The curse of the black middle class and model-c brat

I like to think of myself as among the poster children for modern day South Africa. I can already see those who know me rolling their eyes saying; “there she goes again with her over the top self loving” but hear me out. This isn’t just me shouting at the top of my lungs how incredibly great I am (which isn’t a bad thing to do once or twice in a while) but today this is includes you too. See, I can also spend a minute away from the mirror.

But seriously, I could be one of the poster children of modern SA. Not only was I born at the tail end of a tumultuous period in our country but it was also at a time when those who hadn’t believed British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan’s “winds of change” speech, could now (whether they admitted it or not) feel those winds of change gusting through the country.

I therefore was young enough that I cannot claim with the authority of our struggle veterans that I was THERE, yet I was old enough to know what difference meant, what being white was associated with just as I understood what the implications for being black were.

Recent debates on the admissions criteria at tertiary institutions have been great. I have for years been waiting for this particular shoe to drop, because I have also been a ‘guinea pig’ of the quota system, and to this day I can feel the ring in my ear of that slap across my face (which it was and continues to be for anyone who takes pride in their abilities and works hard so as to be recognised on merit).

I am a product of a mix of formally Bantu school districts and model-c school education and have also had the opportunity to see the world as well as study at Africa’s best institution. So for these reasons, I think I qualify to be on the poster I refer to here. Don’t get me wrong, for every moment of my life; from my days in the ‘struggle’ to those of sitting down for chat over dinner about the beautiful future awaiting myself and my fairer skinned mates, I am very grateful. But it hasn’t been and still isn’t easy. This is a point that admissions debates have overlooked for years and even now, isn’t as prominent as it should be when discussed.

Popular rhetoric on the issue has reduced people to numbers and facts. But the goal, for which such criterion is meant to be working towards, cannot be reached if people continue to be reduced to mathematical facts. Life/human life cannot be summed up in an equation, we are social beings.

Our emotions, thoughts and psyche can explain and be of much more use in moulding us into the well rounded citizens in a way that numbers or generic explanations could never do. Because of the omission of this important and complex aspect, the admissions debate cannot generate full support from all, nor benefit the very people it seeks to benefit and in the way it is meant to; to produce the kind of student this country so desperately needs.

For many of us ‘model-c brats’, the transition is an ominous time, filled with so much trepidation, it is a great miracle how any of us make it to the next step without too much self mutilation or other self destructive behaviour.

The model-c brat is caught between a fight of two very different and unaccommodating worlds, with none attempting to genuinely get to know the other – because the truth of the matter is, both are petrified of the other but neither will come out and say it. Forget the elephant in the room; this is more like the elephant in your life and constantly in your face.

The model-c brat is thrown into this new world without as much as a stick to help clear their path in those difficult to reach areas (safe for the extended studies programs). Instead, every morning it seems, you wake up in one world. A world that has been all you have known up until the day you found a Listers bag on your bed with checked tunics, a few pairs of white socks and black shoes to match.

Up until that morning, you were pretty happy in a black dungaree, but this morning you wake up to part with your dungaree and replace it with a tunic; and a few hours later you find yourself immersed in a completely new world forced to adapt quickly or die. To then a few hours later, suddenly resurface in the world you woke up in, and find it not looking the way you left it that morning. Or is it they who aren’t looking at you the same way they did before you disappeared for a few hours to a new world?

A few hours are all it takes. To the friends you left in the old world who are now (upon your return) looking at you funny; this does not make any sense and the only logical explanation is that you have sold out, you are now a coconut; you cannot possibly ever understand their struggles any longer. A few hours and you have changed, you can see it in their eyes looking at you and yours looking at them.

You need not have said nor done anything since your return to warrant this label, a few hours is all it takes after all. From the moment you put on the checked tunic instead of the dungaree that fateful morning, unknown to you, imaginary battle lines were drawn and you are now on a side which you neither chose be on or even know how to be on.

Things are no better in the new world either, because no matter how quickly you adapt; no matter how well you master life on this side of the tracks, you can never be one of them. And so is the case for the cursed middle class black and model-c brat. You soon find out that you are neither black nor white enough.

After a while, having listened, observed and experienced many of these criticisms what you really start to hear, what you begin to see and experience is them saying in truth we really envy and wish we were you, so as opposed to be bigger people about it, congratulate and encourage you to keep going it is easier not to, because we can then hide behind the cover of cultural preservation and injustices that prevented all of us being exposed to such opportunities. In essence it is much easier to hate than congratulate you, so don’t judge us. This is what I heard.

On the one hand, we the model-c brats feed off of our communities’ insecurities and not in a good way. We condemn them as ignorant, uneducated and jealous. Hating us because of their own lack of ambition. By the time one reaches this point, though it doesn’t take long for some of us to do so, we are so high up our intellectual forward looking ‘high-horse’ that the altitude up there distorts our views so much that we are no different from the very ‘advancement haters’ we’ve began to shun.

What is omitted from the debates is the human factor. Contrary to popular belief, the transition to the model-c living isn’t as clear cut as it’s made out to be. Not for the community from which the student comes from, not for the community the student is taken into and especially not for the very previously disadvantaged student whom all this fuss is about.

So the cycle continues, shunned by our communities we snub them even worse, we move away from the nurture of communities built upon the spirit of communal upbringing, communities we were taken out of in hopes of improving our chances so we can some back and create opportunities for others and a better life for all. Instead we replace these with the cold fences and walls of gated communities. Where one can live for years without uttering a word to one’s neighbour let alone know what they look like.

I urge you to spare a thought for the model-c brat; it isn’t completely their fault that they may have gotten lost somewhere between the corner of advancement, embracing the present and the ambitious road to success and all things great. And while you’re still in that thought reserve some for the ‘advancement haters’ who themselves got chucked off the bus halfway to making friends forever and growing up together, without warning, or even being helped get to terms with their best friends’ 6 hour disappearing acts to another world every morning only to come back looking and sounding different.

Finally, also spare a thought for the disillusioned middle, previously comfortable in their surroundings who woke suddenly (or so it seems) to find a lot more colour everywhere they looked and the going a lot more tougher than it used to be. Even for the hard working kind who’ve always thought there should be more colour anyway.

Until we discuss and debate this issue in a way that includes the human factor, or even through examples from the lived experience of people, we risk another affirmative action, BEE or even OBE situation on our hands. Waiting for too long and too late to fix something with the potential to ease some of the burdens our country faces today.