The chronicles of a black man with an 'old-white English' accent...

I always thought I had a horrendously big voice, and because of this, I never used to speak often. I remember when I would speak with this hoarse voice of mine, people would suddenly start wondering where is this big voice coming from. I didn’t understand what the fuss was about.

As a person who went to a multi-racial school almost all my life, I could speak English - perfectly. Although, at times, there would be moments of ahh…and mhh…I articulated my words carefully and spoke fluently. I didn’t understand why most ‘white’ folks would forever ask me the question: ‘where are you from?’ It made me feel uncomfortable, as if I’m from some poor boy with barely accented English from the poorest of poor African countries.

Even though this question made me feel insecure, it also created a lot of unanswered questions in my head. In 2009, I had a 5 minutes conversation with ‘white’ lady over the phone. She knew me before the phonecall and had never bothered to interrogate me about my education. During our conversation, she blurted questions such as; ‘where are you from, which primary and high school did you go to?’ Having answered those questions, she wished me goodbye and dropped the call. More unanswered questions came to my head!

After this call, I went on to ask my fellow ‘white’ friends about my voice and what’s wrong with it. I know back in primary school I used to get teased a lot about how big and ugly it was, I hoped and prayed that the situation I had back then was not catching up with me in my adult life. Alas, it was not. My friends told me there was nothing wrong with it.

In the year 2011, the questions popped up more often and mostly, it was either ‘white’ or ‘coloured’ folks who would forever pose the where are you from question, and mostly, with such ease this time, I would say I’m from South Africa. After having told them, they would complement me and say you speak nicely. I was stunned! I didn’t believe them at first. My voice has been horrible since my adolescence and only in 2012 am I hearing these comments. Rubbish, I thought.  But then again, I wondered why a lot of white folks get along with me very well. Is it my voice or my personality? I know I’m not the coolest kid in the block, so it should be my voice or maybe not.

A few weeks ago, two ‘white’ ladies asked me the where-are-you-from question. As much as I was tired answering the same question over again, I opted to give them my now mastered answer: 'I'm from South Africa.' When they heard I’m from South Africa, their reply was ‘you have that old-white accent’ and another said: ‘oh…such an educated young man.’ Don’t know what these meant but this very same question has continued till now and people would forever say I have a voice for radio. Even a friend of mine once said; ‘I could listen to you converse all day and I would never get tired of it’. So, any radio people out there…hook a brother up.