We recently celebrated Global Africa Week and Heritage Day and this made me reflect
on my identity as an African and as an individual. It seems to me we’re born blank sheets of paper where upon society has taken the opportunity to clad us in names and box us into categories before we even have a say in defining our own identities. My skin inherently anchors my roots as an individual deep into an African culture and resonates an identity I am proud to be shaded in: black. This I have always known but when I came to Stellenbosch, I realise, was the first time I actually felt it. Black in this town is a dot on a vast canvass of white and I see how it appears that this black sometimes fades into white. The question of identity then becomes essential in that it asks the fundamental question of who we are as individuals because knowing who we are allows us to remain rooted in our being. I would therefore like us, as diverse individuals in a society that seems to mainstream us all, to shed all the tags and labels society has filled our identity booklets with and truly reflect on and define the question: Who am I?