Forged for Freedoms

Unlike what I knew to be true in the U.S, in South Africa, there are twelve official languages. Local sitcoms and soaps like Isidingo and Muvhango have mastered their representation of what it looks like to have twelve languages spoken organically from coast to coast: in a single scene at a cafe, one character will initiate a conversation in Zulu, their companion will answer in Afrikaans, and the waitress will pen their orders down in English. All the while, English subtitles glide across the screen, just in case you can't keep up.

What local South Africans know, however, is that this seamless flow of languages doesn't happen as easily as it's depicted. And for many years, language abilities were weaponized, fueling the fire of segregation from the Apartheid. The language you spoke at home, analogous to the color of your skin, determined where you were permitted to live, work, and go to school. From 1948 to 1994 in all areas of South Africa, your native tongue and post-code could mean the difference between life and death. This reality was something my Granny Joyce knew all too well.

Born to a Xhosa-speaking mother and an Indian father, Granny Joyce was accustomed to seeing blended cultures as something healthy. She and her four sisters learned to cook biryani, chicken tikka, and samosas, alongside classic "black South African foods" like dombolo, mogodu, and chakalaka. She was beautiful with raven-black hair that grazed the small of her back and doe eyes that camouflaged her sassy wittiness. She was a living contrast to the hideously divisive political climate brewing around her. As she grew and blossomed in knowledge and skill, the soil beneath her grew more and more sick with segregation and conflict. By 1961, Apartheid wars were in full swing and Joyce was a newlywed in her early twenties, expecting her first child with a military general. When her husband was exiled to Tanzania following the Sharpeville Massacre, she had the choice to leave with him or stay on familiar land under a new identity. Joyce would choose to reinvent.

Being fluent in Afrikaans and having biracial features, Joyce was eligible to live as "coloured" and not as a black woman. She shed both her maiden and married names and resurfaced as Miss Joyce Flayser. The surname was a complete fabrication without ties to any ancestors; it was simply a clever blending of phonetics from the Afrikaans word for meat (vleis) and the Urdu word for one who strips off the skin (flayer). A name whose symbolism is as meaningful as its fruits. Taking on this new racial identity didn't mean complete freedom as "non-whites" were all oppressed; however, it meant she could move freely without needing a pass to cross through or enter white neighborhoods and other public places. She had the opportunity to live in neighborhoods with reliable electricity and uncontaminated water, a privilege for coloureds that native Black Africans did not have. Most importantly, it meant a lower chance of death for her and her unborn child. Although her little girl would never meet her father, she would keep her life.

Joyce found support from her four sisters who followed suit and obtained documentation with the contrived surname. They shared a small home in Eldorado Park, raising her daughter and adopting coloured culture. These women submerged themselves in their newly acquired social position, holding on to the rights they were meant to be born with. Each woman went on to have children, passing on the Flayser name and its liberties. But the Apartheid-sick South Africa was still too constricting for Joyce.

She met an affluent Mozambican man who was retracting his investments in South Africa and moving back to his country. Having only met Joyce twice, he moved her into his beachfront home and married her less than a year later. Despite moving to a new country with nothing, she protected the one investment she had and chose to reject her new married name, fearing that if she ever crossed the borders and returned to Johannesburg, she'd lose the comforts she built years ago. Despite shedding her childhood for her new identity, Joyce's wit and dolly-like face stayed with her. Although her looks and wits had paved a new path for her bloodline, not even she could have predicted how much this combination of beauty and brains would work in her favor.

This Mozambican man remained a mystery in the Flayser family tree. My father was the only fruit of the short-lived marriage, but he had few memories of him because he'd spent hours away from home at work, and then, was tragically being murdered before my dad reached fifteen. "His death never sat right with me." my father would say. His suspicions were not simply a mourning teen trying to make sense of his grief. The assassins were never found and his body was uncustomarily cremated instead of buried. But, in 1981, most developing countries took a lax approach to tedious crimes. So life moved on, and as a woman with many options, so did Joyce. Her new love interest moved into the beach house she'd inherited from her late husband. They married shortly after his assets were divided and a year later she gave birth to my uncle. My father never truly warmed up to his stepfather or the toddler he'd created in their home. Consequently, he was enrolled in the military and sent to Tanzania shortly after his seventeenth birthday. His only saving grace was his language abilities; he was raised to speak Portuguese and English like most Mozambican children, but was taught Afrikaans by his mother as a precaution. With hundreds of South Africans having relocated to Tanzania during the apartheid, my father forged community with them. However, one piece of his identity always drew attention, with a recurring question: "Where is your surname from?".

Unlike his mother Joyce, my father's skin didn't carry fluidity or ambiguity. He'd inherited his father's okapi-colored skin tone, causing him to blend in with those with lesser privileges than he'd been born into. His skin and name contrasted with each other on his documentation like an eclipse; the darkness of his body covered all the distance Joyce had created from the unambiguous black struggles. At least outside South Africa. Back in his motherland, Apartheid regimes mimicked nazi ethics: race was passed down maternally. So when my father eventually crossed over South African border lines, he didn't carry a dompas (legal passbook that Black South Africans were forced to carry during the apartheid era) to navigate through restricted zip codes. His saving grace was his family name.

At some point in the 90s, my father reunited with his younger brother and my Granny Joyce in New York City (with the eldest daughter choosing to stay behind). She relocated to the U.S. after divorcing my uncle's father, but not before securing a visa with his connections. She was never one to move without a contingency plan.

I'd be ignorant to say my Granny Joyce was the first of her kind or that she "made history" during her lifetime. In a world where pigment and race separated and created humans of a "lesser class", many around the world took similar measures to prolong their lifespan. Nevertheless, my granny Joyce's story stands out with its impact. In a post-Apartheid South Africa, the culture of coloured people is slowly being erased. The nation that once forced a people to band together is now seeking to disassemble decades of community building. No longer needing or desiring the distinction offered by the government, the people who are still "not enough" this or "too" that in order to fall into rigid racial classifications seek to live unbothered and simply live in the community. If not for the survival instincts of one woman, I'm not sure I'd be here to keep the record and preserve the account. Three generations of blood remain unspilled because old skin was skillfully shed. Joyce Flayser wrote in a story of life that can only be erased if her descendants stop writing.