Highway to the Danger Zone (?)

The last couple of mornings, I've woken up to desperate texts from my students: "Do you think we can go out to Khayelitsha today?" I want to tell them yes. In fact, I want to shout a resounding YES, one which will reverberate off the dry-walling in my office as I sit, still half-asleep, reading the news reports on the latest service delivery protests on the Cape Flats. Things don't look good, so I call Tabby.
"Yes sisi," she tells me from the Wellness Centre, "things aren't good here."
"But is it safe, I mean could I come through to say hello?"
She pauses. "I don't think so sisi."
Look, the Wellness Centre verges the epicentre of the unrest around Bonga Drive and Mew Way, so I can understand her hesitancy. But what about everywhere else?

A student of mine usually spends her mornings in the Fezeka community garden in Gugs, farming with a group of apron-wielding older women. Last week, they told her not to come; bricks had been thrown at the neighbouring community court, they weren't sure what was happening. Another student, doing a recycling project at Khayelitsha station was told something similar, as were my students running educational workshops just there down Lansdowne Road. It's not that their sites are particularly volatile, it's that the surrounding area is. I picture the Golden Arrow bus that was stoned last week, flailing into shacks. Stretches of the N2 are closed today.

So I want to tell my students yes. I want to tell them that it's safe. Can I tell them that without contradicting the man in Makhaza who told them no matter what, their white faces meant they looked like Helen Zille's daughter?

A little while ago, Lulu gave me a lesson in race. We were sitting in the Wellness Centre office, both bored and hot. I offered to drive her to Langa so she could give aromatherapy to the seniors' club there. Thing is, Lulu is blind and can't navigate the way, and I don't know Langa. So she shook her head and turned down my offer "South Africans don't know each other," she explained. "They'd see you are white and take advantage." It's Lulu's sentiment that I remember this morning as I write to my students, explaining to those of white hue that the politics of the DA - ANCYL relationship and the meaning of their race makes a trip to Khayelitsha a potentially bad idea in the context of the current  protests. 

I'm angry with ANCYL, for making statements like "we'll make the province ungovernable." And I'm angry with the DA for being unnecessarily antagonistic and not taking responsibility for service-delivery in the way that they should. I'm pissed off with both for embedding their claims in a discourse of race. Mostly though, like my students, I feel incredibly guilty for not seeing my Ma's last week; they were expecting me. Oh, and ofcourse I feel guilty for making an issue of social development an issue of middle-class me. 

It's just a lose-lose-lost situation on all fronts. Time for tea then.