Negotiating Identity In-Between 1

I was born in Dordrecht, a small rural town in the Eastern Cape, on the brink of the Transkei region. This region is the birthplace of many of our current political leadership, including Nelson Mandela. In many ways, this town symbolizes my early and later years as living between culture.

The name Dordrecht derives from a Dutch town and reflects the colonial heritage of living in Africa as a person of European descent: I was borne a European-African. In the town three languages were spoken: English, Afrikaans (my mother tongue with Dutch roots but formed as anti-colonial language under African skies) and Xhosa (the indigenous African language of the Eastern Cape). I had an early realization of the close link between language, identity, and culture. When the policies of grand apartheid were put into practice, Dordrecht literally became a "border town" between "white South Africa" and the Transkei black "homeland," which emphasized a living on/between the boundaries in a graphic political sense.

The isolated life as "white South African" in the height of the apartheid years cut me off from these rich diverse beginnings. After my studies in Music education at the University of Stellenbosch, an isolated Afrikaans institution of good quality, I accepted my first academic appointment at the University of Venda. Here I was exposed again to the rich diversities of language, culture, art, tradition, and identity. As apartheid came to be dismantled, more vistas opened up to explore the richness of life-in-between, lost over many years.