Black Queen White King Check Mate: Race Relations Seen Through the Lenses of Lover’S Chess

By William O'Dowda

First and foremost, this is a love story, although the multiple endings fragment the romance into a tragedy and a comedy as well. It is a true story, autobiographical. But it doesnt mention any names. No one is really sure exactly what happened. We may never know. When we do, a sequel could be on the cards!

The white groom is writing the story as he sees it, adoring his black bride. He relates the traditional rites of passage and compares them to modern conventions. But after the Lobola is paid, expectations do not materialize, so it gets complicated. Readers can decide which of multiple endings they like best, which they are inclined to believe.

In the end, the narrative moves to deep reflection and lessons learned, looking for some value in the experience. The story gives you goose bumps at times, it makes you laugh, it makes you cry, and it might make you cuss. But it will open your eyes. The themes of racism, xenophobia, alcohol abuse, tribal authority, and gender rights all come into play on the South African checkerboard of love. As another writer once famously said: alls fair in love and war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Apr 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482861846

William O'Dowda

The author is a white foreigner who has settled in Africa. He has lived in Africa longer than his bride, who has never lived anywhere else, because he is that much older. He is an empathetic bridge-builder, unhappy with the status quo in which enclaves can harden into ghettos. He detested apartheid but still sees its legacy in attitudes and architecture. He is not particularly well-to-do on white standards but is, of course, much better off than most South Africans. Middle middle class, not even upper middle class, and certainly not upper class. His empathy is just too strong, so he has sacrificed over the decades to promote causes and worked as a change agent, an activist. So he wanted to practice what he preaches about rapprochement and the need to get that Rainbow Nation out of TV studios and into real life on the street. He is hardworking and at times daring too. He speaks more than one language and is well educated. He is biblically literate, so he uses a lot of metaphors from that source. This draws him close to readers of all races in South Africa and also to those of different monotheistic religions because he taps mostly their common source, the Old Testament. He follows the news closely and writes commentary on a regular basis, so he mixes both touching testimony from his personal life with philosophical positivity. Even when it doesn't go well, he looks for learning points. Where there is pain, there is gain. This book is written under a pen name to assure anonymity. This is built-in protection for the one he cherishes. She deserves praise but can’t be named. Because it’s a true story about someone who wasn’t true.

Book preview

METHODOLOGY

They lived happily ever after...

Most romances end on that note. This one begins there. To assure that a happy ending does come to pass, I am taking the following precautions:

• I never mention her name. Nor any person's name, for that matter, including mine. The only place names used are complementary - like Lowveld or Moria

• I write intentionally in the first person - not in the third person or using pseudonyms -- to emphasize that this is a true story. Well, it is one side of a true story

• I avoid keeping to a plot and rather ruminate on what has happened. Thus you can expect a series of thought-bursts rather than a play-by-play

• The closest I get to a timeline is the seasonal framework -- spring, summer, autumn and winter. But these are symbolic not a story-line

• I keep it thematic more than narrative. But it is all historical. It happened. To me

The Right to Privacy vs the Right to Know

On the first day of winter, I got a phone call from the local newspaper.

Is it true that you got married? the reporter asked.

Yes I replied.

Is it true that the bride ran away? she went on.

I chuckled. I don't see it that way I replied. "She told me 'I am your makoti but we are not married'. That sounds like oxymoron to me as a Canadian. But she says she won't move in with me until the marriage is registered at Home Affairs."

I did not ask the reporter not to print the story, but I think the right to privacy prevailed? (By the way, makoti means bride or newlywed whereas mfati means wife.)

Now it's my turn to be the journalist. I want to alert other foreigners to the near and present danger of paying Lobola in South Africa. It can get very dark and complicated. But I have to do so with due caution. Because although I have a story to tell, the characters in the story have rights just like I do, including the right to privacy - because this is a true story.

Chess - i have a story to tell

1

SPRING

This is the season when all plants and animals look their best. Flowering trees bloom in the Lowveld and that attracts the birds and the bees...

Spring is the season of love and that was in the air when I winked at a waitress who I ordered a take-away from. I could sense from the sparkle in her eye that she was interested, so while waiting for the Chinese food to be ready, I went to Pick and Pay and bought some roses. When I collected the take-away, I handed her a rose and my business card along with payment including a generous tip. That was as romantic as the setting would allow.

It worked! She called me. Soon after, we met after hours for the first time.

Ukuthwala

This practice is controversial. To some, it is abduction -- a violation of human rights. To others, it is customary, a sort of an African variation of Romeo and Juliet. A man and a woman fall in love but the family and community of the bride disapprove. So the boyfriend abducts the lady and deflowers her. Then a few days later some of his relatives rock up at her family's kraal to negotiate a marriage, after it is fait accompli.

ukuwthwala

But it does not always start with love. Sometimes it can be more of an arranged marriage, for at times the bride's parents have set her up, ahead of time. This comes right to the edge of exploitation, even though young girls have been brought up to look forward to the day that they will be able to fulfil their role in a man's home - the traditional worldview.

It has also been a way for older men, sometimes widowers, to marry younger women. Even to remove orphans from institutions. Whatever the variation, the practice is seen by some as anachronistic and out of sync with gender rights.

To the extent that it has been known to force girls who are under-aged to marry. Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre, the Rural Women's Movement and the Commission on Gender Equality met with Mandla Mandela, an ANC MP better known as the grandson of Nelson, to clarify his position on ukuthwala. He is chief of the Mvezo traditional council. He told Parliament's portfolio committee on rural development and land reform in July 2010 that, "for a girl to be taken as a wife through ukuthwala --- the process has nothing to do with age. When you are going to discuss culture do not even try to bring in white notions, as such an approach will turn things upside down. Firstly, culture has no age. Age is something we learn today because of our Westernisation."

I found myself attracted to a younger woman. Was it spring fever? Age disparate relationships are not uncommon in Africa. Yes they can be transactional but they don't have to be. They can be genuine and soul-nourishing.

The Mail & Guardian quotes Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani, who...

describes in his acclaimed book Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism how what came to be understood as custom" was in fact a concentration of the authoritarian elements of pre-colonial societies.

Lest one thinks that the tag 'customary' was a shorthand of letting things be as they always had been --- we need to bear in mind that there was nothing voluntary about custom in the colonial period --- colonial custom was enforced with a whip in a system that Mamdani dubs decentralised despotism.

The revival of practices such as ukuthwala, virginity testing and male circumcision should be read against the attempts to circumscribe rural women's rights."

In general, customary practices have not always been democratic. Or if they once were, could there have been some authoritarian-creep during the colonial period?

Inhlawulo

In our first meeting, at my cottage, we sat and talked. It was open and frank. To sum it up, she was looking