White Guilt v White Privilege

YOH, if there's one thing we South Africans like to do at elections it's to talk about race. It's inevitable really, when every analysis of what's whatting includes something regarding racial demographics. Most relevant to my experience of race-related chit-chats is what's said about white privilege, and particularly about white liberals, and you better hope you're not one of those, or if you are, bless: you must just write a blog where you can be as polemical as all the other white liberals and drown out their squealing with your own...

May the polemic begin!!

In 2004, I gave up on white guilt. For the first time in my life I built a meaningful friendship with a black man my own age who described himself as poor. Sure, I'd had a ton of black friends before this, even one or two black romances, but I'd never really spent much time with someone who didn't roll in the same socio-economic circles as me. And now I did. And in that contrast, suddenly I seemed very white, and very rich in comparison. My teenage mind could hardly compute this all. I'd gone from thinking race was totes not a thing because the black people I hung out with had the same clothes and phones and house as me. 'Poor Black People' had always seemed to me to be someones who existed as a stereotype Out There. Now suddenly, I was chilling out with a dude who took public transport (say whaaat?!), who didn't have a toilet in his house (I was confused more than anything else; surely a toilet is just part and parcel of a house?) and who didn't have money to do things like go to the Spur and roam around Cavendish with the rest of us cool kids.

My teeny-bopper self shifted.

I realised that there was a difference between the resources that black and white people historically had access to in this country, and still do. My immediate response was to feel guilty. Huge HUGE guilt. It was my people who had made it this way. My grandparents and great-grandparents and their parents and parents. Somehow I had done this to my friend. I felt terrible. And I was angry. How could my family have let this happen? Why didn't they do something to stop it? Why did all my white neighbours just retreat into their Victorian homes with the big Oak trees in the front garden for all those years and not do anything? Anger and guilt cycled and cycled.

Now, human relationships don't exist in odd little vacuums, at least those that go beneath superficial engagement don't, so these feelings seeped into my friendship. I wanted to apologise, to repent, to halt the resentment. And then I realised that my friend didn't want my apologies, that he didn't resent me. I'm paraphrasing here, because the letter he wrote me is tucked away safe in my little wooden box of treasures at home, but he told me to get over this white guilt of mine. He told me that I didn't make him poor, and that it wasn't helping our friendship that I treated him like the victim of my crime. That I needed to get over myself.

And BOOM, my teeny-bopper self shifted again.

I'd indulged in my own self-pity really, for far too long. I don't think I ever told him how grateful I was that he wrote me that letter and that he gave me a second chance. It's not that I felt that I was absolved now, that this one man had cleansed me of my sins, it's just that I realised that those feelings weren't helpful. They weren't helpful to me, and they certainly weren't helpful in my relationship with him. If I was going to move on, if we were going to move on, I needed to leave the guilt behind.

But there was still something though. The sense of injustice didn't disappear. I didn't cause the barriers that blocked him from success in his life, but I was and I continue to be part of a system that benefits from those barriers. I imagine an athletic track, with two lanes. In one lane I crouch, ready and waiting to launch into my sprint, and in the other lane crouches my friend. We've trained for this race, worked tirelessly. Had that thick burning feeling in our throats when you go for an early morning run in the cold. So we're standing there, in our two lanes. Except in his lane, someone, not me, but someone has put up hurdles. The gun signals the start of the race and off we go. We're sprinting, and sprinting. Every few seconds his pace adjust to jump over the hurdles, whereas me, I just run. By the first corner I have a slight lead, by the end of the race, I win hands-down. I didn't put his hurdles there, but I benefited from them.

And that's how I figured out what white privilege is. Now, obviously both privilege and unprivilege are intersectional: gender, ablebodiedness, language, class, whatevs, all count as hurdles and not. But that's a chat for another time. My point is just, or rather my question is just: what the hell do you do when you realise that you're winning not only because you trained hard, but also because they are hurdles in the other person's track? There's this issue related to affirmative action in university applications, about how some black students feel like because of race-based admisssions policies people will always wonder whether it was their skin colour or their ability that got them there. Honestly, white students should be asking themselves the same question: was it their training/ability or their skin colour/lack of hurdles that got them there? But to link to my question posed above, I don't think questioning is enough really. I believe that you need to work actively to remove the hurdles from the other person's lane, in whichever which way you can, including voting in ways which may benefit them, and not you. Otherwise your race is not a just one.

And this is where it all ties back to elections. As a holder of white privilege, I believe that I need to vote in such a way that does not support my privilege. I need to make an active decision to stay away from parties that I believe support the structures in which white privilege can continue to be nurtured. And here's the important bit: me, as an individual, gets to choose the party that I think best fits that description. Whether it's about land redistribution, or service-delivery, or youth wage subsidies: I need to weigh it all up in my head and figure out what I think is the best way to move the hurdles. My intention needs to be to achieve justice, and my intention needs to be matched with research and critical thought.

Look, I don't give a shit who someone votes for, I give a shit about why. If they believe that the ANC is the best way to achieve justice, then VIVA your vote. If someone else believes that the DA does the same, then VIVA that. There is always going to be dissension when it comes to the relative merits and faults of each party so I'm not going to get all heated up if someone comes to a different conclusion to me about which party it is that's best placed to achieve social justice. I'm going to get heated up if people vote to protect their own privilege.

And blah blah I know all the critiques against virtue ethics and how intention means nadda in comparison to action and usually I'd agree. But honestly, in a country like ours where so much is fuelled by what people believe and what they hope for, and what they dream about achieving, having good intentions is not totally worthless. Ours is a country of aspiration, and I care about what people aspire to achieve. And I believe that if we share a set of aspirations, then those freaking hurdles will be that much easier to move.

I am not ok about voting tomorrow

I am not ok about voting tomorrow.

There. I said it; I am anxious and I am cross.

I am going to vote because I believe in democracy and I want to recognise the labour and pain it took to get us to this point.

But I don't want to vote. I look at the list of people and parties that want my black cross, and none of them deserve it.

We have this amazing freedom, this unbelievable opportunity to do democracy. We get to vote and together we change things and shift things and we can create a government of our own design. We. Us. It's almost overwhelming when you think about.

And yet, our choices don't do justice to that freedom. Our choices don't do justice to us as citizens. We deserve better. We didn't go through all that we did and we don't still wade through all of the challenges of a society in transition to be handed a ballot paper that fills us with despair.

In fact I'm not cross, I'm livid.

I have to make a choice tomorrow, between parties who I believe are all wanting in some way.
And maybe it's unfair and ridiculous and idealistic of me to demand that there be a good option.
Maybe that's politics.
Maybe all we do is pick the best out of a bad lot.
Maybe that's it.

Democracy:
Make a cross next to the face you find least offensive.
Congratulations; you are free.

I don't think it's ok. And I don't think we should be ok about it. I'm torn up. I'm upset. I'm sad and I'm angry and I don't know what to do. I'm not ok with any of the choices I have.

Perhaps I have no right to complain. After all, I didn't make any attempt to support someone's face who isn't on the ballot. Perhaps my civic duty extends beyond being aware and being committed to voting, perhaps my duty extends to finding someone I can believe in, and pushing them as far I can push.

I'm not a politician, and I'd be fairly useless at politics. I'm a dreamer and an optimist and I just want to do something meaningful and beautiful with the vote that I've been given. And I feel like tomorrow I'm going to go to the polls and I'm going to waste my freedom.

I'm going to take my right to vote and I'm going to desecrate it.

That's how I feel.

But I will be there. I will be there because I believe that while now our freedom may be overshadowed by injustice and indifference, it won't always be that way. And perhaps what my freedom requires me to do this election is to be hopeful. To wait and to watch and to stay stretched up and active. Because maybe next time, there'll be a face that I like. And then my freedom must be warm and ready.

But I'll say it again because I need to say it;
I am not ok about voting tomorrow.

Let them wear blue

"Ostrich palaces" was how my mom described some of the houses in Rondebosch when we first moved to Cape Town. I don't think I ever understood the historical reference she was making, but I understood the meaning. Palatial residences, with gardens that opened from the narrow streets into impeccably manicured miniature landscapes--sometimes I could smell the lavender when I walked past. (The house on the corner of Bonair Road actually has a little tower.) My parents bought one of the smaller properties, on which one of the younger, less ostentatious houses, cowers still in the shadow of the three-storey Xanadu behind it.

A few years ago, the crime-concerned residents of Rondebosch decided now was the time to Mobilize. I always enjoy a good mobilization of the middle-classes, they do it so earnestly. There was a growing anxiety about the rising rates of home break-ins, theft out of cars, general resistance to the carefully structured safety of the neighbourhood. The answer, my parents were informed over email and post-box pamphlet, was to install cameras at the main thoroughfares in and out of Rondebosch, and to "stop the criminals before they commit the crime."

My mom had logistical concerns, ofcourse; who was to monitor these cameras, where were they to be installed, given that there are numerous roads into and out of the so-called Golden Mile. Her primary concern, however, was more principled.
"What exactly does it mean," she asked, when she was phoned about supporting the venture financially, and I'm paraphrasing here, "to stop the criminals before they commit the crime? How would one identify these soon-to-be criminals?"
The unfortunate man on the other side of the phone mumbled out an unsatisfactory response.
My mom's spidey-sense began to tingle. Her tone, I imagine, as I retell the story to myself, grew definitively, clinically, cold.
She repeated her question: "What, exactly, do these criminals look like?"
The answer she received was something along the lines of: "they look like they don't live here."
AH HAH! Her spidey-sense was vindicated. In the leafy green suburb of Rondebosch, the blue of the sky is complemented quietly by the the white of the houses and the orange tinge of the bricked pathways around Keurboom Park. Here, there is no black.

My mom declined to participate in the camera scheme. My dad had long since been lamenting the "undercover racism" he detected in the weekly neighbourhood watch emails, and now they had good reason to ignore further correspondence from their security-conscious neighbours (my parents have yet to install burglar bars in their home; they don't believe that living in fear is any way to live in this country).

And pause.

Mahatma Gandhi made an interesting observation many years ago. He is claimed to have said something to the effect of: "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians".

And resume.

The people who live in Rondebosch vote, overwhelmingly, for the Democratic Alliance. They are the Christians I do not like. There are some inconsistencies with, and some troubling moments in, DA policy. There are some individuals in the party with whom I'd rather not have dinner. But their role as the opposition is a valuable one, and they have not been useless in delivering the kinds of services they should. The DA, as a party, offends me no more or no less than the ANC. I like the DA, or rather, I don't dislike them. But I do not, and cannot support their supporters. I do not want to align myself with the party my parents' neighbours do.

Maybe it's short-sighted of me, maybe it's unfair. But DA party rhetoric, and increasingly that of the white liberal media, is making me more and more weary of calling myself a "white liberal" and voting as such. So unlike Ramphele and Breytenbach, I won't be buying myself a bright blue Tshirt.

Although, if someone were to pass me a red beret, I dunno, I might just pop it in my backpack for safekeeping.

I dream in colour

One of the less enjoyable parts of my job, is typing up handwritten notes. Sometimes these are workshop notes, written in thick black koki pen on large sheets of newsprint. Sometimes these are meeting notes, scrawled in books or on pieces of paper that invariably get weathered on the way from meeting to desk. This afternoon, I'm typing. First I visited my favourite news sites, then I tidied my desk. I made some tea and made some more and finally, I started.

I've done two forms, which is a start, at least. As I grumbled and daydreamed about having an intern of my own to type up such things for me, I fumed about why me, with my fancy array of degrees should have to do this menial brain-stifling work. I'm not fulfilling my potential, surely I've paid my dues by now? I felt self-righteous for a moment, then felt kind of queasy.

There are millions, literally millions, of people all around the world doing menial, brain-stifling work. Doing work that doesn't recognize their potential. Doing this work from the beginning of their working life to the end. Never reaching the point at which the world acknowledges payment of their dues. Smart people, shiny people. Bright people, with-it people. Because of circumstance and history, they spend every day reaching unfulfillment.

Imagine the frustration. Imagine having fireworks bursting out of every corner of your mind, bouncing round and round and trying to escape until at last, exhausted by defeat, they stop their sparking and dwindle. Imagine the loss you might feel as you watch your fireworks fight to make their way into the light and no one will see them and no one will know them. And then those fireworks give up. And you beg your mind, "stop sparking!" because you know that short of a miracle, the beautiful creations and ideas that dance before you, will never, never ever, be known to the world.

Imagine the anger. You've done nothing wrong. You've failed at nothing. Everything you've started, you've finished. But you live in a world that doesn't allow you the smallest squeeze into the achievement of dreams. You live in a world that denies you education, that denies you opportunity. You stand, ready, with fireworks in your mind, and the world ignores you. Negates you. Or sees you standing empty, with only grey ash to offer.

My afternoon does not come close. My afternoon will pass. Tomorrow I'll be back on my canvas with colours and brushes and bubbles of light, letting my fireworks flow from my mind into the waiting, welcoming world. My boredom, my sighing, my desperate "why me"-ing will last only the duration of the task. For some people it lasts a lifetime.

I wonder how much unrealized potential, and the frustration that festers along with it, exists in the world? Too much, I know that. And it doesn't serve anyone. It doesn't serve those whose fireworks are never seen, and it doesn't serve those who never see them.

Thursday ennui. Best have a cup of tea.

Oooh, shiny!

Me, I like to read the news. I sit in the morning with my Weet-Bix and rooibos and scroll through South Africa's most recent history. I like a sprinkling of analysis on top of my news, so I tend to avoid sites where the comments are the analysis, and frequent instead noble online platforms like the Daily Maverick. Do I always agree with them, no. Do I sometimes wonder whether they write the news hanging upside-down singing sailor ditties, yes. But generally, I can get behind their general vibe.

This morning I noticed a little icon next to their Facebook link, in that space that used to have a dollar sign and "Love us" for a while. "Taste us" the icon enticed me. Enticed, I clicked and was welcomed by a little black box:

Sigh. Let's look past the generally gendered discourse, and zoom in on just two words: the wife. 

Yes, yes, the ad may be aimed at married lesbians, but that's a fairly niche market. So I'm going to assume heteronormativity on the part of the WineStyle team, and guess that the wife they refer to, is the one married to the husband. Because as we all know, the husband, HEY, he must impress the wife with his business success/financial prosperity/juicy fat wallet. We women, we're easily impressed. A fast car makes us go grrr. A snappy suit, ooh. And a good bottle of wine, Holla Holla we're writhing on the floor. 

The women I know do writhe on the floor when it comes to wine. We love it. We go wine-tasting and wine-buying. We're not experts by any measure, but we know that there's more to a Sauvignon blanc than just green peppers, and that for a Chardonnay to be really yummy, the buttery goodness needs to be balanced with something else. Also, and here's a news story for our friends at WineStyle, we have jobs of our own that fund this luxury. I'm used to having to explain the more nuanced aspects of gender equality to people, but the whole Independent Woman spiel has been bouncing around pop culture for decades. I thought we had covered that ground. Apparently WineStyle, in partnership with the Daily Maverick, missed that bus. So let me spell it out for you: 

Women, like men, can be employed in jobs that compensate them well enough to enjoy the privilege of nice-to-have spending. 

Women, like men, can and do buy things for themselves.

Women, like men, are not necessarily like children and magpies who are easily seduced by shiny things.

Articulating an assumption that it is only men who are able to impress through expressing their financial prowess implies two things. First, it implies that it is only men who have that financial prowess. Yes, women are in general less financially independent than men, and that is something that feminists the world over have been challenging for years and years. We don't need it supported through idiotic advertising like this. Second, it implies that women are easily impressed by their partner's ability to provide... *bang head on desk* It's a tale as old as time this one and I'm not even going to explain the levels of ridiculousness here. If you can't understand, go work for WineStyle, I think they'll have a place for you. 

Tomorrow morning, when I whip out my Weet-Bix, I'm going to give the Daily Maverick the stink-eye, and wonder why in the name of all things vaguely sensitive to gender equality, they haven't done a better job of vetting the advertising of their partners. 

No smile, no sneer

On my way to the deck this morning, as I strolled along Wale into Adderley, a man introduced himself as Luke, and suggested we spend some time together in his "limousine back at home". I was overcome by a sudden urge to punch him in the face. Usually I tolerate the advances and the innuendo and the not so subtle requests for sex, but I this morning I had no patience. None.

I went to a "Rape Awareness" workshop at the US Consulate a few weeks ago. I was expecting it to be horrendous but the new regional security officer knows his limitations and got an outside woman in to run the workshop and it was pretty good. The one thing she said, which I remembered this morning, was that "women, you don't need to be friendly. You don't need to reply, to respond. You don't need to smile." WOWZA! So this morning, I didn't smile. I was just sick of it.

"Oh, but what's a few words?" You may say, "just relax."
Yeah but, I'm kind of over relaxing. If you say hello to someone, and they don't say hello back, it means they don't want to talk to you. It means they don't consent to that conversation. I am forever being roped into conversations and situations that I don't consent to. I am forever having my body and my clothes and my hair commented on. I cut off my hair, almost all of it, and yet STILL men on the street find it necessary to share their opinion on my appearance and attire with me. You know what, I know what I look like, I don't need you to tell me.

I was livid this morning. Really. I wanted to turn around and shout at Luke, "what right do you have to make me uncomfortable? What right do you have to make me try and shift my bags so that when I walk in front of you you can't see my ass and pull a comment about what you'd like to do with it? What right do you have to make me feel like everything else that I am is totally undermined and invisible in those seconds and minutes that you tell me what you'd like to do with my body--because clearly that's all I am...?"

I'd reached boiling point, I guess. After days and weeks and months and years of hearing this kind of shit. Of being called at and spoken to and engaged in conversations that I just didn't consent to. I was furious. And then I wasn't.

I ignored him. I was indifferent.

See, the way I figure, offering someone emotion, whether it be love or kindness or anger or hate, recognizes that that person is a person. That they have humanity. That they share something with you, that when all is stripped away that they could be you. But when you're indifferent, when you ignore and give someone nothing: neither love nor hate, you deny them that personhood, that humanity. You deny them the opportunity to be loved and to be hated in the way that people are, you deny them the part of their being that they would otherwise share with you.

That's what I did this morning. I didn't punch him in the face, I just refused to recognize his personhood. Maybe that's wrong, maybe that makes it worse, but when you're fatigued by the world's insistence on inscribing it's power on your body--because that's what each of those little comments are; a mark seared into your skin--maybe it's forgivable.

I took a deep breath as I walked past the flower sellers and stopped to tap the toe of my shoe in a puddle of water and I love the way it splish-splashes so quickly and quietly. Breathe. It smells good here.

Up North

I don't often get out to the Northern Suburbs; I'm a City Bowl to Metro East kinda gal. So when I do go there, I have very few, very particular memories of all the things that happened there on those streets, in those spaces. There's this concept called embodiment that I studied at some point in life, and it's about how we carry meaning and memory on our bodies. Kind of the exact opposite to Cartesian Dualism and the separation between mind and body. I was driving down Modderdam Road--now Robert Sobukwe--and I started to think about how places have history etched onto them too.

At the traffic lights just after the bridge--the lights where you turn left to go to Valhalla Park--I remember turning right. Turning right and curling round to a children's home and special needs school. I was doing research see, on SNE policy and how the policy accommodates chronically ill children (it doesn't, not really), and this road led to the school and the ward where I did my research. It was the research where I interviewed an imaginary friend. The girls were stuck in their ward and in their school and they created two characters, Dzbe and Dzba, who spoke a language called Ntsikibe Taal; a mix of Afrikaans, Xhosa, some American English and a whole lot of mumbling. These characters, the girls' friends, came from buite (outside) and they were healthy, bouncy, exuberant, and more than a little over-the-top. It was Dzbe and Dzba who I interviewed--through an intermediary ofcourse--about their experiences of education, of marginalization, and of how to have fun. And it was Dzbe and Dzba who I thought of when I stopped at the traffic lights. I imagined them dancing round the red-yellow-green lights like muppets at a 70s disco.

And then I turned onto De La Rey and drove and drove and drove until I passed where I used to turn-off the road to go to Delft and Leiden. In my short-lived days working for a social development consultancy, I did an evaluation on a life coaching programme for school senior management teams. My role in this all was to write school profiles, using everything from their ANA and matric results to interviews with the principal, to taking photos, grading the infrastructure and looking at the classrooms where the computers used to be before they were stolen.
"They were new computers," the principal told me proudly, lost in his own memories of place.
The clearest memory of my fieldwork there, was that each school had these inspiring vision and mission statements up in their reception areas, all outlining an intention to be the best school in Delft, to give quality education, to create opportunities for meaningful learning. Some of the statements were done in Word Art, some carefully stencilled by hand.  All had some kind of ornate border, either flowers or curly-wurly loops and lines. Some even had spelling mistakes.

If you go a little further north, and a little further east, you get to Wallacedene. I did some research on housing here; specifically the relationship between housing and TB. I sat in a wendy-house with a sangoma eating spinach. She talked to me and told me I was in mourning.
"Mourning for what?" I'd asked her.
"Mourning for your old life."
She was right, in her way. It was my first job after graduating, I was twenty-two and a little lost in the world. I missed being on campus and I hated my job.
"So what do I do?" I'd asked her.
"You ask for change."

But I didn't drive that far on Friday, no, I didn't drive that far. I turned instead onto Francie van Zyl to meet with a community health partner of mine. We had tea in his office, in polka dot mugs.

Imaginary friends and spelling mistakes. Sangomas and spinach and hot cups of tea when it's cold-cold-cold outside. I look at a map and I see it all laid out. Maybe I should head out North more often...

Hands in my pocket

I walk past the car dealership on the corner of Cranko Road on my commute home. The security guard always greets me. I smile. Then past Obs Gateway with its layers of empty of shopfronts, and then the pub on the corner where the chef smokes at the table next to the fence and waves or nods at me as I go by. Sometimes I pick up a discarded wrapper from the KFC or MacDonalds as I get to my driveway. And then, as I stand at my gate and look at the sometimes misty side of Devil's Peak, I take out the post. Yesterday afternoon there were two postcards--one for my boet, one for a friend c/o me--there was the weekly Shoprite brochure, there was a copy of a liquor license application and an invitation to a residents' meeting on Wednesday, and there was a small note.

A small white piece of paper with careful black stencilled lettering.
"White girls go out with black- black men." I read. "A lot of girls- degusting."
I stood in my kitchen and read the capitalized note again. "DEGUSTING."
Why did it catch my breath? This shitty little note written by an illiterate racist and left in my postbox anonymously? Why did it hurt me?

I sat at dinner a little while later and over my vegetarian risotto I chatted with a colleague who works at a think-tank in Germany. He's worked for years, for decades, in Africa, advising the European Union and the German government particularly on aid and investment. Smart man. We were talking about Rwanda, about intervention, about how to prioritize investment in a climate of instability and dysfunction. It's the age-old debate really: do you invest in an upside-country country that really needs investment but cannot do that much with it, or do you invest in a marginally more functional country where the need is perhaps not as great but there is more capacity to do something with that investment?

"It is an interesting question," he starts to explain, and I'm paraphrasing this next bit, "but even in the most dysfunctional places, there are pockets of effectiveness."
"Pockets of effectiveness?" I ask.
"Yes, take Rwanda for instance. The Minister of Health is studying towards her PhD, she is very keen on research, on innovation." He continues to explain the possibilities and potential of the Rwandan Ministry of Health.
"So you fund programmes in health?"
"Yes," he answers, "public health. The investment can grow there."

Pockets of effectiveness.

That note hurt me because as a South African, this is the kind of vitriol that almost robbed us all of our humanity. It's the kind of mistrust and hate that we have fought and continue to fight to marginalize. It's why we've built a constitutional fortress to protect us. As a citizen, it offends me. But you cannot always abstract the evil of the world. Sometimes it hurts because that evil is directed to you, to you and your life choices. To me and my life choices. To me, as a white girl, and to the black men that I've gone out with, that I've cared about, that I've introduced to my parents. Degusting.

Look, I know it's nothing close to what some homosexual or mixed-race couples go through daily, and I know it's just some fool who has no meaning in my life. But hurt is not always rational, or proportional. It just is. And it is here, in my shock and surprise that I realize I live not in dysfunction but in a pocket of effectiveness. This is the first time, the first time ever, that someone has articulated disgust at my white girl self dating a black man. No family, no friends, no colleagues, no acquaintances, no strangers on the street have ever felt it necessary to turn to me and say: "You are disgusting." No one. Never.

I can't quite shrug it off, not entirely, but I can see it for what it is: the dysfunctional raving of a loon who doesn't like that reality isn't quite what they think it should be. A loon who, like a paperclip or piece of gum, will first get lost in the pocket of possibility that is the world, and then will fall through the little hole squidged there at the bottom of the pocket into an abyss of absence and alienation.

I walk past the car dealership on the corner of Cranko Road on my commute to work. I walk past in my skinny jeans and sneakers--hands stuck deep in my pockets as is my way--I walk past with my stripey socks and short hair that sticks up at the front, back and sides. And I, I will go out with whomever I want.

A body, my body, another body

My recently decreased mobility has resulted in a lot of things, one of which is that my eastward adventures have been put on hold, another of which is that thoughts about the body and my relationship with my body have been overwhelming my attention. The result: a blog post on the head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.

It's a difficult post to write because it requires an uncomfortable confession: I have spent my life in a blind bubble of able-bodied privilege. I like to think that I'm a sensitive person, conscious of how the various elements of my being offer me invisible opportunity. I reflect on how I benefit from being white, being english-speaking, even being thin, but I have never reflected on how I benefit from having a body with abilities that mirror the norm. I don't even have the right words to discuss disability, I don't know the discourse that causes least offense. I don't know how to avoid a description of pathology when it comes to talking about bodies that do things differently. And I'm kind of ashamed.

I read this article yesterday, listing some able-bodied privileges, and found myself nodding and saying, yes, yes, I have difficulty with that! And then I found myself silenced, because usually I don't. On my everyday, my normal day, I am completely oblivious of the 19 examples listed on the page. But not now. I worry about a lot of things now.

I worry that when I go to the loo at work between classes, when there are eight or nine of my students in the line behind me, that they are going to start breathing roughly, impatiently, because I'm taking so long to roll off the toilet paper, to button my pants. For the first time in years, hell maybe for the first time ever, I feel shy. I feel shy to ask my wonderful colleagues to make me the tea that is my manna, because I can't work the urn in the kitchen with one hand. I feel self-conscious that someone will smell me. Smell you? Yes, smell me. I smell of talcum powder and of sweat. I smell of the canvas of my sling and the bends of my arm that I just cannot clean. I smell of the folds of my skin that I cannot unfold. It's not an overpowering smell, just a gentle scent of my immobility. And I'm worried that someone will smell me.

I feel scared when I go out that someone will bump me. That they won't see my sling or my arm or my broken bones beneath the surface and they'll bump me and it will be sore. I negotiate others' bodies like a minefield. And not just strangers, but also friends. Because I can't give a hug, or take a hug, that holds me close enough to someone else to meet their being. I can't visit my mas in Khayelitsha; how would I get there? I miss them. I can't tell all my friends all that I want, because to text one-handed, trying to balance my sweaty phone in my sweaty palm as I move my sweaty thumb over the tiny (sweaty) buttons, to text like that; I've given up so many times already.

My injury is temporary and my body will heal and I'll probably forget these feelings. But I shouldn't. Because taking an absence of feelings for granted means that I forget the privilege of having a body I don't have to think about, that I don't have to feel about. Just to be clear, I would not even consider projecting my feelings of my body onto the bodies of others. I may know nothing about disability, but if Anthropology has taught me anything it is that individuals react diversely to the same stimuli. These feelings are my responses to the changes in my body. I am sure that others in the same situation have a multitude of other feelings.

Anyway, this post will serve as a reminder to my future self of my able-bodied privilege. And as a reminder that I need to read more on the extent of ability and what it means to people who circle the norm because I don't want my privilege to translate to an unintentional ableism.

Shoh hey, everytime I think I've got a handle of myself in the world, BOOM, I realize I can be a really naive and obtuse individual. Sigh. Best to ring for a cup of tea...

Smile and wave

Driving back to the office from my meeting in Lavender Hill yesterday, a man in a municipal truck waved his way into my peripheral vision. I was too concerned by the scarily-sized monster of a van in front of me to pay much notice as the bright yellow-orange solid waste truck sped past, but after catching that wave I got a little confused. Did I know this man?

Coincidentally, my family does know a man who works in solid waste, specifically in refuse collection. A few of years back, and I'm not sure how it all happened, it transpired that the man who emptied my parent's bin every week had a bakkie and an after-hours job in moving and removals, everything from building rubble to furniture. Since that happy discovery, he's been around every couple of weeks: fetching, carrying and dropping off. He's a legendary character, Mr Isaacs, with a sense of humour and biceps the size of small elephants. And he employes interesting characters to help him when necessary, some more qualified than others. My auntie swears she saw the man who carried her bath from the bakkie to her bathroom chilling on the side of the road around the corner from her house, she also swears that anyone who can carry a freestanding bath on their own is on some serious stimulants.

Anyway, so Mr Isaacs is an integral part of our family's DIY adventures, and he'll really go out of his way to help us out. Two or three Saturday nights ago, he picked up the cupboards that my dad and I spent the morning unbuilding. He was going to come on the Sunday morning but I called him in a late afternoon state of desperation: "Mr Isaacs I swear I can't move with these things here," I really couldn't move, the cupboards somehow multiplied in size when we took them apart and getting to my kitchen felt like completing an obstacle course. So, "PLEASE Mr Isaacs, you have to come and fetch them!" He did. See, legend. My dad saw him the next day and gave him a TV to sweeten the deal, so it really was a win-win.

Point is, I figured, hey, if someone is waving to me from a solid waste truck, it's gots to be Mr Isaacs.

I speed up, hover beneath the truck's high window and give a little hoot. The face that looks down at me is wholly unfamiliar. But man, this guy, whoever he is, is happy to see me. He smiles an enthusiastic and half-toothed smile and waves contagiously. I chuckle and wave back. If he's happy to see me, well then hells, I'm happy to see him. The truck turns right at the traffic lights and I'm back to my solo travel down the M5.

A few corners on I spot a billboard, advertising what I don't know, but with the slogan: "More Jobs, Less Labour Law." I realize I have my "huh?" face on. Who would advertise that? And who's the intended audience? Just, what? I'm all for mass employment, and mass employment that isn't exploitative. Unlike, I don't know, shmeconomics, I don't think that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. But then again, what do I know: I pay my moving man in kitchen appliances as often as I do in cash, and I'm fairly sure that's a little farther away from labour law than it should be.

On the bright side, the south-easter has brought a change of weather to Cape Town. Even the hellish wind is better than the months of grey skies.

Not the roses

Years ago, when I was young enough to need a hand to hold on my walk home from school, I had a conversation with my granny about death. I can't remember the context, or why I was asking about it, in fact I hardly remember the conversation at all. Just the one little bit; her answer to my question of why people cry when someone dies. I told her I would cry because I was sad, wouldn't she? In the most gentle of grandparent traditions, she told me a story. Her friend had died, and she had cried then. "I wasn't sad for me," she told me, "but my friend had the most beautiful roses. When she died, I cried because I was sad about the roses. Who would look after the roses?"

This weekend, her husband, my grandpa, passed away.

He was really tall, and really bald. Our family is famous for our hooked and crooked noses of which he was the proud patriarch. He mumbled an Afrikaans prayer before every meal and for years I tried to decipher his words; I gave up eventually, relishing the mystery of his short incantation. He'd come over to visit and, as we'd all sit outside chatting, he'd bend down and start to weed the lawn, or the driveway, or the minute cracks between tiles on the stoep. He didn't usually heed to the subsequent "Opi, SIT!" from his wife and children. Along with the nose, he gave his five children a work ethic that drives his grandchildren insane. And with that work ethic--similar to what you'd find amongst an efficient troupe of precision elves--he gave us, and gave us all, an unwavering commitment to making things work. Nothing is ever broken; it's just in need of fixing. Oh, and fixing that you'll do yourself. He leaves behind a family who wield power tools like most people wield cutlery.

He would have naps on the carpet in their lounge.

It's impossible to credit the different parts of my being to one specific person. But I can make educated guesses. My mother is one of five, three sisters and two brothers. Three sisters who are strong, not strong women, no, strong people. Against any measure, the women in my family are formidable. Born in the 1950s (and '61), they could have missed that train. But they didn't. Maybe some pop-psychologists would critique my grandparents for having high expectations, but they cannot be faulted for their non-discriminatory approach: their daughters were not exempt from becoming fiercely independent and successful individuals.

I had a glass of wine with my aunt yesterday, at one point she asked if I was dating anyone. I told her no, that I'm too busy, that if I wanted to be in a relationship, I'd be in one. She just laughed. "That's the thing with us Kramer women, isn't it? We don't need a partner, we're happy alone." She's right. Somewhere between my grandpa and my grandma, my mother and her sisters learnt that they were fully capable of flourishing in the world by themselves. And flourish they do. It's not just my grandpa, it's not just my mom and her family. But I wouldn't be the woman I am if my mother wasn't the woman she is, and she wouldn't be that woman if her father had treated his daughters like men treated women in the 1950s.

There are no roses, literal or otherwise, that will need looking after now that my grandpa's gone. My granny kept sane through five children and a career of professional and personal caring, so she'll be fine. We'll all be fine.

So I don't cry for the roses, no. I cry because, like eight year old Jen, I'm sad.

Up North

I've been in Mozambique the last couple of days, just on holiday with a few friends. We drove up to Ponta from Durban, and there on the stretch of road after Hluhluwe in rural KwaZulu Natal, my road rage shifted from its usual tingle to a full-blown fireworks display. It wasn't the cars, no-no, it was the speed bumps. One set after another. It was 6:30am, we'd been driving since 3am and I was exhausted, so kilometres of speed bumps: close to the last thing I wanted to experience at that moment in my life. I was about to explode out of my head, and then, we started seeing the kids. Neatly uniformed little people, walking down the road in bundles of two and three. Over the course of an hour, we must have driven past hundreds of kids in their bright school uniforms, most without schools bags; an unnecessary expense I suppose.

"Shoh, it's early though."
"Ya, I wonder where they're walking from."
Bottles and I can do the math: if school starts at 8am, maybe 7:30am, these kids are spending at least an hour walking to school.

We drive past some of the schools. We know that they're schools because they have signs outside, the school name above the Coca-Cola logo. There's a lot of sand, not so many windows. Not so many cars either, even after 7:30, when you'd expect the teachers to be at school. Another friend, sitting in the backseat, articulates what we're all thinking: "Why do the kids even bother going?"
Rural KZN. We drive past the "Big Farmer" kiosk, cement bricks.
"What else is there to do?" I reply.

Ponta is also rural. Rural and poor. We went out to a bar called Fernando's, got into a conversation with some guys from Pretoria. The one boytch told me that "us" Afrikaners need to stand together to protect the Boer culture. That's nice, white supremacy is alive and well there on the other side of my Raspberry and Rum. I didn't know where to start, so I just stopped talking to him. I forget, very often, that the bubble in which I live--where big words like equality, freedom, human dignity and the rest of the constitutional Brady Bunch, are you know, just assumed--is just that: a bubble.

Other than its visitors, Ponta is great. Postcard beaches, warm water, tropical ambience and kickass peri-peri and prego chicken according to Bottles.

Yesterday was back to work. My friend, a primary school teacher in Soweto, messaged last night to say that not one of her Grade 6 students passed their ANAs (Annual National Assessments). Miss Jay, as her kids call her, feels less than inspired. So do I to be honest. And I'm an annoyingly optimistic idealist most of the time.

Holiday: it's meant to be good for the soul right?

Vegan-ish-ism

I've been a pseudo-vegetarian for a while (I complement a traditional vegetarian diet with a smattering of sushi). Unlike many vegetarians, I have no real reason for being vegetarian. About ten years ago, back in the golden days of my high school youthfulness, it was my life's dream to be a hippie. A hippie who was profusely accomplished, but a hippie nonetheless. So I embraced vegetarianism in an act of identity construction. A few years on, when I sat in my ethics and applied ethics classes at university, it was a very convenient life choice. I was on the side of the ethical, on the side of animal rights. Gold star! Then, a year or two later, concern for the environment really entered mainstream fashion, and suddenly, vegetarianism was the earth-friendly option. Again, I emerged a saint.

I've always felt a bit of a fraud, not having a "real" reason for being vegetarian. Look, I'm not pro the suffering of animals, and am profoundly uncomfortable by the inhumane conditions that fuel our modern meat industry. And yes, I care about the earth and climate change and global warming and saving the whales etc, but it's not my cause, if you know what I mean. I'm no greenie, and I'm for defsies no card-wielding member of PETA. Vegetarianism is habit now, more than anything else, and it's just a part of who I am: a socialist-Marxist vegetarian who smokes a lot of shisha pipe. Take out the vegetarianism and I'm a revolutionary with a steadily growing wheeze.

So I stand, red-cheeked, there in the midst of people too lazy to have an ideological reason for their lifestyle choices. Which brings me to my current consideration of veganism. My room-mate and her partner have decided to go vegan. For ethical reasons. Not a whim, not a lame addition to their ambit of identity expressions but a firm moral stand. I thought, ok Jen, here's an opportunity to prove yourself, here's an opportunity to do the right thing. So I went and bought vegan shower gel and a box of rice milk and was ready and prepared to make my stand.

Then, I was craving something sweet see, and usually when I crave something sweet, I like to nibble on some chocolate. And when I don't have chocolate, I put some raisins in milk and nibble on that. So on Monday evening, I poured me some rice milk and settled down on the ole' couch with my CSI and a blankie. A tentative sip, ok, it's not foul. Another more confident sip and FOOL OF A TOOK that stuff is SWEET! So I abandoned that plan. Tuesday evening and I thought ok, let me just buy a chocolate brownie and I know it's not vegan but baby-steps. I bought a pack of five brownies, settled down on the couch with my rice milk and tried again. I finished my glass of milk because my mother told me not to leave anything on the plate/in the glass, but I was not impressed.

Last night, driven to the point of desperate despair I made the walk of shame to the local MacDonald's and bought a McFlurry. I sat on my couch, ate my ice-cream with oreos and my soul rejoiced.

I explained to my brother today, that perhaps veganism is not for me. It's not that I don't want to, but I've been thwarted. Thwarted by a chocolate brownie and a glass of milk.

I wasn't born a feminist

I didn't leave the womb with my fist in the air. Didn't take my first steps onto a path of radicalism. I didn't ask questions of power in preschool, didn't notice the haze of injustice that coloured the structures of my childhood. I wasn't born a feminist. I wasn't born bearing arms, bearing a cross, bearing an anger and a passion that can feel like fire, which unwatched could consume me.

And yet, here I stand, observing the weight of reality, measuring the oppression that surrounds me. No, not that surrounds me, rather, that permeates me. That seeps into my being sometimes insidiously, sometimes with the force of a runaway train. I am taken over, territorialized.

I wasn't born a feminist. I was forced a feminist. 

And the oppression, well that I can deal with, I can fight with. It belongs to a greater cause. I belong to a greater cause. But it's the hurt. That little personal bubble of pain that scratches at my skin like sandpaper on bone. That's what I can't deal with. Because my hurt is mine. I share my cause with others, but how do I share my hurt?

Oh, but don't let me sound angry. Don't let me sound revolutionary. Don't curse me to the pile of "anecdotes" that don't count. I wonder at what point that urgent pile of anecdotes will become evidence? How many of us must have stories, have oppression, have hurt, before our righteous anger is more that patronized?

So no, I wasn't born a feminist. I was born a gendered woman. But as destined as I am to be marginalized, perhaps equally destined I am to resist. So resist I will.

I will.

It's just that sometimes, like today, I really wish that there wasn't so much to resist, it burns.

Superglue shoe

I buy my shoes from factory shops. The ones I'm wearing today were R 75 for two pairs; sha-wing! What this means, really, is that I need to travel with superglue. Last time I was out in Makhaza I had to make an emergency stop at the Shoprite to stock up on on a tube of "Lightning Fast", and I've been carrying the little yellow and red striped tube around in my bag since then. Today, when walking the streets of Khayelitsha, my shoe came undone again. There wasn't an appropriate moment either there on the pavement between the wheelie bins, or sitting on a tatty maroon chair in the crowded municipal office in Stocks and Stocks, or enough space on the taxi on the way home to stick the pieces together so I'd been shoe-flopping my way around for the better part of my afternoon, which, due to a series of strange events included a lengthy walk through Woodstock.

But it's been a rough day and to restore some of my dignity I decided to pause for a moment before making my way home and to stick the pieces of my bright red cheapsie shoe back together.  Carol was walking out of the office as I bent over in my office chair, glue in hand. I looked up, our eyes met, and we both started cackling. So at least my damn superglue shoes have comic value...

30kms of the N2

There is a 30km stretch of road that I've traveled for seven years. It's that stretch between the perennially green and leafy suburbs of Cape Town, and the somewhat more transient dunes of the Cape Flats. You know the stretch, I'm sure...

It starts about a quarter of the way up the Devil's Peak slope, meanders a little around the Mowbray golf course, straightens out over Jan Smuts, Vanguard and Duinefontein, starts to wobble again as it passes the airport and from there it's up and over the bridge at Borcherd's Quarry. Past the airfields, under the R300, and eventually the stretch seeps into Khayelitsha via Mew Way, Spine and Baden Powell Drive.

Aaah, you remember...

So I've spent some time here. From brief sojourns to epic journeys, with friends and without. Since I'll be traveling this non-metaphorical road for the foreseeable future, I figured I might as well write about it. Not the road so much (I'm not sure how many people would find the speckles of the N2 particularly thrilling) but about the people, the relationships, the geets*.

*For those of you not in the know, geets can be defined, very roughly ofcourse, as "situation"