blacky.

every year in February, the school i went to hosted the inter-house swimming gala; a prestigious sporting event attended by scouts and viciously contested by the school's rising athletes. it was especially exciting for junior learners hoping to make a name for themselves in school: if you did well at the gala, no matter how many letters your name had, it would seamlessly slip off anyone's tongue.

yes, the school was quite classist; there was a hierarchy. and because it was predominantly-white, the reward system of the school was intelligently configured to make it easier for athletes to reach the top.

this configuration was, most likely, a consequence of the reality that many black children are intelligent and can thrive academically, but may not always have the means to participate, let alone excel, in sports. having a reward system that is heavily based on sporting excellence therefore ensured that white learners reached the top of the hierarchy swiftly, while black learners struggled...i think?

nonetheless, the black children who had the means to participate in sports did so-- particularly, swimming. i was one of those black children and i was magnificent at it, too.

i loved swimming with all my heart; it allowed me to connect with water as an element and to see my body become one with it. in that union, i could feel the humour of paradox: to have the potential to both quench (to make live) and drown (to make die).

swimming also allowed me to escape the realities of being a black foreigner, schooling in a predominantly white school in South Africa. in the olympic pool, all i needed to worry about was working on my pace and time and becoming fitter. or, atleast, I thought.

one day, as the inter-house swimming gala was nearing, our house team erroneously booked the swimming facility at a time that is usually given to an opposing team. the rest of this story is messy and, honestly, difficult to recollect. what i do remember is that in the chaos, one of the white swimmers of the opposing house team called me blacky.

blacky.

it was such an odd word to hear. blacky? why not just 'black'?

that was, as far as i remember, the first racial incident in which the violence was blatant and undisguised. it was shamelessly and arrogantly perpetrated. incontrovertible. unmasked. disgustingly overt.

naturally, my response to conflict was always to be calm, internalise, rationalise and, subsequently, move on. sometimes, i would start playing with whatever small object i could find; doing what looked like channeling potential anger from my body to that of the object.

on that day, i was calm, but i could not internalise and rationalise what happened. and because i could not do that, it meant that i could not move on.

this was the beginning of my hatred for whiteness and the white establishment. of course, at that time of my life, I did not know words such as 'whiteness' and 'white establishment', so what i hated was, plainly, white people. white children, white old people.

in fact, at that time, all i had was a form of violence that had a face, but not a name. i hated white people -- all white people -- because I thought racism was an inherent character flaw in every white person, as opposed to it actually being a systematic and structured institution of power.

as i grew older, i began learning more about racism; while still experiencing it, especially in its more disguised and nuanced forms. the learning process was, of course, at a snail's pace.

at first, you learn that everyone can be racist. then you learn that racism is a 'sensitive' topic. then you learn that exploring racism is 'divisive'. then you learn that you should have gotten over it many years ago.

then you learn that race is not even real. we're all the same. how? i definitely do not have the privilege that my white peers have.

then you learn that some of society's conditions are hangovers of apartheid and colonisation. then you learn that they actually aren't, and that the government just isn't doing enough. then you learn that black leadership fucks everything up.

then you learn that white people are treated better than black people. then you learn that black people are also just lazy and, thus, responsible for their own poverty and disenfranchisement. then you learn that white people gave each other free money. but you learn that black people also gave each other free money too, but are still poor.

after a while, you are a senior in your high school, and you realise that you have learned all these things, but you still have not learned anything.

the first time it hits you is when the biology teacher enters the school hall and calls all the black children wambotjies.

but you don't think it's that bad, until another white teacher starts giving critical information in Afrikaans.

but you still don't think it's that bad, until you're told that long hair on black boys looks untidy, while your white peers have unwashed pony tails on their heads.

slowly, you begin to see that racism is not a just a character flaw in every white person; it is the systematic discrimination and oppression of people of colour, with social hierarchy and state power as its main weapons.

you realise that racism does not only exist in the hearts of white people, but it also thrives in your country's systems-- from school rules to fiscal policies. this makes you angry and curious. you are angry, but you are also curious about the extent to which racism actually exists in your country.

naturally, you start to read more, and, on one lucky day, you meet a book titled The Kaiser's Holocaust by David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen.

you read that book, and suddenly, you feel cheated that you had Namibian history for three years and you don't know about Eugene Fischer, or the companies that operated the concentration camps in which thousands of Nama and Ovaherero people were systematically murdered.

nothing makes sense to you anymore.

is the education system racist?

was there actually any reform after independence?

did apartheid even end?

?

you become to hate the white establishment even more, and as you do, people begin to say that you're just bitter. and when this happens, you can almost hear them want to say, "you're just a bitter blacky."

but one day, one of your online friends posts about a structure that depicts a lynching pole; hanging in Henties Bay and described almost-everywhere as the 'most visited tourist attraction' in that town. you are absolutely shocked: first at the fact that the artefact exists, and second at the fact that anybody thinks that people visit the artefact in adoration, as opposed to disbelief.

but you have to channel your shock and the anger it invites. and so, you start an online petition, demanding the removal of the structure. it starts a nationwide conversation on racism and white privilege in Namibia and, like clockwork, the conversation is flooded with people who do not believe in the removal of offensive and racist statues in Namibia.

it is obviously infuriating because before now, you had not imagined yourself having to explain why hanging a lynching pole in public is not a good idea, as it depicts the sites where black people were hung for things as small as being black and as noble as standing against slavery and land grabbing.

as the conversation becomes more and more heated, it also becomes more and more ridiculous. arguments related to the initial reason why the pole was erected begin to enter the chat, and you're now being told that the lynching pole was put up to warn people to keep the beach clean.

you are shocked that this narrative was even accepted in the first place: were there no dustbins or placards available, and were the white people who predominantly visited Henties Bay so afraid of being lynched that they dared not litter at the sight of that pole?

in the middle of what is now an international conversation on symbolic racism, you begin to read more on the history of the world. while you are reading about the world's history, a cultural revolution is also happening in the United States of America and in the United Kingdom. you are excited, because the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol was toppled by protesters. this is exciting to you because you know that Edward was heavily involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade and, with royal patronage, 'traded' African people; stamping RAC on their bodies and selling them as commodities.

the toppling is exciting, but it bothers you why that statue was erected in the first place. you do some research, and you learn that the statue was erected only because he donated a lot of money to Bristol before he died; in what looked like a desperate attempt to whitewash his legacy.

you read up more on that specific statue, and you find that the debate on whether or not to remove it from public display has been ongoing for a long time. you learn that the drag was primarily because white British people believe that the statue was important in telling and preserving the history of Bristol.

it all sounds familiar, so you do some reading on the Holocaust and the Nazi Party. you are interested in seeing whether this type of thinking was applied in Germany: if Nazi leaders were on public display as a means to tell the history of Germany and, perhaps, to serve as a reminder of the pain.

you learn that in Germany, the public display of the swastika is illegal and is punishable by law. this shocks you, because it almost sounds like the rationale was that the symbol is so offensive that its glorification should not be allowed.

now you are frustrated because it almost sounds like the offence that statues and symbols may invite is only valid when the affected or oppressed group is white people.

you begin to actually think about any statue you have ever seen that provided some form of historical clarity but you cannot; because this has never happened: statues are weapons of reverence, and not necessarily instruments of knowledge-building.

and so you become more infuriated and one day, you take a trip to Henties Bay and attempt to set it alight yourself.