Sorry, Not Sorry

by Haji Mohamed Dawjee

  On this particular day, I took my place on a park bench before peak home-time and my mind brain-farted in a big way. The park was filled with domestic workers looking after other people’s kids. I felt a bit nauseous. I had been to the park at a later hour before, when the parents took the place of their domestic workers and the park was bleached by the property owners, contrasted only with the colours of their dogs’ coats.

  Grappling with all this, I wrote a column for the Mail & Guardian the next day, about the plight of domestic workers in South Africa. The title was ‘Maid in South Africa’. The blurb: ‘White people can walk their dogs in South Africa, but not their children.’

  It did not go down well. Community boards filled up with anti-Haji messages. Residents who received the local newsletter were warned about my presence at the park and the casting of my ‘evil’ eye. The guns of white liberals were fully loaded with white tears and they guarded their privilege with shields made of worn defences. Local bloggers with big mouths and little to say shared the column only to castigate me. The same colleague warned me to never return to the park. Her value severely diminished after this warning. There was an ongoing attempt to ban me from a public space. Such is the delusional capacity of a closed-minded and cushioned society. Hilarious really.

  Then, the worst happened. In an attempt to calm the ‘masses’, this colleague who had accompanied me that day came to my ‘rescue’. She insisted on writing a response disguised as a defence against my controversial opinion. This bugged me. A lot. Her wanting to jump on the bandwagon did not surprise me, but it was her motivation for wanting to write the piece that bugged me – the saviour complex. Still, I couldn’t quite put my finger on the massive irritation it stirred in me.

  After some discussion with friends it became blatantly clear: she needed to whitesplain. She needed to whitesplain my thoughts and sanitise them with her ‘wokeness’. I had spoken at her people. She needed to speak with them. The title of her piece? ‘There’s more to getting maid in South Africa’. And just after the headline she launched in to ‘please explain’ the brown girl in the ring of white fire.

  ‘Last week a group of Mail & Guardian readers rallied around to rage at a column published by Haji Mohamed Dawjee,’ the piece began. Then she threw me a bone: ‘The column makes qualified statements that the white people of Johannesburg’s leafy suburb of Parkhurst might be delegating child-minding to domestic workers so that they are freed up to walk their dogs. It also suggests that child-minding might be a duty that the domestic workers had not agreed to.’ She reminded her people that ‘Mohamed Dawjee’s commentary elicited a fireworks display of fury’.

  And then, most significantly, she threw her people a bone: ‘Because I am not a mother, I cannot know exactly what I will decide about who looks after my child one day. But I do know that I would probably feel as angry as many of these readers if someone questioned my decision about this without knowing my reasons.’

  I am sure those who ‘raged’ against my column slept easy the night they read the above piece. I, however, did not. It was condescending. The whole thing was condescending. But because of my conditioning – brought to you by the colour of my skin and years of taming – I said nothing. I might even have called the piece ‘good’ at some point. But time brought to the surface the regularity of occurrences like this. I started to take stock of the same denigration by the same person, over and over again in different ways. And then I started seeing it in other young white people as well. A select number raised on smoothies made of wokeness and little else. It was a club. Its members were people who thought they were acting with the best of intentions, but who were completely deaf to the patronising quality of their acts.

  That white colleague’s need to write a follow-up to my column was yet another silencing of sorts. Another way for a privileged white to hijack the conversation in the name of ‘good’.

  This tore at me for a long time. I regretted not saying enough. Not standing up for myself enough. I regretted playing into the hands of white sensitivities and being careful not to hurt this person’s feelings. I put myself second.

  Eventually I realised that the art of apology had become exhausting. More than that, it had become insincere. What is this nonsense, I thought, of people of colour (women especially) always needing to be the bigger person by making themselves small? And so the seed of the following statement was planted.

  THE SORRY, NOT SORRY MANIFESTO

  I believe …

  In bursting the bubble. I believe in confidently crossing the imaginary line of what is okay to say to white people and what is not. I believe that it is our turn to talk and their turn to listen. If they won’t, it is often going to be my responsibility to tell them to shut up. At the same time, I believe in picking my battles. Not everyone is worthy of my time and investment. I believe that I am entitled to the silence of my choosing because I do not have to be a representative for an entire demographic and I do not have to explain that demographic as an individual. I have had my fair share of white tears and I no longer thirst for them.

  I will contribute to a world where …

  People are no longer allowed to live in spaces defined only by their wants and needs. I will contribute by making this clear through conversation and opinion in order to expose these very people to the short-sightedness of their own making.

  I will contribute to a world where our unreal, unrecognised feelings are made real by troubling the status quo of privilege and encouraging a critical discussion on race. I will contribute to a world where white liberals are forced out of their homogeneous comfort zones and into a place of self-reflection and fault-seeking.

  I will contribute to a world where those very liberals are no longer allowed to romanticise other cultures and races just because they advocate for charities or NGOs or any other civil rights movements.

  I will contribute to a world where the comfortable are disturbed. Where it is not only the oppressed who are targeted (and who often target themselves, as I have done). I will contribute to a world where the white person, regardless of generation, is forced to accept and understand their belonging to the class of the oppressor. I will rattle the cages of the content and comfort the concerned.

  I will contribute to a world that no longer accepts that confidence is a ticket purchased by privilege and race, giving these people a free ride to the podium and the power to speak, often without script, about the issues that belong to us … to me.

  I will contribute to a world where the woke white is aware that wokeness is often selfish. It is a cloak made of personal gain – whether socially or politically – and the thread of insight is often lacking. I will contribute to a world where the status of this woke white does not give them permission to act as saviours to the ‘less fortunate’ so that they can feel righteous and exceptional, thereby consoling themselves.

  I will contribute to a world where I too can make myself rich with the fortunes of confidence.

  Here’s what I know for sure:

  There is a good racist and there is a bad racist.

  I prefer the latter. The latter wears his or her spots proudly and is easier to identify.

  The good racist is work.

  The good racist, when accused of racism, is shielded by their identification as an anti-racist. When confronted by accusations of racism, however subtly these acts are practised, the good racist resorts to tears.

  Tears are work and I know for sure that I will no longer be providing the tissues to wipe up this degree of self-pity. This is not my job. Nor is it my job to act like I am invisible.

  I know for sure that I will change my approach. I will no longer hang around silently while the audible voices around me hold a forum on their ‘useful’ contributions.

  I know for sure that it is both okay and useful for the woke white to struggle with their own conscience. To feel guilt, fear, doubt and self-castigation. I know for sure that this is healthy and any contribution I make to doctor this situ
ation and treat them as victims is not healing at all. It perpetuates the problem.

  The good racist is work, but the good racist is not my job. The good racist is the good racist’s problem and I will no longer contribute to fixing or healing them without having done the same for myself first.

  I know for sure that white privilege and racism have taught me that I am not entitled to my own feelings and opinions. I know for sure that they have built a world in which they have plenty of space and I am entitled to very little.

  I know for sure that my thoughts and ideas have existed without consideration, yet in this world I have been taught to consider the feelings of others.

  I know for sure that my socialisation in this world has been defined by shutting up, hiding who I really am, staying out of the way and being grateful for being allowed to even exist in certain spaces. I know for sure that this stops now.

  I know for sure that those who are protected by their own liberal ideologies struggle to listen to voices that they do not identify with – even if this is not obvious to them.

  I know for sure that when they enter a racially diverse room, they immediately divide the area into the haves and the have-nots without even thinking about it. They know that they are among the haves, and duty-bound to show charity to the have-nots. It is true that there are those with privilege and those without, but by categorising the world in this way and positioning themselves as saviours, these liberals exert their privilege to survive a changing system that is threatening to them.

  Here’s how I know what I know for sure:

  I have witnessed the capturing of conversations about diversity, political correctness or any kind of human right. I have seen white liberals appropriate the conversation and decide what is worthy of outrage and what isn’t.

  I have seen them slyly slip from one side when speaking through powerful structures like the media, to the other at casual closed-circle storytelling around a braai. The changing of teams is a regular occurrence in safe environments: I have seen this side-swap occur as a means to a racist end, or as a tragic stab at curt humour.

  I have been irritated by the giddy reactions of woke whites when they are confronted with the injustices committed by members of their own race who they deem ‘less enlightened’ than they are. The bad whites vs the good whites. But I have realised that there is one ring that binds them, so to speak, and that is their contribution to a reality that is actually quite fucked. A reality they have the power to escape at any time. I have realised that not all of them have accepted this truth.

  I know what I know for sure because I am real. I am a person who has, like so many others, been subjected to a world where white feelings flooded my own. Who has been convinced, systemically, that being a person of colour is only torture and suffering. As a child, this was beyond my comprehension. It split my mind in two with a trauma that still rears its ugly head every now and then because I continue to live in a system where I need, in many ways, to survive before I can just thrive.

  Conclusion

  I am not sorry about refusing to prioritise white feelings when it comes to conversations about structural racism.

  I am not sorry about the fact that you do not want to hear me. Your denial is your baggage and it will not stop me from raising my voice.

  I am not sorry that my raised voice offends you or that you suffer an emotional disconnect because of it. There has always been one, and I won’t feel sorry for you if you have not realised this yet.

  I will not be sorry for making it known to you that it is impossible for you to fully embrace me, a person of colour, as an equal whose feelings are as valid as your own because you still operate under an umbrella of privilege that holds your own emotions in higher regard than anyone else’s – whether you realise it or not. To fully embrace me you must acknowledge this and believe it.

  I am not sorry that the above is confusing to you. And I am not sorry about the pain that confusion brings.

  I am not sorry about the fact that I will no longer be a gymnast cartwheeling around my words and thinking about what the right and wrong thing is to say in order to succeed in piercing through your denial of the politics of race.

  I am not sorry that our experiences of race come from a different place. When we engage in conversation about it, I won’t be sorry for saying that it is impossible for your opinion to carry any weight, regardless of how much amplification your liberalness buys you. You cannot have an opinion on the details of a problem that does not affect you personally. We are not equals in the fight to end discrimination. I am not sorry that in this type of engagement, you are the lesser, the ill-equipped.

  I am not sorry that your rainbow nation did not work out. That you have tried your best to be a nice white person and you feel cheated by your efforts, because you cannot see that your disappointment in the lack of fruition of said rainbow nation lacks empathy. I am not sorry that you feel silenced. I am not sorry for this, because your feeling silenced slaps the faces of those who have been silenced for far too long. Check yourself.

  I am not sorry that my truth offends you. Even if you are a good person. My truth has faced consequences and it will face consequences still. When you speak the same truth you are seen as a hero among your people, while your silence is a way to get ahead in life. Your preachy wisdom on diversity is a way to get ahead in life as well. It’s all win-win. I am not sorry that I will question this almost genetic entitlement without once again tiptoeing around your feelings so as not to implicate you personally. A structure has many parts. You are one of them. I am not sorry about that.

  I am not sorry that I refuse to let you exercise said entitlement towards me. You are not entitled to my time, my energy, my efforts; I am in control of that. Exercising this control does not mean that I will change this white world, but at least I can tip the scales in my favour.

  I am not sorry that I will no longer ignore racial, economic and social segregation and the psychological effects it has had on me in exchange for ‘making it’ in your world.

  I am not sorry that I will no longer justify my right to have nice things in letters of apology penned in pain.

  I am not sorry that it is not my job to liberate you from the chains of privilege, from the prison of your collective thought. And I am not sorry that it is your responsibility to come to terms with the oppression that accompanies privilege – the oppression that your liberal mind inflicts on you, shaped as it is by institutions and practices that, at the heart of it all, are divisive and exploitative. The onus is on you to come to terms with that.

  I am not sorry that I question you, that I doubt you, that I think you are different and that, sometimes, I think you are dangerous. I am not sorry that I am no longer afraid.

  Sorry, but I am not sorry.

  Acknowledgements

  To my parents, Professor Salahuddien Mohamed Dawjee and Ghyroonnisha Dawjee. Thank you for your patience, your guidance, and for skelling me, without which there would be no fire in me and no flames to throw.

  To my siblings, Dr Maryam Dawjee and Muhammad Dawjee. Thank you for always being an endless supply of inspiration and for taking care of me. Thank you for advising me to never carry a handbag because I always leave it in restaurants. Thank you for giving me the comfort of knowing that whatever else I am not, I am at least the older sibling to two of the world’s smartest, kindest and most beautiful human beings.

  To Paps, who likes to give books away – I wrote this one just so that you would be obligated to keep it. May its existence annoy you from your bookshelf for years to come. I win.

  To my mentors: Hannelie Booyens, once my lecturer and now my friend, who said about my writing, ‘There’s a place for your sarcastic fucked-up-ness somewhere in the world.’ Hannelie, I think I have found that place. To Susan Booyens, for endless conversations about annoying Afrikaans people. And, finally, to Chris Roper, who gave me my first column at the Mail & Guardian. I thank you, and I apologise for the troubles.

&nb
sp; To Ferial Haffajee, whom I contacted in 2010 for a job. She advised me to get a qualification in journalism first and then forgot about me – a random, weird stranger. Years later, Ms Haffajee would refer to me as part of a ‘new world order’ in her book, What If There Were No Whites in South Africa? Okay, I don’t know if that is the exact quote, but I am mentioned (along with a host of other, much cooler people). Thank you for writing the foreword; your hero, Haji.

  To my squads: the Nyak Squad, the Bean Club and the Papses – specifically Stephanie Pekeur, my Raym-drops and Sarah Koopman. Thank you for being the best friends and the best fans anyone could ever ask for. Whatsapp me, okay?

  To Garreth van Niekerk, thank you for reminding me to cut my hair when it looks kak. But mostly, thank you for being so wonderfully you.

  To my soul-friend, Rasheda Titus. Thank you for buying me that pen once upon a time to write this book. Writing by hand makes for bad cramps. But here we are.

  Thank you to my team at Penguin Random House: Robert Plummer, Marlene Fryer and Melt Myburgh. Mostly, thank you to my editor, Lauren Smith. I’m so glad we finally had that coffee so that I could thank you in person.

  To the person responsible for making me look marvellous on the cover of this book, Neo Baepi. I cannot thank you enough; the words have not been invented yet.

  To Charlie, our cat. Thank you for your paw-fect contributions in the way of typos and computer reboots. Hope you’re resting well and making ’em laugh up there, puppy bear.

  And to my wife, Rebecca Davis, without whom this book would have been completed with a calm sense of control instead of anxiety, haste and a lot of playtime. I would not have it any other way. Thank you for helping me eat the elephant, not one bite at a time, but by dipping its trunk in wasabi. I love you.