We often hopped into his car and drove into the Garden Route, stopping at Tsitsikamma or Storms River for the day, a hastily packed picnic in the boot. Or we would simply pack up and drive to visit family in Cape Town over the weekend – my uncle believed in spur of the moment adventures.

Over Christmas times we would often all pile into his car and hit the long road to Upington (from Port Elizabeth). Have you ever followed the road north to Upington? It snakes out in front of you like a shiny gray ribbon, while the heat conjures up ocean mirages in the distance. If you ignore the small bushes and grass, you could imagine that you are driving through the red hills of Mars. The Orange River snakes through the red sand like a green artery, bringing magnificent colour into a world that could otherwise fool you into thinking it is dead. When the sun sets over the Karoo, it turns the clouds into orange islands in a pink sea. If you are lucky you might see a shooting star as it arcs across the diamond encrusted sky of the Northern Cape. If you are not-so-lucky you might have to stop suddenly for a kudu, as big as a house, as it leaps the fence at the side of the road and then walks past your car, while curiously inspecting the people inside. Sometimes we pulled off to the side of the road and tried to sleep under a sky so filled with stars that its brightness kept us awake.

I think that the fun of a holiday, for me, was always the trip there, never the destination itself.

Once in Upington we would complain about the heat, our toes being baked in our black patent leather shoes, but taking off your shoes was not an option either, as you then had to contend with the hot earth underfoot and the scorching sun on your toes. I would seek the cool shelter of the grape vine in the backyard, with beds placed under it. I would happily munch grapes the whole day, pretending to be alone in the world, until one of my cousins would grab me by the hand and we would go for a walk down to the Orange River. The walk lead through green cotton fields, across a small bridge and a copse of Weeping Willows and once we got there I would always be afraid of the river, rushing past in a deluge of muddy brown water.

Perhaps my favourite place in the world was Augrabies National park. I remember the thunder of the water and the spray on my face. I remember the little multi-coloured lizards that ran up and down the gorge walls like acrobats. I remember the Moon Rock and wanting to run up it with the bigger children, but my mother, ever aware of my accident prone self, would keep a firm hold on my hand and I could only watch. I remember crossing the swaying bridge over a gorge to the rhino enclosure, where nobody was allowed to enter. And I remember Echo corner, where you could hear yourself replying ‘hello!’ a million times over.

I do not have the traditional holiday memories. There are very few ‘us at the beach’ photos, but I do not really mind that. While writing this I have come to realise that these are the memories I cherish.

The Karoo and its beauty.

There was one thing I always found funny about Afrikaans there though; it was something I did not realize we did until I moved out of Upington into the much more English Port Elizabeth: in Upington everyone and everything became a male.
Saying ‘Marie sê hy gaan hom se rooi rok aantrek’ (Mary said he is going to put on his’s red dress) was perfectly acceptable. My family from there still talks like that and more than 20 years after leaving the small town behind me for good, I find that I still revert to that oddly ‘flat’ Afrikaans when I am around my family from there…I refuse to start calling everything a male and insert double possessive morphemes where they do not belong though.

From a young age I was fiercely and proudly Afrikaans though. Afrikaans was my language, my mother’s language and the language I loved. My mother did make a point of teaching us excellent English, but I was an Afrikaans speaking coloured through and through.

After starting my tertiary education though, I realized that Afrikaans had its limitations. You cannot study computers in Afrikaans because…well…computers were English weren’t they? You do not talk about a ‘c-aandrywer’ (c-drive) because only about one other person in the group will know what you are talking about. Saying ‘drukker’ instead of printer sounded stupid and how can you program in Afrikaans when Visual Basic is based on basic English commands?

And so it began: I would use an English word here and there, then later entire English phrases. Eventually I would flop between the two languages while having a conversation and eventually it reached a point where in the real working world I needed to speak English. So I became English. I raised my son English. Half the time my mother and I speak English when talking to each. I have hardly any Afrikaans friends and when I watch the news the only reason I watch the Afrikaans version is because Riaan Cruywagen is an institution. I find that I think in English even when speaking Afrikaans.

Now living in Cape Town, where the large majority of Afrikaans speaking Coloured people live, I find the mutated Afrikaans spoken here so abhorrent that I would rather stick to English. I might be an Afrikaner at heart, but I present myself as an English person to the rest of the world. I am not ashamed of being Afrikaans though. I am not ashamed of my roots and history. I am a coloured Afrikaner.
So if you think being Afrikaner means a white oom (Uncle) with a boep (big stomach) and a safari suit, think again.

Eventually I did realize that my country was ostracized by the rest of the world and eventually I understood why. But there was no defining moment, no sudden epiphany, no dawn of realization. It was a slow process that started after I moved to Port Elizabeth (PE).

PE was not as conservative as Upington; we were not forced to use different doors, toilets or park benches to the extent that people were up north. I remember going back to Upington for a funeral in my early teenage years. This was when apartheid was on its way out but before Madiba became president.

Things were changing slowly. I accompanied my uncle, also from PE, to the butchery and waited in the car while he went into the shop. There were two doors. A minute later he stormed out of the butchery, looking as if he was ready to commit murder. My uncle had apparently used the door for ‘Europeans Only’. The shop keeper had told him to go back out and enter through the non-European door! Separate doors to buy the same meat from the same shop. The stupidity of some of those apartheid rules still makes the mind boggle.

I remember that my family bought into the ‘Swart Gevaar’ (Black Danger) propaganda before the 1994 elections. Leading up to those historic elections my mother stocked up on canned food and we were told to stay close to home. I could not see how Nelson Mandela, a man who had been in prison for longer than I had been alive, could possibly come out of prison and rule South Africa, as he was sure to do. I was petrified of what would become of SA once ‘the blacks took over’. It was part of who we had become under apartheid. Part of what we had been taught: To fear black people. I realize that now. We clung to the past because we were made to fear what we did not know.

The first time I felt patriotic was during the 1995 Rugby World Cup. I was in my first year at Technikon. It was the first time in my life that I interacted with people of all races. During the start of the World Cup I remember walking to take a taxi home one afternoon and a car drove past, hooting loudly, the new SA flag flying out of the window – South Africa had just won their first match. I never had any interest in Rugby before that, although I knew who Naas Botha was, but I started watching the games.

I sang along to the theme of the world cup, ‘The world in union’ and had arguments with other coloured people who supported the All Blacks. I wonder how many readers realize that the All Blacks have quite a following in the Port Elizabeth coloured community, even today.

By the end of the World Cup I was sold – Nelson Mandela was the best thing to ever happen to our country and there was hope for the future.

Things were changing for the better.

They had to – right?