The Black Under and the White Standing.

by Tamsanqa Mashasha

“Can I get you guys anything else? No thanks, just the bill...Oh, I’m sorry, I just assumed…you know…”

This is an extract from a conversation I had with a waitress-who just happened to be Black and works at a certain restaurant where people with a taste for life dine. When she placed the bill in front of my White friend instead of me, even though I who had requested it. Even though smiling and making light of it at the time, after getting home it struck me that even though we the people of South Africa are said to live in a ‘free, fair and democratic country which has cast off the shackles of Apartheid’ this is so far removed from the truth that one could count to infinity before any viable case could be formulated to established to defend the above statement.

What the Hell am I?

by Tamsanqa Mashasha

I am an African!

…I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me. In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done… My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert….