What happens when you haste the structure of your own social identity? Buffalo flats, a small coloured community in East London, a place where day to day living is a typical life structure. The sun rises and sets in this community with the same struggle at mind for the “community leaders” Since the days of Apartheid, coloured “homelands” namely: Brayside, Parkside, Pefferville, Fynbos, Popcorn Valley, old Buffalo Flats, Buffalo flats, Ghostown, Vergenoeg and Egoli, have held the biggest population of the same race in the East London. You can imagine how many people exactly brew in the suffering of Apartheid.
This struggle has since become a culture in society and taken a subconscious toll on the inhabitants of these areas. Having grown up in this environment, I was witness to the mediocrity of everyday life. This “culture” now shows a level of isolation in the general community, whereby people are happy with being average in their lives. After 13 years of living in the area, I moved to a so called, “white area” and became a scholar at so called “white school”.
This was where I encountered my first experience of certain stereotypes in whiter societies. During registration, I whipped out a parker pen and the prefect at the time looked at me, the colour of my skin and said: “did u steal that pen”, referring to a stereotype whereby coloured people are normally associated with gangsters.
>> Al Postman <<
