me speaking Xhosa or Zulu and
they’d say, “Wat is jy? ’n
Boesman?” “What are you, a
Bushman?” Why are you trying to
be black? Why do you speak that
click-click language? Look at your
light skin. You’re almost there and
you’re throwing it away.
Other colored people hated me
because of my whiteness. Even
though I identified as being black, I
had a white father. I went to an
English private school. I’d learned
to get along with white people at
church. I could speak perfect
English, and I barely spoke
Afrikaans, the language colored