Mandela Memorial Concert, Cape Town, 10 December 2013

So do all who live in such times

I was going through my old papers, and I found something I wrote a few years ago. I presume, from the content, that it was 2008. And I presume, from the style, that it was meant to be spoken. I don't think I ever used it anywhere. So I suppose it can make its debut here!

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How many of you have watched lord of the Rings? Ok?

Well, if you haven't, I encourage you to! One of my favourite scenes in the story is this: We have a land where a huge war is brewing... and we have Frodo, who is just a pretty normal guy, from a small town, nobody special. And as things turn out a really major responsibility for protecting their land from this major attack falls to him... and its difficult. He is speaking to Gandalf, who is his mentor sortof, about it. He is saying that he wishes these things weren't happening in is time, to him, his family, his community, his nation.

The same way we would wish for peaceful lives...
"Why AIDS?" "Why the situation in Zim?" "Why xenophobia?" "Why racism, violence, crime, potential recession, escalating oil prices, escalating food prices, corruption... the things we worry about, our families worry about..."
"Why now, why us? Why do these things happen in our generation?" "Why are we in SA now, when people might think things are looking a bit precarious?" "We wish they weren't happening now, to us and our people."

And Gandalf, his mentor, replies to this wish:
"So do I, and so do all who live in such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

We don't get to decide where we will be born, or when, or the situation we will be born into. It says in Acts 17 that God determined the times set for them and the exact places were they should live. If you're living in South Africa today, its because God chose to put you here. With full knowledge of the situation, with full knowledge of the problems.

What you decide is what you are going to do in the time and place and situation God put you.

Guys, do you think that God is worried about the future of our nation? We've been watching these stories of xenophobic attacks on the news recently... do you think it freaks God out? Do you think he is having emergency meetings? Or putting together a working group to investigate the problem?

Or do you think perhaps that he has already got a plan? Plan A, just a continuation of the plan he has always had, that he has put the solutions in the hands and hearts of his people, that he has already called his church to be salt and light in a community he knew before time he would set them in?

Do you think these events suprise God? Or do you think he has already gifted people, called people, equipped people to be the answer?

Do you think God is waiting for Thabo Mbeki to announce Zimbabwe is a crisis situation? Or address the nation on xenophobia? Do you think God is waiting for the government to do something about poverty or AIDS or job creation?

Or do you think he is waiting for his church, his people, us, who he is already equipped and enabled, to rise up and actually do what he has called them to do?

Found

I know pretty much no one ready my blog, but for what its worth, to whoever stumbles here:

When I was a teenager, I used to grapple with the idea of God. If he was out there, it made no sense: the world was cruel and hard and painful, how could God be out there, and let things be as they are? But then the thought of there being no God was even worse, it felt like if there was no God then nothing whatsoever made any sense at all, everything seemed pointless.

I guess I was a bit of a smart-alec (to use an Americanism!), I used to think I was pretty smart and I used to tease my Christian friends about their illogical beliefs.

Then one day one of those Christian friends invited me along to their youth group. I went along just for the hang-out. But I came home curious. I picked up a bible to investigate this thing that seemed to make such an impact on people. Paging through the stories of Jesus, I realised that they were true. And I remember thinking "why has nobody told me about this before??

The thing I discovered in that moment was what Christians would call the gospel (it means the 'good news'). That the God who created us and loves us, and who we have pretty much ignored, he saw our sorry state and how we are slaves to ourselves and our desires and how we destroy each other, and instead of the punishment we deserved he sent his son to die to to pay the price for our sin, and to set us free.

So God himself paid the price to fix the broken relationship between him and us, even though he wasn't the one who broke it. Through Jesus, he forgives our sin and sets us free from all the rubbish that we have gotten ourselves tangled in in this life.

And all we can do is respond with grateful hearts, and receive what he as done for us already.

In the Bible, Jesus once told us that he came to seek and save what is lost (Luke 19:10). Lets be found by him.

Mazibuko-Trollip coverage

I had the most trippy experience a couple of days ago. I read a Daily Dispatch online (DD) article about the Mazibuko-Trollip contest for the DA caucus leader position. The DD told me that of the seven Eastern Cape DA MPs, one supports Mazibuko, five support Trollip, and one could not be reached for comment but was believed to also support Trollip. A nice little article with quotes from the various people involved, titled Home support for DA's Trollip:



The trippiness occurred later in the day when I went to the TimesLive website, and saw and article entitled DA Eastern Cape backs Mazibuko:



At first I thought perhaps the TimesLive article had more recent information, but looking at it, it doesn't. It just quotes the single EC DA MP that supports Mazibuko and presents it as if the EC supports Mazibuko... ???

The conspiracy theorist in me says "media bias!!" or would maybe insinuate that Mazibuko is favoured by the press, or perhaps just that the press likes drama and DA support for Mazibuko in Trollip's home province (the EC) is drama.

But the TimesLive article is from sapa, so I suppose this may be more indicative of people not checking things properly before publishing them. More a problem of time pressure than bias, perhaps. Especially for online news.

Either way, it is certainly another reason not to believe everything you read :)
And I've long said the DD is a great paper, kudos to them.

I emailed the TimesLive people to point the problem with their article out, no response though.

The Dubula I'bhunu ruling

My 2c on what I believe is a terrible flaw in Judge Lamont's Dubula I'bhunu ruling.

The judgement seems to argue that:

* Hate speech incites violence.
* We evaluate whether it is hate speech by considering how people interpret the words.
* Words can be interpreted differently based on context and background, so who the words are said to is significant.
* Although Dubula I'bhunu was sung primarily in political rally contexts, where the bulk of listeners were familiar with it's struggle context, it was also broadcast to all South Africans, who may not all interpret it in the same way.
* We therefore need to consider how it would be interpreted by all South Africans.
* Given how the song was interpreted in the media, the violent "kill the boers" interpretation was out there in the public space.

I think all of that is fine. But then Judge Lamont speaks about how sufficient people would interpret it as killing boers (especially given that it was translated that way in the media) that it can be considered hate speech.

But wait.

It seems to me that to be considered hate speech, the people interpreting it as "kill the boers" would actually have to be incited to kill boers.

But that is not the case, I believe. The people who interpret it as "kill the boers" are people who are afraid that OTHERS might kill the boers.

So... it seems to me that even if this song is legitimately interpreted in two different ways, it is not incitement to violence, as those who interpret it as violent (predominantly white SAfricans) are not being incited to violence.

This is the fatal flaw in his argument, in my opinion.

He even noted that no violence could be linked to this song.

There is no incitement to violence, hence there is no hate speech.

#myopinion

Stories from today

Last year I used to pray at the healing rooms in my city. It is really just a place that is open for a few hours once a week or so, where Christians are available to pray for people who want prayer. For healing, or anything really. Its pretty cool, mostly because God actually heals people. A few weeks ago some ladies I know prayed for a lady who was blind, and God healed her, and now she can see. For serious.

Anyway I was out of town for quite a few months this year so I got taken off the healing rooms roster, and I haven't got it together to get myself involved again since I got back. But in the interim a new healing room has been opened in my city, in an informal settlement on an old dump site closish to where I live.

So I thought I'd go pray there this week. I've only been there once before so I wasn't quite sure how to get there. I kindof found the place on google maps (tricky because dumps don't have street numbers!), I drove down there, but at some point you turn off the suburby tar road onto a dirt road, that continues for a few hundred metres through a bushy area, then you get to the dump.

So I turned onto the dirt road, and drove past a guy in the road. He tried to get my attention, but I was a bit nervous to slow down and roll my window down because there was no one else around, and... well, you know. Bad things have happened to girls in bushy areas not far from there. Anyway so I carried on driving and pretended not to notice him, but this guy was persistent, he started running after my car shouting "sisi, sisi!"

I don't know if its some sort of white guilt thing or what, but I feel terrible when I treat people rudely because I am afraid they might do something to me. I saw a few people further down the road and figured that probably made it safer, so I stopped and rolled down the window. And the guy came up to the window and said "sisi, you don't want to go this way, this road goes to a dump!"

Lol, so the poor dude was running after my car trying to warn me! Shame!

Anyway, the lady who leads the prayer room went to visit a couple of people in the settlement before the prayer room time, among them the lady who God healed of blindness a few weeks ago.

I didn't go into the lady's home, it was a shack and too small for everyone to squeeze in to. So I just waited outside. But while I was waiting I noticed the she had put up shelves on the front of her house with pot plants on them, and she had hung up a sun hat as decoration, and she had put up these decorative metal... I don't know what they are called, but the curley metal corner shapes you might find maybe in the front veranda of an old style house.

The flower pots were all broken, and the metal curley bits were just tied on with bright red chord. But the style of decor reminded me of my gran, those sort of pretty ornate touches.

So anyway, this story has no point, it was just something that struck me. I guess I could say it made me sad, that this lady living in a shack, on a dump site where the ground is a mulch of soil and rubbish and it is always wet, that she made her house pretty with broken things. I guess I could say I was amazed at that woman, or humbled. But I don't know really.

Bang bang club

I saw the movie Bang Bang Club this past weekend. I thought it was pretty good actually. I've read a few criticisms of it, which I think are valid. But it was also good to see some of the things that were going on during that period, and to remember what we got through.

But this post is not about any of that. This post is about non-South African actors playing South Africans. The accents in this movie were a bit weird, but then I think contrived South African accents will probably almost always sound weird to actual South Africans. And they weren't the worst, as South African accents go.

But was what truly funny was their slang. I assume some sort of South African accent coach must have told them that South African men use the slang words "bru" and "china." Which is true. But the characters seem to fit them into nearly every sentence. Really.

So as the world produces ever more movies set in South Africa, I am putting forward a list of alternative South African slang expressions. As a service to humanity.

I can only think of a few for now, but please feel free to add as you think of any...
(as I was writing this list I found some lists of SAfrican slang online, on wikipedia for example. You'd think the movie directors would have done a google search ;) )

South African slang
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china
bru
boetie
hectic
eish
Ag
tjommies
dinges
woes
kiff

Talking to people

Do you sometimes find words coming out of your mouth, and even as you are saying them you are cringing and a part of your brain is crying out "why are you doing this?!?!?!"

Well, that happens to me sometimes, and one recent occasion was at a student conference in Stellenbosch. I had ditched some of my fellow students who were still out drinking, and come home around 1am-ish, so that I wouldn't be an absolute vegetable at the conference that day. We were staying in res accommodation at Stellenbosch so there was a Stellenbosch student on duty to at the front desk. I chatted to him briefly on my way up to my room, asking him what he was studying. He was a theology student, doing a Master's thesis on something about the Christian response to poverty.

This was when I opened my mouth and had the "what the heck are you saying Laura??" experience, as I asked him why he would choose to study theology as Stellenbosch, in the actual actual department where apartheid was conceptualized? (He was coloured, maybe that makes my question make more sense.)

Anyway, outside of my instant mortification at having asked such a question, we had an interesting chat about it and he said some very thought provoking things.

One of the things he said was that he wouldn't be there if he didn't believe that people had the capacity to change. Isn't that quite profound?

Blue collar

So here is another embarrassing story from My Life.

When I was in the higher grades of high school I was thinking about what career I wanted to embark on, and what direction I wanted to take after school. I thought it through, reflecting on the fact that I like methodical work, I like structure (I liked accounting at school), but that I also have a bit of a practical streak, and I like doing things with my hands. So it occurred to my young brain that perhaps the perfect thing for me would be to work in some sort of production line in a factory. Methodical, practical, structured, sounded like my kind of thing!

I went to my mom and told her that I wanted to be [to quote] "a blue collar worker." Se told me that I didn't know what that meant. I responded that I did, that it meant working in a factory, and that is what I wanted to do.

Of course, in retrospect, I didn't know what it meant. Well, I knew that it possibly meant working in a factory, but I didn't know that it meant working very heard to earn a pittance, probably without benefits, probably without job security, and being the bottom rung in the employment food chain (or near to the bottom rung).

Now that is just something I can't get my head around. There has to be something terribly wrong with a society where people can work hard all day, making or processing things that society needs, and earn barely enough to live on (possibly not even enough to live on). Whereas some guy in an office can come up with "angry birds" and make a gabajillion dollars, and some other guy with a connection in local government can make a gabajillion on a tender for chair covers for official functions, or unnecessary water purifiers for hospitals. That he just buys from a supplier and makes a killing selling at a massive profit.

I would never argue for a society where we all just earn a flat rate of money, there needs to be room for people who work harder to earn more, or people who take up more responsibility to earn more.

But really, someone who works hard for a full day, in an office block or in a production line, should go home with enough to live in a decent place and provide for their families in a decent way.

"Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty." James 5:4

Were do the kids go now?

I read this article a few days ago and it made me sad:
Sobukwe would not be proud of us.

It is part of a great series the Daily Dispatch are doing, where journos travel the Eastern Cape and speak to people and write their stories. The story I've linked to above describes their meeting Robert Sobukwe's son.

I'm not into big shrines or monuments to the dead. But really, it is sad that this man is buried in an unkempt nondescript grave, forgotten by many (except his family). I've been to Biko's grave too, and it is also not in a great state. Biko's grave is in a (very unimpressive) "garden of remembrance." Which is basically just a wall and a plaque.

Perhaps it would seem less cold to leave graves to be personal matters, to families, if we had other places to remember these people. But we don't.

I remember as a child, going on school field trips to the 1820 settlers monument, to the German settlers monument. Going to historical buildings in Grahamstown, that old fort thing. That old gaol in East London. Where do the kids go now?

I know I am terribly biased, but it seems to me that so much of the history of South Africa is written in the Eastern Cape, in small cities and small towns and rural areas. But we are just not bothering to tell the story.

*

USA Democrat boycott

I just so happen to be in a smallish town in the USA at the moment. And it just so happens that this smallish town has been in the national news in the US: it has become a hide out for House Democrats.

I don't really understand American politics, but I think the bottom line is that the Republicans now have a majority in the House in some states. So they can pass bills that the Democrats object to, because of their majority vote.

So the Democrat strategy is to literally run away - they escape to other states, so the Republicans don't have quorum, and can't pass their bills.

Apparently there are over 30 House Democrats from other states holed up in motels in the city I'm in.

And what is even more ludicrous is the fact that this is a tried and true, long standing American political tradition. Lincoln himself once jumped out of a window and ran away to stop the Democrats getting quorum!

Women, children and persons with disabilities

You know when Zuma got started as president, he created a new ministry (or two?) and split up existing ministries? Remember one of the new ministries was the ministry of women, children and persons with disabilities (wcpd)?

At the time I thought that sounded a bit lame, but I figured I'd wait and see. A year and a half later, it seems they haven't done much, and the minister was shuffled right on out in Zuma's recent cabinet reshuffle.

Why I am thinking of this now is that in the past week I've heard two terrible stories. Firstly, I heard of a three year old girl who was raped. My aunt knows the child's mother. Then these is this story of the girl who was raped by two boys at school last week. I read today that there will be no charges against the two boys, due to lack of evidence. When the teachers first heard about the rape, they did nothing. In fact, some even laughed at the girl, or so I have read. The police even waited to go to the school to investigate the rape, because the children were writing exams.

All of which got me thinking about what a desperate situation we are in as a country, where the weakest among us are shamelessly expolited and abused by those more powerful. And the law seems to have little interest, or little serious will, to stop this. It really is a sickness in our society, firstly that a three year old can be raped, secondly that it has become almost unremarkable that a three year old was raped, and thirdly that men get away with this all the time - the conviction rate for sexual crimes is painfully low. The same, of course, applies to a rape among school children.

And then I realised why having a specific ministry to address this is actually so important. I suppose it is just a matter of what is done within that ministry. It can either seriously adress the massive problem we have, or it can be another excuse for some lavishly catered committee meetings and rallys that have no real effect on anything.

So with that in mind, I thought about some ideas of what I would like to see the ministry of women, children and persons with disabilities do. This is just a few ideas that sprang to my mind, add yours if you have any!

Ideas for the ministry of women, children and persons with disabilities:

• Work with research organisations and universities to identify and investigate the causes of the high levels of sexual violence we have. I went to a talk by Dr Wally Serote earlier this year, and he made the interesting point that we really need to enlist universities to do research on our nation's problems. We have difficult problems, he told us, we need to get intelligent people to solve them. Our universities need to be putting their minds to solving our problems. Quite right. The ministry could fund specific research projects on relevant areas, and possibly fund some postgraduate student scholarships for students doing research in these areas. Research funding would be given with time frames and clear deliverables, research findings would have to be presented to the ministry, and so on. This research would direct the programmes run by the department. Research would also be commissioned on the projects run by the ministry and potential projects being considered.
  
• Massive advertising campaigns. Maybe I will be shot for this, but I think sexual violence is possibly even as much of a crisis in our society as HIV/AIDS. We need to have billboards and radio ads and plays at festivals and slots in Generations. The exact nature of the campaign will be based on what our research tells us. For example, if we learn that child rape is party caused by beliefs that sex with virgin children cures AIDS, then that will be addressed. If we find that mothers are aware that their children are being abused but turn a blind eye because the abuser is providing for them financially, or is a relative, then that will be addressed in the campaigns. If we find that social networking platforms are being used to lure young people into vulnerable situations, we will address that in ad campaigns. The campaigns will directly speak to whatever we identify as the main issues.
  
• Keeping children safe. Many children are left with relatives, neighbours, etc. when parents go out to work. In these situations children can sometimes be vulnerable to abuse. We would look seriously at ways to address this. As I understand it there are already government grants (is this the right word?) for creches for young children - we would assess how this is working at present, how it could be improved, and expanded. We would also advertise available creches. We would also investigate other ways to protect young children. The possibility of tax cuts for businesses who provide child care for mothers springs to mind.
• Train police and fix up the courts. I believe this is being done, but as far as I know the situation is still pretty much a complete disaster. Investigations get messed up, court cases go on for years and years, files get lost, etc etc. I think these are problems for the justice system across the board, but the effect of them is so much more extreme for violent crime against vulnerable groups - women and children. I know we can't snap our fingers and fix up our courts entirely, but perhaps some political clout can be thrown at cases involving sexual violence. There must be swift punishment in these cases. To protect the victims, and to deter potential future crimes. A lawyer friend of mine once told me that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.
  
• Enlist teacher's unions. Teacher's unions have a reputation of protecting teachers accused of abusing children. I'm not sure if this reputation is warranted, but the ministry would pin down teachers unions to make unequivocal statements that they support the efforts of the ministry to investigate any allegations of abuse, and take action against any teachers found guilty.
• Enlist the education department. We would also work with the education department in investigations of abuse at schools.
• Get a cracking legal team. We would have a top top notch legal team whose jobs it would be to make sure that people who need to be fired (teachers abusing children, for example), would be fired, people who need to be jailed would be jailed, and so on.
  
• Address child porn. Our cracking legal team would also advise the ministry on areas such as child porn, and on these cell phone applications and sites that allow for easy distribution of porn. I recently heard that a problem nowadays is young kids making pornographic videos of each other and distributing them. If this is being done through a particular cell phone application we would try to enlist the help of the application developer to prevent child porn being trafficked through their application. If necessary, we would consider our options for taking legal action against application developers. We would also work with (and if necessary, take action against) social networking platforms where young people are vulnerable to abuse.
  

... okay I'm falling asleep... if I think of more I will add them. Anyone else have any ideas?

Random ponderance

So my random ponderance for the day:

Could our massive emphasis on corruption in the higher levels of government be a way for middle class people to make poverty someone else's fault, and someone else's problem?

I'm not saying corruption isn't a big problem. I just suddenly wondered today if our obsession with corruption stories in the news (especially involving top people) is not possibly related to our desire to pin the problem of poverty on someone other than ourselves. To think that most South Africans are poor because of corruption in the top levels of government (which involves big sums of money, but actually relatively few people compared to the total population). Rather than thinking that most South Africans are poor because a large number of South Africans (maybe about 10-15%) live pretty opulent middle class lifestyles, taking advantage of our social structure which advantages the rich ...

??

(I don't think either is entirely true actually, I think there are many reasons for poverty in SA. But I'm not sure right now that corruption in top levels of government is any more of a factor than the wide spread opulence of the middle class... hmmmm....)

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?