Dabbling in identity politics and crises

In September of last year a friend told me about the South Africa Washington International Programme. During the last few months of 2012, I had heard so much about it, and recognized it as the common factor between so many of my peers who I looked up to as leaders that by the time January came, I had long been awaiting the opening of applications. What followed was a good few weeks of trying to answer the reflection-intensive questions that SAWIP posed to all of us. I wasn’t entirely sure how to put ‘my South African story’ into words. I had never thought about how to describe my family, apart from remarking that the lot of us were entirely nuts and I certainly had no idea how best to raise R7000.

Today I am about a four weeks into the programme. I still haven’t raised my R 7000, but I am a little clearer on some of my favourite South African stories. One of these stories originates out of our Orientation Camp. Before that weekend, I had carried with me a certain kind of angst surrounding what it exactly meant to be Cara in South Africa, in 2013 when I was not sure where I belonged. For example, I listen to the stories of black South Africans, to the rich traditions that persist even in the most contemporary tales, and I think ‘she knows what is special about her heritage’. I listen to the stories of other South Africans whose parents fought against oppression on the basis of racial classification and I think, “They must be proud of this legacy”. I listen to an Afrikaans boy talking about Dalene Matthee or the Voortrekkers, and I acknowledge the struggle of his grandmother and the magic of the Afrikaner culture. I listen to ‘foreigners’ speak, and I see how they take ownership of their so-called ‘exotic’ cultures. And I listen, not Italian enough to really be Cara Mazetti; not Afrikaans enough to be Clara Claassen and without ancestors who bear scars for me to speak about the struggle as my own. Yet being Cara Mazetti Claassen, English and unaffiliated seems to dismiss too much of what has brought me here.

While speaking with my team about a yearning to ‘belong’ that Saturday night outside on the stoep (a word I grab at in my best attempt at multiplicity) I learnt that I did not alone believe that a common South African identity is not accessible to us yet. In the back and forth of debating the usefulness of guilt, anger, shame and that sense of discomfort, I think much shifted for many of us. I listened to the words of my peers in the same way as I listen to the wisest words of those heroes, past and present, who we often find ourselves quoting. Then for a moment, I stopped and wondered if it was possible that for some of these heroes it had perhaps also not all made sense when they were young and part of a ‘South African youth identity’ that is distinctive and revered today.

All that I know is that I am now surrounded by young people who have recognized where the country needs them most, and are doing something about it – this is where I want to belong. One small reflection in a much larger journey of realization - I might not have the answer yet. In fact, from that well-loved and well-known ‘change-maker’, intellectual perspective I might not even have the ‘right or ‘important’ question yet. Nevertheless, I now feel a sense of mental togetherness. This is significant given that although my generational placing has spared me from experiencing physical ‘apartness’, I have been experiencing self-induced mental isolation, which may be symptomatic of precisely this generational placing.

It is this kind of space, that is cultivated within my team where we ask questions of each other and ourselves, and tackle the multitude of ‘sensitive’ and challenging issues with such fervour, which is one of the elements of the programme for which I am the most grateful.