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.

Advice for Applicants

In a break from my usual ramblings, I thought that it might be time for me to say something vaguely useful.

Part of my job requires me to read applications from students wanting to participate on the programme for which I work. I get a huge batch of applications to read, usually in the space of a few days. At the end of it all, I need to rank the students and justify why I've either accepted, waitlisted or blackballed them. Over the years, I've developed somewhat of a sense of what makes a good application, so I thought I'd share that here. Take it or leave it etc etc. Quick note, my applicants are all American, so this advice is probably more relevant to them, although the principles might be a little more universal.

Here goes, in no particular order of importance.

1. Anecdotes are great, IF they're relevant
When I'm reading through lists of accomplishments and dry essays, coming across a little story offers a nice reprieve, and recaptures my attention. However, if I can't connect the story to the question you're answering, I just get confused. You may be using a metaphor that to you seems abundantly clear but I wasn't there and I can't always connect the dots. You may also be reusing an anecdote that you used for an application that was kind of sort of similar to this one: I can smell it, it's lazy, don't do it! Use anecdotes, but make sure that their meaning is clear, that they are relevant to this application, and that they serve to reinforce what you're saying elsewhere.

2. Don't just list experiences, explain why they're meaningful
It always surprises me how much stuff a 20 year old can squeeze into their life. You've volunteered, you've travelled, you've taken interesting courses, you've lost yourself, found yourself, reimagined yourself and now here you are. Thing is, a huge list of experiences doesn't prove anything. My dad complained this weekend (and I'm paraphrasing here) that some people may have had 20 years management experience, but they're still terrible managers. If you don't learn from experience, it really is fairly meaningless. So write about what you've learnt, and include a mix of knowledge, skills and values.

3. Know what makes you unique, and what doesn't
It amazes me, it really does, the number of North Americans who have volunteered in South America. School trips, church trips, family trips, Spring Break trips: if you've been to Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador or Guatemala, I promise you you're not the only one. (Not forgetting Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and India.) What might standout is if you wrote that you'd taken the cost of your airfare and invested it in an Ecuadorian start-up and spent the summer monitoring the stock market while doing a holiday job, the earnings of which you added to your investment. What would definitely standout is if you wrote that you spent your summer working at MacDonald's. If you wrote that, I promise you, I would not forgot your application. Everything else about you will ping that much more. When it comes to ranking you in relation to your peers, I'll know exactly who you are.

Don't want to work at MacDonalds? Well no one does. But you'll learn about workers' rights, about minimum wage. When I worked in fast food I learnt about drug addiction from a colleague who spent every night's earnings on narcotics, I learnt about mental health from a colleague who went on to commit suicide, I learnt about racism from a manager who treated the black kitchen staff with disdain and disgust. (As a side-note, I also got my first job because the director of the company had worked for that exact franchise. We didn't talk about my academic transcripts in my interview, but about how I had stuck it out there so long, and about the challenges you encounter when trying to manage hungry people.) Look, you don't actually have to work at MacDonalds, my point is just: find alternative ways to have the experiences that grad schools, fellowships, internships etc want.

4. If you aren't into it, I'm not into you
A lot of you apply for everything. Even the things that don't interest you. Well, surprise, I can read when this programme really isn't your number one. If you can't find something in the programme that really gets your heart pumping, you may be better off spending that time applying for something else that does. If you aren't sincere in your interest, your reader is just going to be bemused. It's a waste of your time, and it's a waste of my time.

5. If you're asked to offer an opinion, offer it
Ok, this is an important one so listen up. Usually in an application you're given an article to respond to, or a topic to write about it. I can tell you with absolute confidence, that 99% of you choose the safe, sitting on the fence option. I know that it's a gamble to get radical, but if nothing else, you'll show your reader that you have the ability to take on a challenge, and that you have the courage to take risks. Whether it's affirmative action, climate change, the Middle East or obesity: say something. Be well-informed, be respectful, be robust and open to critique, but for the sake of your reader's sanity: say something. If you are pro, be pro. If you are anti, be anti. If you summarize the arguments on both sides, your essay looks like everyone else's.

Remember: whoever reads your application is not an idiot. They will have read the article or response piece too, and while they have their own opinions, they will (hopefully) be intelligent and sensitive enough to appreciate a good argument even if it contradicts their own. And they will get bored, so so bored, if they have to read a hundred of the exact same responses, and they will be excited, so so excited, if they come across one golden application that goes "I understand the nuances and complexities of the situation, and the competing arguments that are at play here, but I have to say..."

6. Don't be afraid to have values
I'm not particularly religious, but when an applicant talks about the religious values that drive their life, I respect that. Similarly, when someone talks about feminism, or black consciousness, or social justice having a profound influence on their life and guiding their action, I respect that. Having a set of values shows that you've given at least some thought to the bigger picture of life. You have managed to abstract from individual experiences and have found a framework or thread that guides it all. Perhaps it's an erroneous assumption, it's definitely mostly a subconscious one, but when I read someone articulate some values, I do kind of fill in the gaps and assume that in addition to all the good values embedded in Islam/Feminism/Buddhism that this applicant must also have integrity and value for their fellow humans etc etc. It doesn't need to be about religion or politics, you don't need to become an activist overnight, but talk about a philosophy that's important to your family, or to your sports team. You just need to show that have something beneath the surface, you're not just a high-achieving automaton.

7. Know whether you need to be specific, or vague
Some applications want you to articulate a ten-point, five-year plan to world domination. Some applications want you to be flexible and open to what the experience has to offer you. Read up on the programme, speak to people who've done it before, speak to a programme coordinator (I can speak for myself when I say I'm happy to give advice to potential applicants, but over the last three years only two have approached me) and figure out which camp the programme falls into.

8. Proofread
You're not writing a blog post, you're applying for something presumably fairly important. Check your spelling and grammar and formatting. If you've copy-pasted, make sure there is no duplication in other parts of the application, and no references to other applications. Get someone to read through the application before you send it, this will help with Point 1 too. Usually it doesn't blackball you, but it really annoys your reader and doesn't earn you any gold stars.

End of lecture.

I could go on for a while but this post is already long. If I gave a sparknotes version I'd say:
A successful application is one that stands out, not necessarily because of a list of achievements (you don't need to be a genius to succeed at every internship), but because the applicant shows originality, self-awareness, potential for intelligent engagement, and knows the programme to which they're applying. I guess that's it.

Good Luck!

Writing the train, not riding it

I am spending my Saturday night becoming proficient in "Transit-Oriented Development". It's a fairly intuitive concept really; transport acts as a catalyst for social and economic development. More vroom-vroom, more ching-ching. More specifically, more feet on the ground in "corridors", more bums on seats on trains, and more wheels on the bus going round and round, translates to more ching-ching.

While wading through city policy is always a treat, I've quite appreciated the fact that some of the writers of the strategies and plans that get the CoCT stamp are mostly coherent and don't split too many infinitives. So it hasn't been wholly unpleasant. However, I am left with a troubling question as I gaze on the articles and budgets and maps lying next to me on my bed: do any of these writers actually put their own feet on the ground, their own bum on a train, their own packet of NikNaks on the bus seat next to them? Now, I'm not talking about doing fieldwork, because pretty much any old person can take a clipboard to Khayelitsha, talk to a bunch of people, count a few activities, and retreat to their office satisfied that they have a good picture of what's happening on the ground because hells they were just there. So no, I'm not talking about fieldwork. I'm talking about life.

See, there are things you notice as you go about your day to day, that you don't notice when you have a fieldwork mandate. You can go to the rank in town and ask commuters ten questions about their journey, and you'll probably get some juicy information. But what you might not hear is the resigned sigh of the woman in front of you walking up the stairs that take you from the bus terminus at the Grand Parade, over Strand Street and to the taxis on top of the station. You might not see as she lifts her ankle every few steps and shakes her foot gently, maybe even pulling her sandal away from her swollen ankle for a second or two.

You could set up camp with the Metro police block outside the Goodhope Centre and ask the taxi drivers questions as they come to a stop. But if you're not on the van you won't see how the drivers signal to one another as they drive, how they call and sms, how they send messages through the gaaitjies. You won't see how they know about that roadblock, how they swap drivers outside Dart Motors in Woodstock or even the BP after the bridge. You won't hear how the commuters complain when the taxi is redirected past Cape Tech and round past District Six to avoid the flashing lights.

You can ask someone about how hot the trains get, but if you don't sit there sweating and stuck to the seat you may not realise just how unpleasant it is. And you may not know that when people complain about getting wet it's because the road outside Retreat Station floods when it rains and there's a man standing near the taxis who talks about getting a license to sell Old Brown Sherry because he'll make his millions here, he promises you. If you've never felt the pang of panic when you're at Salt River Station running over the bridge to connect to the Ottery train, never felt the push and pull of the sometimes desperate bodies around you, you may not realise that the sequencing of the trains is just not right, and it means that the woman in front of me who sighs at all the stairs must now stop her sighing and run and push and do what she can to get to her train before it goes. The Metrorail trains never run on time, you may hear. But unless you're there, you may not understand the depth of what it might mean to be late. You might not get just how important it might be to bold that bit in your policy document.

Maybe anthropology rubbed off on me more than I wanted it to, but I just don't think that people who don't use public transport should be legislating about it. It's not that they don't come up with usable ideas, They do. They write lovely policies and strategies to help things go vroom. But I think they miss something. I read a stagnancy and staleness in these policies that show just how un-public the writers are. I guess you have to be well-educated to work for government. I guess that means you have a good job. I guess that means you have a nice car. But does your education give you the right to mandate policy for infrastructure that you will never use? That you will never experience? To be honest, I don't know. I have no education when it comes to Transit-Oriented Development and I respect the writers who do; they have some good ideas. It's just that those good ideas are not necessary complete ideas. Yeah, I think that's what I'm saying.

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.

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. 

An outside eye

I've been on the otherside of the Atlantic this last week, and it's been deep.

*

"How long was the Apartheid?"
I froze, momentarily, and then high school history kicked in. 1948, and the National Party comes to power. But before that was the Union of South Africa, before that was the 1820 settlers, before that was Jan van Riebeeck and 1652. I shuffled through the various roots of Apartheid trying to come up with a coherent answer, all the while wondering: but how could you not know? It's Apartheid.

*

AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, HIV, AIDS. AIDS denialism, Thabo Mbeki. We're a country of pathology, if the outside eye is to be believed. We're all dying, we're all weak. I hate that this is what defines us. Conversely, I remember how pissed I was a few years back when a foreign friend called AIDS "unfortunate". "Unfortunate?" I exploded in response, "UNFORTUNATE?" It's unfortunate when you can't join me for dinner. It's unfortunate when you forget your jacket in a bar. It's not unfortunate when you witness the emaciated personhood of your fellow citizens have the shreds of their dignity torn away by a state and a nation that does not know quite how to deal with the pockmarked pain of their being. Does that feel unfortunate?

*

"Uhmmm," I couldn't quite reply.
"Well, the Nats came to power in 1948," the South African sitting next to me started to explain, and I phased out of the conversation.
"Was it as bad as what it was here?" she asked. "With the slavery and the civil rights movement?"
It amazes me how eager the comparisons are between the historic US and the more recent SA. What about comparisons between current US and current SA? We have a legacy of Apartheid, and America has freedom and equality and a black president. But, hi, so do we. And that certainly is no indication of racial equality in our country.

*

Infection and death. Strangely enough, no one mentions diarrhoea. No one talks about the thousands upon thousands of babies and children who die from the condition of their life, not the condition of their body. Those little souls get nothing, not a whisper. In discourse as in death, they receive less than they deserve.

*

They say that changing perspective can teach you things about yourself and your environment that you wouldn't have seen otherwise. I reckon that looking at yourself and your environment through the eyes of an outsider can also teach you things about them.

Safe, safer, safest

So, the commission of inquiry into policing in Khayelitsha got the constitutional green-light last week. This makes me happy, but it is by no means a panacea to the reality of risk that simmers between Mew Way and Baden-Powell Drive. A step in the right direction sure, but given the current levels of crime, there isn't a hell of a lot that wouldn't be. Anyway, it's got me musing about safety, and what it means to be safe.

A few years ago, I spent a some months studying in a small university town in the American Midwest. There were a lot of things in that town that perplexed me (that's a story for another time), but the one thing that really got me upside down, was that I could walk alone from the library to my dorm in the student hours of the morning, when it was all dark and misty and quiet except for drunken feet stomping home from the Green Street bars. I could walk and it was safe. Totally. Not the kind of safe I persuade myself I am when I speedwalk home down Lower Main Road by my lonesome at night. A legitimate safe. No turning your head around safe, no giving the shifty eye to someone walking in in front of you, behind you, near you safe... Just you and the road and your backpack and laptop and your iPod jamming your end-of-the-evening choons safe.

I don't feel unsafe often. Especially not during the day. The light offers an invincibility that disappears only as the sun does. I walk under roads and on bridges, I walk in places that smell of pee and stale clothes. I walk past squashed cigarettes that are so well smoked their filters look singed. I walk past people who stand and say nothing, I walk past people who stand and stare. I walk around bruised mattresses and I walk through people's homes; bowing my head as I try to avoid the artifacts of their lives that decorate the pavements, doorways and parking lots that bring my commute to into their domestic space. Sometimes I walk through Golden Acre after rush-hour when only the BagIt is still open and the "TEN RAND FISH AND CHIPS" shout of the woman at the escalator rolls and rolls around the empty space and it's just me and a few other people and I try to imagine what the space looked like an hour or two ago. 

The last time I felt a little uncomfortable was walking around Lower Woodstock in the early evening a few weeks ago, and the last time I felt really legitimately unsafe was probably the moment a few years ago when I got mugged walking to work by a kid with a super-shiny knife bigger than his face. Otherwise there's just the regular unsafe you feel when you realize ah, I should probably be vigilant at this juncture in my life and you take out your ear buds, quicken your step, and try to mozey into the well-lit patches of the street. 

But what makes you safe, really? While there's a semantic difference sure, between being safe and feeling safe-- the latter based on everything from your experiences to how lucky you feel that day, and the former possibly more objectively defined--I don't know that that's how it works in reality. I think it's possible to be both statistically safe and fearful, and that if that fear creeps into and compromises someone's quality of life and embeds itself in their understanding of the world, then it's probably difficult to say that that person is "safe". Safe means means safe. It means no harm, no discomfort.

The point that I'm taking my sweet time to make, is just that even if the police in Khayelitsha sort their ish out and even if incidences of crime decrease, that doesn't mean that the residents of Khayelitsha are safe. Until the comforting privilege that comes from having no visceral concern for your wellbeing settles into the homes that stand between Mew Way and Baden-Powell Drive, I don't think anyone can in good conscience conclude that Khayelitsha is safe. My concern is a preemptive one, sure, and hopefully it's one that will be wasted. Hopefully the commission of inquiry won't just look at policing, it will look at what it means to be safe. Hopefully. 

Rainbows, people, land

I read a book* recently on the cultural myths that inspire and shape American policy. The book was written in the late 80s and is a cultural relic in itself--the Soviets were still Enemy Number One--but it got me thinking: what are the cultural myths, well no, not myths, more like the stories or ideas even, that mould South Africa's political and economic decisions, and that mould our collective behaviour to one another? I gave it a muse, and came up with a couple. I'm not sure how well they work, but let's try it...

1. The Rainbow Nation
Ever since Tutu first flowered our collective imagination with the phrase, there's been an onslaught of ways in which the 'unity in diversity' trope has been circulated around and between both our personal and political lives. It's about being different and still being able to work together. We celebrated it in 95 with Mandela in the number six green and gold, forgot about it for a while after that, remembered it again in 2010 as we waved our flags and sang in our many languages and can lose sight of it now. Some of our rainbow is forced and some of it comes into being organically. Our political parties remind us constantly that our race defines us, while reminding us constantly that we are all one. Perhaps The Inconsistent Nation would be a better fit? Or, perhaps it's one of those things you need to believe in, for it to be true? Which brings us to...

2. The South African Dream
Ours is a country of aspiration. From our constitutional foundations--which we pray are built on stone, not sand--to the old 'alive with possibility' campaign, South Africa is about potential for change and progress and opportunity. Our present is a dream---from centuries of aggressive oppression to a comparatively peaceful transition and those gently powerful snakes of people queueing to vote in April and May every five years--so it's no surprise that we stake our future on the expectation that the dream will continue and grow. Life will be better. More houses, less violence. More justice, less rain. We sprinkle around 'transformation' like fairy dust, and we live in hope that the dust settles, that it doesn't bounce back up and into the air, gradually losing its purpose until it fades into a dimmer reality. We hope.

3. The Beacon in Africa
We were all so insulted when Guy Scott admonished our thinking that we are the "bees' knees", and when he explained that that isn't necessarily an accurate representation of reality. Regardless of his thoughts on us, our own thoughts are probably closer to the bee's knees than we admit. And much of the rest of Africa agrees. Citizens of states on the otherside of the continent do what they can to get here, and we do what we can to keep them--our inferior compatriots--out. While we boast about our membership in BRICS, we set fire to foreigners and loot Somali-owned stores. We wave our human rights at African despots (in quietly diplomatic terms, ofcourse) while we shovel millions into our back pockets. This sounds more pessimistic than I intended. We are a Beacon. It's just that sometimes the light of our beacon shines a little too narrowly, on too few people, for far too short a time.

4. The Promised Land
The last time I was in the Karoo, I got it. I looked around at the openness and I thought: I can imagine why people feel they belong here, and why they feel here belongs to them. The pull of the land as both soil and meaning pulls deep. We commemorate 100 years of the Native Land Act this year, as well as the laws put in place to destroy it and fix what it broke. But legislation cannot come close to account for our relationship with our land. There are bones that are buried in our land, there are farms and identities that have been built on and around the land. There are stories and narratives and memories and promises of land. I watched Mies Julie a few months ago (you should see it if you haven't) and the play showed so well the wrenching, seemingly irrevocable tie between us and our land, our shared land, our layered land. And between us and the others who live on our land.

5. The Persistent Venus
From tales about how it was the women on the wagons who got the Afrikaners over the mountains as they trekked north, to images of young girls with solid buckets of water on their prepubescent heads: the women in South Africa are strong. She is the woman who works while her husband drinks. She is the woman who raises children while their father never returns. She is the persistent beating of life against the world because the world is hard and she must stamp upon it with all the weight she can muster. White, black, it doesn't matter: the woman in South Africa is the core of the family and of civil society. However, she is also ignored. She is marginalized, undervalued, and because she fulfills the many roles that she does, it is assumed that this is just what the woman does. She works, and she is beaten, either by a hand or a system. She works.

It's reductionist I know, to simplify the complexities of our country to a few simple themes, and I'm not arguing that we should. I'm just musing. Musing, musing, musing.

* Rob Reich, 1987. "Tales of a New America: The Anxious Liberal's Guide to the Future"

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...

Click, stumble, repeat.

Thursday afternoon and I'm back in Khayelitsha. Back sitting in the waiting-room of one of my community partners, an organisation that provides mental health services to children and families. The room I'm in is small and yellow and covered in posters promoting sexual health, good nutrition, and generally positive life choices. The staff move between two rooms to my right, either walking between the two doors or calling across to one another. I sit, quite contentedly, waiting.

"You've been here some time now," one woman comes up to me, "can I get you some tea?"
I smile. "Ofcourse, yes please."
"Ubisi?"
"No thanks, kodwa iswekele, no, I mean itispuni iswekile enye?" I end the sentence a question, just to make sure I'm understandable.
She giggles at my shaky Xhosa and repeats, "no milk but one sugar."
"Enkosi sisi."
She turns to walk away and a voice calls from the doorway next to me:
"Don't tell me you don't speak Xhosa, just listen to you with the sugar!"
"Ewe," I agree, "ndiyazi the important things."
More laughter. "Yes you do, keep practicing."

The admin assistant is off the phone and looks over his counter to me, "keep going."
"Are you sure you're not busy?" I ask.
"No, come," he insisted, "keep talking."
We'd spent the preceding half hour practicing my Xhosa. At first it was just him and me, and I hadn't meant to distract him, but he was so psyched about the few sentences I could get out about the weather and the traffic that the small-talk had morphed into a conversation, which now attracted the attention of the whole office. The staff called out instructions, admonishments, corrections and advice as they heard me stumble over the still unfamiliar sounds. There was disagreement--and it was vehement and impassioned--about who was telling me what. There was also a lot of laughter. I wasn't helping myself, complementing my mangled Xhosa with white-girl questions:
"How do you whisper in Xhosa?"
More laughter.
"No, it's a serious question." I replied. "Can you make a soft click?"
A man standing eating his lunch out of a bright blue tupperware leans over to where I sit and starts clicking softly in my ear.
"Shoh, but that's some other kind of technique!" I try to mimic the muted sounds with mixed success.

I ended up being there the whole afternoon. I drank my tea, practiced my Xhosa, and was moved from chair to chair as space alternated between availability and demand. Eventually I ended up at the desk where everyone keeps their handbags. Behind the zips and the bits of bling I had a little time to think. To muse about why my Xhosa was such a hit. I'm not particularly fluent, far from it. Considering the amount of time I've spent in Xhosa-speaking neighbourhoods the last few years, and more recently the time I've spent in Xhosa class, you'd expect more meaningful linguistic achievement. And yet, my limited abilities are so welcomed.

Look, I suppose I've always known how few white South Africans make an effort, any effort, to learn Xhosa, or Zulu, or Tswana or any of the other nine official languages that we aren't exposed to in the well-decorated classrooms of our Model C schools. But it's really only now after I've mastered slightly more than the "Molo, unjani's?" that I'm starting to think about what that absence of effort means in relation to those vulnerable and bendy struts of all the constitutional goodies: equality, freedom, human dignity etc. I get that English is an internationally understood language, that it's the language of global trade and politicking, but what does a preference for English mean for people who don't call it their mother tongue? How does it exclude and demean? Because it does.

I speak Xhosa like a child, a child with a strange accent and a speech impediment. So, despite my general life confidence, my lack of ability discourages me from speaking in Xhosa. Fortunately, most people with whom I engage can speak English so I'm not silenced. But when I balance the option of speaking Xhosa, to speaking nothing--and in the context of my job sometimes I have to--it's kind of a kak decision to make. Do I speak and run the risk of people thinking I'm a fool, or do I smile and say nothing? As a white English-speaker and all the privilege that goes with that identity, I know that I have an infinitely easier time than most.

And so, while ndisasifunda isiXhosa and I sound like a loon most of the time, ndiza kuzama noko because I don't like that my language has the potential to exclude, silence, and marginalize people. (Also, my white-girl Xhosa is a really good ice-breaker and obviously if speaking Xhosa means more people offering more tea just so they can offer it in Xhosa, then hello yes, I am on that train.)

The Penguin Epiphany

I had an epiphany of sorts today, as I read yet another yadda yadda yadda yawn angry rant against "angry feminists". It wasn’t an epiphany of the eureka variety, but I'll claim it nonetheless. With the proliferation in recent times of analyses of the “fem” word, I’d started to question the feminist movement(s), started to think, hells, maybe we are really a mob of frothing at the mouth man-haters, maybe we do need to rethink our purpose in life and mourn with regret the charred silks of our brassieres. Look, I’ll probably never be a radical feminist—and that’s more to do with my love of relativism than anything to do with the radfem agenda—but after my bathwater circling down the drain moment, I will keep calling myself just a regular Jen-shaped feminist.

What happened is this. After Anine Booysen and Reeva Steenkamp, the powers that be asked South Africa not just to be angry but to be outraged. To be disgusted. To call from the shady slopes of Table Mountain, “ENOUGH!” Fine. Then today I read the angry rant against angry feminists who have, rightly, been outraged at the treatment of the 16 year old woman raped in Steubenville, Ohio. Interestingly, the rant gave no response to the substance of the argument, it was more of the "why do you hate men so much, you probably just can't get laid" variety (I wish I could find it now, but no doubt if you google "angry feminist tirade" and read  the comments on whatever you find, you'll get the general idea). And I thought—as the dots began to sidle up to one another in my mind—huh. Hmm. Ok. So it’s fine to be angry and upset and even to condemn perpetrators of gender-based violence, right. That’s not the problem here. You can be, are expected to be really, an angry parent, schoolteacher, politician, whatever, it only becomes polemical when you’re an angry feminist, even though your anger is directed at exactly the same issue. Now see that’s just cray. So I started replacing the word “feminist” in that delightful diatribe with other labels and what do you know, the ant-feminist rant started sounding a little ridiculous (particularly when I replaced the word “feminist” with “penguin”. That one really made me chuckle.)

Having come to this realization, I thought to myself, fine, so if “angry” and “feminist” are separate concepts, what is their relationship? It seems like a lot of the haters like to think of anger as the main meal and feminism as the sauce, but actually hold the sauce. But I think feminism is less like the dressing on the salad, and more like the bowl in which it’s served. It gives the anger a shape, a purpose. And here’s a revolutionary tidbit; sometimes, just sometimes, it’s not anger.

“No!” you exclaim, “shut the front door!”

Ok, let me check the sarcastic feminist at said front door and describe instead how on Monday morning I was a happy feminist.

I was at an appreciation breakfast. The appreciator was an organization that runs the most fantastic small enterprise development training for women, and they were appreciating all of us in the audience who in some way contribute to their success (my students got a mention for the cultural exchange they do so well, bless them). Anyway, the staff and women of the organization told us all about the successes they’ve had in the last two years. It blew my mind. Collectively, over two years, about two hundred women have generated an income of around R 8.5 million through trading clothing and shoes. Over half of that is profit. They can pay off predatory loan sharks; they can afford better schools for their children. There were so many stories and so many stats and the two that stuck with me were: 64% of women completing the two-year training programme are no longer financially dependent on anyone for their children’s wellbeing and 48% of women report that they have left abusive relationships. Their leaving wasn’t because of financial independence alone, “we are more confident,” the women tell us, “we trust our own decisions now.”

If I were the religious sort I would’ve raised my arms to the fluorescent light above me and started speaking in tongues. As it happened, I just got a little teary and received a pat on the knee from a colleague sitting next to me. The oppression that women around the world suffer everyday, that some of the women at the breakfast suffer, deserves our outrage and our action. Similarly, the victories deserve our celebration. There is much to be angry about, but there is also much to sing and smile about. After the formal ceremony, I went up to some of the women to hear more of their stories; I didn’t probe, I just listened as the women told me about what they had achieved. Should I have asked them about their continued marginalization? Should I have told them of my anger at the injustices that continue to oppress them? It didn’t occur to me then. All I thought as one woman explained her business plan to open an old age home in Langa was: “Yay! Good for you!” I suspect (but won't assume) that like many feminists, sometimes I am angry and sometimes I am not. The ranting feminist haters would do well to remember the many facets of my humanness. They would do well to see the happy feminist, because yes, we do exist.

As a side-note, the organization really put on an excellent breakfast spread, and just try to be anything but happy while munching on a mini-croissant.

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...

The Year of the Yay

As the two and a half avid followers of my little blog know, the end of last year did not leave me particularly inspired about the world. Not just the end of the year, the entire second half really. One horrendous and depressing event after the other just grayed South Africa and Cape Town with a haze of discontent and longing for another reality. But the year has been swept from centre stage to recycling depot and twenty-thirteen has shimmied its way out of the wings. I have high expectations for twenty-thirteen; at the very least it can't be worse than twenty-twelve. Below is my list of five things that I hope will transform my laments of last year into something less Old Testament, and into something a little more Madiba Jive.

1. Minimum Norms and Standards for South African schools
Sure, it would have been great if civil society didn't have to take the government to court to demand them to generate a document that should have been compiled shortly after Romulus and Remus got into their little tiff about where to build Rome. Point is, after much protesting and politicking, the Department of Basic Education has to pull itself towards itself this year and outline a set of infrastructural norms and standards for every school. Now, whether such a set of norms and standards will actually result in every school having a sufficient number of toilets and an abundance of window panes is not immediately guaranteed, but it's a step in that direction and it's a step so tangible you can smell the sweat of the activists whose marching feet forced Ms Motshekga into court.

2. The Khayelitsha Police Commission of Inquiry
The first response of the women at the Wellness Centre in Khayelitsha--where I've wiled away a good many days in the last 18 months--to my announcement that I would be taking the bus out to them instead of my car, was that I should never, ever walk in the stretch of Bonga Drive in front of the school. I've driven that stretch so often its every pothole is jaggedly etched in my mind and I've never seen anything worthy of concern, but the women assure me; it's just not safe there. That intuitive feeling of insecurity, that almost imperceptible anxiety that has spent so long on your skin it has become normal, that edginess balanced between fear and content: no one should have to live with that. But in Khayelitsha, as in so many parts of South Africa, many people do. What makes it all the more upsetting in Khayelitsha is that the people charged with protecting residents and for ensuring the visibility of justice are so wholly unsuccessful at fulfilling their mandate. And so the people asked for an inquiry into policing in Khayelitsha. As can be expected, it was first accepted by some, then rejected by others, taken to court, protested outside of court and on December 13 the legality of the commission was heard. While judgement was reserved, I'm putting this on my list because the commission must just take place and I have faith that the judiciary will make the right call.

3. Design Capital Craziness
Yes, yes, I know Cape Town is only the 2014 Design Capital of the World but 2013 will be the year of buildup, which means that like in 2009, people will be employed to buff and shine lampposts, the City will distribute thousands of generically geometrically designed maps (which are mostly useless but well-intentioned) and gaaitjies the Main Road over will have plenty of opportunity to practice the Dutch and German phrases they picked up the last time Western Europe descended en masse to the Mother City. Ofcourse the dark side of it all is the sweeping away of homeless people who live in the City Bowl, along with the other less human flotsam; all cobbled together in the squirming bundle that privilege likes to ignore. Oh, no, wait, no doom and gloom, no no, it's lucky number twenty-thirteen! Maybe the homeless will be allowed to stay so that visiting Instagrammers can take filtered pictures of their romantic destitution, add in a caption borrowed from Chinua Achebe and post it up on their Google+ pages to show how deeply Africa has moved them. Sigh. Look, I think the employment of lamppost buffers and shiners still counts as a win.

4. Cyril Ramaphosa
Controversial, I know. But I'm still looking forward to seeing how his Deputy Presidency of the ANC translates in practice. My optimism is premised on the belief that ANC party politics cannot get any messier than they already are and that Ramaphosa's wealth, while immense, seems more legitimate than most. I don't think he managed his role at Marikana very well, at all, but in the spirit of the new year and second chances, I think that he is able to manage situations like Marikana. He has the background for it--his role in NUM and in the negotiations preceding '94 indicate his competencies--and he's been out of mainstream politics long enough not to have earned the scorn of too many. Also, he respects Motlanthe and he doesn't strike me as the easily manipulatable type, so I'm hopeful that he'll facilitate a dignified exit for Motlanthe that won't make us bear witness to another Mbeki-esque ousting. A hundred years ago when I was on my high school debating team, Ramaphosa was one of our go-to examples of good government officials. Admittedly, that was a while ago but I still like him a hell of a lot more than some of his colleagues.

5. The DA's bright blue Tshirts
I am not the biggest fan of politicians and political parties, no matter their colour of Tshirts. When it comes to social change, I'm a facta non verba kinda person. And politics is way too verba heavy for my liking. So why do the DA's bright blue Tshirts excite me? Simple, they symbolize the lighter side of politics. The side that I can poke fun at, critique, mock and shake my head at. The picture of Helen Zille in her floppy Khaki hat and bright blue Tshirt marching the streets of rural Kwa-Zulu Natal and wagging her PW Botha finger in the black policeman's face could not have been caricatured better. I am not pro-ANC, nor am I pro-DA (if anything I'm pro dismantling every Focauldian institution that regulates my life but that's a dream I'll have to hold onto for a while) but I am unequivocally pro political fashion. Viva the brightly coloured Tshirt that the DA does so well, VIVA!

And so, with one last glance to the wheelie bin of twenty-twelve, I fix my eyes onto the year of yay that will be twenty-thirteen, and thank every god that ever was and wasn't that even if the year starts to fester, I'll always have a cup or twenty-thirteen of rooibos tea.

Sigh. But for reals, Mr President?

It's not the the Mail and Guardian's release and analysis of the KPMG forensic audit on Zuma and his finances comes as much of a surprise. Ever since the Arms Deal and the Shaik trial, it's been fairly indubitable that Zuma's not as squeaky clean and incorruptible as he has always maintained. And it's not that I'm not pro public interest media, but the M&G's pre-Manguang timing is not going to do them any favours when they are inevitably criticized for "being political"...

Look, Zuma is not the first, only and won't be the last politician with a dubious financial history. Shady finance sort of goes with the territory it would seem. Politicians abusing their office crosses party lines like nothing else. For me what it comes down to is inconsiderate abandon of the responsibilities granted to them by their electorate. Now, like most South Africans, I'm no forensic auditor and so as this whole situation unfolds I'm going to have to rely on the interpretations of others more skilled in the gentle art of financial management to make up my mind. But I'm a human being, capable of feeling, and being inconsiderate is something that I can see and understand.

About a year ago now I went on a site visit of "problem toilets" in Khayelitsha with some ward councillors and city officials; a particular flavour of politician. At one point, we stopped at a standpipe where a young woman was just starting to fill up a large bucket of water. We stood around as local residents talked about their lack of access to toilets, about how they have to come to fetch water for cleaning, cooking, drinking, washing, everything, from this standpipe. They explained how the ground here is dirty and invited one of the visiting officials to reach down and feel it. Not given much of a choice, he bent down and connected just the tips of his fingers with the ground. It looked dry at places, but he'd got a bit of a mushy patch.

As the group started to move on, the official walked over to the standpipe where the woman's bucket was close to full. Looking away from the standpipe and toward the group as he started to talk again, the official moved his hands under the steady stream of water filling the woman's bucket. The water covered his hands and then dropped into her bucket as he rubbed his fingers clean. I looked at the woman standing next to his shadow and watched her watching the water flowing over the man's dirty hands and into her bucket in sepia slow-motion.

"What if she has to cook with that?" whispered my companion, equally mesmerized and confused by the scene.
"Obviously he didn't think about that." I whispered in reply. Now I wish we had shouted.

There are many ways to be an inconsiderate politician: you can steal tax money, take bribes, you can revel in your unearned wealth while your neighbours starve. Or you can wash your dirty hands in somebody else's bucket. I can't quite work out whether inconsiderateness occurs along a spectrum, where bribery is definitely worse than insensitivity, or whether each activity occupies its own paradigm of wrong, and it's how deep you go down that paradigm that adds to the severity of each action.

And as if Zuma isn't bad enough, the DA circus that is sure to arrive soon will no doubt drive me up the mountain. Yuk, yuk, yuk. Maybe anarchic self-government is the way forward?

Deny, surprise, repeat

You know at the beginning of every "Simpsons" episode when Bart stands in front of the blackboard writing some mantra out, over and over and over, usually starting with "I will not...", where the ellipsis indicate some bad or undesirable behaviour? You know that scene? Lately, I feel a little like Bart in front of the blackboard, writing:
"I will not dwell on the bad things happening in South Africa."
"I will not dwell on the bad things happening in South Africa."
"I will not dwell on the bad things happening in South Africa."

And so I won't.

I went to an Appreciation Breakfast at one of my partner organizations this morning that included a lecture on social change. In the past, the organization has hosted some Big Names for the lecture, from business and political leaders to struggle stalwarts and NGO superhumans. Today, they hosted some speakers of far less grandeur and reputation. The speakers were five second-year students from the Leadership and Self Development Course that the organization runs as part of its educational offerings for young people from economically marginalized backgrounds. The lecture wasn't a lecture so much as the launch of their 45-page book on social change titled: "It starts with ME: Youth shaping a better South Africa"

In the book's foreword  the students' lecturer writes: "If all that we see is what is going wrong and how difficult life is, we can become discouraged and give up more easily. If we are aware of the opportunities, and become excited about the possibility of reaching our fullest potential as human beings, life opens up and becomes a source of joy and fulfillment." The book was the result of the students' research project, a project that had seen them talking to young people about their successes, their strengths and their visions for the future.

Now, I may be a flowery optimist, but I'm more fynbos than frills: I'm all for holding hands, but not to the point that I get sweaty palms. Pragmatically optimistic is probably a good descriptor. So I sat there this morning and looked at the cover of the book and thought, ok, this is nice, lovely, well done on them I'm glad they learnt but actually this is not quite my vibe. Then I shut up in my mind and I listened. I shoved out all the horrendous images of the past weeks and months and I listened. I really listened. Look, it's not as though there wasn't a sprinkling of sappy sentimentality, but resoundingly, overwhelmingly, what there was was sincerity.

Five students, who've had their own difficulties in life, talking about other students who've inspired them. And yeah, there was a lot of repetition, but that's what made it real. That's what made me realize that there's some element of commonality to human experience that allows us to be inspired by some of the same things. They spoke about what surprised them about this project, and what surprised them surprised me. "We found out that the youth has so much potential," they said, "that the youth are the future."

Well obviously I thought. Everyone has potential. And then I facepalmed myself and would've kicked me if it were possible. Yes, in my world where wealth and opportunity abound, potential is expected. A meaningful future is pretty much guaranteed. It's not a surprise when someone is successful, it's not something to celebrate. But when the criteria of your study is that the 16 year olds who participate are  still in school, haven't had a child and don't use drugs, I can begin to understand their surprise. And that's what was inspiring. The sincere and honest surprise that hells, actually, I can do something with my life because people who look like me, have families like mine, who go to the same shitty schools and live the same difficult lives can make something magical out of the scraps they've been given to build a spaceship.

Maybe I've gone soft. Maybe my denial of the negative has made me into a marshmallow incapable of cynical critique. The alternative, however, is to face the mess of the farm protests, of the NGO funding crisis, of the everyday poverty that flavours my city. And I'm not quite ready for that yet...

In the wind

The south-easter has picked up these last few weeks, and today it flew and bounced and shook the roll-down doors of the factories and warehouses in Salt River with an impatient kinesis that only mirrors the unrest on the otherside of Sir Lowry's Pass. Two workers on their break struggled to light a cigarette: they huddled together, heads bent down, foreheads almost touching, their hands completing the walls around their faces. Creating a vacuum of calm in the bluster of the wind. Oh, the wind. The wind.

I walked in the wind, hunching my shoulders, scrunching my eyes. The broad streets of that part of Salt River were no doubt designed for trucks that weren't running over lunch. It was just me and the few bundles of factory workers wanting a smoke outside. I find the place I'm looking for eventually--the workshop that covered my couches last week--and collect the left-over roll of fabric and a refuse bag of off-cuts. As I stood in the empty loading bay, the roll balanced on my shoulder as I squeezed the refuse bag under my arm, the wind whipped the flaps of my pale green cardigan into my face. I heaved up the roll, shook my head free of its veil and started trekking up Manrose Street to the Main Road.

I had no hands to wave at the gaaitjie who called out to me, but he understood my nod and the van stood waiting a few metres to the left of the intersection when I reached the top of the road. I paused and looked at him, the wind between us, the fabric under and on top of me and he ran towards me, arms outstretched. "Sorry sorry," he said, "I didn't see you properly from down there."
"No worries," I handed him the refuse bag, "as long as it fits."
He waited for me to get in the van and then passed me the roll of fabric over the heads of my fellow commuters. The refuse bag sat on my lap.
"Allright?" he asked me before he tapped the van in a signal to the driver to move off.
"Allright." I nodded in reply.

On Tuesday, on another taxi, the man next to me looked up sharply as the gaaitjie started talking to the front-seat passenger in a language I didn't recognize. He must have though, and he called out a greeting. They met with the familiarity of strangers who share their foreignness. They chatted, the three of them, and at the crescendo of the gaaitjie's story my neighbour leant forward to shake his hand and laugh. I started laughing too, it was just that kind of contagious, serendipitous happiness that pulls at you.
"What language are you speaking?" I asked him.
"Swahili." He answered.
"Cool!"
"Mambo?" He asked me.
"What's that?"
"It means how are you doing."
I smiled, "I'm good, thanks."
The taxi stopped and he moved to the door, turning back to me, to the gaaitjie, giving a bit of a wave.

As I sat today, surrounded by fabric in the stationary taxi, I felt the van shudder as another taxi stormed by. Taxi's, it seems, like people, respond to others moving past them; caught for the briefest moment in the same frame. And people, like the wind, move past those moments so fleetingly; somewhere else to be.

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.