In a new #SliceofGasant, Gasant Abarder writes that after a few triggering experiences in retail stores he had been clutching at straws when he had really just conditioned himself to loathe his coloured self because of his own perception of what it represents to society.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here, exclusive to Cape {town} Etc.
I owned a few checked shirts but I never wore them so gave them away. When I looked in the mirror I thought they made me look like a gangsta. It’s stupid. But maybe it’s because I’m tired of being followed around by the black or coloured security guard in the shops or being ignored again by a store assistant who looks and sounds like me.
Perhaps the self-loathing started early when I was a pre-teen and the cops would search me for the crime of crossing the street because I’m coloured and my pants were hanging so I must be a skollie, right?
Maybe it’s because for my entire adult working life I’ve had to assimilate into what is considered the norm, like ridding myself of a heavy coloured accent so that my TV news stories could make it to air when I was in my 20s?
Maybe it was because when I was appointed editor of the Cape Argus in my early 30s, a senior exec reminded me they needed a coloured editor to attract readers for a largely coloured newspaper?
Last week, on Valentine’s Day, there were four incidents that happened in four successive stores that triggered a meltdown. Three of the stores were at the V&A Waterfront. The fourth was located on the Cape Flats, which is supposed to be my stomping ground!
It is important for me to point out that these micro-aggressions were by either black or coloured people. They weren’t white people as many on social media just assumed when I tweeted about it.
Having a week to reflect on it, I’ve decided the problem lies with me and my own self-esteem and self-worth. Why did these incidents trigger me so much? Perhaps because I had just spent the previous two weekends in Joburg being fêted by retail staff and receiving excellent service wherever I went. In Cape Town, it seems, terrible service is somehow cute. Maybe, that was all it was.
At the first shop, I asked a store assistant to show me where a certain brand of chocolates was located. She said she was busy but in the very same action proceeded to assist another customer who happened to be white.
The second shop, the store assistants actually rolled their eyes when I asked about a t-shirt (of the late gangsta rapper Biggie Smalls, no less!). One of them later interrupted a conversation I had with one of their more obliging colleagues on the floor as if I wasn’t there.
By now I was spoiling for a fight when in the third store, the staff shrugged their shoulders when I asked for a drinking straw and there wasn’t any. They just shook their heads when I asked if in the whole entire store there wasn’t a straw.
The final straw (in keeping with the theme of me perhaps clutching at straws) was at a football kit store on the Cape Flats. I frequent this tiny shop because I collect football kits and I’ve spent quite a few rands there. The owner is always terse. I was carefully thumbing through the shirts when he proceeded to tell me: “Be careful you don’t drop the shirts on the floor because the rail is full.”
At this point, already fired up by the previous events, I literally lost my shit and unleashed a volley of expletives in an over-the-top display of aggression. It was uncalled for – his comment and my behaviour. He had messed with the wrong guy on the wrong day. He refused to apologise but I made him by feigning a punch.
I left there a hot mess, going through all the things that happened over the past few hours in the car. And then the tears just flowed.
I initially felt humiliated and degraded and said as much on social media that no matter what I achieved I would always be viewed by some as a coloured Cape Flats skollie. And then I felt ashamed of myself because I should have practised self-restraint. It was my perception of myself that had triggered my behaviour and it required deep introspection.
That is not to say that micro-aggressions of the black-on-black, black-on-coloured, coloured-on-black variety is a figment (or pigment?) of our imagination.
South Africa has complex race-relations. For example, the tensions, real or perceived, between black and coloured people in Cape Town are largely played up by politicians for votes. But it will consume us, like it did me, if we let it.
I’m going to be in the same situation again and I need to be ready emotionally and mentally. I’ve always thought I was proud of my Cape Flats and coloured identity – even though I realise these are apartheid constructs. Or am I? Have I been lying to myself and been ashamed all along?
That stops today. It starts with me wearing my checked shirts again. If people behave a certain way because of my checked shirts then it’s on them. If I react to their behaviour, I am really just projecting my self-loathing and letting it win the day over my self-worth.
Also read:
My fellow Capetonians: your misconceptions of Joburg are outdated
Picture: Pexels