Of dragons and kaleidoscopes

The different waves of migration of Chinese to South Africa over the centuries have made for a picture of multiple pieces fitting into a puzzle rather than a single blur of homogeneity, writes Ufrieda Ho.

#Focac: If you were growing up Chinese in South Africa before the mid-90s you’d probably never walk past another Chinese person, even a stranger, without a greeting, a smile or at least a nod of the head – some kind of acknowledgement.

The Chinese South African community till the mid-1990s was so small you couldn’t afford to forget your manners.

In a community this tiny, degrees of separations contract easily. Even the hint of a snub might find its way back to a granny or an aunty who would be ready with a scolding for your disrespect and your rudeness.

Chinese South Africans were a minority among minorities in South Africa and even at their height numbered no more than 25 000, according to Melanie Yap and Dianne Leong Man, authors of Colour, Confusion, Concessions (Hong Kong University Press, 1996).

The authors trace the origins of the first contact of the Chinese on the continent centuries ago, then to the first arrivals in the Cape in the 1660s. The Chinese arrived as slaves, convicts, labourers and those paying off debts to the Dutch East Indian company.

Those first Chinese, Yap and Leong Man believe, would likely have been Fujian Chinese living in present day Indonesia. They also believe that with no records of Chinese women in the Cape at the time, the first handful of Chinese arrivals’ offspring would have eventually become part of the so-called Coloured community of the Cape.

More Chinese would arrive in the southern tip of the continent in trickles as labourers, artisans and merchants over the next century. Then the global pressures of the 19th century would force the handles on China’s “Closed Door” policy that bit more.

Military might and trade powers were shifting from the Middle Kingdom, as China is called. This, combined with internal strife in China, made for bleak outlooks for China’s millions. Canton’s (today’s Guangdong) flagging prominence as leading trade port led many Chinese from Canton to seize on the exit pass to seek fortunes in worlds beyond the Middle Kingdom.

While they initially chose destinations close to China, by the 1870s they ventured further, including to the southern tip of Africa. The discovery of gold by 1886 in South Africa also made the Rand one of the “gum saans”, the “golden mountains” sought out by Chinese migrants.

It’s this wave of migration that lays the foundation stone in the story of the Chinese in South Africa. These first migrants become South Africans and with each new generation born on South African soil pulled tauter the umbilical cord with China.

But it was still an uneasy fit for the yellow man in Africa. Professor Karen Harris of the University of Pretoria’s Department of Historical and Heritage Studies refers to a community with a “hidden history” and one for which there’s little substantial record and data.

This in itself mirrors how the Chinese, already on society’s periphery, preferred invisibility as a device of survival.

Harris writes in the journal Historia (November 2010) in her article titled En route to “Dignity Day”: The South African Chinese and historical commemorations: “The local community’s invisible stance is very much in line with overseas Chinese communities in other parts of the world, where because of their already precarious and often invidious positions within their host societies, they were, and in some cases still are, reticent to draw unnecessary attention to themselves.

“They were, for example, the first identifiable community in South African history to be singled out and discriminated against in a “blatantly racist manner” through the Chinese Exclusion Act (1904).”

There are other complications too. Harris writes: “Compounding this situation is the ambiguous position as regards the respective South African government’s relationship with, on the one hand, the Republic of China (on Taiwan), and on the other, the People’s Republic of China, in both the apartheid and post-apartheid periods.”

Under apartheid South Africa were classified as “Coloureds”. The Chinese South Africans had more concessions and freedoms than other non-white groups but were always second-class citizens.

Chinese were never regarded honorary whites, were disenfranchised like all non-whites till 1994 and were subject to restrictions and quotas on entry into the country, where they could live, go to school, go to university and what work they could do.

Over generations they were assimilated to a western, South African way of life but at the same time memory, nostalgia, history and even skin colour marked them as people with a different origin story.

It’s a story of dragons, emperors, gods for all things and almanacs of divination. Older generations also remembered the hardships of life in China, the paranoia, the brutality and the lack of opportunity that make migration a better option in the first place. The Chinese had to straddle these two worlds, adapt and make do.

The Nationalist party’s status as international pariah though forced them to find trade opportunities with unlikely alliances. In 1976 they would formalise official diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

This relationship would spans the late 70s through to the mid-90s and fuelled another distinct wave of migration: the arrival of the Taiwanese in South Africa.

The Taiwanese, with politically leverage and entrepreneurial gumption, set up factories and import-export businesses that dominated through to the early 90s.

The local Chinese meanwhile continued on another track mostly. They had little political agency and limited economic opportunities. Their focus instead was on education with the goal of graduating a generation of shopkeepers, fahfee men and semi-skilled workers to the promise of mainstream prosperity of professional life.

Through it all the local Chinese and the Taiwanese communities, both relatively small in size, managed to forge social and cultural ties.

The local Chinese community accepted Taiwanese aid for the local community’s Chinese School, the community held annual Double Ten celebrations recognising Taiwan’s National Day and even something like the Nan Hua temple was built through co-operation of the Bronkhorstspruit local authorities and the Taiwanese government and religious communities in the early 1990s.

By 1998 the ANC government severed ties with Taiwan in favour of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The shift in politics, the rising crime rate in South Africa and shrinking business opportunities meant fewer reasons for the Taiwanese to stay.

Today the Taiwan embassy office is a liaison office, the ambassador is a representative, and the number of Taiwanese in the country has dwindled to between 6 000 and 8 000, according to liaison office figures.

Their exodus was matched with a new wave of migrants. By the mid-90s the mainland Chinese looked to South Africa as a destination of opportunity. The official headcount form Chinese embassy estimates are believed to be between 250 000 to 300 000.

It’s a whopper in terms of numbers and compared to the number of local Chinese and the Taiwanese community. Local Chinese now number between 8 000 and 10 000 as the generations of professionals have opted for emigration, creating yet another annex to Chinese diaspora narrative

For this most recent wave of Chinese migrants they too must adapt, create their own story on the continent as the Chinese and Taiwanese who have come before them have done. They will use the traction of their large numbers, the dynamics of globalisation and mobility, the rising political weight of the PRC, and the firm political ties between the ANC and Beijing.

These distinct waves of migration make for communities within a community – the Chinese in South Africa are not a homogenous entity. They touch sides in places and are worlds apart in others.

They share a skin colour, maybe even a mythological bond of being descendants of the dragon. But time, geography, history, politics and social circumstance leave a marbled residue that swirls unbounded through the evolving story of the Chinese in South Africa.

THE STAR