2“Honor your father and mother.” This is the first commandment with a promise: 3If you honour your father and mother, “things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth.”b – Ephesians 6
I grew up in quite a conservative Christian household. Church seemed to be the focal point of everyday life. It orientated time, established relationships, made for good reading practice and of course presented the follower with a moral and ethical codex. I am no longer a practitioner of institutionalised religion, yet I find that my history with Christianity is way more complicated than what I anticipated. I seldom quote the Bible, but I think it provides a sound entry point to my article. Especially given the conflict I am toiling in.
I have had many conversations with friends about Black Tax (I use capital letters because it seems fitting for the weight that the concept carries). First introduced to the concept (more accurately experience) when I arrived at the University of Cape Town in 2015, I found it quite alien. Later on, during my time at UCT, I became increasingly aware of this experience. It was not quite as foreign as I thought. It was there all along, built into my psyche. All the UCT did was give me a language to express my experience. Now, I am a sociologist by discipline, but I do not want this to be an overt academic critique of the concept Black Tax. Quite honestly, I am too exhausted to offer up another one of my life experiences for academic dissection. Neither do I want this article to be received passively. Let us share in the uncomfortably that we secretly toil under.
My basic understanding of Black Tax is tied to obligation. The obligation that befalls those who “have made it out”. Made it out of poverty, abusive families, heavy physical responsibilities, caring, cooking and many more. This idea of “making it” is not one that is linked to some grand theory of human progression; it is primal. We “want” to make it because we need to survive. Our families want us to make it because they want to survive and experience a better life. The reality is that we have not made it out. Have we? Leaving home for university brought us to the point of staring into a very ugly monster: Black Tax. During primary and high school we had a one-dimensional view of it. Now we have it in 3D or are we at 4D yet? Point is, we have been born into a spider web and we realise that we are not the spider at all.
Growing up with a single mother in Atlantis was difficult. My mother did not complete high school and consequently had to do a lot of general work in factories. My grandmother did not have schooling at all and she too worked in a factory. My grandfather was an abuser, alcoholic and a drug addict. Financially we were trying to get by with staple rich food (which is why I weighed 43kg for many years) and there was rarely money for clothes. Apart from going to bed hungry sometimes, the various forms of abuse we experienced would make white Anthropologists/Sociologists best-sellers and NRF A-rated researchers. The reality is that much of my childhood I had an above-average awareness of what was going on. At 11 I started my first job, gardening. I was just a little gay boy pulling weeds from peoples backyard. I am 23 now and it is safe to say, I only tend to sunflowers and roses. My stint at gardening a decade ago was not recreational. I had to contribute to the household income. It pained me to see my mother worried about where the next bread is coming from. She never asked me to contribute, but at 11 years old I realised that I have to. At what age did life start asking you to pay Black Tax? One, two decades ago? I thought so.
My conscious does not allow me to sit here and say that 11 years old me only did the gardening out of love for my mother. We all know that it did not start nor stop with gardening. We all know that pulling those weeds was the action that resulted from endless nights of thinking about how I could stop making my mother worried. At 11 year old, I was expected to reason like an adult, make decisions like an adult and most importantly I realised that “I have to make it”. That is what Black Tax is. It manifests itself at a tender age where your biggest concern should probably be the impending growth of disgusting pubic hair. Instead, you fantasise about the meals, home, car and the paycheck you will get in 10 years after you got a degree. That is your comfort because in your reality you are denied a childhood or any other chance of being care-free. I love my mother dearly and would probably do the same thing if time-travel and alternate universes were a thing. However, it cracked me. The responsibility cracked me and I am still trying to patch it up.
We are all familiar with the idea of Ubuntu. How could we not? In my case, my Coloured self heard the term “Ubuntu” on SABC 2 every Freedom Day. Naturally accompanying pictures of Mr Mandela. The experience of Ubuntu is loaded with a sense of community, collective responsibility, humility, compassion and selflessness. I am not well versed in the history of the term and experience of Ubuntu itself, but I too had a similar guiding principle. I extract Ephesians 6 as evidence, Your Honour. As a child, I loved reading the Bible and religiously-no pun intended- practised its teachings. Honouring my father and mother is something I hold most dear, even today. She tried her best and was a really good mother to me. However, how long are we going to associate Black Tax with Ubuntu and the Bible and other seemingly morally guiding principles?
Black Tax is the obligation that years of oppression and purposeful disempowerment places upon a select few black kids who go to university. The gag of the season is that while we might write articles about it, it is an obligation faced by the majority (Black), young people. Like an umbrella, this structural inequality opens up above black fetuses, babies, them kids and us. Look at the Taxi ranks, the bus terminus, check the corners of our township streets. They are all there. We are all there. It is a tax that does not care for Early Childhood Development, improving infrastructure, nutrition, safety from gender-based violence, education, adequate health services. It is not filled with compassion, community, love or pulling weeds. Black Tax is destroying me, but I cannot stop. It made me dream of a job that will pay well, not one that brings me joy and fulfilment. It makes me think twice before I spend money on my much-loved steak. It orientates where I envision my self living, vacationing (if I am lucky) if I would rent or buy a house. For others it means not attaining tertiary education, going to find work, endure exploitation, give the whole paycheck, making sure younger siblings are fed and go to school. Black Tax took my childhood, maybe yours too?
I asked my friend Lebo how long am I still going to pay for structural inequality disguised as honouring my mother or having Ubuntu. It is this honouring of my mother and Ubuntu that makes me feel human for being there for/with my family. Black Tax attempts to rob me of even this. Sitting in a place of relative privilege at the moment, I am conflicted about even having the right to talk about my struggles with Black Tax. Surely, someone has it worse? That is true, but I remind myself that I did not make it (yet?). I am still 11 and pulling weeds. However, now I am aware and I want to work towards practising selflessness and humility without allowing it the tax to break me. I imagine that this would be difficult since we Black Taxpayers are socially engineered to perceive violence and exploitation as divinely sanctioned moral behaviour.
Anyway, sometimes I wish I could just e-file Black Tax. God knows the Bureau of life owes me.
the depositaries 