Stir the melting pot

BY ARCHBISHOP BUTI TLHAGALE OMI

Marriages across racial or ethnic lines are a fruit of love like any other marriage. Yet, in the present South Africa, such marriages still raise eyebrows.

If the truth be told, some South Africans from different racial and ethnic backgrounds appear to harbour racial and cultural prejudices which should have been done away with when the new democratic order was ushered in in 1994.  But then, both moral conversion and the change of a mindset ordinarily do not take place overnight. Clearly this is one of the major challenges facing South Africa as it aspires to promote loyalty to a single flag, a single nation.

Marriages across the racial line are perhaps more than your run-of-the-mill marriages. Given the past history of state-sponsored, deeply ingrained racial divisions, these marriages are an example of true grit, of genuine strength of character.

Spouses in mixed marriages know that they are members of a particular racial, cultural or ethnic group. But they primarily see themselves as individuals. They jealously guard their private space and resent invasion from family or society. They determine their own destiny and do not allow the collective to impose their tastes or preferences.

The couples consider themselves unshackled from the tyranny of the collective. That is why they put themselves forward as a formidable challenge to South Africans to make a clean break with racial prejudice especially by those who consider themselves to have been victims of racial segregation in the past.

Marriages across colour lines underscore some of the values that are foundational to the new democratic order in South Africa. Such marriages are a hard evidence of people who refuse to be bullied by the prejudices of both family and society.

Couples in such marriages have buried the artificial divisions of the past. They courageously subscribe whole-heartedly to the value of freedom to choose one’s partner, irrespective of tradition and custom.

Communities are often out of kilter with the new values embodied in the Constitution of the country; values such as freedom of choice, freedom of association, equality, participation, mutual acceptance and mutual respect. These values are embraced at a deeper, personal level by racially mixed couples.

Racially mixed marriages are part and parcel of the new moral order in the South African society where people are no longer—or ought no longer—to be judged by the colour of their skin. During the reign of HF Verwoerd and his successors, mixed couples were vilified, harassed, and made to feel unclean and unwanted in accordance with the moral code forged in the belly of the apartheid beast. Many were ultimately driven into self-imposed exile.

Today’s mixed couples defy conformity to the discredited political ethic of the previous government. They consciously follow their heart’s desire and their own mind. They fully embrace the dictates of their own consciences. By making their own free choice, they promote the dignity of persons and transcend the biologically determined categories and labels.

Mixed couples are at the heart of building a new South African society where people are judged not by the colour of their skin or by the group to which they belong, but by who they are: self-respecting, conscious, disciplined and committed citizens of South Africa.

Some parents are horrified when their son or daughter marries across the racial line. Worse still if they marry across the colour line, abandon their own faith and adopt the religion of the spouse. Some parents feel betrayed. They think that what they stand for has been completely undermined; that what they thought they had taught, has been simply rejected.

This, of course, is not how racially mixed couples see it. For them their love brings other new challenges apart from racial hang-ups. The adapted words of the biblical Ruth can be used to describe the feelings of mixed couples: “Where ever you live, I will live.  Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God” (Ruth 1:16).

Couples willingly expose themselves to each other’s cultural and spiritual treasures. They are interested in each other’s ways of knowing, doing and being. This hopefully enriches their way of being present to each other and strengthens mutual understanding. Such an exposure facilitates communication across cultural and religious divides.

The children of such couples are often exposed to two or three languages within their own homes. Already at an early age, they are tentatively exposed to the reality of difference and diversity.

The offspring of mixed marriages are the torch-bearers of the new society, not by appearances, but by what they symbolically stand for. They are the incarnation of the love of their parents. They bear within their inner depths inherited spiritual qualities or virtues of respect for persons, mutual acceptance and courage.  They are an expression of hope for an inclusive society, freed from the trammels of racial prejudice.

To seek to apply racial epithets to them would be tantamount to embracing decline instead of moral progress. It would indeed be a betrayal of the aspirations of a new nation.

South Africans need to redouble their efforts to transcend the hurtful racial and ethnic divisions of the past. The debates in the public square on these matters also need to show a measure of self-restraint.

The fundamental challenge to all of us, is simply to strive to be more human.

Archbishop Buti Tlhagale heads the archdiocese of Johannesburg.