I WROTE MY FINAL EXAMS without too much difficulty. I was able to catch up on some fundamental things and believed without doubt that I would pull through just fine. I had not applied to any other university but Stellenbosch because there was nowhere else I wanted to go. Many of my friends and my boyfriend were going to the University of the Witwatersrand. Daniel had decided to do Actuarial Science, Diana was going to study law and Kabelo was going to study medicine. Kgothatso, Palesa and Mpumi were all going to Vaal University of Technology to do Information Technology. I didn’t want to be in Gauteng. I wanted to be in the Western Cape, at Stellenbosch University, doing a BSc in Physics.
In January 2010, our matric results came out. I hadn’t got as many distinctions as I’d hoped for. I knew that English was a given, and I aced the subject with over 85 per cent, the highest result for English Home Language in the entire district. I missed distinctions in Setswana and History by 1 per cent. But I was proud of myself for having achieved a good average and an exemption with distinction.
A few days after receiving my matric results, I received a letter from Stellenbosch University informing me that while I had done relatively well in my admission tests, my Afrikaans mark was low. I was also a point short for admission to Nuclear Physics but I could always look at alternatives similar to that discipline. Taking into account the fact Nuclear Physics had negative implications for the continent anyway, I decided that I’d instead do Theoretical and Laser Physics. My mother had no money for bus fare, so she booked a train ticket for me. The twenty-six hour journey from Johannesburg to Cape Town was one of the best of my life. A friend of mine, Lungile, who was studying at Stellenbosch University, was going to wait for me at Cape Town Station. I read Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress on the journey.
I arrived in the Western Cape feeling extremely tired. The plan was to stay with Lungile while I tried to sort out the change in my degree choices. I arrived in the Western Cape early to see the place before settling in. I intended to return home after a week to fetch the rest of the things I’d need. Lungile was an incredible host but something happened to me while I was at the university. I felt out of place. I couldn’t bring myself to like the campus. Noticing this change in me, Lungile did what she thought would solve the problem. Little did she know she’d only make it worse. She took me to a students’ braai in the hopes I’d enjoy it and change my mind about the institution. But as I stood in the middle of what felt to me like a sea of blonde-haired, blue-eyed people speaking in Afrikaans, I knew that Stellenbosch University was not the place for me. I couldn’t exist alongside conservative Afrikaaners who, by the look of things, still regarded us as kaffirs with whom they had no intention of even attempting to be polite.
Before my arrival in Stellenbosch, I hadn’t been exposed to an environment dominated by Afrikaaners. I had interacted with some individuals here and there but never with them as a great collective in their own backyard. It was at this party that I first felt the magnitude of the contempt that Afrikaners have for us, a contempt that can be expressed in as minute a gesture as a glance.
The black students, few though they were at that braai, were huddled together in one corner, almost cowering from the marquee infested with their Afrikaaner counterparts. Four or five girls, whom Lindiwe introduced me to, sat at the far end of the festivities speaking, almost in a whisper, their mother tongue. It eluded me why they were isolating themselves so clearly until I walked towards the bar to get myself some lemonade.
The walk from that one end of the garden to the other felt like a march through the valley of the shadow of death. Everywhere around me, pale skins were laughing, dancing and conversing in Afrikaans. I didn’t hear a single word of another language. It was easy then to understand why the black students would feel marginalised to the point of sitting in a corner away from the crowd.
The young lady who was giving out drinks was called Marjorie—someone had called out her name at some point while I was standing in the queue—and she looked annoyed when she saw me. The look of mild irritation on her face was so stunning to me that for a few seconds I thought about getting out of the queue and returning to the girls. Something in me, a stubborness born from years of building confidence in myself, would not allow me to give her that satisfaction. So I stood in line and waited my turn.
When I finally reached the front of the queue, she asked me, almost angrily, ‘Wat soek jy?’
Of course I knew what the question meant but I feigned puzzlement. I responded that I didn’t understand the language she was speaking, and could immediately feel the unpleasant stares from other students around me boring down on me. She asked again, ‘Wat soek jy?’ and, again, I told her I didn’t understand Afrikaans. Her response after that was angry almost to the point of an explosion. She asked, this time in English, ‘What do you want?’
I said I wanted lemonade and she handed it to me. I walked away with a sense that her question had little to do with what I wanted to drink. I felt that what Marjorie was asking me was what I wanted in that place, on that campus, at that university. Something about the way she’d asked the question felt like an interrogation about not only what I wanted to drink but why I’d decided to dare to interrupt her world with my blackness.
I didn’t tell Lungile about the incident, partly because I didn’t want to make her feel guilty for having brought me to a party that had left me feeling depressed. Lungile was a sweet young woman who seemed to be comfortable with the status quo. She hadn’t raised the issue of racism on the campus with me beyond making offhand remarks about how Afrikaans the university was. She appeared to have adapted to the conditions. I didn’t think she’d understand how I felt.
I stayed in Stellenbosch University for a few more weeks, knowing deep in my heart that I would eventually have to leave because, try as I might, I couldn’t picture my future at the institution. I called Daniel, who I was still seeing, and told him about my experience. We created a conference call to include Diana and Kabelo, our couple friends. I explained to all three of them that I wouldn’t study at Stellenbosch but hadn’t applied anywhere else and had nowhere to go if not Stellenbosch. Diana advised me to go back to Gauteng and try my luck at Wits University. I was sceptical. I had never liked Wits and I really didn’t want to be there. I decided I’d rather try my luck with the University of the Western Cape but applications were closed and after trying to negotiate with the management, I was informed that the only space available was in Education. I didn’t want to study towards a Bachelor of Education degree so I decided to return to Jo’burg and make up my mind once I got there what I was going to do with my life. I also knew how crushed my mother would be about my decision but I didn’t allow that to change my mind. I wanted out.
One thing I knew the minute I walked out of the gates of Stellenbosch University was that my life would be dedicated to Black Consciousness activism. Stellenbosch confirmed to me a truth that I already knew about South Africa. It confirmed to me that not only is this country still trapped in the clutches of white racism but also that the struggle to free us from those clutches begged for the participation of all black people, particularly those of us who had had the privileged misfortune of being in multiracial institutions where we had had to deal with the ugly face of white supremacy on a daily basis. I could not wage that struggle alone within the institution but I hoped that by coming together with other like-minded young people, we would begin to at least ask critical questions and maybe, just maybe, we would be able to write a new narrative for and of blackness.