A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece entitled “Of racists, kaffirs and coconuts” in which I wondered out loud if such a thing as a kaffir actually existed. That was at the height of the “Khoza fingers the kaffir” row. In that piece, I promised that I would return to the subject to complete my thoughts.
I have a confession to make. I set a trap for you, my readers. In the very last sentence of that blog, I consciously made a vague allusion to DJ Fresh, the 5fm presenter. I must thank you my sheeple for falling for the trap like a fruit fly on crack for the Venus flytrap’s tricks. You came out guns blazing in condemnation of Fresh’s allegedly coconutty ways. And, to sweeten the deal, some readers even threw in Talk Radio 702’s Redi Direko. I call such moments the good times.
I guess the most important question here is: What is a coconut? I think that it is sufficient to explain the term “coconut” as a black person with white values. Fair enough? OK, if you want to be pedantic and pick at those nits, I suppose you could throw in white mannerisms, speech, behaviour and perhaps even dress sense.
The reason I am honing in on white values is simple. I think that people who use words like “coconut” do so because they lack the vocabulary to say what they really mean, which is “Eurocentric”. I have sufficient lack of faith in human intelligence to predict that someone will attempt to come up with a definition of a typical white person. Some people have the optimism of a horny Chihuahua attempting to mount a Great Dane in heat.
But let us pretend for a second that there is such a thing as a typical white person on which these self-loathing black coconuts model themselves. I am personally not aware of such a prototype of a white person. Who is more typically white: Casper de Vries or Bill Gates? David Bullard or Britney Spears? I hope the question is as absurd to you as it is to me. It makes just as much sense as asking which is better: a shoe or a banana?
However, there are pointers to what it is that people mean when they describe others as coconuts. I’m going to invite the wrath of the nitpickers by trying to summarise of the behaviours that are attributed to people such as Fresh and Redi that apparently make them coconuts:
1. Coconuts speak English most of the time and they do so with an accent that is “white”.
2. Coconuts seem to be very comfortable in white people’s company and may have many white friends.
3. Coconuts, in their sickening coconuttiness, will often express views that seem at loggerheads with African values.
I guess that if I had the time, I could write a much longer list. I could even write a 500-page thesis and get academic accolades from the funny guys in frocks at graduation ceremonies. I am frankly not interested. So let us respect my laziness and confine ourselves to these three coconutty ways.
I think that holding it against people that they speak English with this, that or another accent is the height of stupidity. That is tantamount to dispensing sanction for the ability to learn. Stay with me here. English is the language of the English. One can therefore make an argument that the best English is likely spoken by the English. Not strictly true, of course, but there are reasons why people like David Beckham speak like they have neither a hard palate nor an upper lip. Let’s choose a typical Oxbridge English professor as an archetype of the English speaker, then.
Here’s the thing; most so-called coconuts speak the way they do because they studied in previously white schools. What would personally worry me more is if someone went to Michaelhouse in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands for five years and emerged on the other side sounding like Fikile Mbalula. You will be amazed at the number of people who will descend upon me like dung beetles on a sewer spill and accuse me of saying there’s something wrong with the way Fikile speaks English. In a word: no.
All I’m saying is that there’s nothing strange about people the acquiring speech patterns of those around them. I have a brother who lived in Rome for only three years and when he came back he could not speak without flailing his hands. Mbalula speaks English the way he does because I imagine that everybody around him spoke English that way. Redi Direko speaks English the way she does because everybody around her spoke English that way. If she spoke any other way, this would either make her fake, at best, or an impregnable fortress of stupidity, at worst. Is this seriously a point that needs to be specifically stated?
As for black people having white friends, well, take me to the Noord Street taxi rank, strip me down to my drawers (not nude in this weather, please — shrinkage) and parade me as a coconut. Guilty as charged. But I’ve always just assumed that the whole thing about a non-racial society, freedom of association and all of those goodies in the Constitution was not some kind of gag-reel material. Unless, of course, breaking bread with them pale people is seen as fraternising with the enemy, in which case you’ve got me seriously worried now. Some of them are OK, you know. Others can even resist their genetic disposition to taking a whizz in people’s food. I think we can move right along.
But the bit about this whole coconut business that I find fascinating is the third attribute of coconuts: that is, black people who depart from African norms and values. First off, African values are, in themselves, a deep mystery wrapped up in a riddle to me. They are as much of a mystery as “white values”, as alluded to earlier (he hastens to add, lest the pan-Africanists descend upon him like fireflies on a fluorescent condom in the dark).
Much brighter people than I have grappled with the whole notion of culture, values and norms. All I’ve ever taken out of these wise people is that there are many questions to be answered about the dynamic nature of any particular culture and its traditions. The more astute have probably picked up the fact that I’m all over the dartboard like a drunk in a pub on Saturday night with the usage of terms such as “culture”, “tradition”, “norms” and “values”. That’s because they reside in the same box in my brain, which is neatly labelled “culture and shit like that”. What I know about the subject matter is dangerously little, but I have established a rich tradition of proudly displaying my ignorance. So here goes nothing.
I think that culture/tradition/values/norms are dynamic and subject to external influences. The external forces in these parts of the world were introduced to us by a bunch of guys in tight pants who appeared from the sea in a cruise liner called the Dromedaris. They were later joined by another bunch of okes from a tiny island who went about dispensing their own brand of culture that involved minimal baths and speaking through their noses.
I guess one could argue correctly that the brutality of the methods employed to dispense these values was disgusting. You would get no resistance from me. I’d toyi-toyi right next to you and chant anti-imperialist slogans. Of course I’d run away shrieking like a little girl when the first rubber bullet was discharged and call it “a strategic retreat” afterwards. Not everybody has the stomach to be a revolutionary, you know. The only role some of us can play is to wander this wasteland called South Africa like Kwai Chang Caine from Kung Fu, muttering pseudo-intellectual mumbo-jumbo.
I guess that the disgust that some people exhibit towards those they call “coconuts” is understandable. I imagine that if one holds dear these African values, the perception that some black people seem to be turning their backs on them must be pretty disgusting. I’m personally not one such person. I have always just operated from a “live and let live” standpoint. And if you’re going to cast the first stone at people because they don’t satisfy your “African enough” criteria, then you have a responsibility to share your criteria.
My (hopefully) obvious point here is that Africanness is relative. A few years ago I was having just this debate with someone and I was sufficiently moved to put together this graph:
I hope the graph illustrates my simple point. Even as we castigate those whom we think have embraced Eurocentric norms, in the eyes of many others we are guilty of exactly the same thing. If my granddad saw me now, he’d shake his head and call me a &^*%ing coconut. And from where he’d be standing, he’d be right too.
Is JZ a coconut? Well, it depends, doesn’t it? His mates from his goat-herding days who never left Nkandla probably think he’s a freaking coconut, what with all his suave city ways, complicated English and snazzy suits from Casanova. I could be wrong of course.
Because this is Thought Leader, there has to be a point somewhere in this maze of circular logic. I guess my point is that I see no value in these pointless finger-pointing exercises in which we engage. I personally think that DJ Fresh is an articulate, smart brother who has done well for himself. He is clean-living, does not do drugs (or is smart enough to snort in private), is a family man and doesn’t engage in stupid behaviour in public. I think there’s a name for this, but it escapes me. Ah, yes: a great role model.
Is the best description for Fresh a “coconut”? This is a man whose heart is so much in the right place that he has started the DJ Fresh Foundation, which has raised millions of rands for needy kids (often known as ubuntu) to go to school, for the record. I personally don’t care whether he pronounces the word “matter” or “mutter”, like the president. I think this is a man worthy of emulating. If that makes him a coconut, you can call me a coconut too.
As a matter of fact, I’ll say it for you, granddad. I’m a coconut and I’m proud of it.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 9:26 am and is filed under Perspective, Lifestyle.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
166 Responses to “I’m a coconut and I’m proud of it — say it with me”
Ndumiso this was brilliant!!
You really are de man …(does that make me an inverted coconut?)
BTW, a recent survey, in some other publication, showed that 80% of South Africans belong to a church, so just 20% are non-believers (k*ff*rs). The survey did sadly not reflect the skin colour of these non-believers, wonder if it is a racist thing…
I just think that the word coconut cuts about as deep as the k-word, simply because it is used to degrade once again. I love proper zulu traditions, which is still found here in northern zululand, but it is adapting to the more Eurocentric (thanks for the new word Ndumiso) nature of South AFrica. This means that in the end all will evolve to coconut status, and the tralatitious way will be something seen only in cultural villages. A bit sad I would think.
But, alas, change is something we must all live with, and not obturate.
Hi my name is Nqina Dlamini and I am a coconut.
Well sort off anyway, I still perform all the cultural ceremonies, I paid Lobola for my wife, I even speak English in an “African accent”, but I am ashamed to say that I have “white” and “Indian” friends…….yes I am a coconut.
Well said, brother. Another way of addressing this issue is to take it out of the African context altogether (helps to avoid the spontaneous use of the coconut, kafferboetie, impimpi etc by some folks) and take it to any other country in the world, especially, but not exclusively developing countries. I say not exclusively because there are small conservative communities in any country in the world that get freaked out by the influence of subversive ‘foreign’ values on their ‘culture’.
My point is that there are cultures, values, norms that are challenged all the time in all societies in the world. It’s called evolution. Remember what the whiteys of the US said when their children started to rock and roll - “they’re being subverted by black culture, by the devil’s music”.
My point is also that some of what people call culture is not actually culture, nor is it exclusive to a particular community. My favourite is the one of African men being the head of the household in African culture. Well, I have news for them - there are white folks in the United Kingdom and the US and Europe who claim much the same thing, except that they say it is part of their European culture. Who invented the phrase “I wear the pants in this house”? Not darkies, that’s for sure.
The issue is not culture, it’s practice. Of course, practice can be influenced by culture, but so often culture is used as a justification, especially in cases where there is no other way to rationalise continuing with a particulr practice, eg male domination of women.
By the way, I still want someone to advise me on what the opposite of a coconut is, ie someone who is white on the outside and black on the inside. In the old days, it used to be kafferboetie, but that’s using a no-no word, so we need another kind of fruit or vegetable or something. Any ideas?
Brilliant! I think there are parallels here with what’s happening in the Afrikaans & Afrikaner communities… which I may respond to in detail some time. For now, back to work.
Dear Ndumiso,
My personal feeling is that there is such a person as the one you have just described. But to me the most striking feature of a coconut is to actively strife to identify white white people to the total rejection of your own.
A typical coconut will speak in an English accent;but when the debate really gets hot; the Zulu or Xhosa accent come out to the fore without a strain.
There are many Black people who speak English naturally with a White accent ,but they are not confused who they are.
A coconut, thinks he is a white person, irrespective of his level of education. He suffers from identity crisis. I think that sums it up.
Regarding what is a white version of a coconut, I guess it is what we would call k***erboetie? A white trying to act and dress black. Does coconut have the same derogatory connotation?
Do Blacks look down on coconuts due to black pride in their culture, or jealousy that some blacks have crossed over into the white world?
Consulting Engineer on March 19th, 2008 at 11:07 am
You are utterly mistaken, I’m afraid, Sir.
On the point about accents. First, you conflate speaking grammatically correct English, with speaking with an English - or white South African or Italian … - ACCENT. There is nothing wrong with speaking the Queen’s English - as a well-educated black person who have gone to one of the top universities in the world, I am proud of speaking well.
However, speaking in the Queen’s accent would be exceptionally jarring, and inauthentic. I am glad, sans your simplistic analysis, that I do not do so.
And that is the point. I would say there are different kind of coconuts (truth does not lend itself to simplicity or nuggets of ThoughtLeader pieces- sorry mate). There is the innocuous coconut (like, in fact, Dj Fresh) who speaks decent English, and not in a Fikile-accent. But there is a different breed of coconut, who genuinely mimicks, rather than developing a naturally-theirs, white accent. These latter types usually also find themselves excessively spewing out white slang, such as ‘bru’ and the like. ‘Bhuti’, by contrast, become excised from the vocab.
Why is this more complex than you suggest?
At least two reasons (am in a hurry, so will spare the full analysis for my book :)) (1) Black kids are now in a majority in most former whites-only school. Therefore the cultural-linguistic pull ought to be in the opposite direction. The white kids, however, do not find themselves internalising even the smallest hints of having mostly African classmates. This says a lot about our collective subconscious acceptance of white mannerisms and social indicators as the de facto objective standard of upward mobility. The day white kids start showing the multicultural education process to result in assimilation in both directions, I’d feel better about the process and write it off as simplistically as you do.
(2) Second, you give away your simplicity by conflating ‘good education’ with sounding like ‘an Oxford English Professor’. As a result, you miss the fact that identity has a multitude of slippery shades, including, yes, mannerisms and accent, which hence cannot be airbrushed away as mere products of one’s schooling. (You also lend credence, incidentally, to a trend in the corporate world to dismiss black graduates who do not sound like you and me, as less educated - careful, albeit unintended.)
Schools are complex social enivironments and deserving of deeper critique.
Apartheid’s thrust was to separate us, so surely getting together is good and the better news is that everyone can still keep their ‘culture’, whatever they deem it to be, whilst being part of SA.
Good article, can judge that by the % of thoughtful intellegent replies furthering the debate vs the inane racist ones.
Good thought provoking read brother. I’m interested to know what you think about the following statement, ‘All cultures are equal’. I raise this because most of us suffer from a superiority complex when it comes to our own culture. Is this why we find other cultural practices threatening? Surely as cultures evolve we should be picking out the meat (the good aspects of our dynamic culture) and spitting out the bone (the negative aspects of our culture)?
I’m also interested to know what you think about Eurocentrism and it’s effect on economies. Is this why there tends to be a gravitation towards Eurocentrism in developing countries- because imbedded in it are values such as: a high-work ethic, private land-ownership, a non-fatalistic worldview, thriftiness etc. (these are the positive aspects of course, obviously there are negative aspects too- see above) but these are the aspects that build economies- just ask Japan. Thoughts?
Just on the flip side, to be a bit of a devils advocate. he he.
I have spent a great deal of time with black people since I was a teenager. I have quite a few black friends and get involved in small rural uplifment projects that seek to get the groups to be self sufficient.
I find myself speaking english the same way I always have BUT I have taken on many of their endearments and terms of phrase!
I suppose our common language is English and that makes sense then, but I don’t feel I am alone in this.
Even at predominantly Afrikaaner Braais I find people saying Eish and Haibo these days - almost unconsciously!
Am I safe in saying that many Black languages are better used for expressing - emotion, excitement, distate, and anger than English? It is enjoyable and rolls off the toungue in an agreeable manner!
My guess is that your graph will never reach 100% but that you will see a bit of a peak and a plateau somewhere near 90% with westerners forcing the retention of the many many pleasant Afrocentric activities, terms of phrase and ‘feel goods’.
South Africans be they whatever colour would just not allow it. (same way we would never give up on the Braais and Biltong with our Beer if THAT became highly unpopular in Europe/UK - we’d simply tell them to get lost in our local vernacular)
like fireflies on a fluorescent condom in the dark…
The tears of laughter run down my lily white cheeks. Thanks for a little bit of light hearted sanity in the madness of our country, you have proved me wrong in my perceptions of you darkies,(excluding my coconut friends of course).
Your points about culture are so valid. Let us praise that which is good, in “your” and “my” culture… and roundly condemn that which is bad, not because it is black or white, but because it is right or wrong.
Would our current non-coconut African-centric brothers and sisters call Nelson Mandela a coconut?
I call him the greatest leader our country has ever had, because his values are great and his integrity unquestionable. Lets have more Mandelas. And more power to your elbow. Thanks!!!
It seems that our obsession with race continues to throw up new words and bring old words into disrepute. Previoulsy I thought a coconut was a tropical fruit now I realize it is a term of abuse. Similalry with monkey. I always thought that to call someone a monkey was to imply that they were impish and a little bit naughty. Now it has become a fashionable form of racial abuse for the only player of colour in the Aussie cricket team or driver of color in the whole of formula one oir for the entire stadium of Pakistan supporting South Africans at the cricket
I don’t think I’m a coconut but when I go back to my roots in the Transkei I am often accused me of not knowing enough about my culture. “Ungu mlungu kodwa Khaya” (you are a white person Khaya) they say. I’m convinced that my white friends would strongly refute that statement.
!My Chief - In fact - further on - talking about Fikile Mbalula!
I can never familiarize myself with the way most politicians’ speak (chiefly the members of the ruling party) - i.t.o accent and choice of words/terms. I am in no way judging or belittling any of them - in fact our own intellectual renaissance man is part of this coterie. So this has nothing to do with intellect - it is just that This ‘matta’ continues to baffle me. Perhaps it’s a mandate.
Brilliant stuff, Ndumiso. I particularly enjoyed your graph. Wow. Shows the man of science in you… Been scratching my head and I can’t think of a “coconut” equivalent for whities. Darn. There must be one.
Also, although there is nothing really degrading with the term (to most people a coconut is a very delectable fruit and mixes in the best cocktails), one must be aware that the common way to access the white inside is to slash the coconut open with a machete.
I’d demand a refund if I sent my kids to Michaelhouse and they came out sounding like Fikile Mbalula.The whole cocconut thing is very subjective and really depends on what you’re doing at that moment and who’s watching or listening. The reverse/opposite/extreme end of a cocconut is: Isixhosana, unolali, imoegoe, iqaba, basically a country bumpkin. I fit in both these categories depending on who’s doing the labelling.
does the fact that the use of the word is relative, mean that it can’t be correctly located? differently put, are you saying because to Bill Gates, Patrice Motsepe is poor…to Patrice Motsepe, Tony Yengeni is poor…to Tony Yengeni, i’m poor…to me, those unemployed and dependent on social grants are poor, to them…etc - Therefore, there’s no poor person?
I’d like to differ with you…there are coconuts. Yes, the word is relative and so are the many definitions people use to refer to others, but that cannot necessarily mean that there’s no coconut.
If it werent for skin tone non South African’s couldnt tell a ‘kboetie’ and a ‘coconut’ apart.
That has to be progress.
With progress comes the new differentiations that we as humans thrive upon.
What perturbs us as South Africans is that we cant rely on the old skin colour to tell the difference any more.
I think the term coconut is an ATTEMPT to denegrade,ashame and ultimately to incapacitate you.If you are perceived to be less Black than you should be, then you are labelled a coconut. This ATTEMPT is typical of bigots the world over, today you are a coconut (too White), tomorrow you are too Black, the day after you are too fat, then you are too thin…..it just never ends. So long as you are within the confines of the law, don’t apologize and dont’ stop being what you are or what you want to be.Be a coconut, be fat, be Black, be this, be that….just don’t be incapacitated. Xolani wakaGumede.
Maurice, perhaps the more PC opposite of the term coconut that you’re looking for would be a litchi? A thoughtful article, Mr Ngcobo. Thank you. It warms my little heart to read articles displaying some independent thinking. This seems to have become very rare.
Somebody once said “Culture is everything we do that monkey’s don’t” - the logical extension is the further we evolve the more “culture” we cover ourselves in, the further we move from our roots the further each generation moves away away from the values of their elders.
This whole “Coconut” thing reminds me of my youth (yup i’m no longer young) .My grandmothers (One English one Boer) lived with us. They continued to fight the Anglo Boer war with snide muttered remarks such as “rooinek” and “uncultured upstarts”. My Gran did’nt mix much with “the culturally inferior” (my English Gran’s words not mine) Afrikaaner let alone “those other savages”.
I’ve been married to an afrikaans girl for 30 years,my daughter’s dating one of “those savages” whilst my partner becomes well nigh invisible in the dark. The point being that these tags are normally short lived and only relevant to the person making them, showing up their own fears, inadequacies and prejudices
I wasn’t convinced. But then I saw the graph. Now all we need is a word for white women from Sandton who dress in animal skins and talk about the suffering of the poor over R1000 bottles of wine.
Be proud to be a coconut. I dont see that this is a racial or cultural issue, I see that you are educated and have an enquiring and reasoning mind. I suspect that derisive remarks about coconuts come from people in darker places tainted by issues of jealousy and poor self-esteem.
Brilliant blog Ndumiso! It’s time to stop pointing the finger and abusing people just because of who they are.
I’m a white English (as in from the UK) guy married to a black Ugandan lady living permanently in South Africa. So as you can see, we’re all over the place!
I’ve always found the ‘coconut’ accusation to be pretty pointless. My wife is a classic ‘coconut’, raised in an elite Ugandan school by British missionaries. Unsurprisingly, she speaks with an English accent. In short, she’s a middle class African, such as you will find throughout the continent. So what - that’s just who she is!
In South Africa, I’ve learnt to expect that whenever I hear the word ‘culture’, to listen carefully for the racist, self-interest, or ‘you have to live this way’ angle.
Culture is overwhelmingly about social class, and very little about race. When I lived in London, I knew people who’s ‘culture’ was going to a football match on Saturday, getting pissed on 10 pints of beer, and starting a fight. I’m sure you can still find UK commentators who will refer to this as ‘working class culture’. That wasn’t my culture at all (like you, I tend to run away from danger).
I have far more in common with my black wife than with a white, working class, Londoner. That’s not saying anything profound really, just that my wife and I are both middle class, by background and education.
I think the sting of the ‘coconut’ jibe is that many people who throw the accusation feel looked down upon and insulted by black people who have ‘made it’ into the middle class. In a country like South Africa, where opportunities for good eduction and ‘upward mobility’ (sorry I can’t think of a better word than this horrible marketese) have only recently become available, this is understandable.
And it does make it incumbent on those who went to ‘former model C’s’ or who had the opportunity for self advancement (again, horrible marketing jargon, sorry) to not be snobbish and to get involved in the development of our country rather than just personal self-enrichment.
But it would also help if more South Africans get to break out of ‘group thinking’. As in “we are like this because we are ‘Black/White/Asian/Coloured/Small Blue Furry People from Mars’”. I know that is the history, and that apartheid screwed everybody up, but sometimes people are just people!
Of Coconuts and other fruits
‘Coconuts’ are the only hope for a stable , just and sane South Africa , they should be a protected species .They are only labeled as such by people who are insecure about their culture in the face of foreign logic and its concomitant technology in a fast paced everchanging world .These people are jealous that these Coconuties have the courage and tenacity to mix their ancestry with western logic and make it work for them and everyone around them . They (coconut callers) would rather have everything grind to a halt so that it can decay to a point where it is easier to understand and manipulated to serve their own simple needs . As for turning your back on a culture if thats what has to happen to advance in a western orientated democracy fueled by Capitalism so be it …. otherwise stay in the kraal , cook with fires and use herbs to cure AIDS.
Ndumiso your word is a great wit , a pleasure to read and laced with some succient implications. .Bananas and shoes heyy?? Whose your girlfrend boet?And WHAAAT would your grandad say?
Neo-Nazis and colonialists dont give a damn about yo coconutiness. If u black bru you just black. Get it, why try to to buy whites onto yo side when they dont give a damn about u
I agree - cultures/values change. When I recall my wee little grandmother who landed in SA from Scotland and her outlook on life, the way she related to us as grandchildren, etc. And compare this, a generation later, with my mother and the way she relates to our children, her outlook on life etc. there is a world of difference. Granted globalisation has exposed us to a lot more. But that might be the crux. Some folk are intimidated by change; they feel more secure in a culturally reinforcing ‘milieu’. I think white English speaking folk are generally less averse to change – in the most general sense. We have less cultural referents to hold onto, have always been accused of having one foot somewhere else, and don’t really have a single, overarching heritage. But for Afrikaners and Black Africans (for instance), globalisation is often regarded as a threat. This is all they have to hold onto, by letting go and allowing the global tide to take them out, they loose this handle, they have to re-calibrate their value sets. I suspect it’s a bit like emigration, you have to re-earn your stripes, you recognise that you are no longer operating in the advantage frame.
But different people manage it in different ways; thinking here of the large West African/Caribbean communities in London.
Guess I’m talking about globalisation rather than getting close to whities. Either way, shocking generalisations…
The other contentious related topic is language. The castigation is that ‘coconuts’ speak English more than their own language, meaning that they are somehow ashamed of their language. It is interesting that English as we know it today evolved from German, Celtic, Latin and Old Norse roots. There were and still are so many influences on the English language that up till now, the language is still evolving as different populations all over the world contribute their unique flavors to the language. Of course we should take pride in our roots and try to preserve as much of our heritage as we can. But the inescapable truth is that human beings thrive on community. We are social beings and the need to socialize in this global village will, in time, subsume our need to hold on to our “cultures”. Like the English language, we will be the richer for it.
Many years ago I attended (tourist) the famous Swazi dance of the reeds.
On the way I noted a warrior with a toothbrush stuck through his earlobe and an empty plastic bag (boxer tobbaco, I think) tied around his arm.
Does his use of western artifacts define him as a coconut?
What does Zuma’s use of the machine-gun metaphor, instead of a traditional stabbing spear, say about his cultural affiliation?
I also thought that trade unions were ever-so-Sidney&Beatrice-Webbingly British. Are all Cosatu members doomed?
Great article! I wonder if the reverse exists as well? What would that be called? A litchi? White on the outside and black on the inside? Does something like exist? I guess Ali G (although fictional) would be a good example, but do we have something like him in South Africa?
I’m not a frekn coconut! i’m an Oreo, dark on the outside…soft and white on the inside. hint hint
i studied at cape tech, currently known as CPUT, and my neighbour in Res was a Dale boy. i of course(smirk in place) am of private schooling as well. now one of our friends who also shared a unit with us constantly got annoyed when we were having our bourgeois conversations in our oreo-accents. he’d go off mumbling something about forgotten roots and such.
Funny part about this is we later found out that this was a Dale boy as well, just stuck to his roots(tough african type) and never got enticed by the twang and white friends.
Nonetheless, i’m proud of being me. my father paid a lot of cash for me to speak in this accent. my vocab is also an end-result of this education. i still get wasted on coarse african brew. i still dispatch four-legged creatures to the next world. i went to the mountain and came back.
Now tell me Ndum, do i still pay Lobola if i marry a fellow Oreo/coconut/Model-c/bourgeois???
Hey, it’s indeed a small world. I mean this name calling nonsense. We have coconuts too in ZIMBOS - only they call them SALADS or SALALAS!!! The logic or absurdity of it?: Salalas do not know whether they are the real thing or–just an accompaniment, even a hotch-potch!
Well said!
As 100% Baster said, there is a definite parallel between the Afrikaans and Afrikaner communities. A whole lot of us are struggling to identify with our so-called “culture”. We hate the music, cringe when someone speaks English like a white 80’s politician and we don’t even like beer (cringe)!
Our parentage include English and Afrikaans cultures (sometimes also other European values), all diluted by (mostly) coastal city life.
It just seems that the “other” culture is the more visible one. Pushing to be seen, and to be identified through that. They’re proud of that. Good. Just don’t expect me to join in.
Frankly, these traditional Afrikaners scare me.
Thanks for the piece. The best way to snap a conversation when you are accused of being a coconut is to say: I am a coconut and I am proud of it. Only if there is a lot of positives to that and you want to prove to be as hard as a coconut in your argument. But don’t say it if it means dying for it. Try speaking your Zulu from Nkandla or Sepedi from Sekhukhune and see if you will be a skhokho in Soweto…. As they say: when in Rome do as Romans do, and save yourself a lot of frustrations. This kind of defensiveness make me wish if all South Africans were like Joe Mafela - learn all languages and cultures like you were born in them. And maybe…MAYBE we will get rid of racism, tribalism, or name-calling for good!
Well done sir. Some of these articles are a bit too serious or are taken a bit too seriously by their readers. It makes a pleasant change to have a laugh. I think I will buy your book after all.
There is no denying that our background, culture determine our judgement of what we see as right or wrong(value, what we see as normal or abnormal(norms). Values and norms form the basis of core-existance of human being. They determine our cultural practices but most importantly our frame of reference in terms of interpreting our experiences. This is why you will find that norms and values are more universal than cultural and traditional practices. Thus it is very important not to confuse values and norms with cultural practices as the latter is a way of practising norms and values. An example, all peoples value respect of the elders but how that is practiced cultural could differ. For instance in my culture in order to show respect to my elders I must not refer to them by name. In other cultures not referring to an elderly person by name when you know who they are could be seen as direspect. The issue of how we express our values and norms through our cultural practices is therefore not so important in that sense, however, it is the only expression that people around you can see and behaving otherwise could lead to your alienation and partly why people are wrongly referred to as coconuts.
Having said that values and norms are to a larger extent universal, it is important to note that as people from different backgrounds and experiences we also differ in terms of our norms and values. As said before this results most importantly in differing frames of reference. An example I use is that, I have always struggled to see the importance or value of the symbolism around a birth day and related practices. Where I grew up there was no particular value attached to the such that it had to be remembered and celebrated every year
Let us get back to values. Jesus Christ was not white, by far. He was in the Middle-East and therefore a Jewish saviour of millions. He died because His beliefs and values did not reflect those around him. Maybe He was the first coconut? Who knows? Balance is the art of giving up. The globe is turning more and more to western ways, which might not be a good thing, but it is true still. I believe you can still keep your heritage strong, but you do not have to be a stranger to other ways. Miyamoto Musashi said:”Become acquainted with every art, know the ways of all professions”. Let us become acquainted with every culture and know the ways of every people.
Your argument is meaningless (in the real world at least). Not because your logic is flawed, or your conclusion contradictory, but because your premises are incorrect. The very basis of your argument is on shaky ground. You only get away with it because when taken in isolation, it satisfies itself.
Premise 3
Coconuts, in their sickening coconuttiness, will often express views that seem at loggerheads with African value.
You then go on to say people who depart from African norms, values, etc. First, Expressing a view and departing from a norm (behaviourally) are different. Second, it’s not clear whether you are disputing the existence of cultural differences or that there are blacks who depart from black culture in exchange for white culture. But then again, culture is a mystery to you. Strangely though, you show a Westernization graph. Perhaps you should not be arguing this point; you obviously don’t understand the subject matter.
Premise 2
Coconuts seem to be very comfortable in white people’s company and may have many white friends.
You are being utterly ridiculous here. No body thinks someone who is comfortable with white people is a coconut. By this definition (of yours if I might add) most working blacks are coconuts.
Premise 1
Coconuts speak English most of the time and they do so with an accent that is “white”.
You are correct; holding a person’s accent against them is stupid. But coconut has nothing to do with accent, though those who fit the description do.
Coconut was conjured by youngsters who do not necessarily understand the importance of culture or cultural identity. The word culture (and even manners in the strict sense) does not feature in the definition of coconut.
People who were called coconuts in my schooling days were blacks who attended white schools and thought themselves better than blacks who attended black schools. They laughed at those that spoke like Fikile Mbalula, and asked “Why does he speak like that?” in an “English” accent. They pretended not to be able to speak isiXhosa properly. They in fact called isiXhosa Khoza! People who had an inferiority complex really, who were led to believe that Whites are better that Blacks and so emulated whites and despised being associated with blacks, at least those unlike them. But it’s understandable, they were kids, they did not know any better.
I’ll give you an example, my cousin lived in a white neighborhood, attended a white school and his best friend was white. He spent every weekend in the township. He spoke isiXhosa properly and when he spoke English, which we understood (more or less), we did not hear half of what he said, all we heard was Rah-Rah-Rah. But no one called him a coconut, not our friends or others. There were however others who were called coconuts, who lived in the townships and attended white schools. The difference was their behaviour towards blacks who lived “ironically” in townships and attended township schools.
So you have white friends, BIG DEAL. They are your friends, no one’s gonna call you a coconut for that.
I hope by now you do get that I believe DJ Fresh is a role model, Redi Direko I’m not familiar with, but if it’s just her accent in question, then she’s probably not a coconut.
JZ being called a coconut by his goat-herding buddies? Look your article is well written but you’ve really missed the point. In fact your views concern me here.
As always your article is well written, keep up the good work.
I’m not sure if Merrill has primary school aged children but I can assure all of you that white children do indeed pick up a lot of African words and phrases that they toss out as ‘obvious’ to the rest of us.
I think the mistake might be here in comparing black children (the convenient tags arrive) who went to majority white Model C or private schools and white children who are still at majority white Model C or private schools.
Try chatting to some kids from white homes who go to school in majority non-white schools. It’s there, you’re just not seeing them.
Also for the record, not all white (ack, here we go again) people are neonazis. But I think I’m probably either preaching to the converted there or pissing in the wind or marking myself out as a flaming liberal. Use it, don’t use it.
Why do darkies think the worst thing we can call each other is a coconut? We have serious problems in this country, and outing “coconuts” is NOT one of them. The melanin deficient ones don’t waste their time trying to figure out who is white enough, and if there’s one thing we can take from them it is that.
Amazing how people are so offended by the truth.
Accents do not an African make, and culture cannot be measured by the decibel of a twang.
As Khaya said, its weird to be considered “white”, when white people will NEVER, EVER, mistake you for one of their own - BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT!
Here’s a thought, how do you feel when a non-native speaker butchers your mother tongue? Does it not sound so much better when they have the right intonation?
Ndum, you big headed coconut freak, keep ‘em coming!
Hey, ya’ll were able to access this bit of information are discussing the whole mutter in a language foreign to most right? Right??? Then I guess I’m right in saying that nizi coconut. The world is ruthless and a lot of us have to board the international way of doing things in order to survive so if anyone should be labelled a coconut it’s no one.
The word is degrading and I will not be degraded for my efforts. I’m here to survive for as long as I can and if that means I become an internationally acclaimed survivor… so be it.
Like u-Busi Mhlongo said - I talk a silly language.
I must add that white people are in trouble ’cause your great grandson is going to be more white than what they are… and what is he going to be labelled then? Snow? I dont think so. Ngcobo is the way to go. He will remain u-Ngcobo and he will smack the living day lights out of someone who’ll label him anything other than Ngcobo.
Couldn’t the reverse of a coconut be those white candy covered chocolate eggs that are in all the shops at the moment?
Among my friends a lot of the black guys could be accused of a degree of coconutiness and the white guys of the opposite, but somewhere along the way it all levels out everyone gets along.
The closest to a nut I come for whites is a peanut: sort of light-ish on the outside and brown-ish on the inside until the brown comes off and it becomes yellow-ish again. Hey, these whites are complicated. You never know what they are, do you?
I don’t think anyone should pretend that there’s no such thing as “coconuts”. Coconuts are black people who internalise the most stereotypical behaviour associated with whites. Yes, they speak English with a British/America accent, even when they have never been friends with any Americans!!! Unconciously or conciously they believe that anything British/American (Eurocentric) is good for you. They frown on anyone who speaks English with an African accent believing that such people are stupid. Ironically, a coconut’s own father usually speak English with an African accent and have been propelled by other blacks to wherever they are. Be it in a senior position in government or through BEE or winning govt tenders. A coconut is a fake obnoxious person, really, in that s/he believes s/he is something s/he is not. S/he is not as better as s/he thinks he is to other black people. If you remove the mask of his/her accent you only find an average individual. I’ve attended classes with many coconuts and I’ve exposed their mindset. Coconuts are suffering from what I call identity crisis in that they try so much to have white friends even when everybody can see that they literally beg for that friendship. In a friendship with a white person you usually find that the white person is the dominant party. To a coconut the fact that s/he has white friends or girl/boyfriends - only - is a big deal.
I’m not a coconut and I’m very proud of it… and I’ll continue to criticise those fakes who pretend to be something they’re not.
I must say that your piece was well articulated.But, my definition of coconut is none of the above. I personally don’t give a damn about model c accent or someone’s private relations with the pale natives as Max du Preez calls white people. My coconut number one is Xolela Mangcu, for his political viewpoint that tries hard to be popular to white verkrampte people. If I may mention this, my editor asked me to write a column about “What is a coconut?”, of which I chose not to because the subject is too complex for my township head. But why I am audacious to call Mangcu a coconut? That’s simple. He directly or indirectly benefited from the government empowerment policies such as BEE or AA through Tokyo Sexhwale’s benevolence. But now that he is affluent and in the same fanancial status with many whites, he is aping them. I admired Mangcu for his intelligence, he is one of us who defied the apartheid odds. But I now think the money he has made for himself made him think only for himself not the masses he left in poverty with qualifications and many without. His black consciousness claims conflict with his bourgeois ways, because he is oblivion that his ilk is a tiny fraction. I am working for a media company, but with my honours degree I am not sure how many internships I have to go through before I can be considered a fully-fledged journalist. All my white 2006 classmates from Matieland are permanent staff members at their white owned companies. That’s my slice of life. I would appreciate interaction on my views.
Its unfair to judge people on the way they speak a language. Hell at least they have made the effort to learn more than one! And we adapt the way we speak to fit in. My brother moved to the States to discover that he did not speak English… A toilet is a restroom, the bill is a check and a hotdog comes with just the wors - no roll unless you ask for a bun. And I lived in the UK for five years and had to learn to speak English-English. But back home now I find I’m adapting again and peppering my lingo with sharp-sharp and Mohlo. My one year old son only opens his mouth for ‘Kameesa’ and comes when I yell ‘Yisa!’ So what does that make us then? Vanilla icecream with chocolate swirl?
Great article - and some great comments. However, English is not the language of the English, but an international language, which is an official language in over 40 countries, as French is in 27, and Spanish in 20. More Chinese are learning English than there are people in the USA - to use an international language for business.
Sol Plaatjies wrote that there was no such thing as an African culture - the idea was an insult from racist whites. There were as many differences between African cultures as between European cultures. He pointed out that in one tribe cousins were allowed to marry; in another- cousins that had sex were put to death for breaching society rules. (As much difference as between the French and the Brits.)
Robert
Interesting point about London cultures. The decendents of emigrants from Europe still have cultural identities generations later - Irish Americans, Italian Americans etc.
Consulting Engineer
I don’t know how old you are but when I was at UCT we all dressed the same, white and black, and often male and female - bell-bottom jeans and sheepskin coats!
Excellent piece, Ndumiso - maybe a little over-ripe with the one-liners, but right on the mark where it matters. The idea of a ‘coconut’ - in fact, I’d argue even the ideas of ‘African values’, and of ‘a culture’ as a neatly bounded and fixed entity - come(s) right out of a seriously outdated colonial playbook.
Pan-Africanism was important in its time - the 60s and 70s, right up until the 90s here in SA - because in combatting colonialism, an antidote of equal potency had to be brewed. From Biko’s BC to Nkrumah, Lemumba, et al, it was about politics, specifically the politics of inequality, before it was about ‘culture’. And now that we’re so much nearer to something like equality, or the potential for it, we’re being held back by these outdated ideas of ‘africanness’ or ‘eurocentricity’, as if they can only ever be mapped against ‘blackness’ and ‘whiteness’. The idea that “race and culture are synonymous and shouldn’t be flexible” is IDENTICAL to the theoretical background that the early architects of apartheid, Verwoerd and van Onselen, depended on to legitimate their political evil. For anyone who has paid any attention at all to the diversity of the rest of Africa, it’s obvious that the idea of ‘African values’ is pretty meaningless. Just like people everywhere, the beliefs and ways of life of people on this fine continent come in all different flavours.
So those who peddle the idea that there’s some kind of ‘essential African-ness’ are just repackaging old colonial caricature. The ‘real’ Africa is what we see today, who we are today; ‘real African-ness’ is defined by the present-day actions and thoughts of anyone who calls themselves African. We’re still in the process of figuring out who and what we are; it’s not something cast in concrete in some mythical ‘traditional’ past.
This process of discovery can be confusing, and disorienting, and so some people cling hopelessly to old-school ideas of purism, ‘traditionalism’, like European fascists in the 1930s - but it’s also beautiful, like witnessing the birth of something truly and new our own.
The young people of South Africa, of Africa, need to claim their right to make their own identities, not have the make-believe ideals of others foisted upon them - and to say to the old-school table-thumpers: “deal with it”.
Argh, didn’t mean van Onselen! Sorry - make that ‘Eiselen’. slip of the fingers - they just sound similar, nothing else. Apologies to Charles Van Onselen, if he ever reads this!
[NB! didn’t mean ‘van Onselen’ - had a braindead moment. Meant ‘Eiselen’ - obviously, the only similarity is that they sound alike. Apologies to van Onselen, should he ever read this!]
In the states they have the same issue.
If you don’t speak in a ghetto accent, or don’t use words like “aint, trippin, etc”. Then your labelled as an OREO.
I’ve been accused of being ashamed of my zulu language. It’s not that we don’t want to speak our native languages. It’s because we’ve become so use to speaking in english that we don’t think about having to switch to zulu or sotho, it just happens naturally, I’ve realised that it’s much easier to say things in english than in zulu.
When we were growing up we spent most of our time in school, and in school you generally speak english most of the time, and so yeah it becomes easier to just speak in english.
And by the way, when someone speaks to me in zulu, I will respond in zulu.
I pesonally do not like being called a coconut,
I still remember visiting my cousin in the townships (Ntuzuma) and whenever we conversed in english, you would here the boys that hanged around the neighbourhood calling you names or teasing you. All just because we spoke in english.
I wonder what Johnny Clegg went through when he was growing up, after all he has been labelled “The White Zulu”. I wonder why they don’t give Afrocentric whites, fruit terms like maybe LITCHIES.
Great article — liked the response of your readers that find bits that infuriate and bits they love. For me the very best is the bit about my own ancestors - the Dutch arriving in their cruiseliner and the English with their infrequent baths and hot potatoes.
i’m black, i live in cape town, and i make sure that my clothes match before i even walk out of my door [don’t laugh. from looking around most south african cities i’ve been in, the inability to wear clothes that match affects south africans of every colour and socioecononmic level]. clearly, i’m either a coconut or a makwerekwere. guilty as charged, i suppose. i’m a us-born, west african- and south american-raised, spanish- french- bambara- and kikongo-speaking kaapie [for now, anyway].
collectively, south africans have issues. the issues that don’t make sense to most of us makwerekwere but that obsess you lot like nobody’s business.
[i’ve seen employment agencies that tell people — in three different languages — not to wear white socks and black shoes. this is in style statement 101. come *on*, people]
anyhow, i digress. maybe i’m not guilty as charged as a coconut. the reason? in the last two countries where i did my formal education [the us and the uk] a coconut [or, in the us, an oreo] was someone that did all the white things and also had every intention of marrying white too. and that, my friend, is something that is not on the cards. my parents are black, my grandparents are black. why would i settle down with someone who isn’t black?
to tie this into a serious occurrence that happened elsewhere in the country, why are you all so pressed for integration? trust me, it’s overrated. you really don’t want integration. there’s a difference between equal access and integration. really. you can have the same stuff as they do [i don’t know why you would want it, but that’s another question] without living with or like them.
but hey, who am i to say anything? i’m just a kwerekwere, right?
Awesome article Ndumiso! Makes me laugh how we’re faced with pressure to be more ‘white’ or more ‘black’………what is this whiteness or blackness that we’re meant to display in order to please less secure friends? Frankly, a lot of white people really annoy the crap out of me. Best plan is to hang out with people who share similar outlooks in life, and that will probably give you a fair spread of values.
It is quite interesting that the caucasian population on the continent is miniscule when compared to that of Blacks but Blacks seem to endear themselves to appearance, speech (among other things) of caucasians. I don’t see caucasian transplants doing the same in such record numbers. Some go overboard. Picture that woman in gauteng, skin black and creamy, bright eyes and juicy lips and a massive blonde dye-job stuck to her scalp. No my brother. That’s no coconut; that’s a straight-up freak.
Bollox. And rather pitiful that such trash actually gets published.
When you mean Eurocentric do you mean Sami reindeer Herders or Portuguese tuna Fishermen?
And when you say speaking English, do you mean Benjamin Obediah Zephaniah, the Black Rastafarian advisor to the British National curriculum or Trevor Macdonald the ramous Black British newsreader, mocked by Lenny Henry the Black Comedian?
Or are you just spouting a load of offensive racial stereotypes based apon the total ignorance of your subject manner that could get you arrested in England under the Race Relations act for incitement?
And which could only be printed in a country that is totally ignorant of the accepted standards of living in a multicultural society.
If you want to make jokes about Black people and being English, or Eurocentric I suggest you go and watch some Lenny Henry, he’s been doing it for decades.
Perhaps some people resist change while others don’t.
The afrikaner had to accept english much to his dislike so I guess he is a bit of a coconut as well. So too is the chinaman who eats a McDonald hamburger and sits on a toilet rather than squatting.
Are there not many black people who are anti-white rather than being pro black. Take Uncle Bob - he is so obsessed with being anti white, he has forgotten how to feed and cloth his people and so is no longer pro black.
Uncle Bob, while living in a ‘white house’ has a mind that is locked in a grass hut.
Being a ‘coconut’ is to be one who has broken out of the shackles of the past and who embraces the future by adopting that which is needed to go there.
If China carries on like it is, then we will all have to be ‘cocopines’ and have to learn Mandarin just to keep up.
I congratulate you on a very good article. I see from the comments that you already have fan(Hate) mail from people disagreeing with what you have to say. I think this is what living in a Democracy is all about, everyone has a right/freedom to say what they feel, and people should not forget that, especially from the media freedom(lack) that we came from prior to 1994. On what we can call us whities ? seeing everyone is using terms such as coconuts, dark chocolate, I would say we whities are milky bars.
The problem with summarised views is often that we take the most illogical of these views and focus on them for our arguments.
It is obvious that we have different reasons in referring to people as coconuts, but these reasons are not the same.
I have to apologise that I did not read your entire premise and it is possible that you were playing devil’s advocate. If that was the case, I apologise. I wish to argue with a couple of your points, however.
I have a friend who is Afrikaans. His surname is Viljoen. Now, my friend Barney is over 60 and heading for 70. Barney wants nothing to do with Afrikaans. He speaks English with an English accent (common in the Western Cape northern suburbs). Barney made a conscious effort to divorce himself from Afrikaans and mainly due to its association with apartheid.
I work with Wade. Wade is also Afrikaner from Boksburg. Wade speaks English as did his family. As to your argument, they spent a significant time in Rhodesia and so their surroundings were English, yet they have never denied their heritage and still associate with Afrikaans friends, family, except that they also follow soccer to the traditional Afrikaans sports.
I met a Queenstown farmer at the gym. This white man in his 40s or 50s spoke Xhosa with a Xhosa accent and at times, I felt overwhelmed by his knowledge of my language. He even spoke with me in Xhosa in front of other black guys whom he called “amakwerekwere” and revelled at the fact that he spoke a so called “black” language in front of black people while skinnering about them.
Yet, when he reverted to English, he sounded no different to other farmers in Queenstown or even the Eastern Cape.
While in junior secondary in the Transkei, a friend of mine visited his father in Vereeniging or Van der bijl park. When he returned 3 weeks later, the guy could only speak Zulu. Now, there is nothing wrong with speaking Zulu, but to then pretend like you cannot understand Xhosa was the height of hypocrisy.
My best friend was born in Poland in 1930. Jan spent significant time in a concentration camp (Archangel) in the soviet union under Stalin. Jan has since spent a lot of time in Rome (Vatican) studying to be a priest and has also spent a whole lot of time in KZN where he learned a smattering of Zulu. Yet, John has a significant Polish accent. His sister has even a stronger accent and she has spend the past 60 years of her life in Yorkshire.
Finally, I spent 6 years in the USA studying. Before then, I worked in the banking environment where I was the only black person and hence was forced to speak English all the time. Since my return in 1997, I have worked and lived in an environment where I speak English.
Yet, when I tell people that I lived in the USA, they expect me to speak in an American accent. Yes, for a while after my return I used American vocabulary e.g. lights for robots, flashlight for torch, etc. Yet, I made a conscious effort not to speak in an American accent. A couple of guys in the same program did end up adopting American accents. One of the guys could not complete a sentence without adding “fuck this” and fuck that. No surprise that after 4 years, he had not completed his degree.
Mawethu (now in the dept of transport) was very smart and never picked up the accent. Obviously, because Americans seem to be hard of hearing, I had to annunciate my words better to prevent repeating myself. Sticking to my accept made me tons of friends to such an extent that one of my friends paid for my MBA.
so, I am left with a conclusion that a coconut is someone showing little pride in who they are. Does not matter whether they are Eurocentric or not, if you are easily swayed into believing that being anything but yourself makes you a better person, then you are a coconut. We have name for people that are pretentious or who would stab you in the back if they could. They are never themselves, always pretending to be something they are not. Forget what accent, forget what nationality. It is simply someone so embarrassed about who they are, that they end up creating situations that make them seem “better” than they perceive themselves to be.
This is often common with people with no self confidence, hence they take offence on being called coconuts. My friend, Barney, has no qualms being called anything by those in his community. He made a conscious decisions and ensured that his kids grew up the way he wanted them raised and away from the mindset you now see in Reitz residence in FSU.
So, my point of responding is to show that merely being in an environment does not force you to speak like those around you. People appreciate uniqueness. We cannot all be the same zombies following in the footsteps of those around us, unless we lack confidence in who we are.
If you constantly hide who you are and pretend to be something you are not, then you are a coconut.
BTW, I speak and think in English. Speaking in Xhosa is a struggle for me as my vocabulary is limited by not being exposed to Xhosa speakers.
Can you imagine that some people spend more than 20 years in exile and often surrounded by Russians, Chinese, Americans, Brits but when they returned to South Africa, they had not adopted those accents.
Then, there are people who spend eternity finding fault with the things close to who they are, and finding reasons to worship the things they perceive to be superior.
Now, I do not know DJ Fresh, but I read an article about him in an airline magazine. I was keen to read it because I did not know anything about the guy and what I now know is someone who believes that changing his accent is cool. That then suggest to me that he does not have confidence in who he is.
Having read many of your articles, I certainly would not call you a coconut. I see you as someone who knows who he is. You may speak English all the time, but that is not being a coconut is all about. It is about how you perceive yourself.
So, I would rather you commission a study and find out why people use terms like coconut, instead of taking a couple of views from the internet.
In the late 80s, Moroka Swallows were force to be reckoned with. They really formed the big 4 i.e. Chiefs, Pirates, Sundowns and Swallows. Swallows had some good players and there were two young guys whose names escape me. Swallows won an encounter against Chiefs and one of these youngsters was interviewed. The first mistake is that the black commentator interviewed them in English. I believe they should have been interviewed in a language they are comfortable with. However, that did not happen. This guy blurted out some rotten English presented in a beautiful English accent. If you were listening to the interview, you could see the interviewer straining not to laugh. It was so pathetic, I was embarrassed for this youngster. Suffice to say, have not seen him ever since. His focus was all wrong. He wanted to sound like Prince Charles, yet his ability to speak the language was no better than a 5th grader. Now, there is nothing wrong with not being able to speak English. The guy was a brilliant soccer player and that was his job. It did not require the ability to speak English like Charles Windsor. Yet, he put himself in that embarrassing situation because he was trying to be something he is not. He could have asked the interviewer to interview him in SeSotho or whatever language he was comfortable in. This would have most likely required translation and would have lead to his views being aired undiluted especially to the audience whose skills appealed to. Instead, he made a mockery of himself by pretending to be something he is not. If he made mistakes while speaking in his given accent, we would have understood that English is not his first language, but what was laughable was the running to an English accent when you cannot bloody speak the language.
Is that guy a coconut? In the extent that he did not have confidence in who he was, YES.
Rory Sabattini? Is he a coconut? Here is a South Africa contributing to american causes? He donates his money to the American war effort? Is he a variety of a white coconut or a cultural coconut?
Merril
You make a great point, Merril.
It always amazes me that white kids do not change who they are in the presence of majority black influences, yet we seem to believe that one’s level of education is determined by how closer they are to the English accent.
I believe this is lack of pride in oneself.
Van Zyl Slabbert still speaks in a very heavy Afrikaans accent. I presume if he was black, we would not take him that seriously because he does not speak with a borrowed and whiney accent?
To disgress slightly: There is another famous one:
” us and them ” . Ndumiso, maybe I can inspire you to write about that, as it properly confuses the whole issue. Where I came from many years ago, there was a us&them even though it was never articulated as such, yes well guessed: everybody was pale… however in our country this is different: who is who in the zoo… somebody write some thesis about this please ! Enkosi.
To know who you are is not to stumble backwards in the abyss of time to unsophisticated ignorance. To know yourself as an African is not to conjure up negative pre-white rule images of reeling uncontrollably back in the thick of deep dark and dangerous Africa, as though in some nightmare. To know yourself is futuristic. To know yourself at a time when most people don’t know whether they are coming or going is actually quite revolutionary. It is genius fortune! - Kush Khoza
1. There is nothing wrong with having white friends and speaking in English. I do that and no one has ever called me a coconut
2. As you say, culture is relative and so whatever culture you go with does not make you a coconut. what makes you a coconut is adopting another culture because you believe yours is inferior and by adopting another culture you will somehow be better than people you grew up with.
3. Speaking a couple of African words is not equivalent to speaking in an English (clearly adopted and staged managed) accent. If speaking an English accept is as a result of being surrounded by a dominant culture, then we can assume that all those who lived in foreign countries for a better part of 12 years of their lives will speak like those they were surrounded by. Point is, they do not. In fact, while many black kids do adopt an English accent, white kids who are a minority never do. Why is that?
Is it because they believe that there is nothing wrong with who they are? change is brought about by a need to improve. There is one thing to speak another accent and another in improving your vocabulary and the way you pronounce words to improve being understood. Coconut change because they perceive that what they are is not good enough and that sounding English is good. speaking English is not coconut material.
Be whatever you want, but if you become whatever you want because you associate inferiority in who you are, then you are a coconut.
If it not about who you associate with, the amount of english you can speak or even the establishments you eat it.
It is about confidence in who you are. coconuts lack it
The Afrikan elite is hardly Afrikan in the most fundamental of ways. Culturally, they are mostly Arab or European. Their foreign oppressors are the major sources of their values, their religion, their fashion, their idols, their models, their ideas and ideals. They invent nothing, for those who spend their lives imitating their oppressors cannot create anything. They are mostly not in favour of any fundamental change in the system that delivers some power and privilege to them and death and destruction to the great majority of Afrikans. They are contented to be the managers of neo colonial enterprises, including state structures, set up by others in the interests of others but in the lands and lives of the Afrikan people. This condition has been more or less so from since the time of Arab invasion and the time of European invasion of Afrika and the Afrikan mind. - Kush Khoza
Coconut Kids Have Lost Touch With Their Roots : Andile Mngxitama, 02-Oct-2007 11:46
ONE of the peculiar but not surprising developments of post-apartheid South Africa has been the rapid emergence of influential young people who are neither black nor white. They are a minority but certainly are a cultural majority. They are loud and proud. Their voices dominate youth radio. Their faces adorn our TVs and they are over-represented and promoted in glossy magazines.
A discussion about this new generation of coconuts is made urgent by the recent love showered on Steve Biko by those who not so long ago called him an enemy agent and have worked tirelessly to eradicate his Black Consciousness Movement.
These cocos can partly be accounted for by a strange alliance between business and the post-apartheid political scene and their need for an indifferent, unthinking generation to perpetuate our celebrated “rainbowism” based on reconciliation without justice.
Hence the cocos make perfect business and political sense. The idea of creating an assimilated elite to maintain things as they are is not a new one. The colonialists for instance undertook to create a “native elite” – or what Frantz Fanon called the “mimic man”, who is “black outside and white inside” – to perpetuate colonialism even after formal independence.
Our cocos, stripped of their frivolous ways, are nothing but agents of whiteness. What’s ironic is that black parents pay good money to turn their children into cocos.
Though this is understandable in a world where you need to be a coconut to succeed.
Still, this is a bad investment that can only produce short-term gains and long-term losses because these children will in the end denounce their own parents as too black and backward.
The cocos may have white souls, but they compensate by adorning themselves with material things that superficially affirm their blackness. The Biko T-shirt, beads and seshweshwe tops. These things have become signifiers of blackness and Africanness.
In another time we could have merely dismissed the cocos as an irritating, irrelevant minority, but the truth is that they are poised to occupy the most influential positions in society and therein lies the rub because their values are indifferent to black suffering.
Most are BEE children but poor parents don’t want to be left out so their children are encouraged to spit English through the nose and deliberately neglect their own languages. After all, where will Setswana get you?
An evening with some cocos recently revealed that, among other things, they don’t want to be burdened by history.
I was told: “We don’t care what Jan van Riebeeck did. We were not there.”
They declared that they were born free, as if freedom had been attained at no cost. Their refusal to deal with history leads to disdain for, and denigration of, the black condition.
Without an appreciation of how history defines the present, one invariably ends up blaming the poor for their predicament.
The biggest danger is that coconuts hold the same conservative, if not racist, views as white South Africans. This potentially makes cocos candidates for future conservative politics, assisted by the corrupt and uncaring former liberation movement politicians currently in power.
Soon they will ask: What difference does it make whether it’s the DA or the ANC? What this produces is the paradox where today’s BEE beneficiaries become advocates of colour-blind policies in the future and thereby close the door to the majority who will surely be bypassed by the BEE train.
But we cannot afford to take the moral high ground against the cocos because, if truth be told, they thrive because they are what we all want to be. Biko must be distressed by this turn of events, but not surprised. This article was first published on the City Press, 30th September 2007
Bare in mind these words from Fred Khumalo, then read all the responses to NN’s blogs.
“Words are lethal. Words are dangerous. They betray us to the world in which we move. Once you open your mouth to utter a word , you’ve bared your soul to the world. You’ve exposed your essence, your spirit, to the world in which you move. Words are ideas…..They are molecules of one’s soul” - Seven Steps To Heaven.
These two guys are genii. Rub them the right way and they will produce more than a few wishes.
You are seriously gifted, please write another book. I think we can be liberated on paper but if we are not liberated mentally we will still go around using words such as coconut.Most South Africans still stick together because of the color of their skin, even though they might have little in common. If we can stop seeing our selves as black men or white men and just see our selves as men, freedom of association will truly take place. currently you define yourself as black before you define self as a man. You will always hear I am Black and I am proud why not I am a man and I am proud. We like keeping things/people in labeled containers, this make us think we are in control, this is apartheid at its best.
Kgomotso, I especially enjoyed the way you put Jon Qwelane in his place - “Why do darkies think the worst thing we can call each other is a coconut? We have serious problems in this country, and outing “coconuts” is NOT one of them.
I too liked your well-written article. I was not familiar with the term coconut, here in North America, people talk about Oreo cookies. Perhaps not well known in South Africa, but I am sure you get the picture (if not, just google it) .
No, I am not a coconut or an Oreo cookie, but like others, would like to know what the white version is known as, because I don’t like the term k-boetie, and “liberal” doesn’t cut it.
@ 100% Baster: I don’t know your work or where you’re coming from, but I like your handle and the parallels that you are drawing. Therefore I look forward to what you have to say, as that issue is bugging me at the moment.
Bhuti you are a lost soul, have you ever heard a white kid talking in an african accent? Or when times get hard starting to think about his ancestors?
Coconuts most often adopt a foreign culture thinking that they their own is inferior.
Liberate your mind fana!
All that concerns me about anybody is their ability to manifest universal human values. Factors emmanating from their particular background are only added spice to the interesting mix which they are.
You used you be all fire and brimstone, like a Obama’s dominee on steroids, slaughtering sacred cows; left, right and BC - without fear or favour. Your TL crusade against those whited sepulchers, kow towing on the alter of political correctness, was outrageaously iconoclastic and very funny. Now we debate the unbearable lightness of being a coconut and Eurocentric norms and values, like a bunch EU banana se*xers. I’m too comfortable agreeing with you all the time.
A friend of mine worked as a senior prosecutor in the Cape High Court. As a result she had many meetings with the then big NPA chiefs like Buklelani Ngcuka. BN started his briefings in perfect Lawyer coconut English, but sometime an order came through from on high, for the dumbing down of discourse. Within weeks BL acquired a heavy Xhosa SABC newsreporter accent, but for him, the cat was out the bag. He was outed as counter revolutionary and purged from the NPA. Coconuts in government with its tall poppy and anti-intellectual paradigm are playing high risk games, so watch out Trevor, Thabo and Naledi.
But in business and normal society, its a no-brainer, cool coconuts can pay thrice the Tavern price for designer beer at the News Cafe, with their Land Rover sport strategically double parked outside with its hazards flashing. Its called assimilation and nation building. As I said in an earlier response Kush Khoza must not bring up Bantu Bhiko and Franz Fanon. I happen to know that Steve loved (in a biblical sense) the hairy legged white radical chics on NUSAS at UKZN and Franz was ma sophisticated bisexual Parisian with homesickness issues and taste for white sugar.
PS; I don’t like this Litchi K*fferboetie moniker, as litchis are horny on the outside, slimy on the inside. I prefer Guava - which is soft, but granular and pink outside, crunchy and juicy inside
Thank you Clarien, Will and Cedric Gumede. Litchi is the obvious fruit to use, though, oddly, I suspect it would not be used in quite the same way as coconut.
Consulting Engineer, kaffirboetie is a completely different concept. It was used as a grave insult for whites who were in the apartheid years able to rise above race and relate to blacks as peers. Also for those whites who chose to be part of the struggle against apartheid (without necessarily acting and dressing like blacks, whatever that means!) So you could say that for the kaffirboeties of the day, what was intended as an insult was in fact taken as a compliment!
Which leads me to the difference between the way I think coconut and litchi would be used. Coconut is definitely used in an insulting way to describe blacks who have ’sold out’ their culture and heritage. For some reason, blacks who embrace a more internationalist approach to culture and lifestyle are not highly regarded.
Somehow, though, it is still okay for a whitey to embrace black culture, so unless s/he is being insulted for being a litchi by a more BC kind of black (perhaps indeed insulting someone for trying to dress/act black) or as a kaffirboetie (or a variation thereof) by unreconstucted whites who long for the old days, being a whitey who is somehow not just a whitey is pretty cool. Maybe some blacks are still ‘grateful’ when they discover whites who are not racist (a psychological hangover from apartheid), maybe others have always had an inclusive approach (part of the rainbow nation syndrome). Bottom line is: it seems it’s still more PC for a whitey to have black ‘tendencies’ (identifying with the oppressed?) than for a darkie to have white ‘tendencies’ (identifying with the oppressors?).
Shot, Ndumiso. Very well put. While reading your piece I wondered what one would call white youngsters who want to be Black Americans. You know, the “yo, bro, whazzup” baseball-cap-the-wrong-way-around-with-sneaker-laces- untied crowd. Yes, them. Any ideas?
@Daniel
I have been asked before by a certain segment of the Safrican population (ROWSA) how I can live in Qwaqwa with all those k!f%rs. To which my response is always - Oh no my neighbours are all Very Christian - its only me that’s a k!f%r!
@Merril
There definately is an African to English transferrance of accent/culture - whenever we are amongst Rowsa they always ask my kids where they are from, claiming their accents are not Safrican!
@Putuma
Don’t feel bitter - We Love You 2
@Francois
A Kugel in leopard skin is still a kugel (askies)
Are Coconuts black on the outside - they look brown to me?
Pan Afrikanism was propounded by black leaders before independence. After independence it tended to fade away - leaders becoming concerned for sorting out their own individual countries. Except for Nkrumah, Gadaffi and Mbeki - all of whom envisaged themselves or their countries as “The Boss”.
Felis
A brilliant psychiastrist and author did write about the “We-They” phenonomen: Scott M Peck.The book “People of the Lie”. He also wrote “The Road Less Travelled”.
Kush
South Africans invented lots of firsts - Heart Transplants, dolosses, creepy crawlies etc. Sorry - don’t know if the were Afrikaans or even white. Didn’t keep that kind of tally. Don’t think Donald Woods would agree to your interpretation of Biko. Nor would Robert Sobukwe, who said “the only race is the human race”.
A thought
A litchi is brown on the outside, has white flesh and then a brown pip. This is very profound. If all humankind originated in Africa as is widely accepted, then we are all ultimately black/brown. The white is just a coating. The skin of the litchi is then an artifice, an unnecessary overcoat. We must all just get back to our core.
Ah, but what is the nature of that core?? And where does ‘culture’ come into it all? Culture is not something cast in stone, but a set of learned practises most often resulting from the response of a people to their external environment and to social management needs. So, if we strip away all cultural artifice - white, black, brown, yellow, western, eastern, southern, northern - what are we left with?
Why is it that South Africans who go to England end up with English accents but Englishmen who come to South Africa never lose their English accents? I have always wondered about that as well as how going to a school modelled on the traditional British public school system where among other things rugby and English manners were honoured could have turned me into a coconut. You know say they that you never feel as black as you really are (or coloured in my case and if we must use archaic labels) until you are realise that none of the friends in your group aren’t. Coconut? I prefer Oreo thank you very much - its more … um …. Westernised.
Well said SubSkriber. I don’t think I would have put it better. As much as I support Ndumiso’s articles most of the time, this time his article is not in historical context on why some blacks are called cocoonuts.
Infact this article, indirectly, creates an impression that blacks can just label other blacks ‘cocoonuts’ without any apparent reasons.
The issue of language that you touched here is quite a complex and controversial one. For instance, as much as all official languages are respected in our Constitutions, most African languages are marginalised. English is still ’sold’ as the only language. The fact that some of the black kids cannot take Zulu as the first language in some of the Model C school still show that these schools are in the mission of colonising black kids.
As much as we went to big universities and we have met many white friends, most black communities still regard us future parents who will protect African heritage. No wonder they might call us ‘Cocoonuts’ if they feel that our behavior is undermining what they might regard as African values or accent.
Your article also failed to highlight how people like Mandoza, Novemvete have been ridiculed for not speaking English that is not ‘Good Enough’. How many of us have ridiculed Dolezaar for his not ‘Good Enough’ English?
The two words I know for the opposite of coconut is “wigger” if you’re in the USA and “waffer”in South Africa.
I have a niece who went to a school that was racially about 55% black. The one white girl who was in her group had a very, very, kasi accent. Fitting in is fitting in, and this kid emulated her black friends so as not to stick out.
Amazing how after reading your article people are so willing to term themselves as coconuts when yesterday they probably thought it an insult.What does it show?You have become the Oprah of TL!!!Go Ndum Go Ndum, talk shit to your animals…As for me I’ll just be having my Brandy n Coke waiting to see what you’ll say next:-)
Ndumiso - you bring out the best in us. I’m a proud speckled coconut. kwerekwere to boot. The white bit is more like a marsala mix in the human sense of the word - happy to mash up my Gikuyu, Swahili, Indian, English, American, Zulu and Xhosa influences. My authenticity is that I acknowledge I am a product of a different age (that graph again) and my value set is based on the best choices of all these influences. South Africans with time will get speckled too. Travel into the continent and you will see whites, indians, arabs, mashing it up with the other Africans in dress, accent, mindset and values. Don’t fight the melting pot - welcome it and pick the best from each culture
I have read your past works and, as a budding writer for the world,have admired your analysis and logic. But brother this article is rambling nonsense. You are groping at an interesting issue with slippery fingers and at the end of the article one feels hard done-by the reading for there is no point made. You need a second take.
I saw all the comments and i knew that white people loved it so i didn’t bother reading any further. Ndumiso, congrats on succesfully strengthening the fence in which you sit.
My compliments on your excellent and highly entertaining piece.
I recently reviewed Kopano Matlwa’s “Coconut” on my blog. I haven’t read all the comments above, but I believe that this is not so much a cultural or social phenomenon, but rather a handy weapon in the struggle for interpersonal superiority. A variation on the age-old question: “Do you think you’re better than me?”
Americans, being the non-tropical beasts that they are, use the term “Oreos” rather than “coconuts”. (If any of you lot don’t know what’s an Oreo, why are you reading this?) The corresponding term for Chinese people is “banana”, a Chinese-American friend told me years ago. She had similar views as those expounded by your graph, Ndum.
BTW, if I serve you curry cooked with coconut, does that make you a cannibal?
Of all commentary on this subject, I think subSkriber’s is the most on point.
I myself spent the past 5 years in the US and never felt compelled to speak in an American accent accept when I didn’t want to repeat myself to an American.
Someone asked why British people need not change their British accent when they come to South Africa! That’s because Africans, in general, are very open minded people who make a good effort to hear and understand folks irrespective of their English accent.
Getting a lecture from a dour Scot on English (not for the first time)is akin to Mugabe suggesting the elections will be free and fair.
English is more than the Oxford dictionary (written for those who havent the creativity or imgagination to work out the meaning of words in a well constructed sentence).
Eurocentric in NN case was used to “suggest” a change that is occuring in this country and the ability/inability of some to adapt to it.
“…. that could get you arrested in England under the Race Relations act for incitement?”
Oh please, this is in effect because of the inability of the BRITISH people to live in racial harmony. Why else would the place have such laws?
This side of the world such laws are draconian and fly in the face of our constitution.
We are not settling for the bland British broth you are served up by your nanny states. We enjoy our diversity and savour each flavour that make one of the tastiest potjies in the world.
I’m going to ignore your suggestion that Lenny Henry is even mildly funny (his wife writes all his crap anyway).
For goodness sake you lot gave Johnny Wilkenson an OBE for playing rugby - now thats funny.
I can close without a mention of the Bra’s the Buti’s and Brow’s on the blog.
Get over the fact that the old issue that colour is a divider - it also smacks of Bob blaming his colonial predecessors of 40 years ago for his current shambles.
Come to think of it there isnt much difference between Butt and Bro either.
There is nothing wrong with being anyting that pleases you. I mean we all have rights right? Aha if i wanna be gay I can be, if I wanna be a muslim I can be, if i wanna be a coconut i can be. the problem starts if I begin to see others as inferior because they do not share the same standards with me. So in simple terms you should enjoy the joys of sharing tables with a lot of van wyks and johnsons but not at the expense of your granddads beliefs. Remember that if you dnt know where you come from, all your pale friends know where they come from and you are pleasing them and realy showing how shallow you are if you look down on your very existence!
There’s a simple answer to the question of why English people don’t lose their accents. It’s that you’re sitting on this side of the fence and being all subjective.
English people DO acquire South Africanisms in their language. When they have lived here for years (as I have) when they go back, people ask ‘Oh where are you from?’ The more astute ask if you’re South African. My family joke that I’ve become assimilated and mock my twang.
The exact same thing happens to South Africans in the UK. Only people who have never heard an English English person speak could imagine that they have lost their South African accent. Everywhere they go in the UK people ask them if they’re South African….occasionally they’ll be snubbed because of it, sometimes they’ll be more welcomed because they are ‘outsiders’, sometimes not.
And then when they come back, people mock their ‘Englishness’. I’ll say it again: SUBJECTIVE. Maybe once we can all see a little bit outside our own craniums we’ll be a bit more accepting of others and their coconuttiness/Africanisation/Afrikanerisation/Anglicanisation or whatever.
Sometimes when I read these blogs on Thought Leader and their associated comments, I cannot stop wondering why with all the abundance of intellectual power these South Africans possess, why were we stuck with two choices in Polokwane - Zuma and Mbeki?
Am I a coconut for wondering?
Ingane ka Khabazela on March 23rd, 2008 at 2:10 am
Ndumiso, i decided to read your article, and this is what i have to say. When you are busy genuinely grappling with your own issues and frantically trying to cover it up with your “fence sitting” self defense mechanism, you become boring… well… at least to exceptionally intelligent minds who can read between the lines (like a pentium D processor). I stopped reading because of this. However, what you do need to know is that minds and hearts against the coconuts have been won, and not much efforts were put into winning that war (which says a lot about the next 1o years).
Before i continue, i’d just like to respond to the above poster, Ingane ka Khabazela. To answer your question: “No, you just have a low IQ”. Long live Mbeki. Short live Zuma… hopefully… in jail. (Isn’t it creepy that supporting Mbeki these days seems unfashionable?”
Anyways, I wrote this letter to M&G about two weeks ago. I never submitted it cause i was too busy empowering myself and ensuring that i have enough power to destroy my enemies. And let’s face it, Haffejee will never print my letters (i’m not white, self loathing, coconut, etc). It was in response to an article written by Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya. I post this letter, because like all great men of words (me), everything i write has relevance no matter the time lag. I’m exceptional in that way. Here’s the letter —> try to find yourself in it.
The Letter
This is in response to Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya (Why the FBJ Exists). Mr Moya, I do not quite know where to place you. I do not find your articles to be of great interest to me, primarily because I don’t know where you stand. There are those 0.1% of black journalists that does not pander to the white target market and then there are the coconuts. The coconuts are strategically placed in order to justify the perversion of blackness by the racist media. Could you be the strategically placed coconut that presents himself as black in order to effectively strike at the heart of black consciousness when it rears it’s ‘ugly head’? The reason I ask this is simple: why do you not acknowledge that 90% of all media opinions is based on white and racist preference, thereby effectively excluding the opinions of over 80% of the population. The media pretends itself to be the watchdog whilst effectively convincing itself that it is not the perversion that taints all forms of black achievement in favour of white privilege.
In this very paper, when the story broke over the FBJ and the walk-out by the coconuts, the letter section was almost lily white. I hardly ever buy SA’s racist newspapers, but I do make point of browsing through the letter sections (in the shops) and counting the overwhelming amount of white opinions being portrayed as ‘South African opinion’. On the poles scattered along our major roads, was this newspapers advertising posters stating, ‘YOUR OPINION’. This was with regard to the Naledi Pandor’s school pledge. OUR OPINION was 90% white, pro-DA and anti-ANC. Did I mention that according this newspaper, for a black child to show respect to his liberators through academic achievement is BAD. Apparently, I concur.
The country’s black president, Thabo Mbeki, is treated like a dog by the media but when he meets with the champion of white democracy, Helen Zille, the tone suddenly becomes very dignified.
The Mail and Guardian states that there was an outcry over the FBJ incident. I am still trying to figure out where this faint little howl is coming from. I do not even want to go into the thing where someone told this one person that they heard someone else say something about “Cape Coloureds”.
When those white journalists showed disrespect to the FBJ and when those coconuts walked out of the venue, they all became the enemy of the people. They became collaborators in a strategy to maintain the status quo and prevent any black advancement. For the black person to advance is for the black person to reclaim his or her share of the economy and this effectively means that black opinion will emerge as a dominant opinion, thereby nullifying all those journalists that fought the war against complete black economic liberation and black consciousness. The advancement of the black woman, man and child is inevitable, so may God have mercy on these journalists. I say that with much vengeance.
Liansky
If you don’t like the M&G why are you commenting on its blogs? Why are you not reading the Daily Sun? It has a vastly bigger circulation, and I am told it is written for a black audience.
Liansky - “well… at least to exceptionally intelligent minds who can read between the lines (like a pentium D processor). I stopped reading because of this.”
How pompous and sanctimonious must one be to think they have a higher intellectual capacity than others.
In my experience such pieces are written by narrow minded, self-important, literary dwarfs.
The very reason why the M&G wont publish the verbal diarrhoea.
A simple Google exposes that, not to mention the racial undertones
Ndumiso,
I am a fan of your writing, especially when humour is the main driver of your writing. I have to admit that while this particular column is well written and does contain some humour, it is not up to your standards in so far as proper analysis and conclusions. It does seem that instead of a well researched position, you were too lazy this time to understand the subject matter. I would urge you not to mistake volume of support to quality of support. As you may know by now, there are people who believe the best writing is the writing they agree with, putting themselves as the purveyors of good writing.
I am often guilty of that myself, but will try to be as objective as I can.
Your research pointed you to 3 behaviours that you perceive results in people called coconuts.
Unfortunately, none of these do trully reflect why people are called coconuts.
Now, if you look at the first 2 behaviours, they are so ridiculous that I cannot believe you gathered these as reasons people are called coconuts.
I have no doubt you are versed in many forms of argument. I would categorise yours as a strawman argument i.e. you create an argument/position and they argue against it, regardless of the standard accepted premise from which the coconut argument is based upon.
There are a couple of individuals who did point out the true argument to why people are often referred to as coconuts.
I do apologise if I contradict posters like Subskriber who did a great job os indicating what it is that about coconuts makes them such.
1. The belief that who I am is not enough.
2. I have to be someone else and
3. that someone else would then be superior to what I was.
4. The basis of this unhappiness is more to do with my racial, cultural, lingusitic, etc identification.
The presime of coconuts is that because they are black in an environment where they perceive to be white or atleast sounding white to be an advantage, they have to transform into this particular environment where they will fit in or be considered superior.
Most often, being a coconut has less to do with relationship with whites and more to do with relationships with individuals of your same background.
They percieve that their new found accent, vocabulary or even hairstyle will make them feel superior to others of the same background and hence enhance their status and reputation amongst their peers.
Coconuts are well aware that they are not white and can never be white. They are often not comfortable amongst whites, whom they have put on a pedestal. They are then quite happy to occupy the middle ground i.e. inferior to whites or americans, but superior to their kind.
People who relate to white people and speak english all the time are hardly coconuts, unless they believe that associating with whites and speaking English makes them better than they actually are.
Having called yourself a coconut, I would suspect that your definition of why you perceive yourself as a coconut is warped. I do not believe you are one.
I believe you have been influenced by your surrounding and perhaps you mistake contribution to society with pretending to be someone else. Those characteristics are not mutually exclusive. You can be someone who is not happy about who they are, and still contribute to different ground routes causes. Indeed, one can argue that your contribution might be an attempt to show how far removed you are to these people. Obviously, there is nothing wrong in recognising where you come from. there is also nothing wrong with wanting to be white, American or even Chinese. Who knows, in 50 years time coconuts would be people who pull their eyes apart, dye their hair black and try to sound Chinese. I suppose if white people do that, they could be called guavas?
Seriously, I would like to see you write another article on the subject of coconuts, but then acknowledge that the discussion is not as simple as you made it out to be.
I remember growing up as a kid. Each time I brought my white friends to the township, I was like mother hen, very protective as if I thought the site of him in the township would lead to his death.
I then encountered the philosophy of black consciousness and realised that my behaviour devalued who I was, my background. nothing in the BC philosophy says I should hate whites or have no friendships with them. In fact, they is encouraged provided is based on an equal footing. The moment I see myself as inferior, then I have lost the battle.
English is a language of communication now used in South Africa. Using it, especially in Gauteng and other cosmopolitan areas hardly makes one a coconut, unless by using English you believe you are suddenly superior to the situation you were in
(and we are not talking financial, here) before and much closer to your perceived status of the superiority of the English language, culture, etc.
One poster spoke of Brits coming to South Africa and returning with a South Africa accent such that some Brits ask whether this person is South African. There was also an Irish woman who woke up claiming to speak in a South African accent. Guess what, these people do not consider a isiZulu, isiXhosa, isiSwati, SeSootho or SeTswana accent as a typical South African accent, or even Afrikaans for that matter. For them, A South African accent is that spoken by English speakers in the country, and mostly the ones of British origin. So, when they refer to a South African accent they refer to 3% of the population.
Many white folks in the country will tell you they grew up in farms and had black friends (labour’s son) growing up. They might speak one of the local languages, but there is no mistaking their language and accent when they speak their mother tongue. English kids have been educated at Stellenbosch and other so called Afrikaans universities, but they still spoke with their own original accents. I know a few Irishman and Germans who have been in the country longer than I have been alive (and I am old). These individuals still speak with their original accents. Their vocabulary has indeed changed a lot but their accents have not changed much. I know of an American professor in Botswana as well as a news editor in Botswana. they have been there for years and yet, they still cannot speak a word of Tswana, let alone adopt a Tswana accent.
Now, why is that? Is it because they see nothing wrong with being who they are?
Coconuts are quite happy to be used as a window dressers. The pulpit elevates them and when any black person questions their position, they often see this as jealousy (cannot understand why anyone would be jealous of a confused soul).
Lastly, it is a lack of self respect, lack of dignity and lack of trust in their abilities that people become coconuts. I would rather I sound like Fikile Mbalula with substance instead of sounding fake with very little substance.
Each time I listen to Joel Netshiteve (sp), I sit back and regal in this intelligence, yet he does not sound like a confused half pommy, half American with a twist of Seffrican English.
[…] must confess that when I wrote my last blog about coconuts, I did so rather flippantly and without too much effort. When I made those assertions, I was under […]
I’d just like to clarify something - whether or not English people recognise an ‘English South African’ accent as the ‘actual’ South African accent wasn’t at all my point. It’s completely irrelevant as my point is merely to correct some people who seem to believe that people only adopt an accent of the people that they believe to be ‘desirable/superior’ or whatever it is. Fake accents on the other hand might just be an ‘aspirational thing’ - ew.
No one who has grown up speaking a language as a home language is suddenly going to 100% adopt the accent of someone who is speaking that language as a second language. So the German person living in England might well adopt a more English accent when speaking English but not when speaking in German.
I will probably always speak any language other than English with a nasty drawl that immediately marks me (of course along with my complete lack of fluency) as an English person. But frankly, with more effort I should be able to improve my accent more and more to the extent that I will not have a proper accent but it will be closer.
This is why I think the accent debate is completely random. If you lived for ten years in England and come back with a slightly Pommie drawl, so what? If you come back believing that England is the land of milk and honey and English people are superior, you just need a damn good kick in the pants.
If I go and live in the rural Eastern Cape for ten years and can’t become properly fluent in isiXhosa and improve my accent so I don’t sound like a lazy English person then I probably need a good kick in the pants too.
All completely random. I think it gets people away from the point. I can’t really understand what a coconut is, so my place in the debate isn’t really any greater than pointing out that accents are not relevant, but I’m starting to believe that ‘coconutism’ is actually just one thing of many. All this continual labelling of everybody by everybody else might just be (a great Australianism) tall poppy syndrome - or it might just be something else.
I just know that if we carry on creating groups and subgroups of subgroups or subgroups, we’re all goin to hate each other even more. Who is and is not black/brown/white/Xhosa/Zulu/Afrikaans/English/Tswana
coconut/litchi/banana/male/female/straight/gay
rural/urban/long-haired/short-haired/no-haired
Christian(subgroups galore)/Muslim(more subgroups)……….
Just that alone there’s so many permutations we might as well just start to accept that actually we’re throwing our own brothers and sisters out of their own communities - there are no communities. I’m sure we can create 40 million discrete subgroups if we tried just a bit more.
Debate is not about name-calling, it’s about putting your point across in a way that people who aren’t on ‘your side’ can start to see that you’re right through your measured and thoughtful approach.
Screaming ‘coconut!’ at someone doesn’t help this process. If someone is wrong, they’re more likely to change once they been shown they are wrong in a measured fashion. The defensive person cannot learn; too busy planning their defence to see anyone else’s point of view.
My two cents, take it, leave it. Probably completely irrelevant but I’m feeling tediously wordy today.
I would like to say that i am of nigerian descent and came to the u.k about 8 years ago.Living in walthamstow east london i adapted to the western society and honed my english skills. i like to see myself as british and i admit that i am a fully blown coconut - (in all its nutty glorious-ness!) nothing less will do and strive my best to speak in a very english manner,appearance etc.My boyfriend has grown dreadlocks too- and he is nigerian also.so to round things up we are coconuts!
It makes sense for you to be a coconut, I guess some people would sell themselves as slaves just to shed off the association with Nigeria.
Go on sell yourselves as slaves to the highest bidder…
What are you if you are white on the outside and dark underneath? A top deck! And top decks are proudly South African, I have never seen that kind of chocolate overseas.
Ndumiso
I was born in exile , Toronto in Canada to be specific.I went to be predominantly white schools and when I was brought back to Africa I went to multi racial schools in countries we stayed.
Do I speak English most of the time?Yes I do!
Is my Zulu perfect?Not quite but in my mind I know what to say!
Am I comfortable in white people company?Yes cause I grew up with them and my first girlfriend is white!
Do I love my people , especially Zulu people?Yes of course I love them to death!
Is yogurt and fruit for breakfast ; bowl of greek salad and steamed chicken breasts for lunch;and tuna salad and with roast leg of lamb for dinner and eating phutu or pap just once a week, normal for me as everyday eating?Yes it is cause I was brought up on such diet!
Do I enjoy cricket , tennis , swiming , polo , chess and soccer?Oh yes I do!
Do I identify with European way of living?Yes I do!
Am I a coconut?Yes I am!
In response to Bhambatha - Its like this-coconuts at my local tesco -2 for the price of 1- just the other day me and my boyfriend cracked one open (coconut) and we couldn’t stop laughing - we were in absolute hysterics- can you imagine that!
Having spent some time (5 minutes to be precise) on Ndumiso’s graph, I am struck by something. It depicts westernization of the African black. The assumption is that Westernization will endure and will not be challenged by Easternization, chinanization or even Asianization, let alone Africanization.
The graph assumes that Black Africans are in a path of attaining western values, whereas the West is not attempting to acquire other values. Now, we can all spend eternity discussing what is Westernization. For example, what is Westernization? There is good in every culture, but there is bag in every culture. Furthermore, the more Westernized Africans become, the less Westernization their children would need to be, which means there will be a point of equality with Western norms, unless we seem Western Norms to be this unattainable scenario where no matter how we try, we will never achieve utopia. In any case, even then the graph will bend and move towards flat as Utopia nears. there is also this assumption that Westernization is a well defined concept such that we can say that African Black X has achieved 5% Westernization or that Westernization means behaviour Y.
Fact is, there is no such phenomenon. Western countries have some similarities including democracy, but have lots of differences including language. Now, if I speak English instead of French or German, do I get a steeper gradient in my Westernization achievement graph, or we we assign similar scores to speaking Portuguese or Suomi (Finnish). What about democracy? Which form do we consider westernization? The english version of the House of commons and House of Lords or the American one where millions of dollars are spend for a job that would never come close to paying such a salary?
We accept the concept of openness in the West, but how do we categorise the embedded journalists reporting only the American version, or the fact that Britain has now admitted how they tortured soldiers in Basra in Iraq? If we talk about respects for human rights, do we then talk of Guantanamo Bay or the OJ Simpson case? Do we talk about equality or the continued racism in the USA, Britain and France which has been acknowledged or do we see Westernization as the perfection of technological advacement? If someone in the East (China, Japan, S. Korea and India) develops something more useful, do we jump from Westernization to Easternization, or do we blindly and blissfully see this as westernization?
There was a time when the West was a rural backwater. Can you imagine that they had a Egyptization graph for themselves their grandparents and their grandchildren, or did they work on what they go and improve on it to develop Westernization?
Talking of Westernization, is this Euphism for Eurocentricity, considering that most of Europe is East? America and part of Britain is West, but rest of Europe is East as is most of Africa and the rest of the world. So, it is europinization and americanization that we aim to attain.
What is wrong with taking from what we have learned from Europe, Asia and America and develop our own identity? afterall, that where Europe started. Instead of being something they are not, they worked at being something they could be. Their graph was limited to their own achievements. They created their own identities which are now collectively called Westernization, even though each one is unique.
America came out with cars, but it was Japanese that forced the creation of smaller cars. When I drive a tazz, am I westernized or Japanised?
Jimbi Wilson,
Certainly you sound like a coconut because
1. You seem disgusted by your background
2. Have adopted another culture as a result of your lack of pride in your own culture.
3. You think there is one English identity.
4. You cannot be that intelligent
@Len van der merwe - fair enough,everyone has there opinions.I read your previous (albeit long)comment - it was o.k if a little boring but someting to pass the time whilst having a poo in the bathroom!ha ha -coconut 4life!
Jimbi,
Not to worry, I suspect you get bored by intelligent debate, and so am not that fussed about your boredom, especially from someone like you.
Keep it unreal!!!
Now I wish that every coconut-bashing person could have a copy of this … it would just make things so much easier for “coconuts” like myself coz I’d just refer them to this post.
Ndumiso,your article sounds more like you registered PhD, and need some help on the topic, that’s an interesting one indeed.
This is no pap en vleis issue,you need to realize that. This will require a whole social re-engineering program in order to reverse the indoctrinations of the past. I am talking here not only about BBBEE’s,EE’s and AA’s; we really need to instill in our minds a sense of self worth, now you get a clue; that paradigm shift will not happen overnight.
Evolution that is based on natural selection according to Darwin is currently taking care of itself. People cannot be indefinitely enslaved; as that does not follow the laws of natural consequence. I believe, what we call English today might converge to a universal language that borrows from every language in the world, something that’s on the pipeline already (e.g. what is the English word for lobola?). We cannot cry for spilled milk, but we can only learn from the mistakes of the past, I am saying this because I can’t see how one can use Sotho for instance, to trade with the Japanese.
The harsh reality is that, everyone is living in a global village by now, and we need to exchange. I just think cultural preservation is soon going to belong to the museum (perhaps a reason why people laugh if one cannot pronounce a word in so called “English”) as all of us mingle together with cross cultural marriages in the forefront of it all. In any case culture should be dynamic, I concur.
So I see nothing wrong with how people think now, one may think it’s westernisation as your linear extrapolated, unrealistic graph points out; but rather a transition period where people happen to be victims of circumstances (it happens in any war situation,there will always be casualties). This is not rhetoric at all, we need time to heal whilst in the process our minds are freed from the negativity, we really have to stop stupid name callings by understanding our backgrounds; it takes time.
I only discovered your column a few days ago, Ndumiso. Great writing and great sense of humour. (I’m perplexed at your support of Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy, though.)
[…] a South African columnist on thoughtleader.co.za. He’s at the centre of row after saying ‘I’m a coconut and proud of it’. He rejects that taking on certain characteristics makes him more […]
At the end of the day, despite the fact that we are all South African - yes South Africans with different languages, cultures & traditions, we are also part of a global world - a global world that communicates to a large degree in English, hence the speaking of “good” English is maybe wanting to be more worldly & not necessarily more “white”. (Just a thought!)
I also think the term “Eurocentric” is used a bit too loosely because Europe is made up of non English speaking countries, so is a “coconut” really “Eurocentric”?
If we nitpick, geographically speaking, England is not part of Europe & I don’t think many Brits would happily consider themselves “European” either!
So instead of using the word “Eurocentric” maybe it should be substituted for “Anglophile”.
Australians, Canadians and Americans also speak English, and the constitution of India is written in English (which is one of India’s official languages).
English is an international language - and the world’s main computer language.
I am black female married to an Africa-American with Africa- American kids-raised with a mixture of South African and African-American and Christian values, I still have my African accent speak my mother-toungue occasionally, and English is predominant in my household, does that make me a coconut?
To answer my question: If Iam a coconut.. I am proud for my babies’ and my husband’s sake, my black, English speaking friends, in-laws, church family… and white sisters in Christ. Dang, I am so proud.. And they do not judge how I articulate but appreciate what’s on the inside- which MATTERS THE MOST. And i cannot help the insecurities of those who hear me speak in a mixed accent.
I have just re-read your article/blog above. In my opinion, if I were to grade it, it would get a DISMAL. I am so sorry, it is so uninformed and ignorant. First of all, you have no clue what white values are. And the three points you made above are not representtive of a larger population of those you call coconuts. You have no clue of what you’re talking about. I a have made my conclusion right there in the middle of your article before I read further that you do not have substantial evidence to back up your argument. SO BIASED AND UNINFORMED. It would have been even more professional if you cited some form of academic or journalistic research on this topic. Any Joe on the street could write this junk and make their own uneducated and prejudiced comments.
-First of all you have NO CLUE as to white values are and I am included in the bracket. Could it be that what you are trying explain is ‘POP CULTURE’ of which some may feel offended by freedoms that many so-called coconuts enjoy, or should I say they harbor some inferior complexity, which, in my opnion is ridiculously silly.
Let me ask you a question, South Africa is a diverse nation with so many nationalities and languages, with English being the most official/universal. How come you do not criticize Indians or Coloreds who speak with English and Afrikaner accents, when all of them are dark skinned and half white. They have their own culture and values, but choose to adopt or embrace Western and Eurocentric culture as well. We live in global village. SO get over it.
I do not believe, not for one minute, that you wer setting a trap by writing this article or any other article related to this. You know wxactly what you were doing an dof course you were anticipating a repsonse. Now quit insulting our intelligence. At least you have to be intuitive enough to know that some if not most of your readers are critics as well, and can read between the lines.
I have no qulams with Black people with western or Eurocentric accent. If they choose to abandon their culture or values , it their problem. What matters to me t he most is what one can do for their brother or sister-(i.e. make a difference in your own community or society).
Petty stuff like judging people for how they look or speak is way too shallow in my book and it does not contribute in anyway to our well-being. It’s like gossiping, which is mostly fuelled by people who are not happy with themselves or have too much time in their hands, spreads like wild-fire and the next hing you know you have all this judging and character bashing comments above(including mine)..
And my next question wold be, how on earth could you write this article when our very people are so critical or should embarrased of their own who speak fluent Zulu or Xhosa with what we call a ‘country accent’. When I was growing up young people used to call them ooBaru, just because they grew up ezilalini and are clueless when it comes to eKasi Taal or just popular culture, period.
we live in the 21st century, and what does speech have to do with African values? Values are not only extrinsic.. You cannot make conclusions about people by what you see or hear. We’re so wrapped up in technology advancement and trying to grab the latest gadgets and toys, forgetting all of us definitely have some coconut fabric in ourselves.
South African educational institutions and workplaces are integrated because we fought for those privileges. Many have made friends with White people, and now you have a problem about it?
How are we supposed to produce competent youth if they;re not influennt in the most universal language(English). So what is a parent supposed to do when English teachers, teach English in Xhosa, if you raising a child with dreams of excelling in college/university. I know my argument maybe somewhat out of context, but I often look at the bigger picture.
There is definitely nothing wrong with Blackness or having an African accent- infact I am proud of my African accent, but they way I choose to speak a foreign language should not reduce my entire personality or the real me to being labelled a coconut. In my book, that is a complete shallow view of ones whole-being and values. Hey, if a black person speaks like Oprah Winfrey, but has a big heart and in love and at peace with his or her neighbor- it’s enough for me. And if one is offended by how one speaks- that is some form of prejudice in my opinion. It’s funny how we slam people for speaking a certain way, but we always applaud other ethnic groups(esp. whites) for incorrectly pronouncing Zulu or Xhosa dialects- when they speak in our accents. And when they speak our languages fluently with African Accents nobody complains.
Have you ever been in a foreign country where you had to repeat yourself because they do not understand a word you are saying, even when you speak in their own langauage?
I am not saying one should completely abandon their instrinsic blackness. Being accomodative to other cultures is who we are. And for those who forsake their blackness- they hve some deep-seated issues i don;t even care to entertian. And when your own people bad mouth you about speaking differently or choose to have white friends, is a double-standard to me, when we wear, drive and use brands of products mae by whites and other ethnicities that are not African. Our culture is so diluted- and I find it unjust to judge people based on those facts you pointed about.
Yoh! I’ve never read so much truth in just a few paragraphs. You’ve definately hit the nail on the head! I’m coconut (well, wateva that is!) and not exactly proud of it. How do you begin to explain to yourself let aloone to your zulu parents that you don’t agree with their traditions, belioefs etc. My parents being who they really don’t see the issue in beating up their 17 year old son if he dared to speak up about all these issues! I really enjoyed reading your articles adn looking forward to more!
Hold on! This has nothing to do with culture or values. It simply refers to black people who imitate white people, particularly black people who have ‘lost’ their languages as a result of being schooled in the multi-racial schools of SA.
mr ngcobo
i officially love you. i’m 17 and throughout my short life i’ve been persecuted for the way i speak and how i express myself. i’m seen as a stuck-up, rude and obnoxious teenager. i love my accent and i feel i don’t need to apologise for it. it’s not my fault i acquired the accent but at the same time i love it. i love me. i question culture because i feel it holds no place for me. women, no matter how many men try to dispute it and console us,have no significance in african culture. we are slaves and statues of obedience compared to men and it makes me feel so small. your article made my day and it just might of made my life. thank you sir.i’m a proud coconut baby! love tebogo
All comments must be approved by our editors, click here to read the editorial guidelines for comments. Please allow some time for our editors to approve your comment after posting.
profile
Once upon a time, Ndumiso Ngcobo used to be an intelligent, relevant man with a respectable (read: boring-as-crap) job which funded his extensive beer habit.
One day he woke up and discovered that he had lost his mind, quit his well-paying job, penned a collection of hallucinations. A bunch of racist white guys published the collection just to make him look more ridiculous and called it 'Some of my best friends are white'. (Two Dogs, ISBN 978-1-92013-718-2).
Nowadays he spends his days wandering the earth like Kwai Chang Caine, munching locusts, mumbling to himself like John the Baptist and searching for the meaning of life at the bottom of beer mugs.
The racist publishers have reared their ugly heads again and dangled money in his face to pen yet another collection of hallucinations entitled 'Is It Coz 'm Black'.
He will take cash, major credit cards and will perform a strip tease for contributions to his beer fund.
I am a Catholic, albeit a semi-practising one. Don't make me go into the detail -- let's just say the missus is not perpetually knocked up despite our...
A few weeks ago I was invited to an ANC election rally in Sandton's trendy Taboo nightclub. I think they called the rally the Fikile Mbalula Birthday ...
I believe that there is a dearth of insightful, incisive yet irreverent and witty social commentary on these shores. Look, our publishing houses churn...
Loading ...
Ndumiso this was brilliant!!
You really are de man …(does that make me an inverted coconut?)
(Report abuse)