Hey BLF, do you know what a black person even is?

It feels decidedly weird to, as a “white” South African, be writing a column to “black African” people about how a family of Indian migrants living in Saxonwold are, in fact, not black people.

But that is the basket case known as South African racial identity politics.

I’ve written about this before, but after what happened yesterday outside the home of Times Media editor-at-large Peter Bruce, it could do with some repeating.

Guys, the Guptas are not black. Based on the scandal around how some of the Guptas became naturalised in this country, many of them are barely even South Africans.

In case you didn’t hear the news yesterday, a small group of Black First, Land First (BLF) protesters gathered outside Bruce’s home to accuse him of being an agent of “white monopoly capital” because of the ongoing role he has played in criticising the Gupta family, among other things.

Bruce says his neighbours were left a little traumatised by the whole affair, but he was just plainly annoyed.

Most curiously, though, the BLF told the media the primary reason they had rocked up to harass Bruce was because it was their duty to defend “all black people” from the wicked smears and attacks of white people.

The Guptas, they added, were black, and therefore worthy of such noble protection.

Except they’re not. Of course, they’re not.

It should be obvious to anyone who’s been following this sordid business that BLF founder Andile Mngxitama has been funded by the Guptas to become their Rottweiler-in-chief. Obviously, no one has direct proof of this, but there’s more than enough circumstantial evidence to sway my mind, and Mngxitama does show up in one of the #GuptaLeaks emails as having approached the Guptas for money.

He has, of course, denied this, but he strikes me as the kind of guy who’d find a way of making even me black if the price was right.

Last year when the Sunday Times Rich List came out, it declared that Atul Gupta was now the “richest black man” in South Africa, overtaking Patrice Motsepe.

I initially even accepted this, because we’ve become so used to the broad categorisation of “black” in South Africa under the codes that drive BEE and affirmative action, that “black” always includes coloureds, Indians and even Chinese people – and if you fall into the biggest category outside of these three groups, then you are “black African”.

But the Guptas aren’t “Black”. They are simply Indians who were born in India, and only migrated here from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh in 1993, shortly before the country’s first democratic elections.

The Guptas had nothing to do with the struggle, and certainly can’t even claim much of a family heritage to South Africa, even if they are now South African citizens.

If the Guptas are black, that would mean accepting there are 1.3 billion black people living in India right now, which would probably come as news to them, and not be all that welcome either, considering India, with its much-reviled caste system, continues to be one of the most racist places on earth. By the way, remember these are the same Guptas who revealed shocking racism towards actual black people during that wedding at Sun City?

But somehow they are still deserving of the protection of the BLF.

As I’ve written before, by the same token, if the Guptas are black, then China has about 1.4 billion people living in it who also haven’t been alerted to the fact that, according to South African law, they, too, are black, and should pop over to bid for a tender some time.

But that can’t happen, which the Guptas themselves know only too well, or they wouldn’t have needed black empowerment partners in their businesses. One of their companies, Tegeta – as my former colleague Susan Comrie pointed out to me – only became 50%+1 empowered when Duduzane Zuma and Salim Essa came on board in November 2015.

Even acting commissioner of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Commission Zodwa Ntuli clarified earlier this month that anyone naturalised as a South African after 1994 would probably never be able to be classified as “black”, according to the B-BEEE Act.

So not only are the Guptas not black, they will probably never be able to “try for black”, much as they might like to, to butcher an old phrase from the apartheid days.

Nevertheless, BLF, let’s not allow little things like facts to get in the way of how you pay for your T-shirts, eh?

All the same, here’s a bit of advice you might do well to remember when you look at the name of your organisation on those T-shirts.

Before you set off on your next pro-Gupta crusade, Get to Know What a Black Person Is First.

Charles Cilliers, Citizen.co.za digital editor