I meant to write this blog two weeks ago, but between life, work and feeling sorry for myself at the loss of The Weekender (which no longer even has a web presence, so I can’t link to the archive, so read Peter Bruce’s last piece on it), it has taken me this long to get down to it.

It has been three weeks since The Weekender appeared on a Saturday. I had looked forward to this paper every weekend. I am a great fan of weeklies, even though I know I should be more thorough in my reading of the dailies. The truth is that I scan a few dailies, depending on which ones are available in the province I find myself in on any given day. Most of the time I am in Gauteng, so no prize for guessing which rags I read more regularly than most.

Each weekend, I pour over my newspapers and read the most interesting bits. I read only the odd item in the Sports and Business sections, and I flip through the magazine supplements where these exist, although I used to read City Pulse cover to cover when Gail Smith was at its helm.

But back to The Weekender, then. This paper had become my firm favourite in its coverage of politics and the creative arts in intelligent and engaging ways. The writing was so good, I read 98% of the paper most weekends.

Its closing has led to quite a bit of talk, some of which I have absolutely no time for. But here are some interesting bits:

Issa Sikiti da Silva had this to say about why the paper really had to close, with a few smart experts also throwing in their two cents’ worth.

Justice Malala had an additional thing or two to say about why the paper’s closing is sad for more than its staff and regular readers.

And finally, this is what some readers shared about the demise of the paper:

Jenny Crys-Williams

Paul O’Riordan

Sizwe Majola

Geoff Cohen

… and many, many more.

I will miss it, and Rehana Rossouw deserves the warmest congratulations for running an outstanding paper as well as for penning a weekly column that I could not wait to read every Saturday. I will miss Ms Rossouw’s wit, humour and wordsmith magic and am hoping that there is a book coming out of her very soon, to temporarily soothe the ache of not having her as a regular voice.

The full email I sent the Monday after the horrible news of The Weekender closing. Business Day published an edited version without my thoughts on Rehana Rossouw’s column here

Dear Rehana [Rossouw],

I am sure that this is one of hundreds of emails you have to read, so I am going to make it brief.

My family and I are extremely sad that our favourite weekly read – and the only one we read religiously even on weekends with family drama, funerals, out of GP travel, illness, weddings, burst geysers, leaking pools, load shedding, undergraduate marking, children’s parties – is closing shop.

Thank you for putting together a paper that was always informative, beautifully written, provocative and politically complex. The Weekender made me laugh, wonder, think and change my mind about various issues after reading it. Its reviews made me buy books I would not otherwise have, even though too much of my income already goes to bookshops. Every weekend, my partner and I shared our copy, re-read sections to each other, and rescued bits from our toddler son who always wanted some part to write on and then stuff into a toy-box, bath tub or bin.

I always read your column first – before even my own opinion when you published me – and I will miss that column sorely. (Please tell me that there is a book coming out of you very soon. I probably should not tell you this, but I am not really much of a Business Day reader, although I might need to become one now.)

Thank you for publishing longer versions of my own and other people’s work than the space usually allocated to opinion in newspapers.

I have been a bit lax about the paper recycling drop off, (plastic is really my obsession) so we have a few back issues still which I am not loathe to throw away. Eish! Please tell me that BDFM will now finally have a proper The Weekender, so that its readers can nostalgically know the online archive is there.

All the best to you, Rehana, and thanks again for The Weekender.
Pumla

PS. All my facebook buddies are miserable about The Weekender disappearing – even people who usually just lurk have status updates:(

This is a slightly longer version of a column published under the slightly odd title of “Protect us please”, in City Press on Sunday, 22 November 2009. It is a response to the death of a toddler at the hands of two policemen who shot the boy, who was sitting in a car with his paternal uncle, outside an aunt’s house because “he was carrying a pipe” which the police officers then “mistook for a gun”. This is one of a range of civilian deaths at the end of police officers since attempts by the Police Ministry to tighten legislation which governs when police officers may use deadly force. Ostensibly, this is to equip the police force to deal decisively with violent criminals, but it is open to abuse. Deputy Minister of Police, Fikile Mbalula, is the figure most closely associated with instuctions to “shoot to kill”.

I was not then, nor am I now, convinced that civilian deaths are unavoidable as Mbalula claims. I think the response from police heads has been completely unacceptable.

So here is the long version:

I cried when I saw the picture of a toddler killed by the police this week. I don’t know him or his parents, but I wondered what difference it makes to them whether their child was killed by criminals or police officers. This was a little boy who brought laughter to his parents’ faces even when they did not necessary want to laugh at his antics. Atlegang Aphane was a little boy whose father wanted to play many more games with in the future. His mother cradled him protectively as he kept her up at night. This is part of the experience of love; we had this effect on our parents and the children we love have it on us. As I pondered all of this, I wondered how long the police heads had taken to think about how it would feel if their little children were unsafe from the very people that were supposed to protect them.

No matter what he did, no three year old can look that menacing. There are conflicting stories about a parked car, a child sitting inside it with an uncle, the pipe that little Atlegang may or may not have had in his hand. But no matter what the little boy held in his hand, he must have looked like a little boy to the same eyes that were so attentive as to notice that he was holding something.

Is a three year old the face of violent crime?

I am sure that some police officers, like many other ordinary people, buy guns as toys for their children to play with. Little boys and girls all over the country should throw those toy guns away lest they may be mistaken for violent criminals. Being gun free will not render them safe. Atlegang did not have a gun when he was killed. Even if s/he has a real bomb in his hand, a three year old should not die at the hands of the police. There is no justification for what happened this week.

Newspapers say he did not have a pipe in his hand. But he is dead nonetheless. Somebody needs to take responsibility for this, and not just the two police officers on whose hands his blood is. It will not bring Atlegang back or heal his family’s pain, but it will be a world apart from the insensitivity of justifying a child’s death with talk of innocents caught in the cross-fire.
This child was not hit by a stray bullet between shooting grown men.

What kind of people are we that can accept such a thing as the trivialisation of human life as normal?

A friend of mine remarked this week that she was no longer sure whom to fear more: criminals or the police. She and I have had countless conversations about crime over the years. We have not always agreed on its causes and whether the government is doing enough to address is. She was frequently infuriated by what she called Mbeki’s side-stepping of the issue, as was I. Now the media reports that Zuma speaks about how ‘our’ crime is different from that experienced in other countries, and I honestly don’t know what this means. I suppose that if our crime is more violent, then our police officers should also be more violent and less cautious. But how are we as ordinary people supposed to know the difference in the absence of consideration for the fact that all lives matter, especially those of us who are not shooting at the police?

Yes, I know that there are many outstanding men and women in the police force, many of whom have lost their lives to violent criminals. I doubt that they feel recognised in the glossing over the unnecessary death of unarmed children and adults.

The yearning for more reliable and visible policing is one of the few calls that unite South Africans across the political landscape. When we hope for safety we imagine that we can tell those we can trust apart from those we dare not.

A few weeks ago, in this paper, Mathata Tsedu wrote movingly to Shadi Rapitso’s parents about the horror of losing a child and to a senseless violent act. We cannot accept that the unnecessary loss of life is unavoidable. Giving hope to people who live in this country cannot mean that we have to first fear the police when we think about our own and our families’ safety.

This is the longer version of my column in this past weekend (01 November 2009) in the City Press:

I have been as intrigued by Jonathan Jansen’s inaugural lecture as the thirteenth Vice Chancellor of the University of the Free State (UFS) as I have been by some of the responses. Time may have shifted somewhat, but the Jansen saga is a reminder of various things we would do well to reflect on. Jansen lyrical references to the conflicted pasts of both the Free State province and the University itself did little to mask the real meat at the heart of Jansen’s talk: his decision on “the Reitz matter”. Although he claimed his interest in “closing the book on Reitz” and “reconciliation, forgiveness and social justice”, the University of the Free State’s first black rector legitimated the ongoing trivialization of working class black people’s lives. The ANCYL is wrong to expect us to claim him just because he is black and pretend no insult has been uttered. The workers who were victimized by the students the new UFS rector wishes to protect are also black. Who claims them?

Unlike Jansen, I am not surprised that the Reitz “atrocity could have been committed on the grounds of an institution of higher learning”. This is the easiest part of the entire Reitz video saga, unless we deliberately choose to ignore both history and the ongoing state of South African academia. It is the academy that first popularised notions of racial and other supremacy through scientific racism. Higher education continues to be shaped by this legacy in ways too numerous to list here, but on which much academic literature exists. Jansen knows this well. His claimed ignorance is a mere rhetorical strategy and not a very convincing one at that.

Having recognised that the racist performance captured on tape was enabled by institutional power, rather than individual deviant peculiarities, Jansen proceeds to re-enact it. First he treats the entire matter as though it is about sets of two arbitrary individuals set up against each other: errant young white men versus violated black workers who can be quickly compensated so that they may forgive. It is noteworthy that Jansen spends barely any ink on these workers. The bulk of his narrative is dedicated to those who matter: the young men whose futures are at risk, who need to be re-intergrated into the university community in order to acquire further institutional power. In order to mask this evaluation, Jansen is silent on the place of justice, responsibility and recognition. Not for these young UFS hooligans, the expulsion metted out to many other students who act in ways universities do not like, even if the latter’s transgressions are victimless. In Jansen’s book, the futures of the expelled UFS students are much more important than the lives of the students financially excluded from his and many other institutions of higher learning.

Jansen evokes that terrible convenient Christian narrative we had to all deal with during the fraught TRC to invite us to share his complicity. But Jansen takes it a step further, and unlike the TRC the violated are not even required to forgive, or speak at all. The workers who were publicly humiliated will be compensated in unnamed ways; they are not even important enough to consult. Legality stands between Jansen and the acknowledgement of their humanity. The workers are simply required to forgive these young men for their behaviour, and stop being difficult, like the rest of us. They need to just pretend that their humiliation is over and stop being a nuisance. This is one of the inheritances of the TRC: this terrible obligation of black forgiveness. Along with it, we are invited to turn a blind eye to the very many ways in which violence against poor black people is endemic at UFS and the country. Like many others with institutional power, the new UFS rector has chosen the side of power.

Jansen has felt himself pressed to frequent Reitz, but there is no mention of how hard he tried to connect to the man and women who suffered such indignities. After all, along with the burden of obligatory forgiveness, black people are ever-ready to take the money and run. Biko was wrong when he said that all black people’s feelings matter. According to Jansen, white supremacists need not take responsibility for their action, no matter how obviously rightwing. In Jansen they have a brilliant ally.

As for the proposed “Reitz Institute for Studies in Race, Reconcilliation and Social Justice”, I think it calls for a rare moment of action by South African academia: its complete boycott. I know that you could not pay this particular Black woman academic enough money to go anywhere near it.

This is quite remarkable, so while I collect my thoughts …

According to the SABC:

The ANC Youth League today gave 800m gold medal winner Caster Semenya R60 000. Mbulaeni Mulaudzi, who won gold for winning the 800m race at the international amateur athletics federation’s World Championships in Berlin would get R40 000 from the League, its President Julius Malema told a press briefing at O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg.

Long jump silver medalist, Khotso Mokoena, would get R25 000. In a statement the League said it would start a “vigorous campaign” to demand an unconditional apology from International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF), and those it claimed were responsible for “attempts to humiliate” Semenya.

Meanwhile Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya, has denounced the IAAF, over its decision to conduct gender verification tests on Caster Semenya. “We’re outraged, we’re concerned about the developments recently and we’re saying we will fight and walk together with Caster. We will give her the necessary support that she deserves, thank you for flying our flag high.”

Below is the full opinion piece published in City Press (23 August 2009, p5) with the first half shortened and the 2nd half slightly edited. I did not like the editorial changes, and I see it is not on the website, so I cannot just link to it. If I remember to, I’ll attach the scanned pdf version from the past weekend to my next Caster Semenya post (for those of you obsessive types, like me:)

I wish that the stir caused by South African super-athlete, Caster Semenya, this week was in celebration of how she achieved the previously inconceivable. Instead, Caster Semenya became the twenty-first century Sarah Bartmann.

Like Bartmann, Semenya is a South African woman rendered spectacle in a European city for the world to see. In the IAAF’s statements and ensuing media frenzy, Semenya ceased to matter as more than the subject of humour, humiliation and leering. The widespread use of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ as if they were synonyms is telling, not just for the failure to recognise that sex is a biological and gender a social category. This apparent confusion shows how Semenya, like Bartmann, is unworthy of decent, humane consideration. She may have scooped gold because of skill, talent and choice – all social attributes – but she is reduced to the field of spectacle. Through the IAAF’s irresponsibility, Semenya the outstanding athlete was reduced to a freak, another curious body that does not fit categories we pretend are neutral. She is not even entitled to privacy from the leering eyes looking for the Adam’s apple they claim to almost see, just like Bartmann’s mischievous ‘Hottentot apron’.

Through her exhibition, Sarah Bartmann was rendered object, and her humiliation was justified through claims that her body held secrets of scientific value. Was she animal, human or something altogether different? Semenya’s journey to Berlin was about skill, talent and determination. It has not mattered what she likes, feels, thinks or decides. She is the spectacular body on display waiting to yield secrets that are the world’s entitlement. Ms Semenya has no right to privacy, unlike other athletes who have been tested before. A band of scientists want direct access to her body so that they can answer once and for all: is she female, male or something altogether different. And what would that be?

Suddenly, it does not matter that sex classification tests are murky terrain, or that many people are intersex. Many scientists tell us that poking around with Semenya’s chromosomes, blood samples and other body fluids, or subjecting her to painful tissue sampling is not as simple matter. Rather than conclusive answers, these biological sex tests may yield more questions. In addition to the technical lab dealings, we must never forget that the business of science is also very political. It was men in European labs who brought us scientific racism which the remainder of the academy legitimised so effectively that we still live its nightmares. In the aftermath of esteemed scientists like Linneaus, who classified, and dissected like Cuvier, sex tests such as the one used by the IAAF would become de rigueur for those whose bodies were safe to question and mark as hysterical.

But we are assured that this is not in the eighteenth century. The IAAF will ensure that competent teams of specialists are responsible for these tests. Their results will hold a very clinical truth.

Is it really irrelevant that these tests originate from the 1930s at a time when scientists were less coy about the connections between race, sex and superiority?

Results are determined by which tests are used, when and how. All research is indelibly shaped by the scientist’s questions and assumptions. The language of scientific sex verification hides the significant role that interpretation plays when faced with the results. This is why the same athlete has sometimes passed and failed very similar IAAF sex verification tests. Science is not the unquestionable truth, and it is important to continue to question the racist gender violence under its cover here.

But even if we accept the validity of some testing, the IAAF does not test every athlete, nor does it release the details of ongoing tests as a matter of course. Most athletes are human beings, entitled to dignity, privacy and respect – unless that athlete’s name is Caster Semenya. Semenya’s crime is that she dared to be that young, fast, strong and look like a powerful athlete at the same time. She does not look like the British Jenny Meadows, who resembles idealised white femininity. But Semenya looks and sounds like many women we all know from across the world. Bartmann looked like many African women. But she did not look like Jenny Meadow’s foremothers.

We have more power to defend and support Semenya than our foreparents did with Bartmann. It is our responsibility to speak in anger at Semenya’s racist gender violation, and to celebrate the achievement of a most remarkable eighteen year old.

The Joint Working Group Statement on Caster Semenya

As Mokgadi ‘Caster’ Semenya proudly received her gold medal today in Berlin we join with the rest of the country in declaring our pride and joy at the astounding achievement of this amazing young woman. We are deeply disturbed that questions around her gender have taken prominence away from her performance throughout the international media and condemn utterly the demand from the International Association of Athletics Federations that she should undergo gender testing.

Some 200 years ago a young South African woman named Saartjie Baartman was forcefully removed to Europe, as a woman who was physically different to the commonly accepted norm she became a figure of curiosity and disgust to the people she was paraded in front of. After her death she was dissected. Now Caster is likewise to be dissected; poked, prodded and tested by a panel of doctors who on the basis of their ‘investigations’ will pass judgement on who and what she is. Making an abysmal mockery of her history, her family and her right to ownership of her identity.

That the IAAF chose to reveal that a gender test had been requested before her race thereby forcing her to run under a media storm was disgraceful. It is against the IAAFs own rules to comment on athletes being tested for drugs related offences before the outcome of the test is known, there seems to be no good reason why the same courtesy was not extended to Caster. Nor is she the first woman to face these allegations, athletes from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe particularly have throughout the history of the sport been subjected to suspicion around their gender based solely on their physical appearance and perceived lack of femininity. In 2006 Indian sprinter Santhi Soundarajan was stripped of the silver medal won at the Asian Games due to the fact that despite having the external organs of a woman, being brought up as a woman and self identifying as a woman her genetic tests indicated that she was not fully female. The testing is invasive, insulting, based on a very limited and questionable understanding of what constitutes a woman and has no place in modern sport.

We stand in full solidarity with Caster and applaud Athletics South Africa and other sports bodies for throwing their full support being her. We hope this support will be maintained regardless of the results of the gender inquisition to which Caster is to be subjected.

Emily Craven

Joint Working Group
011 403 5566
emily at jwg.org.za

I have been having various conversations about Caster Semenya and the whole ugliness of not allowing her to celebrate the result of all her hard work. Most of the time, I come across someone who seems to think that there is only one way or reason to be annoyed about Ms Semenya’s treatment. Then there are the people who don’t see what the “fuss” is all about since she should just take the test and be done with it if there is nothing to hide (or think that this is all somehow Athletics South Africa’s fault for various resons since they ostensibly should have tested her first). This second group annoys the hell out of me, so if you’re one of those people, feel free to stop reading, or to send me a comment telling me how much I annot you right back. Finally, there are the people who feel so angry or sad but overwhelmed to the point that they cannot speak their feelings.

So, I have decided to compile a list of some of the varied responses to anger and/or sadness over the manner in which this super-athlete has been treated. I liked reading them, and I did not need to agree with every word the bloggers said to do so. You might like them too, or not.

Sokari Ekine, at Blacklooks, one of my favourite blogs, has posted with necessary clarity in the midst of madness. As one of the readers commented on her post, it is a powefully analytical and very humane piece.

Robert Bravery, the Brave Programmer’s post “Caster Semenya – a lesson” is an wonderful read, beautiful, sensitive and even when I disagreed, the language swept me away. It made me pause and think about Caster Semenya differently. The Brave Programmer interweaves his own adversity with Caster Semenya’s without equating or trivialising either.

And Shane of myfriendshane blog, has simply called the latest post “Caster Semenya” is one annoyed blogger about the entire unnevenness and hypocricy of the IAAF’s stance to Ms Semenya.

Her university website has her very prominently placed and celebrated, which is a good thing

I am sure there are many, many others. Take a look at the anger of the Y-generation after DJ Sbu’s post.

Happy reading, everyone, but remember to come back to come back to loudrastress.

-Media Statement Gender DynamiX and the Saartjie Baartman Centre-
20 August 2009

This week South African media, in particular radio DJ’s and print media have been having a shameless orgy with the gender dispute of our gold medalist heroine competing in Berlin.

Last year we lost a South African sport star to a hate crime because she transgressed gender boundaries. Banyana soccer star Eudy Simelane was murdered in a township because she challenged expected gender stereotypes.

Is our media putting a South African hero’s life in danger on her return, gold medal in hand?

Instead of being proud of our champion the South African media and public is on a witch-hunt trying to define Semenya’s sex. DJ’s on radio are dissecting Semenya’s person to a point of reducing her accomplishments to her genitals.

Says Gender DynamiX Director:” In our work we are reminded of how (wo)men’s bodies are so easily ridiculed and made into a spectacle because of gender notions”. Gender DynamiX focuses its work in the field of transgender, transsexual and gender non-conforming people.

Civil society organisations, are fighting battles against homophobia and transphobia in South Africa. With their work the killing of black lesbians in acts called “curative rape” has come to light. Gender DynamiX maintains that these hate crimes are not only rooted in sexual orientation but also in gender identity.

Ilse Ahrends, Partnership coordinator at the Saartjie Baartman Centre in Cape Town asks ‘. Alas where was the media when National Banyana-Banyana soccer player, Eudy Simelane was murdered because of her sexual orientation?’

Gender non-conformity does not always equal gay or lesbian. It merely refers to a person physical appearance that does not conform to society’s expectations. In general people are outraged and confused by gender ambiguity.

As in the case of Caster Semenya, when confronted by people who challenge our perceptions of masculinity or femininity, we react with anger and fear. This is the daily reality for many South Africans.

Gender DynamiX board member Simone Heradien says: “We are appalled by public and media mechanisms that spur hate speech of this nature. We should not forget the part of radio in the genocide in Rwanda.”
-ends-

Contact: Robert Hamblin 083 226 4683. http://www.genderdynamix.org.za

On Thursday, at the 12th International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Championships in Berlin, an eighteen year old South African athlete broke a record and scooped the gold in the women’s 800m final. Caster Semenya was the first South African to achieve such spectacular athletics heights in the middle distances. Given how happy we are to celebrate Mzantsi firsts, we have much to be proud of in the accomplishments of the teenager from Polokwane. However, if Semenya showed us that “all the world is her stage”, this week we noticed the multitudes that stood ready to shower acid rain on her parade.

Reporting for the IAAF website, Bob Ramsak declared that Semenya’s record breaking time was “naturally, another world leader”. Much of the world’s media dubbed her “controversial” since the IAAF deemed her a candidate for “gender verification testing”. This is fancy language for the crude assertion: she must be a man to run that fast at 18.

But how do you test someone’s gender?

This could be simple, assuming that the tester and tested speak the same language: we are the gender we claim. Ms Semenya has lived her life as a girl, then a woman, and she enters women’s athletics events. But her answer has been dismissed as unreliable.

What people really want to question is whether her sex is male or female, not her gender. Our sex is in our chromosomes, not our genitals, height, muscles, appetites or mental agility. Although lay people believe chromosomes offer conclusive answers, many scientists tell us that XX and XY are only part of the picture, that even biological sex has many grey areas.

Gender is a social category that does not necessarily correspond to sex. Our gender is everywhere, except our chromosomes. But there was a time when scientists thought that our DNA and other biological information determined who we were. Many of us would like to think that science has moved beyond this fact, but has it?

The Caster Semenya saga is an old, familiar story: a young South African woman on the world stage for prodding, genital and other testing by a band of scientists in Europe in order to determine whether she is this or that, or if indeed she is a separate category altogether. It was exceptionally cold over Sarah Bartmann’s Eastern Cape this late August week, and she must have shivered from horror at the de ja vu.

Listening to the increasingly bizarre discussions on the super-achieving Semenya, my mind drifted to tennis legend, Martina Navratilova, who endured endless questions about her gender identity and sexual preference even as she was at the top of Wimbledon. The Williams sisters are scrutinised similarly two decades later. They all look too strong and muscular to be women. And I paused on Eudy Simelane, star footballer, who was prodded to death by a different band of men.

A friend insists that what is wrong is the public manner of Caster Semenya’s humiliation because the IAAF did not quietly take the tests at the beginning of the entire saga rather than making her the subject of rumour and speculation. She notes that the IAAF testing is justified given a history of men running women’s races and the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport.

I might partly agree if the IAAF were in the business of routinely testing all athletes for their chromosomes and whatever else they think determines sex (not gender). It would be despicable and vile test, reminiscent of a time in the science academy when people’s genitals, blood and skulls were studied for information on where to classify them and their capacities. But the IAAF does not subject every single athlete to such tests, only those who challenge dominant understandings of what men and women should look like. Semenya is not the first person to be tested like this by the athletics body. Remember the Indian athlete, Santhi Soundararajan? She first passed and then later failed the same biological sex test, and her results were released upon the failure of the infamous test.

The lesson here is sobering: unless you look like the conventional idealised woman, do not dare dream and achieve big dreams. There is nothing controversial about Caster Semenya, save for the fact that she does not look like a Black Barbie. I don’t know about you, but I will be drinking pretend champagne this week and celebrating a remarkable achievement by a young woman I am proud to share a continent with.