Carvin Goldstone is a comedian who has the show ‘No Swearing’. After the death of a teenager from KZN’s Newlands East, he offered up his opinion on violence to his Facebook audience – an opinion that blames the murder of Montreal King, 20, at the Durban Day music festival on coloured people’s culture of violence.

After listing the various reasons the media and community have placed on the death of the teenager, Carvin gets straight into it, blaming coloured people’s culture of violence on bravado.

Now that’s not to say that it wasn’t a factor, but I want to separate the fiction from the reality and get to the fundamentals of why we are burying our teenagers.

When trying to analyse and understand the factors that led to the death of Monty King and countless other young people over the years, there’s a bigger concern for me than “district politics”.

If anything, district politics is symptomatic of this deeper-lying problem in our communities.

I call it coloured bravado.

It manifests itself at the lowest and highest levels of coloured life.

I’ve seen it on the school playground and in boardrooms.

It’s the feeling that because we are coloured, we must not back down from a fight.

I’m coloured and I don’t take s***!

I’m not a sny! Don’t vat me! You don’t know me! I’ll make you swak! You don’t see me! You don’t fundela my chups! Bruinous are the mainous! Don’t f*** with me, I’m coloured! I will steek you! With line! I’m going to make you rak vol!

Carvin then goes on to explain how, growing up all his life in Newlands East, the idea of violence is entrenched into his lifestyle – and at worst, his community, where people needed to step up or back off. This means violence was only realised by him when he left the community and stepped foot into London 15 years ago.

I couldn’t believe the polite nature of the people, so much so that I mistook it for a display of weakness.

This enabled Carvin to take a look at why the violent nature of coloured people exist – and why they are treated with a feared respect by every other race.

The coloured community here behave similarly to many minority communities around the world.

Low education and literacy levels, forced removals and relocations, congested living conditions, drugs, poverty and starvation are key factors.

Having no vested interest in society and not being highly regarded by other races in the country has forced us to find another way to earn respect.

And it has come at a high cost. Young lives. What is worse is that it has not earned us respect at all.

Instead, it has created fear and panic and further alienated many of us from society. And for the most part, we’ve taken our fight inside. We fighting for respect on the home front against the home front.

It seems to “them” as if we just hate each other, and killing each other is how we express that hate.

But that’s not true. It’s not hate.

It’s insecurity. We are insecure about who we are and where we are going and our place in community and country.

We feel trapped and vulnerable. A rat won’t attack you, but corner it, and watch it fight back.

Coloured bravado is an expression of our uncertainty and anxiety about ourselves.

Carvin suggests a solution: it is each and every coloured parent’s responsibility to change the way you react to, treat and discipline their children.

The coloured community needs a new identity in South Africa, but importantly within its own community. It starts with each and every parent.

….

We will both finish off in tears. Or will we just continue, like me, to see moving to suburbs or Australia or Johannesburg as the only way out? The community as a whole, at home and abroad has a joint responsibility. We have had a devastating setback with the loss of Monty in the most violent and brutal way.

[source: iol]