Cape Town - Anita Ronge isn’t bothered by any of the insults that have been hurled at her in the past week.
She has had to fend off haters for most of her life. Last week’s Twitter outcry about her “embracing her blackness” was nothing that the house DJ couldn’t handle.
“I’m not bothered. I’ve been receiving backlash since I was 14-years-old. It’s old news to me now,” she told Independent Media this week.
The 26-year-old, popularly known as Kasi Mlungu or DJ DuchAz, outraged some locals after revealing on Twitter that she has been bashed for embracing her “blackness”.
Ronge, who hails from the East Rand, recently tweeted: “I get rejected for not being black enough and being too black to be white ... I’m #KasiMlungu and I’m proud.”
The Twitterverse responded with of users either testing her “blackness” with trivia or telling her that she was not black, despite Ronge declaring that she was a “black person trapped in white skin”.
She said she was, insulted as people labelled her a “nutcase”.
“I feel people who haven’t found their purpose in life will always judge people who are living to the full.”
In recent years, Ronge has created her public image as a “kasi mlungu”. “Mlungu” refers to a white person and “kasi” is slang for township.
Her publicity shots also portray her wearing traditional African wear or urban wear. But she says the term “kasi mlungu” wasn’t a nickname she has given herself.
“The name Kasi Mlungu was given to me by my brothers from Hammanskraal who gave me my first and last DJ crash course,” she said.
“They said this is the name they are birthing me with. And I just went with it. It wasn’t something I planned or thought out. At heart, I’ve always been a kasi mlungu.”
Her image as a “kasi mlungu” makes white people uncomfortable, she says. “Most white people think that, if you are a white person hanging out with blacks, you are downgrading yourself,” she said. Many of her relatives feel uncomfortable with her “blackness”.
Her mother, Annatjie, is her only family member who has embraced her identity.
“I can bring my family to the water but I can’t force them to drink. I have the coolest mom ever.”
Ronge, who was raised in an Afrikaans-speaking home, added that while she didn’t grow up in a township, she had embraced township life and spends a considerable amount of time in Tembisa, a township situated on the East Rand.