Thread by @SoliPhilander

@wincadman She likes me. She really does. I'm a very nice person, because I choose to be. You know mos what I mean: If I need to wys you, I can. But I don't really like being nasty to people. I can be, but I don't like it. Maybe in the moment, a little. If I'm hurting particularly. Anyway,

@wincadman So, my grandmother literally grew up in an Afrikaans Boere-huis from around age 4, when her mother died, may her departed soul rest in peace (my gran's too - but with the worrying that woman did over me while I was alive, I doubt it, esp my emotional state at the moment)

@wincadman It wasn't an easy life, and testimony to my gran's greatness, that in her telling of it, there was pain and sorrow, but also appreciation and laughter. But would I not ASK about the people who did these things to her that would horrify me so? The no-schooling, the working when

@wincadman everyone else were playing, how her playmates became her betters (remember, It's still apartheid - I"m an 'underprivileged' child listening to stories about the childhood of the person they loved most in the world)
I'll skip over all the graphic details of how she was

@wincadman 'modelled' to fit requirements, but the one that travels with me is of the first time she ran away from the farm - a young woman already, with her eldest child on her arm. And the farmer followed on horseback, and whipped her back to the farm, no concern for my uncle screaming

@wincadman blue murder - and my gran laughing as she demonstrates how she tried to dodge the whip, mind the baby, and run at the same time.
And then of course, having to explain why she laughed, because nothing about what she said or did was funny, but damn was that woman amused.

@wincadman 'If you can't laugh about it, it will always be your master'

@wincadman I carry no bitterness for what those White People (because that's what they lived) did to my gran. She told me - no time for that. They're also just people. Some people are broken and do evil things. Doesn't mean they're evil. Just lost their way. Need to find God.

@wincadman 'You love them right' (Die Christene en hul skakeringe 😷)
Fast forward a couple of decades and here comes Soli - dik geprop with everything she loved about Afrikaans culture - language, food, humour, work-ethic, family loyalty, issues of honour and morality (it's a complicated

@wincadman culture) and a deep appreciation of where this culture is rooted. Remember though, my gran's appreciation was not from a point of privilege.
Probably why it WAS so deep.
So whilst around me everyone is screaming about the death of the culture, I know as an undisputed fact

@wincadman that the truth of that statement, for me would have to be measured against what I knew about my grandmother. And what I know - my loaded pistol that my gran sends me into the world with.
You can ask Afrikaans people who know me how much they love me. Even the ones who get pissed

@wincadman off with me (I'm no angel, please)
But even Afrikaans people who despise me would have to acknowledge that I have an abiding love for the Afrikaans language, that the white woman whom I love will in my story be the woman I love, and that I really am quite fine with Afr peeps

@wincadman It's racists I can't abide. Feel free to ask that around the white people I know. (This then leads onto another long story about this Jewish doctor my gran worked for in Cape Town till he died. You KNOW she was in the will - in apartheid, baby!
Bra? Ball-and-claw furniture!!!

@wincadman in osse sinkhuis innie Elsies! 🤣🤣🤣
Djy kannie jou gat gedraai hettie 🤣🤣
Alles soe bo-op mekaar 🤣 But BEAUTIFUL stuff! A doctor he was. Loved my gran and he was her 'Ja doctor, Nee doctor, drie sakke vol doctor' My gran couldn't really 'spoeg vissies'. Froze up when she

@wincadman had to speak English -point is, my gran knew White People) I loved my gran, and because she loved me she taught me how to deal with White People. It's what White People find incredibly appealing about me, I know what they mean. It's what White People find incredibly hateful about

@wincadman me, I know what they mean. So THAT's really cool if you're also just making your way in the world, and here comes Soli and that's his criteria and you either engage or not.
But here - finally- comes the syndrome (we agree though that context is important) I'm going to be

@wincadman specific, since Karin, I assume is Afrikaans. Now take someone like PD Uys or Casper De Vries - not for comparison in ability, which I think would be incredibly appropriate, but even in such a case I would not hesitate to bend the knee to either, my appreciation for them

@wincadman in their capacity as just amazing people. It is no secret that both harshly and PDU for much longer, address the inconsistencies and proclivities of Afr culture that has seen them be branded traitors, deviants et al. But it is in performance - no-one forcing you to be the person

@wincadman the finger is pointed at. Because they're funny! And it's funny, because it's familiar, it's a 'take', and it's from 'one of our own'.
But then the world swings more towards the 'take'.
Really, PD Uys and Casper haven't changed their tunes over the years. Reality just started

@wincadman resembling it more.
Have you ever read 'God's Forgotten'? (I think, I'm old). PD wrote that in the 70's? And in it White People live in gaurded, gated communities and travel between them in armed convoys.
Anyway, the more that happens, the more reality life starts imitating

@wincadman art, the more that is not the issue of the reality , but of the artist. Like somehow it was the artists fault that they are cast in these roles that are not that funny. Short sprint to why did I ever find them funny...
Must be because I was trying to do something for them

@wincadman So now these artists are betraying a kindness, a slap in the face.

Short sprint and it's personal, they're hurt and they lash out intending to hurt

I mean it's funny in this instance that she wants to use the fact that I am divorced (ouch, tief) from a white woman to show I

@wincadman that I 'used to care' about white people.

And that's the double whammy, because I'm Coloured my appreciation for her culture was because (in her head) I probably just wanted to be like them
And the point then van die hele relaas
- the syndrome that proximity to whiteness,

@wincadman exposure to whiteness and engagement assumes - not an appreciation of whiteness, but an assimilation of whiteness.
I get it - I can't gaurantee that doesn't happen. But in my work, I'm clear about where I stand -
I was in Mabopane last year and told an audience of predominantly

@wincadman Afrikaans people and I told them: Watch it : with the way this country's going I can't have you all calling out to me in public places and hanging all over me in public - I'm not really up for guilty-by-association. They laughed like drains?
I don't perform to white audiences

@wincadman by pandering to them. Judge me by my work. My work. Go ask the Suidoosterfees why I don't work there. Ask Die Beeld - do they still exist? why I stopped writing for them, ask Anthony Sher what I argued with him about when he played, was it, Lear as Eugene Terreblanche

@wincadman Criticise White People? It's something I've BEEN perfecting.
Cause I nogal like White People.

But that syndrome - that thing where reality starts reflecting what the artist is saying so the ARTIST is problematic, is a very familiar one

@wincadman I suppose I could have JUST said that last bit, but I had to arrive there
😷

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