Dispatch Dialogue

I went to a Dispatch Dialogue yesterday, with speakers Fred Khumalo and Justice Malala. The Dispatch Dialogues are excellent excellent excellent, if you live in East London I highly recommend you get to them.

I confess that Fred Khumalo is almost my Andile Mngxitama. Not quite, but almost. So I was so excited to attend that I squirmed out of two other prior commitments.

The talks were great, Fred made us laugh, Justice made us laugh and charmed our socks off (wow that guy has some charisma). And they both had great things to say. Justice especially, actually. He explained the whole Kumba/Arcelor-Mittal/ICT mining rights deal - its pretty complicated! Good to know we have people investigating these things for us.

I went to the talk having decided that I was going to ask a question about lack of diversity of opinion in the media, or something like that. Which I did. And then felt really bad about it. I asked about why the media does not address the issues raised by the ANC - ownership, lack of diversity, bias, that sort of thing. Shame I felt bad about it afterwards, it felt a bit attacking.

Oh well!

Fred Khumalo didn't give the best answer ever, I must say. He basically said, yes, they are addressing it and they acknowledge some of those issues as legitimate problems, and they do address them in their columns and editorials.

Hmmm...

The media bruhaha*

Things are a bit cloudy, what with "the media" being the ones informing us about the "attack on the media" and how we are reverting to nationalist regime censorship, on the way to becoming Zimbabwe, on the way to totalitarian rule, on the path to shameless corruption and cronyism and what not...

Up till yesterday, all I could find was journalists and editors and media experts and so on telling us that the end is nigh. It has been a bit tough to find some diversity of opinion** in the media. What with the media having a massive vested interest in this subject.

But anyway, yesterday and today I found a few great articles providing some alternative view points on this topic. Here they are! I'll add more if I find more.

• Burning Paper: Does the ANC have a point about the media?
  
• Blogging with Bayanda: “…we ask for no favours from the media and we expect none”
• SA Good News: Freedom of Expression and Freedom of the Media - are they the same thing?
• 6000: If you want media freedom
• Afro-I-Can: Protection of Information Bill and the Media Tribunal; much ado about everything

* I have no idea how to spell bruhaha, I poached it from elsewhere!
** Diversity of opinion... haven't I heard that somewhere before? Oh, wait, it was here: Media Diversity and Ownership ;)

Attack on media freedom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, seriously, lets take a few deep breaths here. Lets think on the words of Tokyo Sexwale:

A perception has slowly emerged within our society that there is some war between the government -- or perhaps the ruling party -- and the media in general."

Such perceptions tended to become reality if not countered, explained or dealt with, the minister said.

"I want to state without equivocation that from where I sit and stand, from where I come from, such a fight should not have a basis.

from here.

What he is NOT saying here is: "There is a war on the media by the ANC!!! And I am taking a brave stand against the ANC, supporting media freedom!"
What he is saying here is: "People think the ANC is waging some kind of war on media freedom. Thats just not true. I am in the ANC leadership, I speak with authority. I, and the ANC, support media freedom."

Really, we are getting a bit hysterical about a problem that doesn't exist.

I do not think that we should be apathetic about media freedom. Where media freedom is threatened we should stand up for media freedom. The protection of information bill, for example, really does sound like a disaster. It sounds like it can easily be used to hide corruption or other problems in government and it can be used to jail journalists for reasonable investigations. That should not be the case, we must stand up to the bill.

And the media tribunal, my opinion is that it is probably too heavy handed. And also too open to abuse.

But having said that, there are big problems with our print media. The ANC's grievances are real. Even if I don't agree with their methods of trying to fix the problem.

As Sexwale says, there is a perception that there is some war between the ANC and the media. Which just isn't true.
And actually, the fact that the media are plugging this idea that this war is real is pretty telling of the problems with our media.

Swimming

I am a really lousey swimmer. When I think back to school swimming, I still get that stressed out feeling in my stomach.

Now, a few months ago I happened to be chatting with a lady with young kids. And she mentioned that she needs to get them into swim class. So they can get up to speed and not feel embarrassed at school.

Wait, what?

Then I twigged. I vaguely remember kids going to after school swim class. Or kids speaking about swim class they used to go to when they were younger. And I realised that maybe my ineptitude when it comes to water might not have been entirely my own fault. Maybe half of the rest of the class had already been to private swim schools! Maybe 90% of the rest of the class!!

And I felt sorry for my six year old self, frantically trying to cling to that floaty board and kick my way across the pool, when everyone else was going for it with ease.

But then it got me thinking about the debate around "quality and transformation" in higher education. Basically the idea of "we can't let standards drop!!!!" versus the idea that we need universities to take part in fixing the wrongs of our past and that are relevant to our situation today.

And I thought, you know, I wonder how much of our fixation with "quality" is just insisting on a level of swimming only attainable by kids who have been to private swim class. Or a small minority who have been able to teach themselves to swim at private swim class level on their own. And then teaching at a level only appropriate to kids who have been to private swim class.

Then "quality" becomes a barrier to entry, or a barrier to attainment, that you can only climb over if you have some special input that the university doesn't even give you itself.

Imagine the ability to swim was a requirement for entry to Grade 2... I would be a primary school drop out! Unless my mom managed to organise me private swim lessons...

Different eyes

A friend of mine recently took a women's ministry meeting at my old church. She is black and she decided she wanted a white person's perspective on the topic too. I've lived in digs with her for about a million years, so she asked me to put something together for her to use as part of her talk. So here it is! Unpolished and unabridged. It was written particularly aimed at the white members of the audience, as I think that is what she wanted. So read it through those lenses.

I left my friend's name as M, to protect her identity! I'm not sure quite what bits of this she used, but here it is in its fullness. I warn you, it is long!



Different eyes

I went to my 10 year high school reunion a year or *ahem* two ago. I was chatting to one of the guys from my old class, when he said something that really struck me. He said that he has realised now, looking back at his school years, how oblivious he was to other pupils who were living through some really tough life stuff. And how in some cases he was even pretty mean to kids that he thought of as weird, but now that he looked back at it, he realised that they were going through horrible stuff at home and not coping with it.

It got me thinking about people I knew in school, and I realised I was also so often oblivious to the stuff going on in their lives. Looking back at it now, I remember kids I knew whose parents got divorced, sometimes in messy ways, kids whose families moved around all the time, kids whose parents died, kids from really unstable homes, where there was lots of fighting, parents with rocky marriages, kids whose parents battled financially...

But it is only something I understand in retrospect. At the time I suppose I sort of knew there were things going on, but I didn't think much of it. My childhood self just didn't really comprehend it. Only now can I look back and realise what they must have been going through, that I was oblivious to. It took ten years and an insightful comment from an old friend to make me look back with different eyes.

The reason I'm telling you that story is that we can be the same way now: getting on with our lives, oblivious to real issues that other people are coping with. And sometimes even causing more hurt to the people living with those issues, just because we are oblivious.

As a white person in South Africa, it is easy not to think about race too much. Because it doesn't feel like it affects us much, most of the time. It is easy to get on with our lives and maybe wonder from time to time why some people get to angry or touchy about race issues.

Unlike for most black people, who are confronted with race pretty often. In how they get treated in shops, in how people repeatedly forget their names, or possibly even forget who they are altogether, after having met them multiple times, in the places estate agents choose to show them (or not show them), in the life situations of their parents and grandparents and other family members, in the way the little old lady from their block of flats is suspicious of them, in assumptions people make about them...

I remember one day some friends and I were going to attend a wedding in PE. Quite late on the night we got there we had to drop one of our party at a block of flats, where she would be spending the night with another friend. Unfortunately when we got there there was a problem with the gate key (long story) and we couldn't get into the flat complex. So we pressed buzzers for the flat and waited and waited and that clearly wasn't working. I was being totally lazy sitting in the car, while the three black girls I was traveling with were at the complex gate trying the intercom, to no avail. Eventually a lady emerged from the complex and walked to her car in the complex parking lot. My friends saw her and ran over to her, asking if she could just let them in, as they couldn't get hold of the girl in the flat on the intercom.

The lady darted to the safety of her garage!!

It would have been pretty funny to see if it wasn't also quite terrible. My friends (one of them was M) called out to her but she was not emerging from that garage! I saw what was going on and figured I'd better put my lazy self to use so I got out of the car and went and stood with my friends and said in my best white accent "Excuse me mam, sorry to bother you, but we are locked out of the complex and we need to get in to our friends flat. We have the buzzer but it isn't working." - or something to that effect. The gate opened and we went in. She was still nowhere to be seen though... maybe she was still hiding out in the garage, in case I was a decoy :)

But anyway, the point I am making is because I am white, I can usually be happily oblivious to this kind of stuff, black people experience pretty routinely. And because I'm oblivious, I can downplay it. I'm like my childhood self. Sort of aware that my friend's parents are going through a divorce, but not really able to grasp how horrible it is for my friend.

And so we need some humility, to recognise that things that we have maybe never thought of as a big deal... are actually sometimes a pretty massive deal. And to recognise that our experience of life is maybe actually not so typical. And things that we can dismiss easily are actually really hurtful heart issues for others, and that they have good reasons to be hurt about those issues.

M has probably already told you about our potato peeler fight. Her take on it was probably a bit different to mine, so let me give you the short version, from my perspective. We had signed up to help out for a church cultural evening. As we were wont to do (and are still wont to do) we had completely over committed our digs and we have to make some truly absurd amount of potato curry. But really the conflict arose (I think) quite outside of the potato peeling for the potato curry. It was a South African themed cultural evening, and the menu included a host of South African dishes. Some of which I thought were quite revolting. So I had been complaining to M about how I thought it was unnecessary to include dishes that some people (like me) thought were disgusting. Why couldn't we just stick to things everyone would eat?

Now maybe if you're white you're thinking "Ja, good point!" or maybe you're thinking "Ouch, way untactful Laura!" But either way, you are probably not thinking "Wow, that was really really hurtful." But you know what, it was hurtful. I was completely oblivious, my metaphorically childhood self. But to look at something that is wrapped up with a core issue in someones identity, their race and culture, and calling it disgusting. Sheesh, that's awful. Imagine if someone told you that you are too fat for skinny jeans, that skinny jeans make fat people look disgusting. No okay. It is almost to mean to even say out loud!

Anyway, I made M cry and I didn't understand why it was such a big deal so I got defensive and angry and hurt and it all just degenerated into an awful fight about a potato peeler, which I am sure she has told you about.

Shame, poor M has been a guinea pig in my life!!

I remember one time M was reading a book about racial reconciliation in South Africa. I was chatting to her about the book afterwards. She said the thing that really hurt her the most that she read in this book was learning that in South Africa, white families used to make their black maids and gardeners eat with different cutlery and crockery from them. That they would often even keep a set of tin or enamel plates for their staff. She said she had just imagined that being her father. Imagine someone made her father eat of a tin plate because they somehow thought he would defile their own crockery. Like keeping a separate bowl for the dog.

And you know what? As she was telling me that, not only did my family keep separate crockery and cutlery for the maid and gardener, but something that is much worse: it had never even occurred to me how awful that was. But in that moment I realised. What a sickening thing to realise. I didn't tell her, wow that was just too shameful. I don't think I've ever told her actually.

But what that incident made me do was to really really properly and honestly reflect on some of the things I have participated in, as a white person, or remained silent about, and some of the attitudes I had. I remembered, for example, those old police demonstrations they used to do for us at school. Maybe you are all too young to have lived through this, but when I was in school we used to have regular demonstrations by the police. They would come and tell us not to talk to strangers and how to recognise a bomb (it was the 80's!) and teach us the child line number and so on. They they would do a demonstration with the police dogs. It was always just too exciting. They would strap some protective gear on some poor black oke and make him run, and set the dogs on him. Now I look back at it and, really, there are just no words. But you know what, I had just never thought about how terrible it was before them.

A friend pointed out to me a few years ago, also, the terrible double standards we have when it comes to people with accents. In his class he had some students from continental Europe and some second-language English students from South Africa. And he pointed out how terrible it is that we can sit through a talk by, say, a German person, and hear them battle through expressing themselves in English. And we will just think, ag, shame, here is this intelligent person battling to express themselves in a second language. But when it is a black South African battling through a talk in broken English, we somehow interpret it as... lack of intelligence? lack of capability?

Do you have any lecturers who are second language English? Do you have a tendency to assume that the European lecturer whose English is poor is really intelligent but bad at English? And the black South African in the same position, do you have a tendency to assume they are not much good at what they do, because of their poor English? Our unspoken beliefs can take us down some pretty awful paths sometimes!

So today we are asking you to start taking an honest look at your own heart and your own beliefs. Not to beat yourself up, not to make you feel bad about yourself. That is not the spirit of these talks at all. What we would like to do is make an honest assessment of the attitudes we have, the generalizations we make, and realise how they can hurt people. As David prayed in Psalm 139: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Let's ask God to open our eyes to the things in our hearts that we need to change.

Which is a scary thing to confront! Because race is a difficult subject that cuts so deep for us in South Africa. But like everything else in our lives, it is covered by the blood of Jesus. He takes away our shame and it will be his grace that enables us to change. It is part of our journey with Him.

Opening our hearts on this issue and allowing ourselves to see the gunky stuff in us is a good place to start. But introspection will only take us so far. For me, a large part of the way God led me through this was in relationships, and in me getting out of my comfort zone into situations which challenged my mindsets.

I remember the day someone in my digs came through to the lounge from the bathroom saying "eew, there is white people's hair in the basin!!!" and I thought "white people's hair isn't gross!!!"

Or on a more serious note, I remember once doing down to the beach front on new years day. I had to pick up a friend from the bus stop. If you live on the coast you know the chaos that is the beach front on new years day. The beach front was actually blocked off, I had to beg to be allowed in with my car. I drove down with a black friend of mine. And as we were driving back she commented that when they were younger, her family and extended family had often spent new years day there on the beach, having a great time. And a little light went on in my mind and I thought, wait, maybe all of these people down here are just mostly, you know, people have a good time at the beach. Chilling with their families, having a braai, whatever. That is certainly not the image I used to have in my mind!

A few years ago I dragged my brother to the ANC election manifesto rally in East London. It was that really intense time before the elections where Zuma became president, and things were quite tense in the country. I dragged my brother kicking and screaming, I think he only came because he thought I might be attacked or something, so he thought he had better come to protect me.

Anyway, it was massive massive massive, I have never been in a crowd that size before. And you know what, it was the most remarkably controlled crown I think I have ever seen. Mostly because these middle aged women would tell people off when the started getting rowdy. It was remarkable. People were chilled out, having a good time, doing some singing of revolutionary songs, and some listening to speeches.

And another little light went on, that when you see those images on the news of ANC rallys, where people are dancing and singing and it looks kind of scary and aggressive... well, what is making me think it is scary and aggressive? Because now I had been there, with the mass of people in yellow T-shirts, with the singing and the dancing. And it wasn't scary or aggressive. People were pretty nice actually.

So the next time I saw those images on TV, I could sit back and evaluate my thoughts. And realise that I had often been interpreting those images incorrectly, because of the wrong beliefs I had.

You know one of the reasons I am such good friends with M today is from that first year we were in digs together, the potato peeler fight year. At the end of the previous year, M and two other friends of hers had been looking for a fourth digsmate. They decided that it was important to them to have a racially diverse digs, so that meant they needed a white person as the fourth person. And, wonderfully, they chose me. And today I have such a diverse bunch of friends that I have learned so much from, which all started that year.

Now I am definitely not suggesting that everyone aims for racially demographic digses! But I am suggesting that we all get out of our comfort zones a bit and put ourselves in situations where our ideas about people will be challenged. Lets hang out with some different people. Read some Steve Biko, or some Albert Luthuli. Go to some events where you know you will be in the minority, racially.

And the great thing about all of this is this: It is good to make sure we have pure hearts before God, it is good to make sure we are not hurting the people around us because of our obliviousness to these issues. But it is *exciting* that we can be part of fixing one of the biggest problems our nation has...

I have a white friend who went to another university (which shall not be named!). But at this other university, when she first went into res they were still dealing with desegregating the reses. She was put into a previously coloured res.

(Actually, as an aside, she says one of the best things about it is that she learned what it was like to be in the minority. To be the odd one out. Obviously white people are the minority in SA, but so often we stick to our comfort zones and hang out with mostly white people.)

But anyway she loved her res. And she tells the best story: one day she was in a mall and she overheard two white guys talking about which reses to apply for. And they were dissing her res and saying, no way, they'd never ever want to stay there. And to paint the picture for you: she is beautiful and very outgoing, one of these full of the joys of life type people. So she bounded up to them and said: "Actually, I am in that res and is is the BEST res on campus, I love it and it is the most wonderful place to stay!!"

And she said it was too funny because these two guys were just dumbfounded. She could just see them not knowing what to make of that at all - was she serious? How could she think it was a great res?

I think that's the loveliest story because in a very easy way she challenged their mindsets.

You know, there is no law government can pass to sort out race problems. There is not even a set of rules to apply to fix it. Or some demonstration we can do. The main way things change is with a million little moments, little interactions that make people rethink things. Like my friends moment with those guys. And we can all be part of that.

A thought on adoption

I don't know if you have ever looked at the world and thought "This is all such a mess, its so broken and cruel, where is God in all of this?"

Well I've certainly wondered about this. And I'm not going to attempt to answer that question here!

But one think I know is that a lot of the time the way God touches people's lives is through other people. So the answer he gives to big social problems is by moving many many people to be a small part of the answer to a massive problem.

I often think of it as being a bit like the bus boycotts of the... 50s? Where it wasn't an organisation that set up a protest and mobilised and organised people. It was just many many people who said to themselves 'This is enough!' and took action. And eventually there was some formal organisation, but that isn't where it started.

I think what God does is the same, often. He moves many people to think 'This is enough!' and to take action, and when enough people respond, the world changes.

But back to the title - why I am writing about this is that again this weekend I noticed this trend of people wanting to adopt. More and more and more in the past 5 or so years I've been hearing my friends say they want to adopt. Some are starting too.And some will, I have no doubt, when they are a bit older and are more settled.

Even guys saying they want to adopt, remarkably. A year or so ago we were discussing this issue and my brother totally surprised me by saying that when he is married and settled he will consider adoption.

And I was thinking of it this weekend because I was hanging out with two new friends, and the topic of adoption came up. They both want to adopt.

I'm sure this wasn't the case 10-20 years ago: young people hoping to adopt one day. But now people see the need, and they are moved by it, and they want to be part of the answer.

I have a friend who was a doctor in an Eastern Cape hospital and she would tell me horribly sad stories of babies being abandoned at the hospital. And we know about the problem of young kids being left parentless by AIDs, and other reasons.

But then I look around and see that God is creating an answer to the problem.

The world cup and housing/poverty/education etc.

So here is what I don't get.

We've heard a lot of this sort of thing over the past few months: how it is shameful that South Africa is managing to pull off this huge international event, build these fantastic stadiums, upgrade airports, choreograph security and transport, etc etc for the World Cup, when we still have so many problems in our own nation. The problems with government provided housing, the massive problems in education, the problems of poverty, corruption, crime, health services and so on. Why is it that we can get it together to pull of this major international evet, but not to sort out our own, serious, problems? Aren't our priotities so skewed?!!

But. The world cup is an event that will last a month. It did entail several major building projects, but that is it: several. It did take a lot of money but I dare say it is not a pinch on what we spend on education. We did manage to sort out transport for it. But again, this is for an event that will last a month.

What the world cup planning didn't entail was dealing with a massive dispersed nation wide network of local government, provincial government, unions, and staff at government led institutions. Hospitals, clinics, schools, police stations.

What it didn't entail was sustaining quality service from all of these different categories of people from year to year to year.

What it entail was dealing with the inefficiency of the civil service. I remember being told by a teacher I know that teachers in her area weren't paid last December. The beuracracy just didn't get it together to pay them. No, the world cup didn't have to deal with that.

So why is it now a scandal that we managed to pull up the world cup?

Thoughts on injusice and anger

People who don't know me very well think I'm nice and sweet. Shame it irritates some of my good friends who know that I'm really not. Well, I am nice and sweet sometimes, but I'm also sometimes really, really not.

Especially when I get mad about something. Which doesn't happen very often, but when I do get very mad the whole world turns a bright shade of red through my eyes. I am usually quite vocal about it, when I get angry, and my normal politeness just drains away.

Which is what happened on Friday, while we were watching the world cup opening ceremony. We don't have a fan park too near to us, so a few friends and I decided to go to a local mall which had advertised that it would be showing the soccer and have diski dancing and activities for kids and so on. That sounded more fun than watching at home, so off we went to the mall.

The mall had erected a very large screen in the food court area. We got there a bit early intending to have lunch first. We sat and ordered, and were still eating at the opening ceremony started.

Now of course, as the opening ceremony started people came to watch. And they were standing in front of the screen. So people sitting at tables in the food court couldn't see to well anymore. Quite a crowd gathered to watch, of course, soon you couldn't see too much if you were sitting.

So people sitting complained to the management, and the management sent security guards to clear away the people who were standing. The standing people were told they could watch from the level below (or the level above), looking up (or down) at the screen on the middle floor. Which was totally useless because it was very awkward to watch from above or below, and anyway, the whole point of going to watch in a public space is that there will be lots of people.

The sitting people should just have stood.

So watching the security guards making people move, stopping them watching, I kind of lost it a little bit. Sho I got really mad. Shame I felt for my friends afterwards,I think they were a bit scared of what I would do!!

So I went to speak to the manager who told me that the paying customers at the tables eating at the restaurants had to come first. So we had a bit of an altercation about that. "That is just wrong!!!! You advertised that you would be showing the soccer here!" etc. etc.

But it was getting me nowhere and I was getting more emotional and the guy was just not interested so I gave up. I sat through the rest of the opening ceremony fuming quietly. Then during the gap between before the match I decided to assess the places people had been sent to watch the match - on the floor above or the floor below. They were both terrible.

So I decided to go find the boss of the person I had spoken to before. My friends pleaded with me to be polite. And they were right - people just shut down if you are rude to them, and I was a bit rude to the first guy. So I found the big boss and asked him if they were going to allow people to stand and watch the actual match.

He immediately launched into an apology about how people sitting couldn't see the opening ceremony, he assumed I was coming to complain about the standing people. So I said no, no, I had been sitting but actually I really feel people should be allowed to stand. He was surprised and said okay he'll note that some people are happy to have people standing.

So I left it at that. And spent the next hour trying to cool off.

And come the actual game, TONS of people were standing. I don't know if the management had already decided to just let people stand and watch, or if they just gave up when they saw the magnitude of people.

But there were tons of people, tons of vuvuzelas, tons of singing and shouting and a great vibe :)

I wonder about myself and these matters. Sometimes I think I am really grateful for having been born white and middle class, because if I actually had more serious grievances with the world than bikering with the mall management I would probably get myself into sooooo much trouble. I would be one of those people getting shot at with rubber bullets I suppose. Injustice just makes me see red.

But then I am also aware that sometimes this kind of indignation is the priviledge of the white middle class. I'm sure you've all been in a long queue of 90% black people waiting patiently and there is one white person throwing their toys out of the cot about having to wait. Eeek that always makes me cringe. I purposefully don't complain in long queues just because I don't want to be that person!! I remember an era when white people just refust to stand in the ID book queue at home affairs, because it was too long. They dealt whith their ID issues at the passport queue, which was short. (That was many years ago, late 90's!)

I suppose part of the answer is in the things that make us mad. Is it all about our own comfort and our own inconvenience, or are we looking at the world and seeing how messed up some things are, and allowing ourselves to be moved by it? Are we willing to get angry and take action against things that don't even affect us personally, but are great injustices against others?

Or how about this - here is the real clincher - are we willing to get angry and take action against things that will even be to our personal detriment?

Tough questions.

The universal South African experience.

My friend Atha has just started a blog (check it out, she has some great stuff to say, especially if you are interested in education).

Reading her blog inspired me to update mine...

Something I've been mulling over for a while is this: You know Desmond Tutu and his "National Braai Day"? It is an effort to bring people together around some universal experience. It is celebrated on Heritage Day, the day we remember our past, where we come from, and who we are. And in a nation like ours, where different sections of society have very different heritages to celebrate, the braai was thought to bring everyone together. Whether we braai in our back yards, in our front yards, in our neibours yards, at the beach, in a half drum or on a pile of bricks, or a weber, or a skottel, we all enjoy a braai.

It is a little bit cheesy (I just read about the Braai Day Song - lol!). But its also rather nice, and it is good to have ways for people to connect across lines we don't usually venture.

But actually why I was thinking about Braai Day is that I think I have discovered the truly truly universal South African experience: Unemployment.

Not everyone is unemployed (obviously!), but unemployment is an experience that effects people from across the spectrum. And especially young and youngish people.

White friends of mine have battled to find jobs. Black friends of mine have battled to find jobs, coloured friends, Indian friends. People from wealthy backgrounds, people from politically connected backgrounds, people from middle class backgrounds, people from poor backgrounds. People with matric, with degrees, with double degrees, with Masters degrees.

All of whom have experienced extended periods of unemployment, sitting at home, sending out CVs and getting more and more and more desperate and depressed. Mustering up the will to apply again and again and again. And most of the time, not even getting the courtesy of overt rejection. Just sending out your CV into the abyss, and no response, no response, day after day.

Some of them are still unemployed. Some settled for jobs that were not ideal, but were jobs.

It is quite sad that instead of being unified by this common (terrible) experience, this problem actually serves to divide people further. I think many people don't realise how common this experience is. So they sit at home feeling horribly isolated, thinking things are easy for everyone else. Which is just not true at all.

Anyway, so how about next year we combine "Heritage Day" with "Braai Day" with "Unemployment Day" ? A day of solidarity with (and perhaps free meat for?) our multitudes of jobless young people.

Okay, maybe not. But if you are unemployed and at home railing against the rest of the world, at least know that you are not alone. And don't give up, others have been where you are and got through it, and you will too.

This and that

Remember a few years ago, when every possible racial issue under the sun seemed to bubble to the surface at once? The Freestate video, Jansen's response, that white kid from a farm somewhere up north who randomly went and killed someone in a nearby township... were there other incidences too? I think so. Anyway these things were all over the news and everyone was talking about them... wasn't it also around the time Mbeki was kicked out and the whole JZ trial / persecution / who knows was in full swing?

Fun times :) You know us South Africans, we love a good controversy. Anyway, it seems ET's death brought us back to a bit of that. Only now it is centred around the AWB and farm murders and the like. And Julius Malema... well, kindof.

Anyway, these are serious matters of course but in true South African style we deal with the serious (in part) by having a good laugh about the silly parts of it. With Andre Visagie and Chris Maroleng giving us some fantastic opportunities to laugh (Don't touch my Studio!), and Malema doing his but too (rubbish is what you have in your pants!). The funnies for me was reading a New York Times article about the Malema incident with the journalist, which diplomatically wrote that "He insulted Fisher's manhood." Ah you have to laugh!

Anyway so several good things have came out of the present heated situation in SA:

• Some truly winning comic moments on TV
  
• The full exploitation of the comic moments on twitter... #touchmystudio
• Twitter increasingly becoming my news feed of choice. We heard about ET's death on twitter hours before it was even on the formal online news sites (though twitter is very prone to spread wild rumours too!)
• Zuma actually decided to tell Malema off
  
• The African National Congress facebook page was wonderfully entertaining for a few days**
• People spoke about things they usually don't, and to people they often don't. We all need to be concerned about farm murders, they are scary. We all need to be concerned about the living conditions of farm labourers. It really is a blight on our nation that a 15 year old is happy for the comfort of living in jail. And we need to talk about things across the boundaries of our own circles of similar political opinion.
• There seems to be a growing feeling that Malema should not be given so much airtime, that we should not allow ourselves to be so aggrived by his silliness.
• .... I'm sure I will think of more...
  

Shame, I do feel a bit sorry for Afrikaans people though. Its tough being them at the moment I think.

On an entirely different note, I read this article by Prof Jansen yesterday, and I think its wak. Which is saying something, because I really like him and I usually love to hear what has to say about things. Sure, there is a place where nationalism can get self indulgent. Or xenophobic. Or superior. But being proundly South African is none of those things. I'm proudly South African because I think we're pretty awesome. We have a lot of flaws too... but thats why its also important to recognise our awesomeness :)


** It times of upheaval like we have seen over the past couple of weeks, white people (like me) rush to the ANC FB page to see what is going on, whether black people are really plotting to kill us all, to moan about Julius Malema and so on. Which leads to some of the most fantastic conversations.

One of my favourites was when a girl wrote on the wall of the ANC page, saying she had got lots of emails saying that after Mandela dies all of the white people will be killed. She wanted to know if this is true - reading other people's responses to her, and hers to them, was just delightful.

My other favourite was when one ANC pesron put up some info about a black hunter being killed somewhere on a farm in KZN I think. The ANC had mentioned it in a statement as a way of raising the point that farm workers and other people in rural areas are as subject to violence as white farmers. But what was really hysterically funny was that one white guy saw this and completely misunderstood it, and started commenting about how there is no place for black hunting in the new South Africa (he though black hunters = people who hunt black people!).

Too much silliness!!

Bloggers 4 Free Press

Sipho Hlongwane issued a call for bloggers to join a Bloggers 4 Free Press campaign. (#speakZA on twitter)

The ANCYL has been up to all sorts of nonsense of late, and one of it's most sinister moves has been against the press. Details can be found here and here.

We are all free to criticise the press, in the same way we are free to criticise anyone (including our civil society and political leaders). I often complain about our press, and I do think they sometimes display serious biases and blind spots. I think the ANCYL's gripes with the press are sometimes legitimate.

BUT freedom of speech and the free press are cornerstones of democracy. We may disagree with someone, but that doesn't remove the right they have to speak. And a free press is a vital component of democracy, a tool that allows citizen's to keep their governments in check.

It is time to be concerned when political organisations victimise journalists(*) and try to limit their freedoms. In this case the ANCYL crossed way over ethical boundaries.

So today we stand for freedom of the press.


(*) I can hear someone respond to this: "But what about when journalists victimise Malema and company? Don't they have the right to respond?"
Of course they do. If the press have published untrue things about them, then they can and should take action against the newspapers. There are formal avenues for them to do this.
But Malema is also a public figure, who purposefully puts himself in the public eye. He must expect the press to follow him. And for the ANCYL to resort to this present sort of underhanded bullying of the press - it is not only unacceptable behaviour, but it is a very negative reflection of the ANCYL, that they apparently don't value the freedom of the press.
It is easy to support some ideal, like a free press, when it is a abstract idea that doesn't affect ourselves or our organisations. The test of our commitment comes when submission to the ideal will cost us something. Then you can see how strongly the ideal was held in the first place. The ANCYL appear to be failing this test.

More thoughts on free education

A question for the floor:

Many people (individuals and organisations) are strongly pro free education. Is this because people are desperate to be educated? They want to read Foucault and Marx and discuss philosophy into the wee hours of the mornings? They want to maser today's science, the present knowledge of the human body, the nature of the cosmos? To debate economic theory and the impact of enocomic schools of thought on various areas of the world today? To interrogate the way we govern our nations and our cities? To master the skills required to understand our natural world - to conserve our coastlines, maintain safe water supplies, to uncover the fascinating worlds of animals.

If the answer to this question was yes, I would say that a three year university or college qualification is a truly terrible way to do this. Real education of this sort is a life long endeavor that everyone can, and should participate in. It is a matter of reading and observing and listening and seeking out knowledge throughout our entire lives. Part of that may be times spent in a formal learning context, in a classroom or a lab or in the field. But much of it (most of it, even) won't be. Much of it will be reading books, alone, or learning from people. Going to open lectures, reading the newspapers, participating in events where people learn and discuss. Going to museums and science centres and joining clubs and societies of people with similar interests.

I think that is an exciting thing. I wish we lived in a society that encouraged this more. I go to the Dispatch Dialogues in East London sometimes, and they are such a good example of this. School kids and professionals and pensioners and academics and civil servants and the unemployed. All listening, engaging with a speaker, engaging with one another. I once sat next to a girl at one of these talks who must have been around 17 or 18, and afterwards she asked me for a lift to the town library. She told me that she had never been a library member before, but she was so excited after the talk that she went straight there to join. Her eyes had just been opened to this world of knowledge out there, and she wanted to participate in it.

Another wonderful recent example of this is the VC's Forum held at Rhodes University about two weeks ago. Grahamstown has chronic water problems so the VC hosted a forum to discuss the water. Various academics and water experts spoke, the municipality spoke, there was discussion around it. It wasn't simply a public lecture: many of the speakers, even the scientists, had different takes on the issue. And there was engagement with the floor and the speakers. what a good example of positive interaction between an educational institution and a community. Out of the limited context of a degree or diploma or certificate programme.

But to return to my original question: The desire for free education, is this because people are desperate to be educated? I strongly suspect you answered no. I would certainly have answered no.

No doubt there are students who do have this motivation, to one degree or another. The desire for knowledge and understanding.

But for most students, lets be honest, the primary desire is not for an education is the broad sense. The desire is for a job. Which is a very reasonable desire - we all want to work, we all want a salary.

And education is seen to be the golden key that will open the door of employment.

So when people cry for open education and free education, the main thing they are wanting is to get the skills they (and others) need to be employed, and to have opportunities to be employed in good jobs when their studies are finished. And for these opportunities to be available to everyone.

Now is that something best done through a three year degree programme? And through giving more people access to such programmes?

That is a topic for another post!

The Shrieking Man

I just discovered a very interesting blog:
The Shrieking Man, a monologue about South African politics.

A thought on JM

I don't really understand all of this current fuss about Julius Malema's income. Admittedly I have only read the online articles about it. But every time I read his comments on the matter (which the online papers seem to be using to condemn him), I think he makes a lot of sense.

• Malema does not work for government. Why can he not own a business?
• If his business has been given tenders preferentially because it is owned by Julius Malema, then that is definitely wrong. But the wrong would be primarily with those awarding tenders. If the government officials awarding tenders do so to curry political favour, then they should be brought to book. The same goes if they award tenders to enrich themselves, their families, their friends, or to get kick backs from companies.
• Malema has also not been the ANCYL president forever... is it only the president that the papers say should not benefit from private businesses? What about the second in command? What about local municipal ANCYL leaders? Of course they can have their own businesses. So why can't Malema?
• Malema makes the point that he and his circle of friends and age-mates in the ANC are young with minimal financial responsibilities, and earn good salaries. So they legitimately have more money than they need, and can afford up market lifestyles. I think this is a very reasonable comment. Even if he is earning around R20000 per month, that is a good salary if you don't have big expenses. And if he is receiving an income from business ownership, all the more. And if his friends are doing even better than this in the private sector or in government positions, I think it is likely that they can honestly afford nice cars, nice clothes, and fancy parties.
  

It seems to me that the root of all of this is two beliefs. The first is an accusation that there is some illegality in Malema's finances. Possibly that he is not paying taxes appropriate to his income. But the more serious veiled accusation is that he purposefully uses his political power to get tenders for his companies. Maybe I am too naive, but I think this is unlikely. And at any rate, there is no evidence for it.

The second is a general disapproval of his lavish lifestyle.

A sad fact about human nature is that we tend to resent people who do well for themselves. And justify this by assuming that their success must be due to some sort of illegal or immoral means. The same way people accuse successful foreigners of all sorts of things.

People also tell themselves that he is selling out his own struggle, that he is hypocritical to stand for the poor when he lives this opulent lifestyle. But if you have money, you have money. As long as you don't forget where you come from, to use Malema's own words.

On a personal note, I find excessive displays of wealth a bit distasteful. I recently had to work hard to retain my high opinion of a man I know after seeing his car - it was absurdly lavish. And am not a fan of the hard partying big money spending materialistic thing these ANCYL guys have got going.

So on a personal level I can see Malema's lifestyle and think that it reflects badly on his character (I do). And if I am ever in a position to vote for or against him I can vote against him on that basis.

But as things stand, he is not accountable to me. His money is his own, and he can spend it however he chooses.

Zuma Zuma Zuma

Zuma Zuma Zuma!
(Or perhaps it should be #Zuma #Zuma #Zuma ?)

I haven't blogged in ages so I figured I may as well add my 3 cents to the present furore.

I had a facebook discussion with a friend recently, about what he eloquently called the current "obligation towards political silence." Basically the idea is that one of the most profound and important responsibilities white South Africans have is to shut up.

Which of course is difficult for us, because we are an opinionated lot.

Now I've been watching the Zuma saga unfold, in the wake of the "political silence" conversation.

One interesting thing about how the scandal has gone down this time is that there is not too much vocal white outrage. If you are not white and you want to understand this, this is pretty much what has happened(*):

When Zuma first barged into our white collective consciousness, he seemed to be a lecherous rapist up to his eyeballs in all sorts of fraud and sinister political maneuvering. And what was worse, he was inspiring crowds of black people to get very very angry and sing songs about wanting their machine guns. White South Africans have been raised from birth into a fear that black people want to kill them. So if you get a big enough crowd of them angry enough, all hell is going to break loose. The "swart gevaar," and all of that. And of course on top of all this is his standard two education (or whatever it is), his seeming support of the rabid Malema, his buddies the communists...

So in the white mind, the end was nigh, soon they are going to start burning tires and taking the farms, those crowds Zuma has been whipping into a frenzy, then nationalising everything in sight, then who will be safe... better make sure our passports are in order. We knew we were on the way to becoming the next Zimbabwe, etc etc.

Which is all completely absurd, of course, but there you go, white people were pretty scared. Irrationally scared, but scared nonetheless.

Then he came into power. And nothing much changed. And he suited up and went on international tours like Mbeki. And he seemed to be a pretty jovial fellow at least, at least he seemed to be getting on with people. And putting those commies in their place a bit, ha! (We are still worries about this, but so far so good). And this whole wives thing, well, it is a bit disturbing to us... but it is culture, we suppose. We probably shouldn't mess with that too much. Still, we disapprove. But he's looking pretty snappy in his suit. And at least we have moved past that AIDS denialism debacle. And he has made some good noises about getting serious about fighting crime... so, okay.

Then there is the love child scandal. Shocking. But... we already knew him to be lecherous. A one night stand with a lady young enough to be his daughter. Rape or not, this labelled him as the kind of man who was into one night stands with ladies young enough to be his daughter. And them he got married again TWICE. Good grief. So by the time the love child came along, it was just more of what we had become used to from our president, in this area of his life. Not that we approve, we just weren't shocked anymore.

What happened? Something surely unprecedented in recent South African history - an event white people didn't have much to say about. Sure, we disapproved. Then we lost interest.

So something happened that *never* happens - there was almost no outraged public white voice on this issue!

Which opened the door for something else quite exciting - an outraged public black voice.

Normally in South Africa the outraged black voice is predominantly private. The media and other public spaces are reserved for defense against the loud white voice.

But this time, things changed. Which is rather fantastic, I think.

I would explain further, but I expect that you know what I mean. :)

This was all illustrated beautifully in an M&G article today, where an anonymous ANC NEC has this to say:

"Said the NEC source: "We first thought it was a private matter. But we were surprised that the outcry did not come from white people or foreign media, but from our African constituency. They must vote for us to stay in power and we must listen to them.

"We realised that we need to change our approach or it will cost us in the 2011 local elections and beyond.

"We really want the president to zip up and make sure this doesn't happen again. If it does, it's over. We have nothing left to defend his conduct."






(*) Not my personal opinion!

On Pardoning de Kock

I've been a lazy blogger recently (Facebook seems to have stolen all of my internet effort, sadly). But Andile Mngxitama's M&G article "Let Prime Evil Go" just shook me out of my laziness.

My first response to this article is just "wut?"

I understand how people who committed apartheid related crimes have been let off by the TRC. In this massive unjust system, they had a job to do, they did their jobs, they were following orders and doing so on the mandate of the government. In many ways then their actions were the responsibility of the government, of the apartheid system. So if they came clean at the TRC, they could be let off.

It doesn't sit so very well, but I can understand it. If I was a young man in the SADF in the 1980s, maybe I would have done some unimaginable things. Because I was ordered to, maybe, or because I was in some situation where I was (rightly or wrongly) afraid for my life, or because I had some skewed picture of the world where "the blacks were out to get us", and all that was standing between us and anarchy and war was my brothers and I in our cassipers.

I get that.

And I get that Joe Nobody soldier on the ground should not have to take the blame for carrying orders that were given from the top. The people at the top, with the appearance of clean hands, should take the primary blame. I get that.

I also get that the apartheid system benefited not only the guys with the guns, and the guys at the top giving the orders to shoot, but the average white South African, in his house in the suburbs. And in one sense, while there were politicians and generals and police commanders giving orders, the order to maintain apartheid was given by highest authority in the land - the voting populace. All of white South Africa who enjoyed the fruit of apartheid and turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed to maintain their way of life, bear some responsibility for those atrocities.

Down with all of that.

So we had the TRC and absolved lots of people.

Judging anything like this isn't clear cut, of course, but it seems to me that there are pretty clear guiding principals for letting people off for apartheid era crimes.

It can be argued that de Kock should be let off because he was acting on orders, just carrying out the will of the state. A soldier doing the bidding of his commander. But I just don't think that holds water in his case.

I stand to be corrected, because I have a limited knowledge of what went on with de Kock and Vlakplass. But from what I know it was a place of wanton murder and torture and cruelty. The little I have read about it turns my stomach.

If you are a soldier and your commander tells you to kill someone, then you do, fair enough. But you don't mutilate him them, then douse them in paraffin and burn them alive. And if you do, you are no longer a soldier acting on orders, protected from personal responsibility.

And even if we are just speaking about killing people, without torture and so forth... how can you be a soldier fighting for a nation that would be appalled at you if it knew about your existence? Do you still have their authority behind you, protecting you? Surely not. I know that white South Africa turned a blind eye on a lot, and maybe it is naive of me to think so, but Vlakplaas and the kind of assassinations and so on the de Kock was involved in were kept from the public eye, and would not have been approved of by the public. Which means he was less a soldier for an army, as a hit man of the acting regime. The powerful of the time. Surely he knew that.

Apparently the lawyer prosecuting de Kock said that "this is a pure crime. This is not a political crime."

I am open to have my mind changed on this, because I could do with knowing more about Eugene de Kock. Maybe he was a scapegoat. But with what I know now, no, he was not just a soldier doing his duty. And he should not be indemnified as if he was one.

Holiday Read #2: Ways of Dying, Zakes Mda

My second holiday read was Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying. I enjoyed my first holiday read, Bitches' Brew, but this one was just a cut above. Shame for Fred Khumalo, he was great until he faced such competition!

I've actually avoided Zakes Mda books before, because they just sounded so macabre. A proessional mourner? Weird and macabre. So I thought before I read it.

I took it out of the library because I thought I should just give him a try to enlarge my South African literary education. But wow, this book blew me away.

It was a bit macabre actually. Lots of death. And a story that would be altogether too harrowing if i wasn't also altogether too beautiful.

Five stars, I totally recommend it.

Holiday Read #1: Bitches' Brew, Fred Khumalo

The first book on my pile of Holiday reads was Bitches' Brew, by Fred Khumalo.

It is written as a series of letters between Lettie and Zakes. The story begins with Lettie, from Lesotho, leaving her rural home for Durban after realising she is pregnant. On the bus to Durban she meets Zakes, the Jazz musician. Zakes grew up in a devout family. But when he discovered Myles Davis and Steve Biko at university, he dropped out of university, dropped out of his family, and made his own way in the world.

After their meeting in the bus, they part ways. But eventually end up coming in and out of one another's lives. The letters between them reminisce about the parts of their lives spent together, and fill each other in on the times spent apart. The other men and women in their lives, the shebeens they ran, the enterprises they were involved in and Zakes' eventual descent into hardened criminal.

It is a beautiful book. About love and about stumbling your way through life.

It is a bit explicit sometimes (so many local books are! I know I am prudish but I wish this wasn't such a characteristic of local literature.) But I recommend it. It is well worth reading. For the poignant love story and for the array of characters he paints so well. And for an intense picture of the era the book was set in: the 60s, 70s.

Ask people questions

One of the life lessons I learned from reading about Robert Sobukwe:
Ask people questions.

Particularly, people from other African countries. But actually, this applies to everyone really. The people you meet have this great wealth of experience you can learn from.

Know a doctor? Ask them about the strike... what conditions are like in hospitals... what their day to day experience of work in life... how things are different in different areas in SA...
Know a teacher? Ask them about their salaries... ask them about the Department of Education... ask them about the state of schools... ask them about the capabilities of learners... ask them about OBE...
Know a Kenyan? Ask them about their elections... their government... ask them how their nation is managing to get education right...
Know an Afrikaans person? Ask then about how they feel about their place in the new SA... ask them how they feel about Wikus... ask them what their take on home language eduation is...

We all have such different experiences of life, especially in South Africa. You can stand in the queue at the ATM with people whose life experience is SO different from yours, speaking to them could open your eyes. Give you insight into things you really have no other way of understanding. Speak to them. Ask then questions.

I got this from Robert Sobukwe's biography How Can Man Die Better. He spoke about how, in his day, information about what was going on in other places was really inaccessible. Particularly in other African countries. Because of the censorship and propaganda of the South African government I suppose. So what they used to do was just talk to people, make the most of opportunities to ask people questions. When you met someone from Ghana, say - drill them will questions about what is going on there.

And I think the principle easlity extends to day to day life - we can learn so much about the world from the people around us. Speak to them, ask them questions!





(I also learned this lesson from one of my pastors - he always used to tell us to take the opportunities presented to us to ask people questions!)

Lesotho

This last weekend I went on a holiday to Lesotho with some friends. What an adventure!!! The highlight was a completely death defying pony trail in a place called Malealea in the mountains. Beautiful, remote. But the paths were TINY and we were high high up. Sometimes I just had to cling to my pony and not look down!

Lesotho was beautifu. The thing that struck me most about it was how they have this urban-rural thing going. Maseru is *enormous.* But it seemed to me that most of Maseru was what we would call the rurals. Or at least, certainly more rural than city. Lots of big big plots. People herding cattle, vegetable gardens and fruit trees everywhere. Guys wearing the archetypal blanket-over-one shoulder :)


I'm reading an autobiography of a Chinese lady at the moment. Something that struck me in the book was when she was writing about how China was going through a huge famine, some time after the Great Leap Forward. Her family lived on quite a large plot of land so when food became scarce they started growing a lot of their own food. And her family taught some of their neighbors to do the same. So they rode out the national famine and they were fine. But the people living in city centre apartments, high density accommodation, they were literally starving. Because food was not available in the shops, and when it was they did not have enough money to buy it.

It seems to me that that is the best method to protect people from ecomomic crises: ensure that people have enough land that they can grow their own food. Or at least grow some of their own food.

So seeing the setup in Lesotho, I was reminded of that. Then I thought of our RDP housing - some of them are so close to each other you could barely hang washing between them. And it seems to me that Lesotho is getting something right that we are getting wrong.

There is such a stark contrast as you cross the border back into South Africa. In and around Maseru the landscape is just dotted with houses and small fields of crops, little shops, cattle. On the South African side of the border, it is just fences. Commercial farms. No people to be seen. Again, it seems to me that Lesotho is getting something right that we are getting wrong.