5 days in South Africa
I am in South Africa for the next couple of weeks – in Johannesburg and hopefully Cape Town for a few days. I recall reading Ethan Zuckerman’s post on his recent visit to SA where he stayed in the same area I am in, Melville, which he described as
one of the ritziest corners of Johannesburg, each house is a compound, complete with mechanized gates, coiled razor wire and dogs.
I am not sure about the “ritziest corners” – I am in a two roomed “cottage” formerly the servants quarters of a smallish bungalow – the only house on the street without an electric fence at the front. Very scary these electric fences. The house next door has one and I am so tempted to touch it just to see what would happen and if it really works. I am not sure which is more scary, the fence itself or me having this pushing desire to touch it. I am still here so no I havent done it yet. Coming from Nigeria the gates, bars, fences and wild dogs are no big deal. The only thing is we do not have electric fences since the electrity supply in Nigeria is so erratic that it would be a waste of time.
The most annoying thing for me is not the fences, locks and gates but having to take taxis everywhere after 7pm in the evening. Everyone keeps telling me not to go out even in Melville at night, not to carry my laptop on the Kombi bus – basically not to go anywhere at night without a taxi. A Cameroonian colleague who lives in downtown Joburg takes a taxi to a bar 10 minutes from his apartment and back! Coming from sleepy Granada where no one even goes out before 10pm and you can walk home on your own at 4am in complete safety this takes some getting used to. I realise I no longer have a sense of personal security.
As Ethan said in his post, South Africa is a vast and complex country and I am sure we are seeing it from different sides. Where I am based is a long way from Blogging Indabas in Grahamstown in terms of race, gender, class and sexuality. But more on that another day. Yesterday I went with members of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women and Behind the Mask to Tshwane (formerly Pretoria) on a demonstration in Pretoria protesting civil partnership for LGBT people and calling for same sex marriage to be legalised.
A visit last Saturday to “Anywhere Shopping Mall” (Rosebank) led to an amazing exhibition of recycled art and later on to Market Square in so called up and coming NewTown – I would describe it as a crazy place with crowds of drunken youths, fights and noise from 40 band concert taking place. Pretty scary for two non Zulu speaking females – ah but we came home Ok!
PHOTOS UP AT
FLICKR – MORE TO FOLLOW
Other items in the news this week:
Archbishop Desmond Tutu celebrated his 75th birthday in a huge bash in Cape Town. He ends his speech…..
“We imagined that because we had this noble cause, the vast majority of people were altruistic, were idealistic, and we thought we were going to translate that and transfer it automatically to the time when we were then free; it’s not happened.”
Silence is no option for the Arch.
Violence – its everywhere here. In schools which are described as “Sites of War”. The Sunday Times reports on the brutal knifing murder of Nkosana Mbhele 18 last Monday by a fellow 14 year old pupil.
On a slightly lighter note, the Sunday Times had an interview with Busi Mhlongo who having survived cervical cancer and had a hysterectomy 30 years ago now has breast cancer and faces the possibly of loosing her left breast. Biography of pain. She has also lost 6 of her closest musicians to death in the past three years. She sees her breast cancer as
Ag, I told myself this lump would pass. Nothing serious. And now just see where I am. It’s so painful. Even if I were able to I would not have stopped cancer from attacking my breast or any part of my body. I think, though it sounds terrible, it was coming……
“I am not surprised I have cancer. It reflects an unfulfilled care. My breast is telling me: if I am a symbol of affection, then you have not loved me for a long time, mate. That means I have not loved myself for a long time. It all piles up.”
Tags: South Africa
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This is a very deep statement that goes far beyond cheesy, western statements about the “mind/body” connection.
Glad you are doing well, even with the temporary loss of a sense of personal safety….
Please do stay safe. I remember being annoyed by South Africans’ constant paranoia about venturing out into public places after dusk both in Joberg and Cape Town. But I was also annoyed by Venezuelans telling me the same thing. Had I listened to them I probably wouldn’t have gotten mugged last week. So please do stay safe and also have fun. It sounds like the trip has already been though-provoking.
I hope you take some photos, lady.
Hey Habari…Hope you do take photos…Hope I will reach there too one day …Just to be in Land of Mandela
welcome to joburg! i have been living here for two months now at wits university as a fulbright scholar and know melville very well. i stayed at bed&breakfast in melville the first nite. this having been my second time in south africa (first, in cape town for 5 months last year), i’ve learned that south africa is a very complex country. coming here as a hijabi black “american” has had it difficulties and challenges as well. i hope you enjoy your time!
Yes – complex is amost an understatement – race is major here. Photos are up at flickr – seems like no one is getting the link? so have edited the post and link to photos is in capitals?
Born and bred in South Africa I really get annoyed at people critisizing South Africa. Dont know why these people dont stay at home – one thing I know for sure all over the world there are letters from Nigerian connection asking people for help in transferring huge sums of money. Hey people why dont you clean at your own doors first before starting criticizing South Africa. At the moment I live in Switzerland and I respect their ways, well at home they told me to respect others – I believe in freedom of speech but criticizing others doesnt improve things.
Sokari.. sorry to disillusion you but as far back as the 80’s my uncle had an electric fence and a live wire actually running around his home.
There was a very popular criminal who was roaming around the area with his gang, he had approached the King in the area for some ‘protection’ money.. i.e.. pay me or I’ll send my boys round to do some damage.
At the time, the police were notorious for being on the take, so even with his 24hour guard he’s son’s didn’t feel safe and neither did he’s wives. So folks got electric cables, paid the local electricity officials ‘extra’ and we had uninterrupted power supply for months.
We even got notified in the area when there would be an outage, and everyone had the generators ready
before you criticize South Africa for being a violent and crime-ridden country where the citizens have to protect themselves with electric fences, do some research and you might be surprised to discover that 90% of violent crime in SA is perpetrated by Black people.
yes! it’s your Black brothers and sisters who are behaving violently, murderously, without conscience – not the “Whiteys” that oppressed them for so long!
Hey South African,
It is precisely because “whiteys” have surpressed, marginalised and disempowered black South Africans for hundreds of years that SA has become a highly unequal society in terms of wealth, with white people owning (plus a new and growing black elite and middle class) the capital and land and the black majority with nothing. So, stop bitching about the black peril and start working for a sane, pro-poor economic policy in South Africa, which is the only way to solve the country’s social ills. It is precisely because our rich citizens keep on with the current economic policy–which benefits them tremendously–that they have to fence themselves off. Post 1994, the two biggest growth industries have been the financial and security sectors. One making money for rich folks, the other safeguarding that money. Please….
Btw, the greatest crimes have been committed by white people in this country, including the financing of Apartheid via debt which had to be “paid” off post-Apartheid, hundreds of billions of rands that would have eased the poverty of millions of black South Africans.
@south african…
I guess the black folk made a mistake, when a black man got voted in, maybe they shoulda just reversed everything the white people did right?
they shoulda issued em with passes, chucked them into the townships and made it illegal for them to marry each other in places… right?
I’d go on, but you are making me laugh.
Web Girl@ Your comment is a complete over reaction and it is clear you have not read this post. I pointed out the similiarities between nigeria and SA so what is the problem. The violence in schools was a report in the newspaper and the other two reports mentioned had nothing to do with violence.
soul@ I dont know anyone with an electric fence even those with generators but thanks for pointing this out -
Sokari,
I thought it was only on my blog, but yours also seems to confirm that blogging about South Africa could be a risky thing to do. I am amazed and depressed by some of the comments above.
Sokari my warmest regards but I will always over-react to anyone who criticise South Africa, me being a black woman who grew under difficult oppression but still managed to go and live in Europe and now see the parallels.
Nothing positive will ever come out of critisism. Lets all sit at the round table and start discussing like adults who are willing to solve the situation to the best.
Webgirl@ I have not criticising SA – In this series of posts on SA I am making statements of facts and expresssing my opinion based on my observations and discussions I am having with South Africans and other Africans who live here.
webgirl…
how can something positive never come out of criticism?.
I’m Nigerian, I criticise Nigeria much more than any foreigner ever will.
If we do not criticise ourselves it implies that we are content with the way things are.
It means we are willing to accept the status quo. And I am sure that you were not willing to do that, and many were not willing to do that which is why South Africa is at least a little bit ‘freer’ for black people today.
There is something known as positive criticism, and there is something known as an over-reaction.
I remember talking about the movie Tsotsi on this very blog and criticising the people who decided that it was a movie that shouldn’t be shown in the ghettos of New York..
Some people read the comments and immediately attacked me for criticising the movie!
It’s a shame that you feel that someone cannot make an observation on SA without you feeling that you are under attack.
You do yourself a great disservice.
@soul
how can something positive never come out of criticism?.
Because the one criticized wants to defend her/himself. Its always good to criticized the self for this way you can learn. I can change myself but will never change the others – so its very good to start with your own “I”.
@sokari
Yes Im sorry I realise I didnt read the post in the right sense my apologies as mentioned before whenever I hear something negative about SA from a non SA my horns – I will call them horns start tickling – but I realise you were there for a good reason and all you said was positive.
Im prepared to teach you some Zulu if you want better would be of course Xhosa. One of my homepages will lead you to a xhosa page http://www.eyes4u.ch
It would really be a pity if you go to South Africa without even learning Zulu, Xhosa, Sesotho, Sepedi, Shangaan, Venda, Ndebele, Swati, Afrikaans etc. Chalenge me I will teach you
Ahh webgirl…
i see that we have very different views on this.
That’s cool.
I always welcome constructive and positive criticism, because I don’t mind hearing what other people think about something.
Different opinions good or bad as long as they are constructive are ways for me to figure out if there are other ways for me to achieve a particular goal.
it’s like listening to the elders, but realising the elders don’t have to be older, just people with a different look.
Sometimes, I like to hear what is happening in other places and compare and contrast.
in anycase, I guess we just differ on our outlooks.
Be well
Excellent photos, S. Hope you have time to completely caption them when you’re back in Granada. Wordy as I am I find photos a great help in contextualizing how people live. On the ickier side: http://flickr.com/photos/soks/273158904/in/set-72157594334344574/. Suddenly McGriddles seem slightly less disgusting.
I’ve been to Jo’burg a few times and stayed at a guest house in Melville. The landlady (of course, white) warned us to walk in groups by day and not to walk at night by any means. Fuck that. Bibi and I walked about 1 1/2 miles to 8th Avenue (a gorgeous street of cafes and galleries) and back and trooped around on foot for a week day and night – without a whiff of wahalla. The only others walking around were solitary black men. I’m sure shit goes down, but the white paranoia is too much. People should fight to reclaim the streets – cities are safe if there are lots of people walking about.
We did the same in Pretoria, staying in the downtown area. Funny story: we were with a bunch of civil servants who were desperate to eat home food. They magically found a local bukka in a basement, only to realise it the bukka was a front for a brothel full of local heavies. They ate their food as quickly as possible and left!
Last time I was in Joburg a few months ago I landed from Lagos at 4am. I was struck by all the solitary black men walking in the almost-freezing cold, not a combi in sight. Its rare to see whites walking, day or night.
Then in Cape Town, a taxi driver tried to extract extra money by driving us the long way into town past Cape Town flats. How bizarre to see all those electricity pylons feeding tin sheds for mile after mile. If only Nigeria had that much electricity – but if only Cape Town flats was not a huge slum.
South Africa is a lovely fascinating place, full of beautiful people and landscapes, but the issues are deep and yet-to-be resolved. Truth and reconciliation? Not yet.
Webgirl@ i am only here for a couple of weeks but yea i need to have some basic zulu words written down like hello etc – in fact i need to do that today!
Jeremy@ i agree wiht you – my Ug friend and I have been all over the place though not late at night but there is this paranoia which I find irritating – Downtown is so full of people up till at least 10pm I cant see what the problem is. Obviously if you walk alone late esp women you may encounter problems but you would in most places. Nonetheless I have only met one white person so far so my stories are coming from black people and some of them are quite scary. I feel frustrated as everytime i say i want to go somewhere i am told hey take a taxi or you have to wait and i take you – i am not used to that – i have travelled on my own all over the place and hate having to rely on people. i want to buy some cheap CDs – have been told where to get them but cant get there without going in a taxi which defeats the whole purpose as i will end up paying R100 there and back – may just sneak away next week and to hell with it:)
@soul
my dear criticism has never been positive – the fact it is critic make it so ugly. Different
views on a subject will always be there.
@Jeremy
Im glad you and your friends defied that and walked at night, well in most European
big cities you dont dare walk at night for those drug addicts will attack you, and
btw they even mug old ladies during the day – at least we blacks respect our old ladies
@Sokari
Lesson 1 Zulu
Sakubona (Singular) – Good day or Hallo
Sanibona (Plural) – Good day or Hallo
Unjani (Singular) – How are you?
Ninjani (Plural) – How are you?
Sala kahle (Singular) – Good bye
Salani kahle (Plural) – Good bye
Anything concrete ask Webgirl
Striving for Excellence in what I do
webgirl@ thanks for the lesson -
blah blah blah. Rule of law and the cost of life. Pls stay safe, come back to the EU, so that we can live to fight another day.
The photos you linked to on Flickr are so many, and unlabelled. Photos showing you would have been preferable, for me. Anyway. Is this you? http://flickr.com/photos/soks/273158712/in/set-72157594334344574/
Looks so much like the Sokari I know.
Enjoy SA!
Yes thats me and most of them are labled but its just the time it takes and i was rushing to get the photos up sorry ooooooooooo