Loudrastress


Apartheid still lives on in SA

From The Weekender, 27-8 June 2009
Posted to the web on: 27 June 2009
Apartheid still lives on in SA
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AN UNDERGRADUATE student of mine recently spoke of racism, and apartheid specifically, as something that happened “in our grandparents’ time”. How I wish that is true.

I remain ambivalent about the meanings of such ignorance. On the one hand, I am amazed that an 18-year-old can make such a weighty slip. For her, apartheid can never be a burdensome reference point, and an ever-present reality that shapes what is possible and what not — like it was for me, and many South Africans of the same age.

On the other hand, this relegation of apartheid to a mythical distant past is enabled by the forced amnesia at the heart of new South African nationalism.

The past is not a closed, transcended chapter 15 years after the formal death of apartheid. Many of its stories continue to live in the present, undermining rainbow nationalism and unity in diversity, and rendering the transcendence of race unlikely.

Two events I attended last weekend drove home the many dangers of pretending that we can wish apartheid away. Its legacy continues to shape our country in material, emotional and psychological ways every day.

Those of us who are not 18 have some answering to do, and even more work ahead of us if we are to be truly free of apartheid’s inheritances. There is logic to wanting to forget about apartheid. No matter what else was going on in our lives, it was a time of shame, complicity and degradation.

Those who were victimised by it may very well have wanted to forget about it because nobody enjoys remembering pain and humiliation. Its supporters live in an altered moral universe, and want to disavow their role due to guilt and shame .

I n our daily lives we recognise that sweeping such feelings and pasts under the carpet is counter-productive. Not wanting to “dwell” on painful experiences is different from granting permission to others to pretend there is no painful past with ongoing effects.

We want its existence recognised, honoured and respected. Being defensive when we have wounded others is bad form. Yet in relation to apartheid, for the most part, this is how we continue to write the national script on race.

Speaking at the launch of the Miriam Tlali Reading and Book Club at Xarra Books at the weekend, Tlali noted that “in order to understand this country, you have to learn about what has been happening. Like everybody else, we are the progeny of our past, of our history.”

Human Rights Commission chairman Jody Kollapen reminded us in his keynote address to the Apartheid Archive Project conference last week that there is no mention of apartheid in the South African constitution. In the spirit of the constitution, we speak of apartheid euphemistically or pretend that it has been resolved.

However, as University of Cape Town psychology professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela told the conference, denial will not allow South Africans to get to the place of transcendence we pretend to have already reached.

If we do not own these stories and how they shaped us, we give them invisible power to affect daily exchanges today. We will not be able to recognise one another’s full humanity until we choose to confront the past, and honestly own up to its wounds and ongoing material and psychological effects.

Defensiveness just postpones the problem and means we are all sitting on a ticking time bomb. There is already much evidence in our society of the rage that comes from misrecognition.

Apartheid lies not just in what Wits University head of psychology Prof Norman Duncan calls “unwelcome memories hurtling into the present” — it determines who is most likely to be poor, to be deliberately rendered homeless, racially harassed, promoted without question or ridiculed for being excellent.

It affects whose pain is most likely to be denied or mocked. It determines whose alienation is masked or amplified.

The conference was an invitation to face the archive that is apartheid — whether it is written on our bodies, in our minds or in what we choose to tell. Facing the archive is about gathering and processing information.

This was reflected in Wits historian Noor Nieftagodien’s keynote address: the importance of paying attention to ordinary people’s lives under apartheid, rather than the sole focus on the heroes and villains .

Until that is done, understanding, processing and transcending apartheid will not happen.

The conference speakers offered differing voices and contrasting politics but Kollapen’s keynote was the very embodiment of facing the archive. He went beyond asking how it was possible to reconcile South African contradictions to build a compelling argument on what the consequences of such double speak are.

Less than 4% of land has been redistributed, but public discourse focuses on white fears of land grabs “Zimbabwean style”.

Most available research shows that affirmative action and black economic empowerment have had limited success, yet even some of the most “respectable” newspapers scream about endangered white professionals. This cruel inversion provides alibis to conservative white people as they manufacture paranoia.

Apart from anecdotal recitals, even the most conservative researchers have failed to produce evidence that white men are marginalised in SA today.

This manufactured paranoia holds blacks and progressive whites hostage: for as long as we are weighed down by reassuring imaginary marginalised whites, we are distracted from fully engaging in transformation .

In academic institutions across SA, many white people refuse to recognise black excellence even when faced with overachievers because “affirmative action” has been turned into a swear word.

Yet at the same time, white mediocrity is rife, with many underqualified and underperforming white men in senior posts across the academic landscape.

Many white women in academia are both the chief beneficiaries of affirmative action and its biggest gatekeepers. Here manufactured paranoia is supported by the lie that all black people leave academia because of more lucrative employment in government and corporate SA.

Research points to the exact opposite, but we are to believe the unproven, widely circulated lie of black greed and white marginality.

It is 2009 and black academics remain a minority within the academy, where they are reminded at every turn of “affirmative action”. White academics are individuals. Blacks are representatives who stand in for the hordes of “underqualified” barbarians .

Apartheid would not let people speak their truth: of guilt, victimisation, complicity, shame and pain. Manufactured white paranoia does the work of apartheid: it silences and inverts what is really going on, sans evidence.

Counteraccusations of racism when white privilege is pointed out push the debate into invisibility, silencing like apartheid did.

Attorney Sibongile Ndashe calls these the passwords that make honest discourse impossible in SA: women have to say “not all men are bad” before they can be heard. Black people have to say “there are some good white people” before there can be the pretence of listening.

We often feel that our individual stories are insignificant. But we carry them whether painful or pleasant. The apartheid archive project is a way to find community.

It is an ambitious project. Its team continues to deal with the various ways in which an archive such as this can work and be used.

The project gives hope like little else that deals with race in SA. Tlali also said that facing our history should be part of what we teach our children and it is why we “should be as restless as we can be” until the work is complete.

- Gqola is [associate] professor in the School of Literature and Language Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.



Vote in the poll: Who are South Africa’s leading public intellectuals?
3 June 2009, 2:39 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

I had meant to put this up on my blog earlier this week, but between reading The Weekender on Saturday and finally putting this up on the deadline, much has happened. The communications folks at my work institution also made it easier for me to post here (rather than retyping the ad from the newspaper), so I have relied on their formulation below, in quotations

“WHO ARE SA’S TOP THINKERS?

The Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Wits University, Prof. Loyiso Nongxa initiated a debate on what defines a public intellectual. An entry into the debate was published in last Saturday’s edition of The Weekender with mention made of at least three Wits academics. Click on this linkto read the article. The newspaper is now running a poll to determine who South Africa’s top public intellectuals are and what role they should play in public life. Candidates must be living, active in public life, show distinction in their field and have an ability to influence debate. Send your list of five people to weekenderwin@bdfm.co.za by Wednesday, 3 June 2009.”

I am sure entries are accepted until the end of 3 June 2009, so keep voting. It will be very interesting to see who ends up on the list. I’ve sent my votes for my five, although I think there should have been enough space for 10 people.



Wassup with Zuma’s parly

I know that all eyes are on the Union Buildings with Jacob Zuma as the fourth president of a democratic South Africa, but there is something very puzzling going on in the new parliament.

First of all, Baleka Mbete, formerly the Speaker of Parliament before briefly becoming the Vice President of the country has been getting quite a bit of mixed attention. I was not watching, since some of us have day jobs that require us to occasionally be in specific classroom X on certain days of the week, but according to various media reports, she remained sitting after her name was mentioned along with other MPs for swearing in.

This was then followed by much speculation in the local media for days on end. Was she miffed that anything short of a vice presidential appointment was a demotion? Was she demonstrating diva behaviour by throwing her toys out of her cot? Was this just demonstration that women who throw their lot in with the violent men never get rewards?
And on it went, as analysts and commentators wrote and spoke and foamed at the mouth.

No matter what the real deal is for you, the fact of the matter is that she seemed like the most powerful woman in the country over the last few years. It no longer looks that way – no matter what position she continues to hold within her party. I may be wrong, and breaking news could tell us another story in a few weeks. But I am not holding my breath.

Ms Mbete is nobody’s doormat. That bit is clear from afar, so I am not writing her off by any stretch of the imagination. However, her current position (as unclear as it is – and nowhere near parly) can only make us wonder about the drama behind the scenes.

Then there is another woman who has been powerful in various ways over the last few years: the feminist former deputy speaker, Nozizwe Madlala Routledge. She, too, is nowhere to be seen in the new parly, having resigned quite suddenly (it seems from a distance) as the new order started dishing out seats and responsibilities that would decide who is who in the new regime. Although, Madlala Routledge’s departure was also much discussed, it has completely died down now and things seem to have gone back to normal. Again, my mind is working overtime trying to work this one out.

I couldn’t help thinking that something very sinister is up with the new dispensation. These are not two small childish women (as they were condescendingly called in some press) and their resolute refusal to tow the line – whatever the real line and story is – is not a small matter. It makes this blogger very curious about what is going on in the ruling party. We may not know for a very long time, given the tendency in politics to be loyal to a party that has taken the wind out of your sails.

It is precisely because I think that both exercised agency – they were not just responding – that I am perturbed and a little more than concerned.

As if the untoward mystery and demotion/(self)absenting of these women was not bad enough, the ANC fell far short of meeting its 50/50 gender parity in parliament. Again, very little was said by the usual commentators and analysts – apart from a handful of gender and feminist folks, some of whom said the strangest things this time round – even though a 50/50 split still means women are under-represented. I insisted in commentary at the time, that one after the other these signs are showing us that we are entering the age of the big men.

Now, as if South African women do not have enough problems, we have to deal with the indignity of a ministry of women, youth and disabled people. This last fact has had me so incredibly depressed I could barely do more than put a foot in front of the other, take care of admin, and do practical stuff for weeks. Yes, I still talked to and hung out with the people l love. But I could not write.

Even though I am far from a Zuma fan, and I had my reservations about his administration long before he was officially in power, I did not expect to be so deflated so early in his presidency. Yes, it is depressing that women are once again the problem in this country. No self-respecting Black person would consent to a ministry of Black people because it would be clearly recognised as racist rubbish reminiscent of and hankering after Bantu Affairs. Women are the majority in this country. We are not in power. And so it that we get a special little ministry as though we are some odd interest group or annoyance. On what planet is the women’s minister different from a Sebe in so far as she accepts such a post?

I really was hoping against hope that the Zuma administration would prove me wrong – but the signs so far, long before 100 days in office -are more worrying than anything I could have predicted. I did not vote for Zuma in the presidency, but there was never a question that he would be president. I can live with the fact that I am not in the majority because I like living in a democracy, even when what I want does not happen. I still hoped against hope that there’d be a few pleasant surprises early in his administration.

I guess South African feminists had better brace ourselves for more bizzarely offensive posturing on gender affairs. Eish.



2009 Elections: COPE banners rock

In a previous post, I was particularly tough on COPE for the absent posters so close to the elections. I have also been irritated with the change in the face of COPE, again, so close to the elections. But those posts are there for you to read (and re-read?) another time.

I still think the Dandalas might be a liability to COPE, but would be very happy to be proved wrong. This past weekend one of the papers carried allegations that Hlomla Dandala, the highly talented, popular and gorgeous actor son of the COPE presidential candidate, Mvume Dandala, had been involved in an altercation with some LRC (previously SRC for you oldies) member on a university campus. All I have to say on the matter is that Dandala junior sure does generate a lot of bad press – pre and post COPE associations. So, he is consistent in getting weekend press coverage for alleged dodgy behaviour.

I have completely changed my mind about COPE visibility, at least in Jozi. The Congress of the People may have taken an eternity to appear, and then surfaced with lame Dandala and Lekota posters on street poles. They may also have produced unnecessarily messy confusion with two faces on the COPE election posters.

And I don’t want to even think about why the Manifesto on the website only appears in Xhosa and English, or why a party as slick as COPE does not have a copy-editor so that we don’t have to read a “summerised manifesto” instead of a summarised one on their website. And I won’t say any more about the strange punctuation of dates. (Yes, I am pedantic about these things as well as paranoid about even the appearance ethnic nationalism.)

But now the Congress of the People have taken over entire low flying bridges and metres of space on the freeway (M1) as well as a brilliantly located three-sided advert just before you cross over the Mandela Bridge from Braamfontein into Newtown. This is some coup because the latecomers are suddenly very visible in the city. I don’t know whether this is true outside of Johannesburg since I saw very few eThekwini naseMgungundlovu (in Durban and Pmburg) when I was there a month ago.

Since my last KZN trip predated the huge COPE banners popping up all over Jozi, other cities could also be in the changed environment. Those driven to comment on this posting, please say something about the COPE posters in your city or part of the country, in addition to whatever else you want to say.

In the city of Gold, there is a huge banner along the Parktown (St Andrew’s) exit on the M1 south, which is also visible when you get onto the M1 north from the Empire/Jan Smuts onramp; another equally big one just before the Grayston off-ramp again on the M1 north. But the best one I have seen covers three sides of a building in Braamfontein. It’s just before the Nelson Mandela bridge on the Braamfontein/Wits side of the bridge. From some angle it looks like it is ON the actual bridge.

So, what’s so cool about the specific COPE ad, and the other ones around the city? First, I like that they are on the freeway because, like the UDM ones that were first to grace the M1 freeway in Jozi, you can’t miss them and they say something about the parties advertised as fast paced, on the go parties, like Jozi itself. The UDM billboards are where ads for products usually are, so they are well placed to draw the drivers’ and passengers’ attention without being reckless and driving into the car in front of you.

COPE has that bright yellow that you can’t miss even from the corner of the eye, and even at night, which helps it stand out when placed on a grey concrete slab. The COPE colours grab you, and the minimalist writing is also quite succesful because you can read the message almost instantly. When you start getting bored with the yellow, the bright blue and/or bright red are sure to get you. The simplicity is both striking and very effective. Thankfully, no politicians’ faces on these ones, so they can be used again, if COPE hang around as a party of the SA political scene. This earns COPE a few stars for enviromental savvy.

They get a few extra stars for Lyndall Shope-Mafole as the Gautend premier candidate as well. The former, Director General at the Dept of Communications, was elected onto the ANC NEC early last year, post-Polokwane, so she clearly had the favour of the new leadership of the ANC. Yet, off she went to join the new kid on the block. A mystery?

Next, COPE get five stars for location, intertextuality, and wit. I am re-tempted to vote for them because I am very entertained. Regular readers know I want to be entertained during electioneering. In a good way too. COPE are making me feel a lot more hopeful that they are all they were cracked out to be at the November convention. Then, they offered the possibility of newness, imaginative platforms and politicking.

They have my attention now because I work near the Nelson Mandela bridge; my office is in Braamfontein. I drive on the M1 to and from work most days of the week. So, just like I have been seeing Holomisa’s face on that banner for months, now I see COPE everywhere. This can be both a good and bad thing.

On the one hand, such location is an advantage because you begin to read and visually ingest these billboards and banners even when you’re not thinking about them. Advertisers know about this sort of thing, which is exactly why they use billboards. Or atleast part of the decision. So, the visuals become part of your natural thinking and life environment, holding your attention even when you don’t realise it, I imagine. Does this mean people can end up feeling it’s quite ‘natural’ to vote for a party they have started to think about as part of their everyday life? Is that a serious stretch? It might be. But maybe not.

On the other hand, the placing may be a handicap because we could grow so accustonmed to seeing these banners and billboards that they fade into the background of our lives. That may also mean we forget about them if they are up too early. They really become like all the other billboards up on the freeway. I can’t really tell you, off the top of my head, what else is up on my route right now. Except for the Dark and Lovely ad with Sonia Mbele/Sedibe, which is on a building face opposite COPE’s ad. That is quite strange, but maybe there are no other billboards and banners on my way to work anymore. Maybe the Zuma posters on every streetpole and lightpole on the freeway (with the Indian cricket and the Lyric Theatre ads in between) have me so overwhelmed that I can’t see anything else. Or, more likely, the regular billboards have faded into the background.

I don’t know what the research says about this, so this is just speculation off the cuff.

Back to the election visibility of COPE. The above is all well and good, but because I live in my head somewhat – both an occupational hazard and one of the reasons some of us are drawn to certain occupations (it certainly is not the renumeration that attracts you to academia) – I have been thinking about the third, huge COPE advert that I see often as I go about my way. Wit draws attention, that’s for sure.

The Braamfontein/Nelson Mandela COPE ad is the best placed strategically. First, the building is visible from Braamfontein, from the CBD and from various interconnecting freeways into/and out of the city. Location is key in terms of maximising impact. Then there is the fact that it is placed next to (and from some angle it seems as though it is ON) the Nelson Mandela bridge. The bridge connects the academic (Wits)/activist (NGO filled Braamfontein Centre) part of Jozi with Newtown, Jozi’s cultural precinct in more ways than geographical. The COPE ad and bridge also hover above the Jozi CBD, again in more than physical ways. There is a confluence of meanings to be read just from where the metaphoric meets the physical.

But placing it on Nelson Mandela bridge is no accident, I am pretty sure. COPE is premised on its links with the liberation movement: in the name choices attempted, the party name settled on, the oft-cited liberation struggle credentials of the leadership (except Linda Odendaal, but that is another blog posting that may never happen), the fact that the website spells out the full name unlike other parties that rely on acronyms, the rampant patriotism and appropriating the colours of the flag for the logo, endless references to defending democracy and the constitution and so on.

What are the odds that the physical link with Mandela is accidental?

Now, when you speak about the poster you really have to literally link Mandela’s name with COPE, even though Mandela is an ANC member. This happens in your language. But it also happens at the level of association.

Can you get better credentials in the public imagination than saying your name next to Nelson Mandela (Bridge)? Or resting on Mandela (Bridge)? I think not.

There are other unsavory associations to be gleaned from the location of the COPE-claimed building, of course. The building (and therefore the advert) is not really on Nelson Mandela bridge, it’s actually on its right. On Mandela’s right? The Black DA?

These unfortunate readings are only suggested when you look at the bridge from up close, as you approach the bridge. But by then it is already too late because the gigantic letters spelling HOPE have got you. And we sure need hope in this country, even when we disagree on which party to turn to for that.

But,
a) since I am still an undecided voter;
b) COPE is not paying me to electioneer, and my days of canvassing for the ANC are in the past; and,
b) I am not an intellectual for sale,

I will be thinking about another party to vote for tomorrow, and there will be a blog on that too.

What fun electioneering offers!



“The Fat Black Women Sing” is brilliant

I might be one of the last people to see this play/musical in its run at the Market Theatre, due to a range of life issues, but I sure am glad that I did. It is on an extended run until March 29, 2009 due to popular demand. I can see why, and if I manage to, I will see it again this week.

[Warning: Please note that this is not a review, because regular readers know I have that weird love/hate relationship with reviews. It is a series of reflections on my most recent obsession. Most reviews I have seen have spent more time telling you how fabulous Napo Masheane is, which she is, than on the actual play. One misses the boat completely and thinks that women only conversations are the terrain of victimhood.]

Napo Masheane’s play is billed as an adaptation of Grace Nichols’ _The Fat Black Woman’s Poems_. I don’t quite agree. I love, love, love Grace Nichols’ work. Napo Masheane may just be the most exciting playwright working in South Africa today. Ms Masheane is a magician with words, and she has that very enviable talent of weaving magic across layers of language. Most of us do our best writing in one language, and maybe write well in another one or two. Not Ms Masheane. Even in her Feela Sistah days she would deliver exquisite poetry in English and elegant seSotho/seTswana.

Masheane’s play is clearly in conversation with Nichols, and ideologically both pieces are in the same conceptual world. Masheane’s play, however, works very differently stylistically and this is not just because of the different genres adopted by the two Black women writing.

Starring Nomathamsanqa Baleka, Sheila Katende, Tumelo Moloi, Bomsa Buthelezi and Simphiwe Zungu, the play is a journey into the worlds of Black women’s diversity. The acting is phenomenal as these women take us deep into the fraught business of beauty, sex, relationships, abuse, pleasure, language and self-esteem. The four “fat” and one “thin” woman banter, allowing us see the various ways in which beauty is elusive. The fat women are harassed for being women and for being fat black women in the streets of South Africa as they mind their business. The thin woman is shunned at school because boys consider her too skinny. But these are not victims who suffer and then tell tales of woe to a patient audience. Rather, these are performers in a double sense, making us aware of the very many layers that exist in how Black women are talked about in various narratives.

The bulk of the play is in isiXhosa/seSotho/seTswana with occasional isiZulu and some English. It is not an English play. The friend I watched it with speaks isiSwati and English but enjoyed the play sufficiently, even though I only translated some of the seSotho/seTswana dialogue. Language is a very important aspect of the play too. Masheane uses language to do more than cover all the basics and bring exciting contemporary content to our languages, as crucial a project as this is. She does this well too. However, language is a character in the play itself. There are things, names, textures of this play that simply cannot be captured in the standard English we speak. There are character types and forms of familiar strangeness that would make no sense in English. Yes, the play can be translated. But my friend and I comcurred that it would have to be into some African American dialect or Westindian creole. But then it would not be about South Africa.

There are things about relationship that are negotiated through language, so that women’s exchanges are not romanticised. The Xhosa character, for example, has some wit that resonated and reminded me of a specific type of sophisticated sister, not a single hair out of place, has her life set as she seems to want it, who every now and again reminds you, as did the character, that yena uliqabakazi lakuQumbu. And there is a hint at some tension that complicates sisterhood when she doesn’t quite “pronounce” things properly.

You know the historic rumour about how Xhosa people don’t pronounce English and other African language names properly. Well, it is flirted with here, but also cleverly undermined and questioned in the dialogue. This is just one of the many, many ways in which the language is layered and recognition is key to the play. There are turns of phrase that take you back to some place you haven’t been to in a while. And you find yourself wanting to join in the conversation.

I am not quite a “fat black woman”, most of the time. But I was once a fat Black girl and as I try to lose the excess pregnancy weight, I have thought of myself as a “fat black woman” at times. As I watched the play, there were multiple moments of recognition that are not premised on beng a fat black woman necessarily. How many of us do not know the discomfort that comes from your inner thighs rubbing against each other painfully? Or the fertile ground that is the anticipation or arrival of the first period. And here, I did wonder whether Ms Napo had actually used my story as I listened to one of the women tell of the bizzare interpretation of the first period. I tell it often in friend’s homes when the conversation turns in that direction, and I know I have told it in Ms Mash’s presence before. I’ve also shared it with Lebo Mashile and audience in the L’atitude episode on menstruation. Masheane is more than welcome to my story and well edited and used too. You can go and watch the play and wonder which story is mine. If you are a friend of mine, you’ll probably recognise it.

Zoe Wicomb says you can’t trust writers with anything because you might see yourself in her work. Makhosazana Xaba reminds us that we are not so special that we have original experiences. Whatever we think is ours has happened to someone else. So, maybe ‘my story’ is not just mine alone.

And this is part of the utter beauty and joy that comes from watching this play. Even the stories that were not strictly my direct lived experiences are mine. It is one of the few times I have watched a beautiful piece of art and felt completely seen, and at home. I loved this play so much I can’t stop thinking about it.

I liked it so much that if I can get a script out of Ms Masheane, I want to write a longer piece on the play.

There are a few other people who wrote about why they loved this play, and how it was about them too. In a beautifully written review, Chisanga Kabinga said the songs were a soundtrack to her life. Jabulile Ngwenya writes a fun, if somewhat journalisty take, on the play. There is nothing wrong with journalisty writing. And award winning reviewer, Chris Thurman offers his take here.

As I left with my friend, I could not have been more grateful to the friend who watched my baby that evening so I could take this wonderful piece of art in. I left feeling like I’d been hanging out with a group of crazy friends.



ANC Presidential names I could vote for
26 March 2009, 11:00 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

If my national ballot paper had one of the following faces next to the ANC logo, the party could keep my vote:

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma
Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge
Cyril Ramaphosa
Zwelidinga Pallo Jordan
Vytjie Mentor

But that is not to be.