Heritage, according to South African History Online, is “a deceptively simple idea. It can be considered to be made up of the practices and traditions that are passed on from parents to children, but it also has to do with what has been passed on from the family, community and place where people have been raised. For example, heritage can include a family’s professional history; religious affiliation; or cultural traditions.”
My paternal family are Greek-Italians and my maternal family are Afrikaners. But the closest I have come to experiencing my heritage is probably the times I’ve eaten malva pudding and koeksisters.
Afrikaner nationality is related to a set of paradigms. When I imagine an Afrikaner, I imagine a khaki-clad right-wing conservative (this is my modest way of saying RACIST) with an aversion towards English and a fondness for eating animals they’ve shot themselves. Of course, not all members of my family conform to this stereotype, but enough of them do.
Although I am an Afrikaans-speaking white person from South Africa, descended from Dutch settlers, and although my descendants fought in the Anglo Boer War, I will never identify myself as an Afrikaner, because doing so inescapably asserts unwanted political weight on my shoulders. But, I will also never identify myself as a Greek, because doing so will connect me to a heritage I’ve never been part of.
I have always felt excluded from Afrikaans culture, as I have never been able to sokkie* (partly because I have no rhythm and partly because sokkie-ing makes me cringe) to Steve Hofmeyr’s Pampoen* or Kurt Darren’s Kaptein*. I hate Afrikaans music, because I experience most songs as flippant and objectifying. For example, Snotkop released a song this year titled Souserig* (Saucy) and the lyrics ring, “Sy’s souserig, sy maak die manne benouderig… ek kort sous op my lamsboud…” (She’s saucy, she makes men feel sultry… I need sauce on my leg of lamb”). This is illustrative of a heteronormative patriarchal culture. But, I won’t get into that now.
Snotkop, Souserig
Steve Hofmeyr, Pampoen
Kurt Darren, Kaptein
For a long time I hated Afrikaans because I associated the language itself with Afrikaners. I thought I was edgy and cool because I could pronounce the “r” in English without the grated Afrikaans accent. I didn’t want my accent to betray who I was. The other day, I was on a three-way voice chat with a family friend and a friend of theirs. Both of them are Afrikaans, but they insisted on speaking English to each other. I ended up speaking Afrikaans to them, and they replied in English. This annoyed me and they came across as pretentious and laughable. They can’t fool anyone into thinking they’re English, since their Afrikaans accents unavoidably trickle through. After some reflection, I realized that they are not pretentious, but they are however intensely embarrassed about being Afrikaans. I know Afrikaans people who reject Afrikaans in other ways, by only reading English books and writing poetry in English only. It is saddening that Afrikaans is tainted with racist ideologies and that this makes people dismiss such a beautiful language. As I’ve gotten older, I have come to feel affectionate towards Afrikaans and its guttural “g” sounds. I think Afrikaans is a beautiful language, and sometimes I page through the HAT*, just admiring the words.
The only thing about me which signifies my Greekness is my surname. Back in school, I loved my surname because it wasn’t Afrikaans (surprise, surprise). My surname, the signifier of my heritage, was often ridiculed in school. One day, my name was called out during assembly, because I had to receive something on stage. The principal was newly appointed, and he didn’t know how to pronounce my surname. What came out of his mouth was a garbled, distorted mispronunciation of “Antonopoulos.” Everyone burst out laughing, and luckily I didn’t attend assembly that day, so I didn’t experience the humiliation first-hand, but I didn’t hear the end of it after assembly.
I cannot speak Greek, and I am not familiar with Greek food (except Greek salad), music, traditions, or clothing. It is too late to incorporate Greek traditions into my life – I will always feel like an outsider and I will never be able to immerse myself fully into the culture. For a long time, I felt a nostalgic longing for Greek culture, and a loss for something I could never claim as mine in the first place. When I think of Greek heritage, I have a vague notion of plate throwing in mind, but I realize that this perception is a romanticization, and it does not do the culture any justice at all.
Since I do not identify with either Afrikaner or Greek heritage, I find myself on the fence. I am glad I haven’t internalized Afrikaner ideologies, but sometimes I still wonder who I would have been if Greek heritage was a part of me.
Glossary:
Sokkie – “Sokkie dance is a style of social ballroom dance with a partner. It is also referred to in Afrikaans as “langarm”, “sakkie-sakkie”, “kotteljons” and “Water-pomp”. Similarly to American ‘Sock Hop’, sokkie, meaning ‘sock’ in Afrikaans, refers to the way young people dance sokkie in their socks and often barefoot” (Wikipedia).
HAT – Handwoordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal. The Afrikaans dictionary equivalent to the Oxford dictionary.