I realize that my posts completely defeat the point of blogging (and maintaining readers), because they are horribly lengthy. Also, I haven't really included other noteworthy happenings:
-Spent last Saturday night in the townships passing out fliers with friends for a "Jazzalicious" festival. Townships at night are something else altogether; a few white South Africans who found out on Monday were myphed at my willingness to go there. Running from shebeen to shebeen, and occasionally a small jazz joint tucked away on a sidestreet, it was probably one of the more crazy experiences I've had in South Africa. Being the only white person amongst hundreds of locals drew uncomfortable amounts of attention, both positive and negative. Not sure how to feel about being an American celebrity, but unfortunately its true. Parties in the streets and on-top of cars. Police beatings behind vans. Shaking hands and constantly explaining myself. The festival was for Human Rights Day (today!) and one particularly drunk man assertively told me that human rights were for black people, that a white lady cannot fathom rights. Very interesting, teary-eyed conversation. My friends promptly stepped in. The thing is, I can't completely disagree with him. Afterall, I've never had my rights abused. When will we move from declaring individual rights universally to actually developing mechanisms that step in to protect them? One step at a time, I suppose.
-Am obtaining a free surfboard from a new friend I met on campus last week. What does that mean?: 3-day weekend of surfing in Jeffrey's Bay! Hello, now-inexpensive recreation. Cheers to Josh Wood.
-Went to a festival called "Transfest" at Wacky Woods, which is nestled in the most beautiful African countryside on the way to East London. Imagine rolling green hills cut with enormous valleys and misty peaks in the distance. Gorges greet us around every corner, boasting rivers. At the festival, fire lanterns drifted through the sky and we watched the spectacle of lights and music with our feet in a 3-tiered waterfall pool. Amazing. Also painted our faces and danced the night away, with infrequent intermissions for mango-eating. Will post pictures soon.
-Hatha yoga courses began last week: finally learned how to do a head-stand. The studio is only a 25-min bike ride away from Summerstrand.
-Have seen some incredible live jazz performances and poetry readings in local clubs. Every Wednesday night is now officially Jazz Night! South Africa's jazz tradition is rich, Abdullah Ibrahim created a Cape sound that rivals even the best of American small-combo sounds.
Monday, March 21, 2011
"Color-blind": why ignoring race doesn't break it.
How can I maximize the value of disconnectivity?
How does South African society change its internalized interracial discomforts?
But first, allow me to rant.
After fidgeting unsuccessfully with a candy machine which has stolen my remaining 5 Rand, it was only appropriate to stare sadly one last time at the Cadbury Milk Chocolate bar, caged behind glass, and leave for the computer lab. (And yes, chocolate sometimes takes its critical place as a staple in my erratic diet). Unfortunately, no internet on campus. Knuckles whiten. A sigh creeps into my boiling stomach, as if trying to cool hot, angry soup. Involuntarily, I begin to make a list of the various objects or technologies that, here in South Africa, share a common tendency to break. Sometimes (oddly enough) I embrace the transitory nature of the now-not-so-reliable "things". It infuses appreciation into the impatient soul. Not today. I was excited to hammer out more details of a father-daughter trip across the White Coast this July and connect to the storm that is a faltering Libyan revolution against Gaddafi. See:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/201132093458329910.html
Oil or democracy, America? Tough choice. But ah, Yemen is now our next feature revolution. Will Saleh meet up with Ben Ali and Mubarak in exile? Read:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/03/2011321104457102860.html.
(Sorry, links don't work) Interestingly enough, last March at an Arab League Conference in Libya, Ben Ali proclaimed 2010-2011 as "Year of the Youth". When I read this the other day, I both laughed and cried. Little did he know..
Anyways. As is now a tradition in the Wittmeyer siblinghood, laptops have broken while abroad. For Sean, this was in Barcelona. For me, this was at an internet café near the beach, as I hammered out the last of a 6-page essay due the following day. Another computer arrives soon, but let this absence explain my lack of consistent posts to the blogosphere. Biking to campus for internet as a temporary and physically enjoyable solution will not follow through today, as NMMU’s network has crashed. No other alternatives that don’t require borrowing or bartering come to mind. I feel like a newborn baby severed from the mother; replace the umbilical cord with an Ethernet cord and you get the picture.
However, there is value in forced isolation, in disconnectivity. Our generation is one increasingly characterized by being online, all of the time. Once upon a not-so-distant time, we replaced face-to-face conversations with phone calls. Then it was texting. Now it is facebook. Roommates will chat online together from separate rooms of the same apartment; grievances in relationships are expressed in passive status posts. Here in South Africa, the luxury of deep, confrontational conversation is endless. Without the use of intermediaries, people sit on the South Campus hill and dialogue – I’ve had hours-long conversations about Israel, formulas for social interaction, current issues surrounding racial justice, personal histories, which club boasts the best DJs…all on that grassy knoll. We hearken back to the rawness and immediacy of exchange. When I have dinner with a local, cell phones are always put politely out of sight. Friendships erupt in serendipity – being at the right place at the right time and spontaneously sharing hours.
So yes!, there is value in being driven off-line. Left in my own head (frightening), I can no longer sidestep metaphysical questions for previous, constant, 24-hour distractions. This has led to a dramatic increase in my writing, a revival in poetry, and tapping into the prevailing moment instead of an obscure future/past.
There you have it. One cannot learn about a culture without talking to its many, living components.
Speaking of which, among the most interesting and difficult realizations I’ve made here has been racial. I’ve had to toss out my American conceptions of race and the sensitivity I have at hearing blatantly racial statements. In the States, we’ve swept a lot of our guilty history under the rug, claiming to be “color-blind”, and taking great offense when outsiders point out the racially shaded streets of our poorer metropolitan areas. But we have made leaps and bounds culturally. South Africa is not entirely dissimilar, though Afrikaner magazines (and some white South Africans) will still vocalize their disgust with blacks. I encountered this in a store just last week. By and large, South Africa is a country striving to be color-blind while trying to construct a nation of peoples still culturally, geographically, and economically divided: still-teeming tensions between Xhosas and Zulus, blacks and whites, Coloureds, blacks, and whites – oh, and don’t forget the Indian population – are still widely in force. One friend of mine called “Moose” told me that though he’s effectively an Oreo (he’s had many English influences growing up), he’s had white friends admit to him that they were, indeed, racist. After yoga one evening, as I was preparing to ride my bike home along the ocean from Humewood to Summerstrand, some white men braaing next to the studio were anxious to talk about my conceptions of South Africa. They were pleased to hear that I was greatly enjoying the country and did not believe it to be as crime-ridden as the international media sometimes erroneously portrays it. One then asserted, “Yes, there is some crime. But who’s doing it? The blacks.”
I nodded curtly and left.
Please do note: as recently as 1992, the CDC funded a study that explored the link between violent crime and DNA. Though this effort was subsequently attacked and properly refuted, it is vexing that obvious confounding variables (poverty, unemployment) were overlooked. And by “impartial” scientists.
On the same token, I have to step out of my entrenched opinions. The ANC is not doing much in the way of changing the traces of these cultural attitudes, but rather enforces them. The Democratic Alliance is, de facto, not allowed to campaign in black “ANC-dominating” townships. The few blacks brave enough to vocalize their support of a different party (or criticism of the ANC) are often harassed by others. Intimidating ANC members fly Christianized slogans: “If you don’t vote for the ANC, you will go to hell.” Sometimes it seems that the ANC’s leadership thinks it can enjoy continued support (regardless of its often sloppy policies) simply because Mandela was its posterchild and also because it was the predominant party in the opposition movement that tore down Apartheid. After 17 years of rule come April, a party should have other victories to boast of…namely, reconstructing a segregated country.
Democracy depends on a population of voting adults making calculated, informed decisions when circling names on a ballot that is necessarily multi-party. It seems that the ANC doesn’t want that. Employing tactics liken to the National Party’s during Apartheid, the ANC has effectively relied upon racial divisions so that a new, competitive, multiracial party doesn’t crop up and win significant seats in the Cabinet. Voting is rather like taking a census; 80% are black and expected to vote for the ANC – which they usually do. Whites (9%) typically vote for the Democratic Alliance. This is good for the ANC, bad for truly nonracial elections and political engagement.
Some of the ANC’s newest policies under Zuma tout affirmative action programs for hiring only blacks instead of creating new jobs or installing initiatives to move blacks from the townships to the economic centers. Certainly affirmative action is necessary for a country where your race most likely determines your economic standing, but these policies must also avoid hurting minorities. Black-only employment quotas have created frustration among the other groups; I’ve heard complaints from students who can’t find jobs based on their race and whose families want to leave the country. Nelson Mandela did not want to create a black-only South Africa; he wanted a multi-racial country to emerge out of its first brutally colonial and later idiosyncratically racist past. But how do you that? And how do you resolve the racial norms and stereotypes still riddling the national culture?
How does South African society change its internalized interracial discomforts?
But first, allow me to rant.
After fidgeting unsuccessfully with a candy machine which has stolen my remaining 5 Rand, it was only appropriate to stare sadly one last time at the Cadbury Milk Chocolate bar, caged behind glass, and leave for the computer lab. (And yes, chocolate sometimes takes its critical place as a staple in my erratic diet). Unfortunately, no internet on campus. Knuckles whiten. A sigh creeps into my boiling stomach, as if trying to cool hot, angry soup. Involuntarily, I begin to make a list of the various objects or technologies that, here in South Africa, share a common tendency to break. Sometimes (oddly enough) I embrace the transitory nature of the now-not-so-reliable "things". It infuses appreciation into the impatient soul. Not today. I was excited to hammer out more details of a father-daughter trip across the White Coast this July and connect to the storm that is a faltering Libyan revolution against Gaddafi. See:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/201132093458329910.html
Oil or democracy, America? Tough choice. But ah, Yemen is now our next feature revolution. Will Saleh meet up with Ben Ali and Mubarak in exile? Read:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/03/2011321104457102860.html.
(Sorry, links don't work) Interestingly enough, last March at an Arab League Conference in Libya, Ben Ali proclaimed 2010-2011 as "Year of the Youth". When I read this the other day, I both laughed and cried. Little did he know..
Anyways. As is now a tradition in the Wittmeyer siblinghood, laptops have broken while abroad. For Sean, this was in Barcelona. For me, this was at an internet café near the beach, as I hammered out the last of a 6-page essay due the following day. Another computer arrives soon, but let this absence explain my lack of consistent posts to the blogosphere. Biking to campus for internet as a temporary and physically enjoyable solution will not follow through today, as NMMU’s network has crashed. No other alternatives that don’t require borrowing or bartering come to mind. I feel like a newborn baby severed from the mother; replace the umbilical cord with an Ethernet cord and you get the picture.
However, there is value in forced isolation, in disconnectivity. Our generation is one increasingly characterized by being online, all of the time. Once upon a not-so-distant time, we replaced face-to-face conversations with phone calls. Then it was texting. Now it is facebook. Roommates will chat online together from separate rooms of the same apartment; grievances in relationships are expressed in passive status posts. Here in South Africa, the luxury of deep, confrontational conversation is endless. Without the use of intermediaries, people sit on the South Campus hill and dialogue – I’ve had hours-long conversations about Israel, formulas for social interaction, current issues surrounding racial justice, personal histories, which club boasts the best DJs…all on that grassy knoll. We hearken back to the rawness and immediacy of exchange. When I have dinner with a local, cell phones are always put politely out of sight. Friendships erupt in serendipity – being at the right place at the right time and spontaneously sharing hours.
So yes!, there is value in being driven off-line. Left in my own head (frightening), I can no longer sidestep metaphysical questions for previous, constant, 24-hour distractions. This has led to a dramatic increase in my writing, a revival in poetry, and tapping into the prevailing moment instead of an obscure future/past.
There you have it. One cannot learn about a culture without talking to its many, living components.
Speaking of which, among the most interesting and difficult realizations I’ve made here has been racial. I’ve had to toss out my American conceptions of race and the sensitivity I have at hearing blatantly racial statements. In the States, we’ve swept a lot of our guilty history under the rug, claiming to be “color-blind”, and taking great offense when outsiders point out the racially shaded streets of our poorer metropolitan areas. But we have made leaps and bounds culturally. South Africa is not entirely dissimilar, though Afrikaner magazines (and some white South Africans) will still vocalize their disgust with blacks. I encountered this in a store just last week. By and large, South Africa is a country striving to be color-blind while trying to construct a nation of peoples still culturally, geographically, and economically divided: still-teeming tensions between Xhosas and Zulus, blacks and whites, Coloureds, blacks, and whites – oh, and don’t forget the Indian population – are still widely in force. One friend of mine called “Moose” told me that though he’s effectively an Oreo (he’s had many English influences growing up), he’s had white friends admit to him that they were, indeed, racist. After yoga one evening, as I was preparing to ride my bike home along the ocean from Humewood to Summerstrand, some white men braaing next to the studio were anxious to talk about my conceptions of South Africa. They were pleased to hear that I was greatly enjoying the country and did not believe it to be as crime-ridden as the international media sometimes erroneously portrays it. One then asserted, “Yes, there is some crime. But who’s doing it? The blacks.”
I nodded curtly and left.
Please do note: as recently as 1992, the CDC funded a study that explored the link between violent crime and DNA. Though this effort was subsequently attacked and properly refuted, it is vexing that obvious confounding variables (poverty, unemployment) were overlooked. And by “impartial” scientists.
On the same token, I have to step out of my entrenched opinions. The ANC is not doing much in the way of changing the traces of these cultural attitudes, but rather enforces them. The Democratic Alliance is, de facto, not allowed to campaign in black “ANC-dominating” townships. The few blacks brave enough to vocalize their support of a different party (or criticism of the ANC) are often harassed by others. Intimidating ANC members fly Christianized slogans: “If you don’t vote for the ANC, you will go to hell.” Sometimes it seems that the ANC’s leadership thinks it can enjoy continued support (regardless of its often sloppy policies) simply because Mandela was its posterchild and also because it was the predominant party in the opposition movement that tore down Apartheid. After 17 years of rule come April, a party should have other victories to boast of…namely, reconstructing a segregated country.
Democracy depends on a population of voting adults making calculated, informed decisions when circling names on a ballot that is necessarily multi-party. It seems that the ANC doesn’t want that. Employing tactics liken to the National Party’s during Apartheid, the ANC has effectively relied upon racial divisions so that a new, competitive, multiracial party doesn’t crop up and win significant seats in the Cabinet. Voting is rather like taking a census; 80% are black and expected to vote for the ANC – which they usually do. Whites (9%) typically vote for the Democratic Alliance. This is good for the ANC, bad for truly nonracial elections and political engagement.
Some of the ANC’s newest policies under Zuma tout affirmative action programs for hiring only blacks instead of creating new jobs or installing initiatives to move blacks from the townships to the economic centers. Certainly affirmative action is necessary for a country where your race most likely determines your economic standing, but these policies must also avoid hurting minorities. Black-only employment quotas have created frustration among the other groups; I’ve heard complaints from students who can’t find jobs based on their race and whose families want to leave the country. Nelson Mandela did not want to create a black-only South Africa; he wanted a multi-racial country to emerge out of its first brutally colonial and later idiosyncratically racist past. But how do you that? And how do you resolve the racial norms and stereotypes still riddling the national culture?
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