Acrobat PDF - Kubatana

As time went on, most of us were forced to accept that race was
not a determinant in matters of intelligence. We were also forced
to befriend some of the very bright kids so that they could help us
with our assignments. It was a humiliating experience but in the
process we discovered that they had concerns like all of us, that
they cried and laughed just like us and that some of them were
‘normal’ people. Slowly we were crawling towards them, hard as it
was. It was a humbling experience, it was unfair. Remember I was
brought up to believe that the blacks were born to serve the
whites. I grew up with a strong sense of entitlement. Why not? The
whites wrote most textbooks that we used at school, the whites
started our school, the majority of the teachers were whites, and
whites owned interesting commercial businesses, we had all the
reasons to be arrogant. Economically, whites were more visible,
how could I not see us as a privileged race? Who were the inventors
of whatever was considered useful in life; telephones, medicine,
aeroplanes etc. how could I not feel superior to blacks? What
had they ever contributed to modernity? What did they have that
they could claim as their own? Race was all I could think about
when dealing with blacks. Yet circumstances were forcing me to
interrogate my views.
I grew up fully aware that blacks were violent criminals. My parents
told me chilling stories about incidences of black brutality against
whites. I learnt to avoid them as I had heard that even brief
encounters with blacks could be a cause for alarm and trouble.
Every time I saw a group of black boys approaching me, I would
freeze. I would really be scared, immediately, for no good reason. I
had gut fears of blacks. The mass media with its negative portrayal
of blacks fuelled my fears. Today, I have vivid memories of a black
boy who became my nemesis, often threatening me physically and
verbally at school. I can still see his long ugly fingernail on my nose
and hear him saying, ‘white boy, I will crush your brains’, just
because I called him a kaffir. He only did this when other white
boys were not around. But then my fears of blacks are grounded in
something deeper than memories of a childhood bully. There was
and is always an assumption that you are going to be attacked by
blacks, My fear, even today, is that I do not have the language to
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