WANELISA XABA

Part 1: The tall invisible white men^{[1]The first part of this essay consists of a work of fiction based on various true events from my own experience and many students I have spoken to during my Masters and PhD research. An element of fiction has been added.}

It feels heavy to exist as a Black person in Cape Town. It is heavy and engulfing. It is like a sensory assault to the nervous system. Visualise a hundred woollen blankets stitched together at the seams thrown over your back as you walk about your day. They throw the blanket over you at the mall, at the post-office, at school…just everywhere! Tall white men invisible to the eye… they roam around Cape Town carrying heavy woollen blankets of Blackness. They drape us with this heaviness until we suffocate and are found dead facedown drifting on west coast beaches.

During my last year of undergraduate studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT), I moved back to kwaLanga. There is a small bridge at the edge of Bhunga Avenue that links kwaLanga to the highway towards the city centre. I would see the tall invisible white men with the blankets of Blackness standing at the end of the small bridge. I’m talking about thousands of blankets. They cloak everyone as we leave the Cape Flats to the city centre. I remember the first time a tall invisible white man came to cloak me. I was on a local taxi from kwaLanga to campus. Fifteen people sitting and four people squashed alongside the aisle of the Quantum taxi. The faster we approached the bridge, the tighter my windpipe would constrict. I clutched the collar of my Vote Azapo t-shirt and while trying to open the window of the taxi to get some air, I noticed the tall white men. As our taxi passed, they swiftly threw twenty blankets over the taxi. The fellow passengers and the driver wore the blankets mechanically and without blinking. A lady with a heart-shaped face and a bad weave grabs my blanket and throws it over my shoulder. She and everyone else in the taxi sits up straight with their hands folded where their inner thighs meet. Unblinking. I noticed that there were chicken-scratch writings on her blanket in between her shoulder blades.

Ah. “Pre-conditions to obedient Blackness”, I think to myself as I read her blanket.

“Must smile and laugh with Maddam’s children even when they throw hard plastic toys in my face.”

“Must peppeta^{[2]A local way women carry little children on their back, usually tied to the woman by a cloth. Only now, some Black women who are domestic workers are expected to do this with white people’s dogs.} Maddam’s dog like a baby on my back and take it to the park…even if it shits on my back”

“Must not wear tight clothes so that Maddam’s white husband is not tempted to touch my bum when I mop.”

And so on and so on. Endless lists of do’s and don’ts. I wondered what my chicken-scratch writing said? I am probably not a good heavy blanket adorner because people are always shouting at me at lecture halls, grocery stores, restaurants telling me to behave outside of the Cape Flats. Consequently, I could never unsee the tall invisible white men at all our township bridges leading to the city centre. On the rare occasions when there is heavy traffic, sometimes the invisible white men miss a taxi. That is when you see a viral video of a Black man roundly kicking a white person after they called the Black man a ‘kaffir'^{[3]Derogatory term used to refer to Black people during Apartheid.}. So naturally, the heavy blankets are needed to keep order and to ensure we remain unblinking.

On one Monday in July 2011, when the roads were particularly congested, the spiritual custodians of white supremacy (another name I call the invisible tall white men) missed covering my taxi with blankets. I was on my way to my first therapy session. I had had a ‘violent incident’ at the university library and had been ordered to attend therapy or I would be sent to Valkenberg Psychiatric hospital.

“So. Let’s start our session.” The white psychiatrist sits down opposite me with a yellow folder. Jesus Christ! Another tall white man?!

“Do you know why you are at Groote Schuur hospital Sammy? Is Sammy your legal name? You don’t have a formal tribal name or something.”

“No.”
“No, what? You don’t know why you are here or you don’t have a tribal name?”

“No to both” I say quietly.

“Well, Sammy, you had what we call a psychotic break. This happened during your study session in the library at UCT. The librarian says that you were jumping on top of the desks with your hands on your head. Apparently your pupils had turned white and you were making frightening animal noises.”

“I don’t remember doing that.” I lied.

“Why don’t you tell me what has been going on in your life recently? Any major changes or traumatic events?”

“There have been no major changes. Only, that…” I trail off.

“Only that, what?”

The door of the consultation room opens and Brenda Fassie saunters lazily inside. She is wearing a Black lace top (no bra underneath), a short red leather skirt and black combat boots. Her skin is radiant. Like she has used too much vaseline. She sits on the back part of the Doctor’s black leather couch. The Doctor’s back is against her crotch. Brenda’s legs and boots are placed on the chair’s arm rests cradling the Doctor between Brenda’s combat boots.

“Sammy? What are you looking at my dear?”

Brenda lights her cigarette and tells me not to say anything.

“I am looking at nothing. It’s just that I have to commute from the township to campus every day. It is stressful and I arrive on campus very tired.”

I look up and Brenda is gone. Where she sat now sits my grandmother. “You better tell the truth”, she says to me. Her voice is annoyed. “Tell him about the tall invisible white men.”

“I will tell the truth, Makhulu!” I responded.
My grandmother smiles.
“Who are you talking to Sammy?” The Doctor asks me.
“My grandmother.”
“Is she here now?”
Yes, behind you.”

The Doctor writes something down in my file. I interrupt his scribbling, “But I want to tell you about the tall men with the blanket on the bridge. It explains what happened in the library,” I say to The Doctor.

I leave out the “white”. I don’t want him to be defensive or think I am a racist. “There are these tall men at the bridge in Bhunga Avenue in Langa who clothe us with heavy Blankets when we leave the Cape Flats.”

“And do other people see the tall men? Do these men say anything to you?” The doctor looks at me like I am a piece of cheesecake.

“I am the only one who sees the men. They don’t speak and they just cover us with heavy blankets. These blankets are heavy and have different rules written on the back. The rules inform us how we must behave. I am wearing one right now. It is heavy and it suffocates me.”

“Why do you think the tall men are targeting you and your township?”

“I think they target all townships.” The Doctor is confused. I understand his confusion. I have left out the key component which is race. The tall invisible men are white and the blankets are only given to Black people. The rules written on the blanket instruct us on how to behave in white spaces. But how can I explain all this to him without offending him? So I have to cut out all the parts about race.

My grandmother looks at me disapprovingly from behind The Doctor. I know I must tell the truth to the best of my ability. I must include race to provide context. “The invisible tall men at the bridge are white. They target our township because they need to tame us. Well…this is what I believe”. The doctor’s face slowly turns red. He does not look at me like I am a delectable cheesecake anymore. Behind him, my grandmother lifts one of her thumbs up in approval and smiles. 

Her approval makes me brave. I tell the truth about the ‘violent incident’ that happened in the library. Despite his crimson complexion, I confess that there are more tall invisible white men at the UCT library. These white men carry a small spade and a blue plastic bucket. They take the books off the shelves and they spit in them. They approach all the Black students reading in the library. The men take the small spade, make an incision on the upper cranium and use the spade to remove grey matter from our brain. They take small quantities over three or four years so that you don’t notice your cognitive decline. You lose the language of your ancestors and you lose the memory that connects you to your people.

When you leave UCT, you are a shell. An unblinking shell with a heavy blanket on your back.

On the day of the ‘violent incident’, the tall white men were making their rounds across the library. Scraping and scraping away the grey matter from Black minds. When it was my turn, an old Black man charged towards me. His face was similar to my father’s face. On his head sat the head of a leopard. The head was still attached to the skin that used to cover the leopard’s back. The leopard man grabbed the top of my head and brought me towards his torso and away from the tall invisible white man. “I freaked out!”, I told The Doctor. I freaked out and ran away from all of them.

“The report says your pupils were white, your mouth was foaming and you were screaming. You were jumping from one desk to another and strangling white students,” the Doctor interrupts me.

“Well, my grandmother says that I saw isihlwele^{[4]An ancestor.}. That is an ancestor that protects me. I am called to be a healer.”  

I caught a glimpse of some of The Doctor’s notes in my file: “Patient demonstrates paranoia, delusions of grandeur, auditory verbal hallucinations, a sense of danger that does not exist and complex visual hallucinations”. My grandmother reads The Doctor’s notes and begins to weep.

“I feel like they are giving us five-hundred-year old heavy blankets that we don’t want anymore. Well, at least I know I don’t want them. They slow me down in university. Other people in the Cape Flats also use them as weapons against each other. I want to kill these tall invisible white men. Take a machete and slice their heads off clean at the bottom of their necks. Imagine if we did not have to carry heavy blankets everytime we left the Cape Flats? Five hundred years on our backs the whole day Doctor?”

He writes in his file again, “and a possible danger to others”.

“Sammy, I want to keep you here for further testing. I do suspect that you have schizophrenia.”

My grandmother weeps even louder. I chuckle in disbelief.

I look at my grandmother and ask rhetorically, “You see what happens when you tell the truth Makhulu^{[5]Grandmother}?”

The Doctor looks at me with alarm but quickly composes himself again. “This is a manageable condition my dear. I can assure you that this is a manageable condition and you can lead a normal life.”

I turn away from my grandmother and face The Doctor, “It is not schizophrenia. It is the Black condition”.

The Doctor looks me straight in the eye and says, “What if it is both?”

My grandmother steps between The Doctor and I,  “And what if it is neither?” She pleads with me.

The Doctor has had enough of my conversations with my grandmother that he is unable to see. I am put on a stretcher, my ankles handcuffed to the metal rails and given two yellow tablets. The tablets relax my facial muscles and then I am wheeled away to Ward One. I hold on to the metal rails and my mouth begins to drool. I think of Sis Brenda Fassie and how beautiful her skin looked today. I think of my grandmother, all her tears and her words. How could it be neither schizophrenia nor the Black condition?

I think of the old leopard man with my father’s face. I think of the Black students in the library with dwindling grey matter. I think of the recurring dream I have when there is a full moon. I see myself wearing blue and white beads disappearing to the bottom of the Nile river.

One day…I will behead the invisible tall white men.

Part 2: White psychology, Black indecipherability and iThongo

The invisible white men. Or the invisible white person holding a correcting pen and examining our words. By extension, examining and correcting our humanity is a common feature in the Black psyche. The phenomenon Du Bois (1910) calls ‘the veil’. Seeing oneself through the limited eyes of whiteness. In many ways, white psychology and our understanding of our psyche has been contaminated by the heavy blankets to lull us into compliance within coloniality. 

The above story is a compilation of my personal narrative and the collective narratives of many Black students I have spoken to over the past 10 years I have been studying Black subjectivities and citizenship in university. I and many other Black people who were students in the colonial university have received misdiagnosis because white psychologists and psychiatrists were unable to understand our spiritual calling.

In a way, we have been indecipherable to western psychology.

I often think to myself, that is fucking worse than not being good enough. It is worse than existing in the zone of the non-being. To be invisible within the white imagination can offer some safety (ka Canham, 2023). Relegated to the perpetual expanding margins of the colonial epicentre can offer some safety. On the other hand, to be undecipherable is another hell. You exist in part in the white imagination. You are not worthy of being human but intriguing enough to be an object of fascination and study.

The Black mind has always been a source of fascination for white people. Please note that I say Black mind and not Black people. The difference being that the mind alone is the disembodied object of fascination divorced from the Black being. This intrigue has been one of the driving forces of scientific racism. This obsession has fuelled racist experiments of indigenous and Black people. For example, researchers would drill through the skulls of indigenous people in New Zealand and fill them with millet seeds. This was used to measure the intelligence of native people. The end result would contribute to racist scientific theories about the lack of intelligence of indigenous people (Smith, 1999).

Black indecipherability has been a key component of the formulation of various disciplines and ethnographic schools in the colonial universities established in former colonies.

Universities were built in order for academics to assist colonial administrations subjugate communities.

Colonial administrators needed to know the languages, spirituality, societal norms of the societies they intended to subjugate. The deciphering of these societies became the undertaking of linguists, anthropologists, archeologists etc. (Ntsebeza, 2012; Lalu, 2011). This includes the field of psychology (Fanon, 1967).

Taking into consideration this colonial history, a pertinent question needs to be posed: What is the moral and ethical responsibility of white psychology and its white practitioners to the Black mind to date? Most importantly, can white psychology and its white practitioners be trusted with the Black mind? According to Biko (1969), coloniality and Black subjugation first occurs in the mind and therefore decolonization must also first occur in the mind. We must ask ourselves, does western psychology (rooted in colonial logic) not continue to damage the Black psyche? And would having a white psychologist (also still rooted in colonial logic) examining and making a diagnosis not disrupt the decolonial process?

Perhaps the most harrowing question: if whiteness only sees Black people as objects, can Western psychology which is designed to treat humans (read white people) help that which it understands as an object?

The collective stories I have told in the first part of the paper demonstrate that white psychologists are not equipped to help treat the Black psyche. Firstly, Western psychology understands the mind of what the West deems as human (white people). Therefore, it understands itself and its people within a historical and ideological context rooted in colonial logic. Therefore, white psychology and its psychologists would need to decolonize psychology in order to understand and be able to help the Black psyche. In order for this to happen, the Black psyche must not exist as an exotic other or an object of fascination divorced from Blackness as human. The constant misdiagnosis of people who have intwaso^{[6]A calling to become an healer in Southern African spiritual traditions.} as either bipolar or schizophrenia further demonstrates that white psychologists are not equipped to deal with the complex psycho-spiritual realities of African/ Black people.

What do I mean by psycho-spiritual realities?

I mean the interconnectedness of African people’s psyche, our spiritual worlds and African spirituality. It is important to understand that African people had their own spiritual landscapes before colonial administrators colluded with European missionaries to utilise christianity as a civilising mission in Africa. We had our own indigenous ways of relating to god, nature, astronomy and the spirit world (Xaba, 2021). These African landscapes have been impacted by coloniality but they still exist. Various African spiritualities explain our relationship with this physical world, the spirit world and the afterlife.

For example, I have been initiated as a healer in the Xhosa tradition of iCamagu and feel comfortable speaking from my personal interpretation of this spiritual tradition. This tradition is closely intertwined with the Xhosa culture, traditions and customs. We believe that when people die they don’t turn into nothingness or go to a christian heaven.We believe people move on to the spiritual realm and become ancestors. These spiritual entities interact with their descendents and oftentimes, healers become mediums who interact with both the physical and spiritual world. Personally, I believe that we all have the ability to connect and receive messages from the spirit world however the spiritual annihilation that has happened as a result of coloniality and organised religion has made most of us disconnected from the spirit world.

My reality has been that I am able to connect with people who have died through various indigenous and spiritual methods and mediums. At times, these spiritual entities have also inhibited my body to convey urgent messages to relevant people. Most of the time, the underlying goal of most of these spiritual entities is to ask for their living descendants to perform certain rites so these ancestors can heal or to pass on a healing gift. On a fundamental level, my experience of African Spirituality has been the beautiful work of intergenerational healing.

The tragic part is this: if coloniality refuses to see Black people as human then those who are invested in coloniality miss the opportunity to understand the psycho-spiritual lives of Black people. This has huge implications for western psychology which is rooted in colonial logic. It is therefore not surprising that western psychology will continue to pathologize Black people with a spiritual calling.

This is where Black indecipherability gets dangerous. While being invisible to the white imagination is dehumanising, the invisibility or social death offers us some level of safety (Hugo Ka Canham, 2023). However, indecipherability locates us as the exciting and exotic unknown to the white imagination (think of the cheesecake metaphor in the short story).

We exist as skulls to be drilled into for white experimentation.

I cannot stress the infinite dangers threatened by western psychology and its practitioners on the Black psyche.

In South Africa, psychology remains racist and out of touch with the psychological and spiritual needs of Africans.

It remains rooted in coloniality while African spirituality is rooted in healing African people from colonial violence. This tension is played out on Black people who have a calling to be amaGqirha, iZangoma, ooMakhosi^{[7]Various names for healers.} who access western psychology and its practitioners. This results in misdiagnosis and the pathologization of our indigenous spiritual norms (Albert, 2023).  

 So, how do we move forward from this place? Am I suggesting that Black people do not access psychological services? Am I suggesting that every Black person that is diagnosed with bipolar or schizophrenia must stop taking medication and initiate as a healer? Am I suggesting that healers stop taking their medication? Absolutely not.

I am merely stating that this conversation exists within the broader conversation of colonial violence and metaphysical catastrophe of Black people in South Africa. I am merely pointing out that white supremacy and coloniality is still entrenched in South Africa and the white community is not interested in eradicating them as they benefit from these systems. By extension, white psychologists are a part of this community and these colonial systems.

Each and every white psychologist must do the work of interrogating how their discipline and their personal practice reproduces coloniality and potentially harms their Black patients.

Most importantly, as new conversations about an ‘African psychology’ emerge, it is imperative that white psychologists interrogate their interest in the Black psyche. Lastly, I would continue to encourage more meaningful and equal collaboration between African healers and Black mental health practitioners in order to decolonize psychology in Africa.