First edition published July 2010; layout and design by Barbara Mueller; Printing by MegaDigital, Cape Town.

About the Book:

“Lekgowa sets up a dialogue with celebrated essayist Professor Njabulo S Ndebele’s acclaimed exploration of South African identities, expressed in a feature article ‘Of Pretence and Protest’ published by the Mail & Guardian newspaper in September 2009 focussing on white English-speaking identity. It stands alongside Antjie Krog’s recent text, Begging to be Black, as a powerful contribution to the complex and fraught discourse about identity in the ‘new’ South Africa. At the same time, the book’s intensely personal nature makes the challenges it poses to received ideas accessible and direct. It will certainly appeal to any adult-thinking member of South African society.”
– Professor Deirdre Byrne

“You lay bare what we so often shun away from. You have lived up to the saying ‘rutang bana ditaola, le se ye natso badimong’.”
– Pududu Mogoba

“Do you think you are black?”
– Sid Luckett

The book is about identity, white identity, my identity, and the deconstruction and reconstruction of identity. One of the strange things about dominant identities is that they do not realise that they are identities. They become templates for assimilation of other identities. They construct other identities as difference, but do not open themselves up for investigation. Lekgowa is a word that challenges the hegemony of white identity. When I become lekgowa I realise that the word subverts my unspoken identity and stirs it into defence. Hence the importance of 'how the word is used’, 'the sense in which it is used', its 'popular use', as against its dictionary use. The book is not about how a white identity defines a word, but how a word lekgowa redefines an identity. It is a reversal of 'gaze' from the colonised to the coloniser

Lekgowa means ‘white person’ in the languages of over 15-million black people in Southern Africa. The word is used in the sense of ‘to lack decorum, to be rude, to be an embarrassment (or a person who embarrasses you), to be annoying, to be disrespectful, to have no regard for other people, to have no shame.’ It denotes a person who is ‘disrespectful’ towards you or ‘undermines your dignity.’ The English language includes the idea of ‘defamation of character,’ and this is sometimes given as a further explanation of the word.

The text uses the tools of autobiography, genealogy and sociology to explore the mechanisms by which identity is constructed and maintained.  A central presupposition of Lekgowa is that identity is never fixed, but is founded on cultural and national myths – and that these are open to deconstruction.  As an ostensibly white, English-speaking member of the Anglican Church, Tony has discovered that his own identity is historically shaped by lies and obfuscations of his ancestry, and that he is not at all who he once thought he was.  The uncovering of his true hybrid identity – and the creation of an authentic South African identity - has been a courageous project, marked by a number of dramatic psychological experiences. 

This is a text for South Africa in the twenty-first century, when the old racial identities have officially been declared invalid, leaving many people floundering between their inherited prejudices and their desire for change.  As Lekgowa demonstrates, changing prejudices, beliefs and identities is not as simple as it seems, but is imperative for healing to come about in South African society.

Lekgowa sets up a dialogue with Njabulo Ndebele’s acclaimed exploration of South African identities in Of Pretence and Protest.  It stands alongside Antjie Krog’s recent text, Begging to be Black, as a powerful contribution to the complex and fraught discourse about identity in the ‘new’ South Africa.  At the same time, the text’s intensely personal nature makes the challenges it poses to received ideas accessible and direct.  It will certainly appeal to any adult, thinking member of South African society.  It also has resonances for international audiences, since European societies provided the impetus for colonization as well as the original colonizers whose descendants are currently embroiled in political change and social transformation.

To follow discussions - click here for Book SA

Article in Sunday Times (Times Live) 26 July 2010

Article on Times Live 18 July 2010

Article on LitNet:- Interruption and discontinuity in Anthony W Harding’s Lekgowa by Deirdre Byrne

Article on the Gamawela Community

About the Author:

Tony Harding was born in the upper strata of English-speaking white Capetonian society in the last century.  He grew up in an era when members of his class were firmly, if a little desperately, trying to maintain their identity as colonials in a foreign country.  This doomed project was enabled by the racist structures of Apartheid, which made cheap black domestic labour available to wealthy whites.

The author’s journey into his own psyche, including the racial identities that he inherited from his social class and the pathologies of his family lineage, is narrated in Lekgowa.  Within its pages, he details his own geographical journey, from Cape Town to KwaZulu-Natal, Ramatlhabama and Jane Furse, finally settling in Johannesburg.  His external journey was driven by his conscious and unconscious need for authenticity within a deeply divided society.  As a result of his commitment to educating and empowering black youth, he managed several educational projects in poverty-stricken parts of South Africa.  It was in these areas that he met his wife, made a life commitment to her, and embarked on work for the Land Claims Commission, which exposed him to areas of South African society that few have ever encountered.  Today he is a respected member of the Gamawela community who live in Limpopo Province.

“Lekgowa is not an autobiography. It is sleight-of-hand autobiography. Identity writing is mythic, discontinuous, without closure. There is no sense of certainty in past and future. We claim truth at our peril. Our silences overrun us in the end. Life is a quest for freedom in the playful cosmos we live in.”
– Tony Harding

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