strangulation. They feel like panic and pain. And they feel as though they will only go away if you make yourself small or disappear.

  There is a special kind of self-doubt that blossoms from systemic racism, and the present and post-traumatic effects of it are completely unafraid. These effects express themselves wilfully, and they are both predictable and erratic. They steal any semblance of common sense from the mind that suffers them.

  The terrifying narrative of systemic inequality is disseminated with such conviction. It concusses its victims, whose speech is broken and words forgotten. It instils feverish thoughts that cry with desperation. Let me out of this infection, let me believe in myself, what is happening? it screams. This existential crisis felt like it would kill me. When it passes through me now and then, I remember that feeling well. It made me feel like an actor cast in a horror movie I didn’t audition for. The set had no refuge. No stairs. Nowhere for me to go.

  Before we started working at the magazines, the editors and news editors arranged a meeting with the four winners. They came through to Stellenbosch and while we waited outside a pub for them, one of the Afrikaans students started a conversation about which magazines we would be placed at. He suggested that the white-targeted magazines were perfect fits for the three of them, because they were white and would not be seen dead at a magazine catering for another demographic.

  Then this kid politely turned to me and said: ‘You, of course, will be going to [a magazine aimed at black readers].’ I don’t think I need to explain the ignorance and racism here. His polite disposition quickly shifted into a massive side-eye. I could have smacked the white off him. Obviously, I did not. I inhaled my words. And even though those words were contemplations of my own construction, they were poisonous and unkind to me.

  I could have smacked the white off the same student earlier in the year when we visited the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. He pointedly said that I would have been okay during apartheid because I would have passed the pencil test. He pretended this was a compliment, ignorant of the fact that it was anything but.

  This kind of casual racism is worse than the in-your-face kind. To me, it’s worse than expressing open hostility because it displays a kind of cold ambivalence so deeply entrenched in the offender it’s sickening. Casual racism is an over-performer. That might seem like a contradiction. It is not. Casual racism shows; it doesn’t tell.

  Don’t get me wrong – horrifying acts of racist violence carried out by regimes or terrorist groups are maddening and incomprehensible. These incidents are not rare, but they are hard to answer for. The meaning of these tragedies is so useless. People’s lives taken for what? Why would people behave this way? The easy answer is hate. And these acts of hate are punishable.

  The casual racist, however, almost always gets away with their words because they do not warrant th
e punishment demanded by racism that is regarded as more hostile and dominant. But casual racism is the act of manipulative dominance. Its communication displays a calculated kind of cunning. It is often delivered to the person of colour as some kind of backhanded compliment, but it is the thief of our joy and that is exactly what it intends to be.

  The reason I entered the competition was because I desperately wanted to stay in Cape Town. There was no way I was going back to Pretoria; I hated it there. But I needed money to stay and the prize would be a massive help. I had spent the five-year retirement annuity I earned at my previous teaching job on a post-grad degree in journalism, and my once lekker bank balance had landed close to nothing.

  I also entered because working at one of the biggest magazines in South Africa would bring with it excellent industry experience. There was a lot to learn. I found out later that I would only learn how to become a gold-medallist at crying myself to sleep every night because of hardcore prejudice. I went from zero to caged dog real quick, and in that cage I became a hard-ass.

  The other interns all got to go out on boss stories. Well, not really boss. But they were doing real journalism. I got to write thirty-word DVD reviews, thirty-word app reviews and the occasional CD review. The dude who edited this portion of the magazine was one of the nicest people in the building, though, so I didn’t mind working with him.

  Then, of course, I was assigned the odd interview that happened in a township like Epping or Philippi. The brown person covering the brown stories, so to speak. Again, I didn’t mind, but the prejudice in assigning these stories to me was obvious. Also, most of them didn’t get published. I’d do the story, submit and then have the editor shout ‘What kak is this?’ from across the newsroom. There were also a lot of ‘foks’ and ‘fok Hajis’ thrown into the mix. There was no reason for the scolding, in my opinion. I won the damn competition; I could obviously write well. Or nah? I didn’t know. Existential tortures, remember?

  Systemic racists have slight or no regard for people and communities that do not fulfil their vision of the world. There is no need for a moral responsibility. Even if it’s not obvious, there is a disregard for people other than their own, and this disregard is powered by contempt and hatred. In white-owned media organisations, people of colour only exist to be antagonised. We are constantly engaged in battles and acts of petty sabotage: struggles for more opportunities, equal pay and the fight to be heard and respected. We receive little encouragement and mentorship. No effort is made to display any semblance of pleasure in working with us. Instead, the only efforts made are to convey disapproval.

  I often got shouted at because of my politics. Like the time I was told to write a story about a black youth who spoke at a TEDx event. I was broken when I was told the story was not good enough simply because I refused to change the details of his life to something more stereotypically pleasing.

  The truth: he was an intelligent, well-rounded teenager who came from an impoverished but stable home with a healthy family dynamic. He offered mentoring and maths tutoring to the rest of the matriculants at his school.

  The magazine wanted me to make his story more Tsotsi-like. It was demanded that I change the details of his life to say he was involved in gangs and drugs before he changed for the better.

  What the actual fuck?

  I fought hard for this guy in the most polite way possible. I was even apologetic, but I lost. They changed the story anyway. I demanded that my byline be removed. It was. Losing one brown byline is a small price to pay for the perpetuation of stereotypes. The obvious reason for the editorial manipulation was that no one wanted a story of a good black kid. Only white kids are intrinsically exceptional.

  The newsroom in this kind of organisation is the reality that counters the rainbow-nation magic offered by advertising. Companies like these are not the shiny space we’re offered in pay-off lines where people of colour have meaning in their lives outside of the struggles they face. The stories happening inside newsrooms like these are different from the ones we read on the outside. The stories we live on the inside are different from the ones we are expected to tell.

  One day, I got summoned to the front desk to chat to a retired architect who wanted to speak to a journalist about a possible story. He had no appointment. What he had was a lot of time and a healthy bout of racism.

  When you’re a person of colour interning at an extremely white organisation, an ‘order’ like this can be translated as such: everyone else, including the other (white) interns, is far too important and busy with actual stuff; send the skivvy down to waste her time with one of the hundreds of people who think they have a scoop for the magazine. It gets her out the way and gives our eyes a rest from the constant effort of ignoring her.

  I’m sure other interns have to do this kind of thing all the time, realistically. But it’s hard not to take the above stance when you’re literally the only one doing it while everyone else is getting their story ideas accepted in the news meetings and yours are being overlooked.

  People popped in uninvited for lengthy story briefs all the time. Me having to go talk to them happened all the time too. Eventually, I trained myself to enjoy it. It gave me a lot of insight into the madness of the world, and it was a free pass out of a depressing and scary office.

  Once, someone’s mother-in-law came in to see me. Well, not me specifically. But there I was. She was trying to get her son’s money back from his ex-wife. As her story went on, I realised there was no money. She was referring to the financial contribution he made to their marriage. Like for food and stuff. ‘She ate all the food he bought her. We want that money back. She needs to be exposed,’ were this woman’s actual words. What a wonderful waste of time. A healthy hour out of the office and absolutely no need to write a bunch of crap.

  There was a white belly-dancing instructor who tried to convince me to investigate the Turkish man she had married. It would be a massive exposé, she said. She fell in love with him and then discovered he just wanted citizenship. He now paid her no attention at all and she realised he didn’t really love her. She needed the story because she needed closure. Again, a wonderful waste of my time.

  But the most memorable of these ‘I’ve got a story for you’ experiences was the one I had with the retired architect. He had a sense of entitlement taller than the building I worked in. His was a story I should have demanded I be allowed to write. His was a story that the magazine should have published because it provided an education in the workings of a white mind in a democratic South Africa. It was excellent proof of the ignorance and pride of the delusional racist who – with a sense of conviction firmer than a marble floor – claims to not be racist at all.

  He was thoroughly displeased to see me. He wanted to know exactly who I was and what I did at the magazine. Was I the receptionist or someone’s assistant? He wanted to know why the editor did not come and chat to him herself. Then he dropped the ‘W’ word: ‘When I saw you I was so confused. I thought you would be white.’ I smiled through my teeth, bit down hard and turned my molars into sawdust. I responded with a cappuccino, on me. God knows I needed one to wash down all my finely ground teeth.

  With milk-foam-framed lips plumped up by false teeth, he proceeded to lean in and tell me what he claimed was a state secret.

  ‘I know exactly why taxi drivers are responsible for most of the motor accidents in South Africa,’ he said.

  Oh, this is going to be good, I thought. I know what you think he said; you think he said: because they’re black. Nope. The story took a turn I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined.

  He went with the whole ‘I’m an extremely culturally aware South African’ angle: ‘You see, it’s because in the black culture, when babies are young, the mothers carry them on their backs so their eyesight never develops. It happens with the girl babies as well.’

  Whew, what a relief he mentioned the girl babies, I thought. If he’d been racist, a self-proclaimed liberal and a sexist, that
would have been too much.

  ‘But of course,’ he continued, ‘it’s only black men that drive taxis and because they have undeveloped eyes, they cause all the accidents.’

  Wow. His point was that there was a massive problem with black culture, with how black women raised their children. They were creating road-killers because they did not know better. He thought he was sympathetic in his over-performance. But really, he was indifferent, cold, ignorant and racist. He wanted me to write the story so that he, a privileged white architect who unjustly made his money during apartheid and had little else to do now besides rationalise white superiority, could share his thinking with the rest of South Africa. Because the white reality is the right reality and it needs to be manifested in all parts of society – including those pertaining to taxi drivers.

  There was no better metaphor than this man for the newsroom in which I worked. A racist assumption bred from a mind made by systemic racism.

  This man was the walking, talking racist ideology of that office. Of so many offices. And like those offices, he comprised a mass of ideas and assumptions. A worldview like a tumour that belonged to a group of people whose beliefs continue to spread the disease that is systemic racism. A disease that uses the lens of white superiority to interpret both physiology and culture. A disease that maintains the constructive image of whiteness, and the destructive image of people of colour.

  This specific experience at this specific job remains significant to me. It is a reminder of the epidemic that perpetuates stereotypes and prejudices and popular beliefs – when it comes to young black boys who live in townships, for example.