I wrote this text in 1985. It formed part of my multi-media Performance “Eingewickelt”, first performed in 1986 during the Art contre/against Apartheid Exhibition, Übersee-Museum, Bremen, Germany. Here in the English translation:
Cultural Embrace
I am a woman
my home is Africa
my skin is white
In the country in which I live, I am a foreigner...
embraced by textiles of descent and heritage
in bands of colour and gender.
Embedded in bandages of nationality.
“European” is what they called me at home.
European, that was the word for people with my skin colour.
European...although my great, great grandmother was born in Africa.
Damned because my skin unmistakably points at the chain of my Germanic origins.
European thinking, white thinking, I was taught:
You are better, you are civilised, you are developed.
I know what things are about, I have it good, know which way to go...
was what I should believe.
My task to help, to guide, to lead,
I should fulfil,
because that is the way it is as an open minded, liberal, socially aware European.
All this because my skin is white.
Oh how I hate it, my up role-fixated soft white skin.
An illness, not able to be rubbed away, not rubbed out.
Fixed, continuing damnedness.
Away, away, away, I wanted to go.
I don’t want to participate,
I don’t want to lead,
I don’t want to fight for others,
I don’t want to pray for others.
Away from the arrogance of knowing better and the unbroken chain of guiltiness.
Away from the white land to Europe where you and your kind belong...
European.
Once here, I was given a new title.
Here they called me “foreigner”,
the word for non-German, for not belonging.
Here they taught me:
you don’ have a clue, you still have lot’s to learn, you have to fit in,
settle down, be empathic, you are not better, you won’t find a home here.
Why should you, after all...
you will one day go back to where you came from.
Had I been black, at least that would have given evidence of to the fact
that I came from Africa.
Endless unconfirmed knowledge about belonging....that was my problem...
an uninterrupted outsider.
Until I looked through the veil and realised
that my roots were anchored in the rust-red, dried out dust of the South African earth inseparable.
I am an African,
not a European,
not a foreigner,
an African embraced in European thinking, bound in European values.
Here, in this country
the streets are so pure, houses so dust-free, skin-pores so cleansed.
White skin shines and shines...
...and I was looking for red dust.
In some suburbs, I found traces of too much alcohol the night before,
empty bottles, paper and some remnants of dogs...
But I never found red dust on these European-white streets.
Memories...
of fine rust-red dust particles, that embed whole cities and veil the people.
Red dust on the streets, in the houses, on the skin, between the teeth, under the fingernails ...
all over, free-flying, light and unavoidable.
Symbol of freedom in my country.
Damn it! Whose freedom?
Mine or that of others? That of others or mine?
Is there such a thing as “our freedom”?
Questions
that led me back
into old, familiar, deeply-loved memories of rust-red dust earth, right into the middle.
That is where I noticed the red dust in my veins,
bloody,
scratching it’s way from the inside out,
surrounded by pain.
My pain, not that of others.
And anger.
My anger, not that of others.
And life. My life.
That is the path away from the chains of the soft white conscience surrounding me.
My pain. My anger, my life.
Free, like a single red dust particle is what I want to be ...
No more a stranger in her own home,
no more unknown,
no longer in the wrong place,
no longer without a place.
No longer running into boundaries.
Barbed wire boundaries at home in people’s hearts.
Concrete boundaries in people’s heads.
I will break open
and blow up restrictions,
smash barriers
and feel life,
experience my life.
Free from my white jail,
free from my padded chains...
chains that nevertheless remain chains. Smothering hug of my homeland.
Not to be compared to the barbed wire hug of my home for my brothers and sisters,
not to be compared to the slow bullet of starvation,
not to be compared to the quick, torturous death of the gun ...
not to compare.
why compare?
I want to get out of my white constricting, smothering, bribe of a soft social death
and awaken the life within me.
A functioning woman will not be made of me,
nor a good-tempered foreigner,
nor an arrogant, left-liberal, socially aware soul-handicapped white ...
No more away, but towards ...
towards the place where the river of my life flows
the red dust in my veins.
I am a woman
my home is Africa
my skin is white
in the country in which I live, I am an African.
The performance ended with this poem by Ingrid Jonker...
The Child
The child is not dead, no
the child raises its fists against its mother
Africa cries, cries the smell
of freedom and heath
in the ghettos of the encircled heart
The child raises its fists against its father
in the course of the generations
Africa cries, cries the smell
of justice and blood
in the streets of its armed pride
The child is not dead, no
neither in Langa nor in Nyanga
nor in Orlando nor in Sharpeville
nor in the police station at Philippi
where it is lying with a bullet in its head
The child is the shadow of the soldiers
on guard with guns, Saracen tanks and truncheons
the child is present in all assemblies and at the passing of all laws
the child looks through the windows of the houses and into the hearts of the mothers
the child now playing in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere
the child that has become an adult drifts across all of Africa
the child that has become a giant travels across the whole world
Without a passport.