............she came 2nd in the competition and was outstanding.

Coconut by Kopano Matlwa

When I think of the word coconut two meanings come to mind: the first being the large brown tropical seed consisting of a woody husk surrounded by fibre, lined with white flesh and containing clear liquid. The second a person of colour who is white on the inside.

I conducted a mxit survey to find out more about the second definition and got the following replies. A coconut is a person of colour who acts white, has a white person’s accent, acts posh, and hates black people’s music. A coconut is someone who doesn’t turn around when someone yells fried chicken, can’t pronounce any black words, refuses to speak their mother tongue insisting that they can only speak English and only has white friends.

The response I was expecting from at least one person was you, so it was no surprise when that was one of the replies. I despise being called a coconut! Just because I have white best friends, sound like a white person , can’t speak my mother tongue and I listen to Paramore, I am a coconut but no one ever stops and considers that I have black best friends too, I have no problem pronouncing any black words and I listen to artists like Black Coffee and HHP.

The thing that bugs me most about being called a coconut is that everyone who calls me that is a hypocrite! They have white friends, they know all the words to Justin Bieber’s hit songs and they act posh. The only difference between me and them is that they can all speak their home languages, but I bet that if they were to go into Soweto or Alex they would be called coconuts and they would not want to be associated with such ghetto people! Black people who aren’t Coco are ghetto. It is believed that their English usually consists of sentences like “Borrow me your English, mine she’s broken.” It is believed that most white people’s English is outstanding and that they all live in the lap of luxury.

To me it seems like we are still living in apartheid like era. It seems that when someone tries to break the racial barriers by not limiting themselves to what is expected of them based on their skin tone they are insulted-called names like coconut and Oreo. South Africans waffle on about how much the country has grown, how far the country has come since the Apartheid days, how the country isn’t just black and white anymore, there are shades of grey. But if one is not free to express him or herself without the fear of being labelled a derogatory term by society, one has to ask are there really shades of grey because I still see black and white!