Kuli and Jimmy,
I’M sure you understand if I don’t bother with the “dear” before your names. I’m positive your ears must be burning given your names have appeared in just about every newspaper going.
You, cabinet spokesman Jimmy Manyi, over your wild statements there “is an over-concentration of coloureds in the Western Cape” and “they should spread in the rest of the country”.
And of course you Nomakula (Kuli) Roberts, writer of the newspaper column most appropriately titled Bitch’s Brew.
I’ll start with the latter.
After that scribble about how you dreamt of silky hair and wanted to speak like you were singing like the coloured girls of the Cape you probably never in your wildest dreams thought you’d receive so many open letters, did you? You probably also didn’t know coloureds could get so angry.
Add that one to your list of why you envy coloured girls so much – because wow!, they can certainly get mad at silly column writers . . .
But now on a more serious note.
At first I wanted to come to your defence when people threw hard words at you left and right . . . and we’re talking about rough and rock hard.
The thing had already begun gathering steam on Facebook. Incidentally it wasn’t just coloured girls who were mad at you but also some white women and quite a few guys.
They wished they could lure you to the N1 with a fake handbag sale, they wrote on the site. Nogal to the N1 where 10 crocodiles were still roaming free after falling off a truck the other day. Hey, now that’s when I knew these people were seriously cross!
But I’m not angry. Maybe just a tad irritated.
You and I understood one another in those days when we were colleagues. You were working as Drum’s fashion editor at the magazine’s Cape Town HQ and you were always fun, though even then you were rather outspoken.
Jinne, Nomakula, I didn’t know you actually wanted to be brown – or wait, “yellow”. That’s how you refer to us, isn’t it? Yellow.
But remember I truly don’t have a sense of grievance about your writings and I’m not suddenly struggling with a Sannie Sorriegat attitude either – with all due respect to my mother, coincidentally also a Sannie.
On the contrary . . .
After all I am just a little bit irritated.
But I have to admit I kind of wanted to get angry about the bit where you write about how “these girls breed as if Allan Boesak sent them on a mission to increase the coloured race”. I’m a ripe 38 and I don’t have kids, you know. And I can name quite a few contemporaries who aren’t sitting with a kindergarten full of little ones either.
And if I remember correctly you have two children? But let’s leave that there.
Yes, I agree, coloured women laaik their ciggies. You have a point there. But hey, we don’t eat so many fish we’re “depleting the ocean”, even if we wanted to
But do you know why I’m a tad irritated?
Because you generalise. Or let’s put it this way: you and the friend you quote – the two of you generalise about coloureds. Our bruises are more obvious, so if you hit us it will be easier to see, you say there. Now I ask you with tears in my brown eyes (pun intended): why must all coloured women always be beaten up?
Your friend says we coloureds know exactly what tik is. Duhh, here I thought everyone knew what tik is whether they’re pink, blue or purple. Everyone knows. See what I mean by generalisation? Rather say “everyone”. It’s probably safer.
Look here, Kuli, I like my red wine and the next time you come to Cape Town bring a lekker red with you. To me Black Label is just too bitter. It makes my teeth ache. Hope you’re not surprised to hear I still have all my teeth. Yep, woman, in my mouth. All my own.
Oh yes, I’d also like to tell you how I enjoyed dancing in a Greek restaurant the other night. It was only there that I smashed a plate for the first time. It was really lekker and you should try it some time. Hey, your friend says in your column we people so love chucking plates around. And I’ll do it again, but only for fun in case your friend says again we coloureds are “violent”.
The other day a friend said on Facebook we should stop feeling so sorry for ourselves when someone from another race group satirises us. Look, she laughed like a drain over your column. She and her two sisters. So, Nomakula, people did laugh. Even if it was just three of them. Don’t feel bad.
YOU’RE just as “lyrical” about how we girls sing as we speak.
When I read that I had to ask myself aloud (like the Ingelsman would say): “Now how would that go?” Does that mean we sound like the people in movies like Dreamgirls, Grease, Mamma Mia or Liefling, maybe even Annie? They all sing when they speak . . . but at least they dance too so it makes some sense.
I say again, I’m not angry, Nomakula . . .
And hopefully you won’t get angry about me opening my mouth today. It’s called freedom of speech, isn’t it?
I’m really not touchy and I can take a joke. I often crack coloured jokes, just ask my colleagues. I’m the Franz Marx of coloured jokes and I absolutely believe you didn’t mean to take a dig at us with your little I-wish-I-was-yellow stories; you were just trying to be funny. Funny ha ha, that is.
But you weren’t.
See, guys like Koos Kombuis, Emo Adams, Marc Lottering and Wicus van der Merwe are funny ha ha to me – actually laugh-til-my-sides-hurt funny.
Now let this coloured woman from the Western Cape give you some quickie advice.
Not everyone can make racial jokes. It’s actually an art and one you should rather leave it to the above-mentioned funny ha ha people.
Please tell me, how did your column get past the eagle eyes of an editor?
I swear my editor would have a heart attack if I dared to write such drivel.
And I would definitely be ashamed if I were you.
So now you’ve lost your job?
Although I’m sorry about that, and not really angry with you, unfortunately I can’t speak for the rest of the country’s coloureds.
I’d rather just wash my hands in innocence and wish you well when you’re over here again. Now your pen has become a sword you might somewhere hear someone say: “Here, hold my snoek and Castle lager so I can chop off this Kuli woman’s tjank (put this woman in her place).”
And don’t be surprised if it’s a coloured girl.
After all you know there’s an “over-concentration” of us in the Western Cape. Just ask Jimmy Manyi.
Oi, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy.
You’re supposed to be educated man, as my mother would say. But now we know you’re also a spokesman with no guard on his tongue. So you ended up making a big mistake.
Even normally laid-back Trevor Manuel is fed up. The national planning minister has called you a racist in an open letter; you’ve been compared with Hendrik Verwoerd. Pretty bad, isn’t it?
But statements like yours make me angrier than Kuli’s, Jimmy.
See, it’s because any right-thinking person who comes up with this kind of rubbish is looking for trouble, plain and simple.
It’s totally unacceptable not to have coloured people in every centimetre of the country, you say. What? Do? You? Mean?
In my opinion YOUR statements are “totally unacceptable”.
Now the poop has hit the fan all you keep saying is “no comment”. Shouldn’t you rather just have kept quiet in the first place? Have you learnt nothing from old Julius Malema’s mistakes?
Believe me, keeping quiet is also an answer. If you can’t contribute something constructive to our society lay low like a Minora blade and keep dead, dead quiet.
“I’m not going to say a word; not a word,” you’re saying in an attempt to put out the fires.
Pity you didn’t do exactly that from the start because then, Jimmy Manyi, your ears wouldn’t be burning . . . and the same goes for you, Kuli Roberts.