Unpacking our response to 'the 59ers'

We joke about the Afrikaners who went to the US, but our shared South African identity evokes our compassion and hope they haven't made a mistake

- Joy Owen

It is Tuesday evening. I am seated with a friend and my son in our favourite restaurant in Bloemfontein. My son listens to our conversation as I note that the 49 Afrikaner migrants (or 59 as some reports suggest) incorrectly and problematically afforded refugee status through executive order by the Trump administration have landed in the US.

Their departure is called the "Great Tsek" on social media. We laugh conspiratorially.

South Africans respond to most situations with a trademark humour that inspires much hilarity. We repeat the in-joke in multi-cultural and multi-classed spaces — taxis, buses, lecture halls, at a Sunday braai, in a coffee shop, between co-workers — we evoke the reality of co-created belonging through humour.

Our humour, a shared South African-ness irrespective of historicised divisions of race, class, creed or gender, masks our discomfort, or psychological and emotional pain. Whether we are supporting Tyla's right to self-define as coloured — while ridiculing and stereotyping colouredness — and interrogating black Americans' failure to unpack the context of coloured in South Africa, or vituperatively disowning Elon Musk, South Africans have a unique, enmeshed and complex affinity and loyalty to each other.

Amorphous and responsive, this loyalty is an organic response to a perceived threat, or a show of appreciation or forgiveness — recall our troetelnaam (pet name) for our president: Cupcake.