On December 25th, 2021, Ernst Roets, Executive at the civil rights organization AfriForum, posted a tweet that deeply affected me. The post portrayed a modern interpretation of resistance—one that many would assume to be armed but instead showed a traditional family, with parents taking their children to church. As expected, there were criticisms that it was about a white family and accusations of racism, but there was something in the image that resonated deeply with me, especially in the context of emigration.
1. Family History and Emigration Journey
My father comes from a large family. His parents, whom I never knew, both died before I could remember them. My great-grandfather came from Fife, Scotland, met his wife in South Africa, married her, and raised five children.
From those 5 kids was my grand father. My grandfather had a further 5 kids. Large families were the norm in those days. The eldest son, Robert, got married, had a daughter, divorced, and remarried. Next in line were my father and his sister. My father had three children, while his sister had two. The youngest, Duncan, had two children. We all lived in the Durban area, growing up in different suburbs around the city. My grandfather worked in construction, contributing to the construction of key sites such as The Pavillion in Durban and The Richard's Bay harbour.
When I was 16, my parents took me to the UK around the year 1998. At that time, my father side of the family also moved to the UK. Every son, daughter, and grandchild of my late Grandfather. This included four children of my grandfather (one had died during childhood), their spouses, and my grandfather’s nine grand children. Predictably, those children went on to marry British women and raise British families. If asked on official documents about their nationality, they would all identify as British - not South African.
2. Reflections on the Past
So what is it that affected me about the post Ernst put up. The post ultimately got me thinking, having returned to SA in 2017 it suddenly occurred to me that I was the last of my family now residing in South Africa. I was the last of my family name to live here. This on its own means little to many and yet its no small thing to me.
I recall aspects of my childhood that many would share a mutual understanding with. I recall when I was young I used to cycle my Bicycle all over my suburb seeing my friends. We would play in the streets until the street lights came on and we knew it was time to go home. In those days, in Durban City Centre there was a public park where they would put up Christmas lights and displays and my parents would me there to see them. I remember eating bunny chows with my friends outside our local arcade where we used to play Mortal Kombat on the arcade machines. I remember going to Pavilion, going to dinner with my parents eating at Centre Court, then going to Musica, Exclusive Books, the Biltong Store and finally the Movies downstairs to watch many different films, including The Matrix. I remember going to the Wheel in Durban, on Point Road, where there was small little market stores on the top floor where I would get Nintendo Cartridge Games.
I remember in 1993 when the first black kids joined my school after the ending of apartheid. I remember in 1995 when we had the Rugby World Cup and pogs were all the rage. I remember how aggressively we tried to collect all of them and trade them with our friends. I remember when South Africa won the world cup. I remember Saturday mornings watching KTV. They used to have a Toys R Us 1 minute rush and a Sonic The Hedgehog phone in where you used to steer Sonic by saying Forward, Forward, Jump. I remember Sunday mornings when my Grandmother would put a roast Chicken in the oven at 50 degrees, which would ultimately be cooked by the time we got home after the usual 3 hour Sunday service.
These are just some of the things I remember, and I am sure many of you will read this and remember those days and have an understanding of what my childhood might have looked like because of a shared history.
My father and his brothers all served in the armed forces. They all fought on the borders. They all got married in Durban, had their special days there, raced their wives to hospitals in Durban where their kids were born. They bought their school uniforms, went to their gala days, sports days, went to their running clubs etc. Many took their kids on their first paper routes on Sunday mornings at 5am.
3. Reflection on Emigration
The key of all this is, and what affected me most was that this was all for nothing. I am the last of my family in South Africa. Our unified history, our struggles, our joys, who we are as a people are all gone. My brothers and their cousins will all raise British Kids. These Kids will have a childhood very different to our own. They will go to a British School, talk with a British accent, have British morals and values and one day when we sit down with them and talk about our history, our childhoods and our upbringings - they will simply put not understand anything we have to say. Our shared cultural appreciation will be gone. They will look at us with eyes that do not comprehend. In many respects their experiences will differ so much with our own that they will consider our childhoods as being now more than bizarre.
My family has a family plot in Durban where my grandfather and my father are buried. The entire family no longer lives here, if I died tomorrow I would be the last to be buried there and then our family history would be over. No one would ever know what we experienced, no one would ever know we lived there, and certainly none of the now British kids would vaguely even understand what kind of childhoods we might have experienced.
In our eagerness to escape South Africa for our better lives abroad we made ourselves foreigners in another land and in the process committed cultural genocide. As the last of my family in South Africa I can’t help but look back with sadness and wonder whether it was worth it. Whether we should have endured more than we did.
4. Conclusion
In hindsight, the reasons many cite for their emigration stories is always the same. Crime and Economic opportunities. Often we sacrifice our cultural identities to become economic baige units in a foreign land with no cultural or historical identities. But its fine, because we have a job, live in an apartment the size of a RDP house and pay our taxes as good economic units should.
When challenged we say, yes, but at least its safer…
But I ask, is that all life is? Would my great grandfather having gone through everything he did sit today and say, I’m so glad my great grand kids would in later years go and become an economic unit in the country I sought to leave in the first place? Or would he ask why I failed to endure in the way that he did to continue his legacy and family history?
I don’t have the answers for that. But I did come home and endure I will. I will not be the last of my family to live in this great country of my birth.