A relative truth

"Why does every conversation in South Africa turn heavy after just a few minutes?" a student sitting next to me asked.
I didn't really know what to answer, so I took another sip of tea and looked back down at the transport schedule on my laptop.

We'd been talking about violence, particularly in The (Always Capitalized) Townships and I'd stumbled through some kind of explanation of why people in South Africa are so intent on killing, maiming, raping and beating one another. I'd tried to abstract the conversation, tried to critique hypotheses that I've heard before, everything from new barbarism, to muti rubbed into thin cuts on the arms and chests of young men, to a local and global desensitization to black death. "Look at the drones in Pakistan," I tell them, "your government kills little brown children everyday but they aren't blonde and blue-eyed so it's no biggie." Tried my best, I really did, not to offer an opinion of my own, because what do I know? I know that there's a difference between a culture of violence and a violent culture but really, that's where it ends. So I'd listened to my students' stories as I'd fiddled with the spreadsheet in front of me, shuffling various pick-up and drop-off times, double-checking my route map. A history of this, I'd told them, or a history of that. The teabag bumped against my lip when I sipped, I'd forgotten a teaspoon to keep it pushed against the off-white curve of the mug while I drank. It was mildly annoying.

Earlier that day, when I'd been picking them all up, they'd asked about the men with horses.
"What horses?" I'd asked surprised, as we crowned the bridge between Samora Machel and Gugs. Of the wildlife I've seen in this part of Cape Town, a noble equine isn't one.
"There are men with horses and mattresses."
"Oooh, you mean a donkey cart."
"A donkey cart?"
"Ja," I shifted my attention back to the scribbled sheet in front of me, "some guys will go hustle for scrap metal and they have the cart to move the metal from place to place."
"Where do they live?"
"I dunno, around here, oh, and Bonteevil." I looked across to the driver for a confirmation nod. I'd heard that story somewhere, that there were a lot of men with donkey carts who lived in Bonteheuwel. I'm not sure where I heard it, but as the driver nodded in agreement, I passed on the rumor and wrote another note about timing on my schedule.

"We're going to a socialist memorial," two students told me when I asked why they wanted to know where the Mowbray town hall was.
"Oh, for Chris Hani." I nodded.
"No, for Hugo Chavez," and "who is Chris Hani?"
I went back to my tea for a while, before starting up about the violence in the early 90s, about white extremists, about the multiparty negotiations, about the SACP and then I ran out of steam. I suppose Chavez is closer to them, to their families, to their lives.

Which brings me back to the conversation about violence. Last night I got a note delivered to my inbox stating that since Sandy Hook, 2 200 people have been killed in America from gun violence. And that, in turn, brings me back to my student's question: "why does every conversation in South Africa turn heavy after just a few minutes?"

Well, there are many heavy things that happen here. But really, there are many heavy things that happen the world over. I tried to explain that they see it more here because it's a different kind of heavy. "The difference between a machete and a sniper's rifle is not all that much," I tried to tell them. "At the end of the day, someone's dead and someone did the killing." Like the donkey carts that trot along the side of Lansdowne Road, and their drivers who hunt for exchangeable goods, it might all look a little different here, but don't tell me people don't hustle for scrap metal in the ole USA. The surprise is in the aesthetics, is it not?

Ja, I know, I know it's not. I know that here we have a special kind of violence here that the rest of the world doesn't actually share, a heavier heaviness, I know. But will it really help anyone or anything if we're defined by it? I'm not sure. Best have another cup of tea.