Zolani's interview 2/3

THIS PLACE IS A MIRACLE!

A brain shared into 2

“I went to a multi-racial Catholic Irish school. At this time in South Africa, all multi-racial schools were affiliated to the church. My parents didn’t have the money to afford it but they negotiated a lower fee for my brother, my little sister and I. We got a pretty good education there.”

Indeed, in 1975, for every R 644 the government spent on a white student, R 42 was spent on a black one. The black adults we interviewed told us that they received an education whose aim was to make them not think too much and rather obey. In 1963, Verwoerd was already warning people: “ When I have control over native education, I’ll reform it so that natives will be taught from childhood that equality with Europeans is not for them.” In this context, it’s quite understandable that Zolani’s parents wanted to give their children better chances by sending them to a private school.

But the cultural gap between what was taught in these schools and the realities of the black youth was quite big: « I had a very multiracial education and a catholic one, and on the other hand, I come from a very traditional Xhosa upbringing background: we believed in ancestors. Some weekends, my father would brew the traditional beer, he would slaughter a goat or a sheep, lot of people would come to our home. And at school, they told us that we should never believe in ancestors. So you develop these 2 parts of your brain, 2 personalities: South Africans are like that.»

Are South Africans a bit schizophrenic? Could be. Well, when so many animist and monotheist cultures coexist, and so many different worlds as well, no wonder people develop two kinds of personalities. Otherwise, by dint of moving from one world to another, from a township to a rich previously white area, from a world where you’re called “chief” to one where you’re just a “boy”, from a world where you worship your ancestors to one where the beliefs your parents taught you are forbidden or ridiculed, without this “saving” schizophrenia, you could easily lose your mind!

Interview led by Antoine Gazeau, translated by Julie Marchand & proof read by Chantél Daniels.