Where are you from?

Ulla Dentlinger

Description

Ulla Dentlinger�s life history begins in poor, rural apartheid Namibia of the early 1950s. Growing up in the Rehoboth Baster territory, she early on discovers that her parents are not prone to reminisce about their family�s past. The most mundane information about their background is guarded much like a state secret. As a child, she begins to panic at being asked the question so normal to others: Where are you from? Only in later years it dawns on her that she had to be a �Coloured�. The sense of conflict increases immeasurably. By then she is growing up in apartheid South Africa, but now in a �white� suburb of Cape Town. She goes to a �white� school and bears herself in a German fashion. She and her family had, in fact, jumped the colour line.

Sujets

• Women
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Basler Afrika Bibliographien
• Date de parution: 29 octobre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9783905758979
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

Ulla Dentlinger| Where are you from?

Ulla Dentlinger Where are you from? |‘Playing White’ under Apartheid

Basler Afrika Bibliographien | 2016

© the author © the photographers © Basler Afrika Bibliographien

A co-publication of:

Basler Afrika Bibliographien PO Box CH-4001 Basel Switzerland www.baslerafrika.ch

All rights reserved.

Most illustrations in this book are from the personal archive of Ulla Dentlinger. The recent photographs of Rehoboth in chapter two have been generously supplied by Cornelia Limpricht (Hamburg). Other photographs originate from the archives of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Republic of Namibia (ELCRN, Rehoboth Chronicle and Album) and the Basler Afrika Bibliographien (BAB, Dammann collection). Efforts were made to trace all copyright holders. We apologise for any incomplete or incorrect acknowledgements.

Cover photograph: Ulla around 1956 at Verlos or Namtses

Map on inside front cover: Apartheid and racial segregation in Namibia at a high point: the map of the so-called Odendaal plan which designated ethnic “homelands“ to Namibia’s African population. In the centre of the country the Rehoboth Gebiet. Adapted from the Report of the Commission of Enquiry into South West Africa Affairs 1962–1963. R.P. No 12/1964, Fig. 9

ISBN 978-3-905758-79-5

ISSN1660-9638

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Contents

A tormenting Question

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7

Endnotes

Epilogue

Hedi’s Story

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112

Acknowledgements

The Enssles and the Dentlingers

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124

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3

Lena of my Childhood

120

5

Where are We All From? “Humanity is Coloured”

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Rehoboth … Colourful and Controversial

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72

31

50

My Story

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In fond memory of my brave mother, Wilhelmine, and my strong sister, Ute. I would give anything to learn what details they would have added to my stories.

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A TORMENTING QUESTION

People often have difficulty placing me. When I lived in the United States with my family, Oregonians were intrigued by my accent. They thought it sounded British. When we travel in Europe, nobody would suspect I am any- thing but European. In South Africa, people agree that I might be South African – but they also detect something indescribable that slightly sets me apart from them. When I switch into clear Afrikaans, they might smile in acceptance. But what takes the cake is when I speak a few sentences in Khoe, a local Namibian language. Now they become confused. “So, where are you actually from?” they will want to know. To them this seems a simple, obvious question. Try as I might, I am not able to give them an equally short and simple answer. For me a whole life- time is contained within that question. I have a story to tell, of which the gist is this: While growing up in rural Namibia in the mid-1950s, my parents did the unthinkable. Knowing we were of mixed heritage, yet wanting the best for their children as all good parents do, they arranged our schooling accordingly. They sent, first me and then later my sister, to white schools. Possibly encouraged by their initial success, all four of us went ahead and lived white lives. Had we now “jumped the colour line”? By various obscure and not well-documented processes – convinced they had to be secret – we believed we had changed our racial classification from “coloured” to that of “white”. We juggled colour. At the time, being white was a highly desirable status to have; in fact, it wasthemost desirable status. Now, some fifty years later – and twenty years after the dismantlement of apartheid – it becomes ever harder to say what advantage it brought us. As the world at large becomes ever more diverse, who can say it is better to belong to one group than to another? Who can today even categorically say: “I belong to ethnic group A, while my neigh- bour belongs to ethnic group B”? Do we even have to belong to groups? At that time, though, this private family reclassification which we took upon ourselves was certainly not something done lightly. It was a step fraught with uncertainty, even danger. The price we paid was anguish, con- stant fear of detection and a sacrifice of family connectedness. The decades- long process of subsequently becoming comfortable with my new identity was psychologically so unnerving that I have only recently felt free to talk about it. This is certainly the first time I ever write about it. On 21 March 1990 Namibia became independent, thereby officially end- ing its mandated status to South Africa. On 27 April 1994, apartheid was offi- cially dismantled in South Africa, a result of the first free elections since 1948, with the African National Congress replacing the Nationalist Party. People born after these two dates (often called the “born free” generation)

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have thankfully been spared legal colour discrimination and are sometimes unable to relate to apartheid as it once existed. It is hard for them to imag- ine that only two decades ago there were certain schools for white children in South Africa and others for black children, that seating arrangements in buses or in trains were reserved according to colour, that certain jobs were allowed to some and certain salaries prohibited for others, that there were legally prescribed places to live and partners to choose from, all of which was determined by the tone of your complexion or the texture of your hair. Some older southern Africans have simply put these years behind them, wishing to forget. Foreigners, of course, feel outrage at the injustices suf- fered by black people, but might not quite understand the complex plight of those with mixed genetic background, who were equally victims of a harsh and inhumane policy. Yet those of us who grew up as people of colour after the South African elections of 1948 that called the conservative Nationalist Party into life – and who subsequently saw discrimination based on colour being written into law – remember our heritage transformed from being a personal attribute to 1 that of a public logo, permeating every fibre of our existence. In Namibia , too, people were now rigorously assigned to racial categories of white and non-white, and then more precisely into European, Owambo, Nama, Herero. And then, of course, came the category of mixed racial backgrounds, such as the Coloureds or the Basters. In fact, these groupings had already existed during German colonial times, but the South Africans now had the political apparatus to almost perfect their system of entrenching differences – but not absolutely. There remained grey areas. My family was to use these grey areas to their advantage during the early 1950s. With this background in mind, consider for a moment the seemingly inno- cent question: “Where are you from?” The average respondent would happi- ly, when asked about their background, proceed to give their country or place of birth, perhaps name the place they grew up in. They might talk about where they went to school, college or university, then continue to talk about their family, how earlier generations came to settle at a particular locality, possibly mention one or other memorable relative … at any rate, go on a pleasant journey into their personal past. With the question answered, the average listener, no doubt, will now be keen to tell their own story, tell where they come from. All of us have participated in this dance of questions and answers about our background. It is the way we probe someone we are getting newly acquainted with. If we run out of something intelligent to say, the question “Where do you come from?” breaks the ice at a party. It makes good small talk at a dinner table. It provides common ground between speakers and cre- ates noted differences.

As a child on our Namibian farm, I learned early on that my family was not one to revel in stories of where we were from. My parents guarded even the most mundane details about their own parents much like a state secret. Innocent questions about their past from my sister and me would elicit – not smiles at the pleasure of reminiscing, needing no prompting to spill out – but instead, wary sideway glances hinting of the fear of detection. My father’s standard response would be to remain stoic, while my mother looked hurt. These mysterious reactions would be followed by an awkward silence, best described as if a primary school student was being punished for some offence. A definite but inexplicable sense of guilt hung in the air. It was not altogether clear who the guilty party was meant to be: was it my sister or me, for asking? Or were my parents hiding some mystery too horrendous to be admitted? Why were they feeling so uncomfortable? Since nothing was verbalised, we all just let it pass. Finally, we stopped asking. Modern psychologists would probably warn against this kind of parent- ing. Ignoring strange habits tends to perpetuate them in families and make them heritable legacies. Having been sensitised to these latent signals, my sister and I began to mimic this strange behaviour and then adopt it as our own. As young children, we would now, in turn, never willingly offer any infor- mation on the little we knew about our background. Instead we hunkered down, as our parents did, ducking apparently potentially embarrassing ques- tions. Later as a teenager, should a conversation develop in the direction of parentage or heritage, I would silently cringe, instinctively wishing: “Oh, let’s just move on to another subject and forget about this one”. Finally, during my high school years I drew my own lonely conclusions. We had to be of mixed heritage – coloured – as such people were called in southern Africa. And living as whites, as we did, was against the law. But what else was there to do but continue as before – quietly, secretly – in line with the family tradition? Not being able to speak for my sister, I can only assume that the full and powerful meaning must have hit her as hard as it did me. I know from friends that she was teased at school in Windhoek about her heritage. She seemed to have internalised and suffered so much from this “affliction” that, after her very early death from cancer, good friends finally summoned up the courage to ask me whether she had been abused. They had difficulty imag- ining what made her seem to bear some secret burden. I feel that I was lucky to have avoided such acute suffering. Perhaps my personality was different; perhaps my subsequent distance from Namibia made it easier for me. From an early age I had been drawn to differences in people, an unusual look, foreign places. I intuitively gravitated towards the study of anthropology, hoping to explore “otherness”. I was also keen on travelling. Getting married to a German and leaving South Africa, therefore, while making me wary at first, later seemed natural.

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