Shameful dark days in South Africa

UPDATE: My friend Jo has just put together a moving video of the Cape Town situation, where things are still desperate and relief needed. If you are on facebook, watch it here.

cartoon © JONATHAN SHAPIRO. 26-5-2008

Man, SA is in a strange place. Crazy-ness has been going on here lately - horrible xenophobic violence, looting, raping and killing. It started in Alex (Jo'burg) two weeks ago, and reached Cape Town on Thursday. On Friday the air in CT was really tense, and we were worried about the safety of friends in the townships. Not fun at all! Jules and I had our farewell party on Friday night and it was hard for anyone to be really present knowing what was going on around us.

I’m sure people are trying to work out what went wrong and why SA (the 'rainbow nation') is so anti-foreigners. One of my surmises is that it is not really xenophobia, but systemic injustice. You can’t stand on people for so long without them getting angry. Scholars will talk about Gini coefficients and economic policies and crab-bucket syndrome, but, in plain talk, the poor had had enough of the poverty and unemployment levels here and were expressing their anger. (The interest rate hikes, huge food & petrol price increases and Eskom woes all contributing) Unfortunately the scapegoats were fellow poor people, who just happen to be born North of our borders, and their manner of expression was violent and destructive.

So, South Africa erupted, and we had some of our darkest days since Apartheid. Although xenophobic violence is not new to SA, something somewhere has tripped, and this was on a different scale. My question though is - once we have patched up this eruption, will there be structural change and action from government and the ‘haves’ to ensure the root causes are dealt with, or will we just wait for the next crisis? And, if things don’t change, who will be the recipients of the anger this time? Will it be the real creators and benefactors of the status quo - privileged whites? You and me?

I’ve been offline for a bit (reasons to follow on the blog) so I followed these developments via word of mouth, radio and newspapers. Today I was able to scour the net and read some of the online and international commentary on what actually happened, and how multi-faceted the issues are. If you want a brief synopsis of what happened, here are three helpful articles with background, commentary and interviews:

M&G - Hunted by gangs, migrants flee flames.
BBC - Tensions erupt in city of promise. (Joburg)
M&G - Is this the end of the rainbow nation?

And for those of us in SA, the problems aren’t over. 45 000 displaced foreigners is not an easy task to deal with, nor are the sights and stories at the community centres and churches where those chased out are gathered. It is good to hear some stories of communities reaching out. I was especially glad to hear of the apology at Masiphumelele, where the community has asked the foreigners to come back, and are going around returning the looted items. Maybe there is still some rainbow here in our nation, barely visible shining through the dark clouds?

Hunger. Strikes. Riots. The food crisis bites!

Crap! This little planet is in for some rough times ahead. Here's a well written and researched article on the looming food crisis (seems to be all over the press here). The crisis has already sparked violent protests and riots in 10 countries. In SA we've felt an increase in the price of basic foodstuffs and the chances are it's going to get worse. Last year's price fixing scandal with the 3 main bread companies didn't help either.

The Crisis' two main culprits? Bio-fuels and Climate change. The supporting acts? The oil price, weakening markets, the palm oil crisis and China's burgeoning new middle class.
The victim? As always, the poor & Africa.

More breaking news: the World Bank president estimated yesterday that increasing food prices will push 100 million people deeper into poverty. Crap!

on my way to work today...

...i saw a zebra!

and i thought, "in what other country can you drive to work with a big city and harbour on your right, and a zebra grazing placidly at the foot of a mountain on your left?"
tell me. Where else in the world?

PS. I'm not sure if 'placid' works with zebras, but it sounds cool. Maybe if the zebra knew it was in a reserve it wouldn't be so placid.

PPS. This spectacle is not just true for Cape Town. If works in Pretoria too (less one harbour). When driving to high school and varsity, just as you get off the N1 at Eufees there is a hill in front of you that is part of a reserve. I think it's linked to the Great Stone Toaster on the Hill (Voortrekker Monument) site. If you are lucky you can also see zebras and blesbuck grazing (placidly?) on the hill.

Need a doctor?

Disclaimer: the content below may offend pious viewers. You have been warned.

Do you suffer from anything. No really, anything?
From court cases, bad luck, body pains, to promotions, bewitchings, and strong penises, Prof Raoul has the herbal remedy for all your problems.

As tongue in cheek as it may sound, this is for real. Whenever I catch the train to work, I am bombarded by advertising about this "Prof Raoul". Exiting the Cape Town station (via Golden Acre) onto St George’s Mall, the minute I come up the escalators I am greeted by the famous Cape Doctor. (For the uninitiated, this is the south-easterly wind that blows incessantly in the city) However, there is also another doctor that greets me, through a couple of people standing at the top of the escalator eager to shove these little flyers into my hands:

Click to enlarge for full array of remedies.

So, I give in, and take one. The first time I read it made me laugh. It still makes me laugh (mainly due to the bad grammar). However, I thought this would be a valuable example to my US friends of the varieties of cultures and beliefs that are all mixed up here in wonderful SA. It was also a wake up call to me in realising how little these wildly differing worldviews actually interact with each other. For many people these ‘superstitions’* and remedies are real, and I’m sure Prof Raoul makes a healthy income as a ‘doctor’. Though I may need a promotion or desire a solution to this countries unemployment, I somehow don’t think he has the herbal remedy for me. ;)

*I use the word ‘superstition’ humbly and carefully. Western culture is as superstitious as any other (eg. you won’t find a seat row 13 on an aeroplane). There is also nothing inherently ‘Christian’ or ‘better’ about allopathic medicine against traditional or alternative forms of medicine.

that's just great!

New UN report: Africa hardest hit by climate change.

That's just great! (sarcastic tone)
Why does the continent with the richest resources and the least carbon emissions always have to get the worst deal?

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

The last king of Scotland

I've just returned from watching The Last King of Scotland - a movie about Idi Amin and his reign in Uganda.

Wow. It's movies and experiences like this that make me wonder if there is hope. I'm still trying to work out who to be angry at; why the richest continent is the poorest; and why Africa seems to be shackled and unable to stand?

It is a harrowing film - but, as learnt in Men in Ministry yesterday: harrowing comes from harrow - plough, and is a positive word associated with harvest. Hopefully telling these dark stories can be cathartic for Africa and humanity in some way. Hopefully.

Have a look at the website, and watch it when it gets to SA.


~ it was good to see the sights and sounds of dancing, veld, dark skins, kids running and waving again. The movie also made me realise the racism I carry inside (and might never get rid of) and that i just don't like Empires and their leaders, no matter which colour.

monoculturalism

Statue of Liberty?

Whats wrong with the picture? I've been doing some thinking lately on how 'colonised' my mind (and picture of Jesus) is. Funny how we see us imposing (or even just sharing) our religion, worldview and dress code on the rest of the world as 'liberating' for them, yet if anyone were to tell us how to dress, think and vote, we would see it as highly oppressive and biased. (thanks for the pic Bron)

I have used this George Orwell quote often, and it is still true:

'All animals are equal, yet some are more equal than others'.

Here's one i read this week:

'Every viewpoint is just a view from a point'

~ Richard Rohr

One of the gifts i see the international students bringing to CTS is the ability to give the 'other side' of the picture. Most of my picture is very Western and colonised, but living in Africa with the life-giving tensions of the differing worlds has rubbed off on me.

Newsflash:

I'm still on the fence about Mugabe, but I saw a great example in the iafrica.com news today: China are hosting over 40 African heads of state to a HUGE Africa-China convention. Included among the list are controversial figures Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir and Zimbabwean Presidebt Robert Mugabe. Responding to criticism, China's foreign ministry made no apologies for inviting them:

"Our principle when handling our relations with other countries is to never try to impose our social system, development mode, values and ideology upon other countries" ~ foreign ministry Liu Jianchao.

Is this the equality and 'non-judgmentalism Paul and Jesus mentioned, or helping precipitate human rights abuses? Whatever it was, it is a great quote, very different to others we hear!

http://business.iafrica.com/news/373040.htm

Talking of multiculturalism, be sure to see the Elephant seals at the Georgia Aquarium. (thanks for the pic farmer Gwen)

The Governor General

I am feeling better. I've recovered from my week of weakness and sleep and many tissues. As always happens, being sick makes me realise that I am not immortal and my body has limits. The helplessness is frustrating as my body forces me just to stop and wait. So I did. I'll fill you in on what happened and what is to come, but for now, seeing there has been nothing to read here for more than a week, here is an exerpt from Ben Okri. It is a great passage. It is longish - to make up for the silence. It is rather African and anti-Empires. Enjoy!

(oh, and happy 21st to Matthew - was great to chat. Happy bday also to Criss, Charles and Elizabeth)


INFINITE RICHES by Ben Okri (excerpt)

The English Governor-General rewrites Nigeria's history...

He rewrote the space in which I slept. He rewrote the long silences of the country which were really passionate dreams. He rewrote the seas and the wind, the atmospheric conditions and the humidity. He rewrote the seasons, and made them limited and unlyrical. He reinvented the geography of the nation and the whole continent. He redrew the continent's size on the world maps, made it smaller, made it odder. He changed the names of the places which were older than the places themselves. He redesigned the phonality of African names, softened the consonants, flattened the vowels. In altering the sound of the names he altered their meaning and affected the destiny of the names. He rewrote the names of fishes and bees, of trees and flowers, of mountains and herbs, of rocks and plants.
He rewrote the names of our food, our clothes, our abodes, our rivers.

The renamed things lost their ancient weight in our memory. The renamed things lost their old reality. They became lighter, and stranger, They became divorced from their old selves. They lost their significance and sometimes their shape. And they suddenly seemed new to us - new to us who had given them the names by which they responded to our touch.

Caught in his passionate objectivity, the Governor General made our history begin with the arrival of his people on our shores.

Sweating into his loose cotton shirt, he turned himself into a fairy-tale figure awakening stone-age man from an immemorial slumber, a slumber that began shortly after the creation of the human race. The Governor General, in his rewriting of our history, deprived us of language, of poetry, of stories, of architecture, of civic laws, of social organisation, of art, science, mathematics, sculpture, abstract conception, and philosophy. He deprived us of history, of civilization, and unintentionally, deprived us of humanity too. Unwittingly, he effaced us from creation.

And then, somewhat startled at where his rigorous logic had led him, he performed the dextrous feat of investing us with life the moment his ancestors set eyes on us as we slept through the great roll of historical time. With a stroke of his splendid calligraphic style, he invested us with life. History came to us with his Promethean touch, as his pen touched our Adamic souls. And we awoke into history, stunned and ungrateful, as he renamed our meadows and valleys, and forgot the slave trade.

He rewrote our nightspaces, made them weirder, peopled them with monsters and stupid fetishes; he rewrote our daylight, made it cruder, made things manifest in the light of dawn seem unfinished and even unbegun. In the process he laid before our eyes the written evidence of our recent awakening into civilization - we who bear within us ancient dreams and future revelations.

We who began the naming of the world and all its gods. We who fertilized the banks of the Nile with the sacred word which sprouted the earliest and most mysterious civilization, the forgotten foundation of civilizations. We whose secret ways have entered into the bloodstream of world-wonders silently.

And as the Governor General rewrote time (made his longer, made ours shorter), as he rendered invisible our accomplishments, wiped out traces of our ancient civilizations, rewrote the meaning and beauty of our customs, as he abolished the world of spirits, diminished our feats of memory, turned our philosophies into crude superstitions, our rituals into childish dances, our religions into animal worship and animistic trances, our art into crude relics and primitive forms, our drums into instruments of jest, our music into simplistic babbling - as he rewrote our past, he altered our present.

And the alteration created new spirits which fed the bottomless appetite of the great god of chaos...

Theological Impotence

Here is a pertinent piece of theology from one of the top African theologians. It is something i need to remember while i'm over here - to ask questions whose answers will help when i'm back home. The title is "theological impotence" - i like that.

We could go on and on asking basic questions about the whole meaning of the Christian revelation, the Church, salvation, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and a host of other fundamental theological issues as they apply to the church in Africa today, and in the 21st century. For those of us who belong there, who work there, who live with these and other concerns of survival, theology as we have learned it according to western tradition is very much called into question. If seminaries in Europe and America allow African students, whom we send to them for theological circumcision, to return to us with no idea of the theological meaning of our big words, of our life and death concerns, we will feel rightly betrayed. And the cause of Christ will be gravely imperiled. We send you the sons and daughters of our churches to be truly and realistically equipped for the calling of the gospel in Africa today. Please do not send them back to us as bastards or bearing a watered-down theology. If you educate them in the theology of hope, for example, let them theologise hope in terms of feeding the hungry, eliminating famine, providing employment, being remembered in church after death by one’s children – in terms of what is nearby, reachable, desperately necessary. Otherwise the individual and the community will not survive long enough to have their hopes realised.

… The Church cannot exorcise demonic forces in today’s world through guesswork. It must be squarely involved in human concerns, and it must not look back. Theology should assist the church in this task, and to do so, it must itself be freed from inhibitions handed down from past generations. Christianity has exploded in Africa, and theology too must explode. It can no longer be done only according to St ABC Seminary in Athens or Rome; it must find its own method, its own direction, its own voice, where the people of God are, so that it may mediate the meaning of God in Christ for them. The African theologian who has experienced the agonies of having a burning appetite but nothing to eat will surely theologise differently on the same theme of food from the American theologian who knows the discomfort of having a plate full of steak but no appetite.

John S Mbiti, Theological Impotence and the Universality of the Church,
in Lutheran World XXI/3 1974. Lutheran World Federation: Geneva.