HALF & HALF

‘What are you?’ was the defining question of my childhood. Sometimes it was broached delicately, woven into idle chit-chat. Other times it was less subtle; strangers would blurt it out within minutes of meeting me.

These days it would seem an odd, confrontational question to ask someone you’ve just met. And how do you begin to answer it? Identity has become so fluid.

But during apartheid, life was far more rigid.

We lived in a system based on separateness and classification, and people needed to know where you slotted in. It determined whether they could go to the beach with you, enter a shop through the same entrance as you, use the same toilets as you, or what they needed to tell their