THE first time I saw a black and white couple walking down the street holding hands and cosily snuggling up to each other, my eyes followed them until they turned the corner.
I grew up in a strictly black environment where one did not date across the colour line - unless you experimented in your early 20s on campus.
The first couple I saw fitted the usual stereotype I had heard some ignorant people speak about with either curiosity or disdain.
He looked like an older man in his late 50s with a receding hairline, and she was a dark, pretty young girl with braids hanging down to her bum.
I immediately thought he was rich and that she must be an exotic species wanting to indulge her extravagant lifestyle. I obviously jumped to conclusions.
I was so intent on finding some dirty or weird reasons to explain something as natural and as simple as attraction and love.
Now that I am doing a proper flashback about the same incident years later, it's striking that the white man did not actually look that rich, or that old.
He may have been in his mid-40s and looked fairly ordinary. Except in my mind I chose to stick the lecherous old man label on him. This is because it was easier to think that he was simply in the relationship to buy the lady's company. And to think of it, her braids only went past her shoulders but, my jaundiced eye just chose to elongate them a bit.
I guess it is the remnants of the dreaded Immorality Act of 1957 that indoctrinated many of us to also criminalise love between the races.
In fact, the act turned most of us into voluntary moral policemen and women. We may not have arrested the couples for being in love, but many of us made sure they felt our disapproval.
We obsessed with trying to provide answers for why a white girl was kissing a black boy. Why a black boy would want to marry a Chinese girl. We found comfort in giving them labels and calling them names.
During apartheid, there was apparently a special branch of police officers who investigated anyone who dared to love outside their race. These policemen spent considerable time and resources eavesdropping on people's bedrooms.
They placed secret cameras to catch those who flouted the rule that said thou-shall-not-cavort-with-another-race.
They would wait for the slumber effects that usually afflict sated lovers and pounce on them in the wee hours as the forbidden lovers enjoyed post-coital bliss. They would take embarrassing pictures of them naked, shove them into vans and arrest them.
News broke out recently that Hollywood actress Daniele Watts was handcuffed and arrested by police for kissing her white husband, Brian Lucas, in public because she was thought to have been a prostitute.
If the tables were turned and the two officers chanced upon a young white couple kissing fondly as they tend to do, they would not have batted an eyelid.
But Watts was arrested because of the same prejudice that concluded that there must be something sinister because the kiss was between a white man and a black woman.
After this incident, I was reminded of how far we have come in South Africa when it comes to our tolerance of inter-racial love.
Gone are the days when we used to scratch our heads trying to define love by any other name than what it simply is.
High-profile couples such as Mmusi Maimane and his wife Natalie and songstress Lira and her husband Robin Kohl have challenged the stereotypes and have helped all of us to exorcise our own racial demons.
Indeed, South Africans of all colours are making love these days and not war and it is good to watch.
It is the power of the snuggle, as one local author liked to say.
For more stories like this one, be sure to buy the Sowetan newspaper from Mondays to Fridays
Crazy little thing called love knows no colour
THE first time I saw a black and white couple walking down the street holding hands and cosily snuggling up to each other, my eyes followed them until they turned the corner.
I grew up in a strictly black environment where one did not date across the colour line - unless you experimented in your early 20s on campus.
The first couple I saw fitted the usual stereotype I had heard some ignorant people speak about with either curiosity or disdain.
He looked like an older man in his late 50s with a receding hairline, and she was a dark, pretty young girl with braids hanging down to her bum.
I immediately thought he was rich and that she must be an exotic species wanting to indulge her extravagant lifestyle. I obviously jumped to conclusions.
I was so intent on finding some dirty or weird reasons to explain something as natural and as simple as attraction and love.
Now that I am doing a proper flashback about the same incident years later, it's striking that the white man did not actually look that rich, or that old.
He may have been in his mid-40s and looked fairly ordinary. Except in my mind I chose to stick the lecherous old man label on him. This is because it was easier to think that he was simply in the relationship to buy the lady's company. And to think of it, her braids only went past her shoulders but, my jaundiced eye just chose to elongate them a bit.
I guess it is the remnants of the dreaded Immorality Act of 1957 that indoctrinated many of us to also criminalise love between the races.
In fact, the act turned most of us into voluntary moral policemen and women. We may not have arrested the couples for being in love, but many of us made sure they felt our disapproval.
We obsessed with trying to provide answers for why a white girl was kissing a black boy. Why a black boy would want to marry a Chinese girl. We found comfort in giving them labels and calling them names.
During apartheid, there was apparently a special branch of police officers who investigated anyone who dared to love outside their race. These policemen spent considerable time and resources eavesdropping on people's bedrooms.
They placed secret cameras to catch those who flouted the rule that said thou-shall-not-cavort-with-another-race.
They would wait for the slumber effects that usually afflict sated lovers and pounce on them in the wee hours as the forbidden lovers enjoyed post-coital bliss. They would take embarrassing pictures of them naked, shove them into vans and arrest them.
News broke out recently that Hollywood actress Daniele Watts was handcuffed and arrested by police for kissing her white husband, Brian Lucas, in public because she was thought to have been a prostitute.
If the tables were turned and the two officers chanced upon a young white couple kissing fondly as they tend to do, they would not have batted an eyelid.
But Watts was arrested because of the same prejudice that concluded that there must be something sinister because the kiss was between a white man and a black woman.
After this incident, I was reminded of how far we have come in South Africa when it comes to our tolerance of inter-racial love.
Gone are the days when we used to scratch our heads trying to define love by any other name than what it simply is.
High-profile couples such as Mmusi Maimane and his wife Natalie and songstress Lira and her husband Robin Kohl have challenged the stereotypes and have helped all of us to exorcise our own racial demons.
Indeed, South Africans of all colours are making love these days and not war and it is good to watch.
It is the power of the snuggle, as one local author liked to say.
For more stories like this one, be sure to buy the Sowetan newspaper from Mondays to Fridays
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