​Today, on the 25th April 2020, I have arrived at a particularly significant milestone. As of around 9:30am this morning, I’ve been a resident of the UK for a full eighteen years, meaning that I’ve now lived in England for longer than I ever lived in South Africa. To put it another, more mind-boggling way - if I’d fathered a child when I arrived in the UK, that child would now be the same age as I was when I landed here (not to mention there’d have been some rather alarming things going on in my personal life).

The fact that I’ve now spent more years in England than South Africa is a bizarre thought, and one that I couldn’t even have imagined when I stepped off that Virgin Atlantic flight in April 2002. Back then, it was all about living from moment to moment, sucking up the experiences around me like a recently unblocked plughole, overwhelming myself wilfully with the sights, sounds and experiences of a culture so similar, and yet so fundamentally alien to my own. I was most certainly a foreigner. A tourist even. I had a strong sense of being overseas, away from home. A sense that, as long and free-ranging as my chain was, the anchor to which it was attached still lay firmly in the serene folds of the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa.

Of course, today I’m still essentially that same person, albeit now with the clichéd paradigms of less hair and more wisdom (the two apparently being inversely proportional). But there’s one fundamental aspect of my personality which has come into question more as the years have rolled by, and that’s the matter of that anchor. These days, although the weight of it still remains wedged in place back in South Africa, the chain by which I’m attached to it has gradually been corroding away in the salty waters of my life experience, to the point now that if I tugged on it, I'm not sure it would still hold. If for some reason I were forced to choose between British or South African citizenship tomorrow, I think it would be a pretty easy decision to make.

The thing is, while superficially I still consider myself to be “South African” (mainly because my British life still hasn’t quite succeeded in removing the saffa tint from my voice), the reality is these days I bear only a passing resemblance to the residents of my birthplace. I am missing nearly two decades of popular culture, I have forgotten much of the language, rules and customs, and despite my best attempts to keep myself in the loop, I also know precious little about my country's current affairs or politics. Were I to pack up my belongings and move back there tomorrow, I would find it just as bewildering as I found the UK when I first arrived here. And doesn't that say a lot.

But, here's the rub - I don't really feel like I'm British either. Instead, it feels rather as though I've turned on the TV part-way through a movie - early enough for me to get to grips with the characters and figure out the storyline, but far enough along that I've missed a few important scenes at the beginning. No matter how involved I become with the plot, no matter how many tears I shed at the end when the protagonist's dog dies, I will still always be missing a few final pieces of the puzzle. Of course, I can still find out what happened at the beginning by asking someone who watched the whole thing, but even so, I will still always have that nagging feeling of having missed a bit.

And so, if I’m neither South African nor British, what precisely am I? Well, a hybrid, really. Britafrican. And in fact, that’s something I've become quite proud of over the years. After all, hybrids are almost always an improvement - they combine the best of two individual concepts into something new and unique which surpasses the originals. In the same way that the diverse gene inheritance of multiracial people means they are stronger and less susceptible to disease, my Saffa/Brit cultural inheritance gives me some advantages over my mono-national contemporaries. On one hand, I've retained many of my South African cultural mannerisms - my unique accent, my proficiency with a 'braai' (barbecue), my love and experience of outdoor activities like hiking or camping, and my useful local knowledge when talking about or showing people around my homeland. On the other hand, I have a British passport, a solid knowledge of UK history, geography and politics, and a bank account with some nice solid pounds sterling in it (well, relatively solid anyway - thanks, Brexit). I’m as proud of my Britishness as I am of my South-Africanishness, even though neither one defines me completely.

Being a hybrid also grants me a unique perspective on life in both countries. I’ve noticed, for instance, that many Brits have a tendency to bemoan the shortcomings of their country - the government, the transport, the weather and even their own culture. As an immigrant though I subconsciously compare every aspect of my British life to that in my country of origin. I’m not stewing over the five-minute delay on the tube so much as marvelling at the convenience of its very existence. I’m not grumbling about the continual dampness so much as celebrating our abundance of water. Likewise, when I’m in South Africa I can now appreciate the raw, visceral beauty of the country, its culture and its people, just as a tourist would, without becoming bogged down by its day-to-day fears and frustrations.

So, after eighteen years in England, I'm in the arguably enviable position of being able to consciously pick-and-mix the best bits from both of my homelands with which to furnish my personality, like a sort of cultural Ikea. It’s a rare gift, and one which can only really be obtained with the perspective gained from experiencing life for an extended period in more than one country. Sure, these days anyone with a passport and a credit card can travel to far-off lands and experience foreign culture. But it’s only once you immerse yourself in that culture for long enough to assimilate some of it into your own personality that you really become permanently richer for the experience.

Afrikaans people in South Africa have a word for a white colonial of British descent: "Soutpiel" (pronounced “sowt-peel”), which roughly translates as "Salty Penis". The rather droll joke being that they have one foot in Africa and one foot back in England, leaving their privates dangling in the sea between the two. It’s intended to be demeaning - the inference being that us “Souties” can never truly be South African because we can’t let go of our European roots. And certainly, I would concur that am the definitive (if not literal) personification of a Soutpiel.

Nevertheless, as far as I’m concerned, the joke is on them. Sure, I may have roots in Europe, but I also have roots in Africa, and from them both I extract a rich cultural nourishment which includes both the dry red soil of the African plains and the damp white chalk of the British downs. And that can only serve to make me stronger and more culturally diverse, after all.

To another eighteen years!

I lost a loyal friend this week
The truest one of all
Who listened quietly when I talked
And answered when I called

A friend who held no prejudice
No jealousy or hate
He never tried to change my ways
Or influence my state

He calmed me when I angered
Consoled me when I cried
He made me laugh, or simply sat
With me when I was quiet

We met when we were both still young
And full of energy
We roamed about outside for miles
And played contentedly

But then, when I got older
I chose to move away
A thousand miles across the sea
Cut off from yesterday

Yet every year when I returned
Our bond would be renewed
Though I had changed and seen the world
Our friendship still stayed true

I noticed though, as years went by
My friend was getting old
The life he lived, so wild and free
Began to take its toll

The time that I last saw him
I knew would be goodbye
He lacked that sprightly humour
And that twinkle in his eye

It seems to me he knew it too
Though he would never say
When I was home he stayed close by
My side throughout the day

My friend’s departure broke my heart
And left an empty hole
To lose a childhood friend creates
A gap within your soul

But in it, I will place a box –
A simple diary of
The memories he gave: Of joy,
Companionship and love

So here’s to you my special friend
You may no longer be
But you’ll play always in my heart –
The closest part to me

​***

There will come a time
When I can no longer stare at these soft hills,
When I can no longer brush
The head of this grass across my wrist,
When I can no longer rest
My ears against this peaceful silence,
And caress my cheek
Against this sweet breeze,
Perfumed by grass and moist soil.

There will come a time
When I can no longer open this veranda door,
Inhaling this contentment of coffee and dew,
And the gentle note of my mother’s voice:
“Good morning!”
When I can no longer sink
Into this symphony of rustling birch leaves,
Faint grasshoppers and repeating turtle doves,
And touch this sun, warm on my back.

Then, I will be cast adrift
In a cry of neon signs and sirens,
A face at every turn,
Concrete under every footstep,
I will float away
In a shouting world,
That never could understand
The joy of solitude,
The companionship of nature.
Then, my familiarity will be artificial,
My home will be a raft
In a stormy sea.

…But that time is not now.

So I will take a minute
To gather up these quiet moments,
Like Lego bricks,
And build them,
Piece by piece,
Into a soundproof room.
And there I will live,
In the moments before I fall asleep,
And the noises outside my window then
Will become those of this true home.

​***

When I first stepped out onto English soil 16 years ago, I was completely oblivious to the complex class spiderweb into which I was walking. Of course, we had a class structure in South Africa, but as you’ve probably guessed, this was designated mainly by race. As terribly politically incorrect as this was, it did make things easy, especially in my young, naive child’s mind. Black people dug up the roads and vacuumed the house, white people worked in offices and drove BMWs. Simple. We were white, so we socialised with other whites. Some earned a bit more, some a bit less, but we were all essentially the same: White middle class. My parents were thankfully quite liberal, but I knew plenty of other white families who were openly derogatory about other races and their cultures. Such was the twisted world of apartheid South Africa. Things did start changing somewhat after Mandela came to power in 1994, but for the most part the social structure in the rural farming community where we lived remained largely unchanged. Blacks and whites lived totally separate lives, we in our comfy carpeted four-bedroomed houses and they in their primitive huts with straw roofs and open fires.

So it was naturally quite perplexing for me to settle in a country where the class structure is not nearly as obvious. On my very first day, shortly after disembarking the plane, I walked past a building site and was somewhat surprised to see a white guy shovelling dirt out of a hole. A couple of days later I watched intrigued as a team of white binmen collected the rubbish on my street. At first, I assumed this meant that everyone was the same, that class here simply didn’t exist. But of course that was very naive of me. I quickly learned that people here do indeed fit into one of three distinct classes – working class, middle class or upper class.

But this is where things get awfully complicated. Ask a builder what class he is, and he will probably tell you proudly that he is working class. “Salt of the earth, mate.” Cool. Easy. So all builders are working class then? Erm, not necessarily. Take Darren: He grew up in a working class family and started off working on building sites. But he now owns his own loft conversion company and employs teams of builders all round the country. He works in a plush air-conditioned office and drives a sleek new Jaguar. He will tell you he is middle class, pointing to his collared shirt and his prim secretary, but technically he is still a builder by trade.

Right, so it’s about money then? Well, that comes into it perhaps, but again, assume at your peril. I once dated a girl whose dad had the top job at a factory. They lived a very comfortable life in a stylish house with all the mod cons which I would have associated with middle class life back in South Africa. However, when I put this to her she seemed quite offended: “We’ve always been working class, we’re not posh!”

Hmmm.

The deeper you dig, the more convoluted it becomes. Where you live, what you eat, what you wear, what you watch on TV and what sports you like can all contribute to what class you fall under. Most middle class kids to go to university, many working class kids don’t. Middle class men are happy to use an umbrella when it rains, but take one to a building site and you’ll be laughed at. Working class people consider themselves as simple, honest, hardworking people holding the country together, and are liable to label Brits in the other social classes as “posh wankers” who haven’t got the guts for a “real man’s job” (say “mayn’s”). Middle and upper class people, by contrast, will often opine that the working classes are “a bit rough”, and consider them prone to violence, crime and, *cough*, unsavoury sexual activities. There are a few grains of truth in both perhaps, but as with any stereotype these opinions are vastly overinflated. When you dissolve away all the extraneous assumptions, the bare metal of the matter is simply that class isn’t really about your job or your bank balance; it’s about your culture.

Funnily enough, Brits don’t have any trouble assigning themselves and others into social classes. Most of them know instinctively where someone fits, even without speaking to them. And these days I generally do too. But explaining it is a struggle. It’s lots of little snatches of information, like how you conduct yourself, your accent, what vocabulary and grammar you use, what culture is important to you, what your parents do, where you hang out and what part of town you live in. But at the same time there’s no rule book which states that if you listen to classical music you are middle class and if you live on a council estate you aren’t. It’s more instinctive than factual.

All this leaves me in an odd position. What class am I? Do I import my old class assignment from South Africa to the UK, or is my class here determined by what I do for a living? The latter would certainly seem to apply to the lady I saw recently on a BBC documentary about London Underground. She is a cleaner, which most Brits would unanimously proclaim as a working class profession, yet in her home country of Russia she was a successful professional cyclist, basically a celebrity. So if this is the case, then based on the jobs I’ve had since I’ve been here, I am both middle class and working class. I have worked in a mortgage consultancy, an electrical installation company, at Tesco as a delivery driver and as a manager in a corporate office. In each profession I have had to mould myself to the predominant class structure in order to get on with my colleagues. A couple of years ago when I worked on building sites, the mere mention of art, rugby or university would generally be met with scornful remarks, so instead we talked about football and women with big breasts. At one stage we were working on an electrical installation job at the British Museum. As we were carrying a length of trunking through a display on ancient Mesopotamia, one of my colleagues remarked: “What kind of nobhead comes here and spends all day looking at these bits of old rock anyway?”

Indeed.

So during that period of time, I probably would have considered myself working class, based on my profession. But I would then find myself strolling home at night listening to Mozart or Beethoven on my iPhone, and accompanying my girlfriend at weekends on trips to art galleries and old castles. My colleagues, by comparison, wiled away their evenings watching Eastenders and spent their weekends playing football. I’m not in any way trying to insinuate that one pastime is superior to any other; only that they are very different. In which case, can I really class myself culturally with a group of people who have mostly alternate interests to my own? I don’t think I can.

So, I’m middle class then? Well, I don’t know. I live in Streatham, definitely not one of London’s most salubrious areas. I don’t own my own home, instead I rent a room in a flat shared with a couple of friends. My salary is not great – I don’t even earn enough to afford a car anymore. On paper I actually tick more working class boxes than middle class ones, and yet I feel more middle class than I do working class.

The conclusion I have come to is that as a foreign immigrant, I am in the seemingly enviable position of not being categorised into any social class, as opposed to having it pre-formatted into me by generations of social stereotyping. As a result, I have British friends who come from both working and middle class backgrounds, and I enjoy all of their company equally. But the downside is that, like a jigsaw piece from the wrong puzzle, I may perhaps be able to squeeze myself into a social space with similar gaps and protrusions, but I will never quite fit completely. And as long as that’s the case, I will never truly feel that sense of belonging that comes with the pride of belonging to your own class.

​***

Something struck me recently, whilst I was struggling to scour a pot which had been left unwashed on our kitchen counter for about two decades: Every action that we perform during our lifetime can be broken down into two basic conceptual categories: Creative, or Destructive.

Creative processes involve bringing something into the world that wasn’t there before or improving, changing or restoring something and thereby increasing it’s value to ourselves and to others. It is the embodiment of an idea, the realization of a goal or the assistance of a fellow being. It can be as literal as painting a picture or as abstract as smiling at a stranger. Creative processes will always have some kind of aim, and more often than not have a defined conclusion.

Destructive processes by comparison are generally aimless, lazy and wasteful. They are the actions that remove something from us, degrade our personal environment or which expend energy or resources without giving us a useful return – a night slumped in front of the television or a rude gesture at a traffic light. They are selfish actions, indulgent often, and yet they are generally the ones we forget with the passage of time.
Our spiritual well-being thrives on Creative processes. They are the very fundamental building blocks of happiness, for upon completion of these actions we feel successful, fulfilled, victorious, ecstatic even. They are the moments we often remember for many years to come, doused in the heady scent of nostalgia. They make us feel more intelligent, more cultured and more purposeful, and they give us, and others around us, the inspiration to keep creating. Even the most mundane or indeed unpleasant Creative processes give us satisfaction upon completion, and in fact generally more of it than we imagine before embarking on the task.
​
But human beings are creatures of irony. In reality we are incredibly good at enduring discomfort. We are smart, initiating and with the right tools at our disposal we can adapt ourselves to an incredibly wide range of less-than-advantageous situations. But our fatal flaw is that we believe that we dislike these situations far more than we actually do. And so, when given a choice between a Creative or a Destructive process, we will often choose the Destructive one, because we believe that it will cause us less pain. Take out the rubbish or watch TV? Go out with friends on a cold winter evening or stay at home? Give up our seat on the tube for the pregnant lady, or pretend to read the paper? In all of these situations, the Destructive process beckons, and yet the Creative option gives us a modicum of inner peace, however small, that we can draw on later for the warmth of happiness.
So go forth now, and do your washing up.

***

​What is the difference between right and wrong?
When you are right, to a person who is wrong, you are wrong,
But if you are right, to a person who is right, you are right
Likewise, when you are wrong, to a person who is right, you are wrong,
But if you are wrong, to a person who is wrong, you are right.
So: Wrong to wrong is right, and right to wrong is wrong.
But right to right is also right, and wrong to right is also wrong.
Therefore, wrong can be right,
And right can be wrong.
So in fact, there is no difference between right and wrong!
​
 ***