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.
Filed under: Southern African politics, things that suck | Tags: African nation state, ANC, Baleka Mbete, Black people, Black women's activism, Blogroll, gender based violence, Jacob Zuma, Ministry of women, Nozizwe Madlala Routledge, South Africa, south african feminists, South African parliament, South African politics, Union Buildings
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.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bomsa Buthelezi, Chris Thurman, Feela Sistah, Grace Nichols, L'atitude, Lebo Mashile, Makhosazana Xaba, Market Theatre, Napo Masheane, Nomathamsanqa Baleka, Sheila Katende, Simphiwe Zungu, South African literature, The Fat Black Women Sing, The Fat Black Women's Poems, Tumelo Moloi, Zoe Wicomb
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.
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.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: affordable public transport, African nation state, African people, BRT, Joburg, Johannesburg, South Africa, taxi drivers
Joburg freeways experienced bottlenecks yesterday because of striking taxi drivers. This was the mildest inconvenience caused by the strike. Commuters who usually rely on minibus taxis were left stranded, terrified or both. Why terrified? See the post “Taxi Drivers terrorise commuters” later this week.
No matter where you went yesterday, you could feel the effects of the taxi strike. But that is the whole point of strike action: to force the hand of the targetted/most affected to give in to the demands of the workers. This all makes sense, and things sure were slower yesterday. At my one of my local supermarket, the queues were much longer than usual, with notices all over the shop apologising to customers about the quality of the service on offer (“due to taxi strike action, we are unable to provide our usual excellent service”).
The people for whom this was much more than an inconvenience are those who rely on one or more taxis to get to work every day of the working week. For these people, the limited alternatives (buses, trains, walking) had to do. But if these commuters found these forms of transport satisfactory in the first place, they would not be taking expensinve minibus taxis.
This seems is an argument for the BRT to be fast tracked. The government has a responsibility to provide public transport that is affordable, convenient and reliable to its citizens and residents of the country. This is far from the case currently. As much as the government has done in the last 15 years, efficient public transport (as service delivery)would considerably increase how much money people have in their pockets at the end of the month. The government knows this.
Nobody pays more to get around than people who rely on taxis for travel. The transport used most frequently, and by the largest numbers of poor, working class and newly employed people effectively keeps them poor. Someone who lives in Yeoville/Kensington/Bez Valley but works in Sandton has to first take a taxi to Alex, and then another to Sandton. This costs approximately R25 one way. You do the maths. This young person then cannot buy her or his first car and flat anytime soon. It is a strange spiral that prevents young professionals in debt (students loans also take a huge cut of this group’s salaries).
Now imagine that someone else has to travel farther, in addition to the relatively newly minted graduate workerbee whose image I had in mind in the above scenario. Now imagine the cut from the salaries of another worker: the woman who cleans your office or the man who fixes things in your office building. Given how appallingly these people are already paid, why should they have to use the bulk of their salaries on getting to work? (When you think about the state of our public schools and hospitals you want to cry because these workers then waste money on travel that could afford them better healthcare and schooling for their families).
A middle class person’s petrol costs for a month are less than half of what the travel costs of the people I mention above, even if that middle class person drives a petrol guzzler. So the less money you make, the more you pay for transport. This is injustice, and the government has every right and obligation to turn this around.
As annoying as the digging up of roads and re-routing in the city are, I can’t wait until I don’t have to drive to get around in the first place. I am looking forward to being on that fast bus that is more convenient than the car I drive. All of us riding on the bus also means a smaller carbon footprint for the children some of us insist on having;) and enjoying. It means more time to read the paper, to have that extra cup of coffee, to listen to the voices of other people, to have a conversation while looking at your partner/friend/child’s face.
I can’t wait!
At the same time, I do feel sorry for the taxi drivers. But only for about 5 mins. It’s sad to think that the oldest Black business sector could be decimated sometime soon. It’s also sad to see that government’s approach to the taxi industry leaves much to be desired. What was the point of the disastrous taxi recapitalisation scheme if taxis are now supposed to step up and intergrate themselves – without proper discussion, consultation or co-ordination – into the new BRT and other public transport? Many of the cars forced down the throats of taxi drivers are really crap – the worst Chinese imports available which fall apart at the first opportunity, cannot really be fixed because there aren’t enough affordable, available parts, require different mechanics from the ones the taxi industry has been keeping in employment for decades, etc. I have always thought that the taxi recapitalisation programme was daylight robbery. It did not just take the rickety minibuses off the road. It affected most taxi drivers the same way – even if they had fairly okay taxis still.
Against this backdrop, then, you can’t blame the taxi industry for not taking government at their word. This is especially if the taxi associations have really not been briefed on exactly how they will be intergrated, how this shareholding deal will work, etc, etc. No matter what you think of taxi drivers, when you hear taxi association from different cities saying the same thing on different radio and tv stations, you have to wonder about what is really going on.
And, for those of us who are not entirely convinced about the increasingly pro-free market directions of government policies, the fate of taxi drivers – and all residents in the country – are the responsibility of the government.
As expensive as taxi fares are, taxi drivers would have a lot of support if they did not terrorise the very people they depend on. That’s why my sympathy lasts for five minutes. But more on that on Friday.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ANC, Blogroll, COPE, Shikota, South Africa, South African politics
I went home to a little town called Fort Beaufort this past December. Yes, it is a weird Eastern Cape thing that most of us leave Jozi and made the long trip to that big mismanaged provice. But this is not a post about migrancy. It’s about COPE and the ANC and little developments in that small town, which I hear are being played out in many other towns.
Firstly, I was struck by how many people were wearing political t-shirts around Christmas time. There are always some people wearing political t-shirts at any given time. But the Festive Season usually has people either too dressed up or too hot to draw more heat to themselves.
Not this December. Standing in a queue for the FNB ATM for my mother who’d just has a back op, I count three political t-shirts out of 10 people in line. One says something along the lines of: MK, my ANC, my choice, my … (something else which now escapes me). Fair enough. One other person is wearing a bland ANC t-shirt from previous elections. The third person is wearing a read COPE t-shirt with that awful wheel like logo that always makes me a little nervous. Why? It reminds me of a windmill and then I end up in Holland. Don’t ask me about the strangeness of random associations.
This was repeated I went. Sometimes there were more COPE t-shirts than ANC t-shirts. Once or twice there was a yellow DA t-shirt.
To compound the strangeness was the fact that everytime a COPE lorry went around town with a loud speaker, a few minutes later an ANC lorry would go in the same direction. I know it is electioneering time, but what kind of madness was this in 36 degree heat at Christmas time?
Given that the ANC is the party in power, why is it following COPE? Over the last few months, COPE has been setting the agenda, and the ANC responding. This would worry me a more than a little as the ANC. Incidentally, there was a small DA gig in town at some point as well, but nobody really bothers with that except for the 50 people at the event.
I do hope that the exchanges between COPE and the ANC stay this side of the law, even if the bounds of civility were transgressed months ago. I know that people stayed away from each other’s parties, mcimbis and weddings because old friends and families were now on different sides of the COPE/ANC divide.
Interesting times lie ahead.
