South Africa is portrayed as a liberated country, as a result of it’s history, there are humanitarian organisations dedicated to eliminating/reducing all forms of violence against women, children, gays and lesbians, etc. we are always given a sense of protection from things that might harm us. We even take a few extra measures to protect ourselves, either from experience or paranoia.
With an average rape campaign, the man is seen as the natural perpetrator but what if the perpetrator is an aunt instead of the HIV positive uncle or the mother instead of the alcoholic father?
Sexual abuse is a common theme in our country; it’s become something common to watch the news and see that someone like Virginia Tiny Mokopo, who allegedly molested kids in Oprah’s Academy for [elite] Girls. The most recent scandal in the very same school, are several girls getting expelled for sexual ‘misconduct’.
I grew up wanting to be nun and I changed my mind about being a nun after discovering that I need to travel a different route in my life. Holding them in high regard for most of my life, I was disturbed to find out about a nun on the internet, Sister Norma Gianini, who pleaded no contest to two counts of sexual assault in 2000. At the age of 79, this Roman Catholic nun is said to have had 60-80 sexual encounters with a certain man, since he was thirteen years old. This was the first of many other women found out have committed crimes of this nature, there are a number of websites, blogs, books, etc. that take the issue into depth but really, are we aware of this matter? Read more…
Abahlali baseMjondolo to Mourn UnFreedom Day on 27 April 2009
Today is Freedom Day in South Africa. However for many in SA the notion of freedom is as illusive as ever as under the new apartheid where the poor are disenfranchised and excluded through the Kwa Zula-Natal Slums Act. Below shackdweller movement of KZN Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Western Cape – Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, explain their position. Soon Durban is to become a “world class city” at the expense of eliminating the poor who remain slaves to the rich not just the white rich of racial apartheid but the new black rich of class apartheid.
Walala Wasala, Wavuka Usuhlala ema-Thini
Monday 27 April will mark the 15th anniversary of the first democratic elections in South Africa. Once again the poor will be herded into stadiums so that the politicians can tell the people to celebrate their freedom. Once again Abahlali baseMjondolo will be decelebrating. We will be holding our fourth annual UnFreedom Day.
On the Sunday before unFreedom Day we will launch the beautiful new crèche that has been built in the Motala Heights settlement.The Motala Diggers have already been running a large community garden for sometime and the community have now decided to take the initiative and to build and run their own crèche.
On unFreedom Day a major announcement will be made about the next step in the movement’s ongoing struggle with the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Housing and their notorious Slums Act.
unFreedom Day has been organised by the Abahlali baseMjondolo Youth League. While others were voting on Wednesday we were planning unFreedom Day. The day before the election some of us attended a small University of Abahlali baseMjondolo seminar on the idea of a living communism. Our hands are clean.
Nobody can come with any facts to condemn unFreedom Day. The fact is that we are not free. Everyone can see that. Even on Election Day, where everyone is supposed to be equal as voters, the poor stand in the queues while the politicians are rushed to the front. Even on Election Day there is no equality. There is a constant oppression that promotes inequality in its simplest forms.
We are never given a platform to say what is inside our hearts. Therefore we have provided the platform for ourselves so that we can speak for ourselves and speak freely. It is up to us to tell the truth about our suffering and our struggles. continue reading UnFreedom Day
I have always been fascinated by the life of Bessie Head ever since I read “A Question of Power” many years ago. Now I am on my second reading of “Imaginative Trespasser: Letters between Bessie Head, Patrick and Wendy Cullinan, 1963-1977” a book which seems to have now become essential reading for my solo holidays in far off places.
My fascination lies with many aspects of her life. Her intense
relationship with Africa and the constant presence of feelings of dislocation with the continent but Botswana in particular where she lived in exile. The other constants in her life were the loneliness of being an outsider and just being Bessie Head, an African woman with a much troubled mind, which led to many periods of intense psychosis and sometimes hospitalisation. And of course her writings.
The letters are an important contribution towards understanding Bessie Head as well as providing context to some of her most important work such as Maru and A Question of Power. In 1964 Bessie, with help from civil rights lawyer, Ruth Hayman, was able to get an exit permit to leave South Africa . She had dreamed of moving to a “free” African country for many years and eventually in 1964 she got her permit and a job as a teacher in a small village called Serowe in what was then Bechuanaland (Botswana). The village gave her the much needed emotional space to begin to write seriously. Unfortunately for Bessie Head, Serowe and Botswana in general reinforced her feelings of alienation as what she describes as a “non-tribal” African. She explains this in a letter dated 23rd Feb, 1974
Pambazuka News has a list of protests across African against the War on Gaza though I have to say it is somewhat sickening to see Sudanese people amongst the protesters given the “crimes against humanity”committed by their own leaders – would have been far more meaningful if they had also protested against the genocide in Darfur. We cannot be selective about injustices. Tajudeen Abdul Raheem develops this idea in his article “Saying no to the Israeli massacre” referring to the global protests taking place since the beginning of the war and in particular the one in London last Saturday which I also took part in.
This is a massacre perpetrated by the mighty, merciless Israeli army, a force armed and actively supported by the US and NATO with the supine collaboration of Arab leaders, including the so-called moderate Palestinian leadership under the main Fatah organisation from its Bantustan enclaves in the West Bank.
There were initial fears that the cold would deter many from turning up for the march, but so deep is the outrage of many that they poured out in their thousands in all the major cities of Britain to call for an immediate ceasefire and end to the blockade.
Tajudeen goes on to explain the importance of these and other demonstrations against injustices are not necessarily that they will bring immediate change or end the war. Rather they need to be seen in their cumulative impact – for example protests against the South African apartheid regime AND as an expression of solidarity at the injustice taking place.
It is not enough for us to just look on and say to ourselves that what is going on is bad and simply change the channel. You can join the protest or organise one wherever you may be, write letters to newspapers and make use of feedback sessions in the media. You can also boycott Israeli goods in the shops like Jaffa oranges. Even if our governments, much like their Arab counterparts, are too compromised and cowardly to stand up to Israel, what about you and me?
There are many Africans who are confused about the Israel–Palestine conflict, believing it to be purely a case of Islam vs Judaism or Arab vs Jew. As a people who have known slavery, colonialism, and apartheid, how can we be so complacent about the right of others to a life of dignity and sovereignty over their own affairs?
Links: Avi Shlaim – For some historical and recent context that is clearly forgotten or missing in most of the analysis on this war.
[There will be another protest march this Saturday 10th [starting in Hyde Park] Last week, there were between 20,000 and 30,000 drawn from a cross section of people from across the country. Also nightly protests outside the Israeli embassy which have included Jewish anti-Zionist groups and Rabbis from Neturei Karta
The other day I was reminded of this post on “Walls around the world” I wrote 18 months ago by a friend and I promised to post it again. Now there are even more walls. The whole of Gaza has always been a walled enclave in the midst of stolen lands. Now it is surrounded by walls of tanks and naval guns. Ironic that the siege of Gaza reminds me of the siege of the Warsaw Ghetto. I wonder if the Israeli IDF spokeswoman makes the connection – doubtful with such self-righteous supremacist arrogance.
Another new wall is the one between Zimbabwe and South Africa where refugees escaping hunger, political oppression and disease are chased by white vigilantes with automatic weapons and dragged back across the wired borders. If they make it to the city they face xenophobic hysteria from their brothers in the post apartheid wasteland’s.
And then there are the invisible borders – where people are divided between the included and excluded. Legal and illegal. welcome and unwelcome. Those in the clique and those standing on the periphery trying to enter till eventually they tire and go create their own set of invisible walled enclaves excluding and including according to some set of arbitrary criteria which is what makes cliques so horribly oppressive.
Whilst the Apartheid wall being built by the Israelis is probably the most well known there are other walls that have been built, are being built and will be built in the future.
Morocco built one in the 1980s during the war of independence with the Polisario Front. To maintain their occupation of Western Sahara the Moroccan government built a wall of 2700 kilometres with mines, across the desert with the help of their good friends the Israelis. The wall prevents the Saharawi from crossing back into their lands from the refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria.
Then there are the new fences recently built between the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco. Here Morocco acts as a proxy police force for Europe to prevent migrants from West Africa and Morocco from entering Spain. The fences are barbed wire with razor edges. Recently Spanish PM, Zapartero announced a third parameter fence as the present two are proving insufficient to stop people climbing over despite the dangers. Read more…
Nearly 15 years since apartheid ended, millions of black South Africans still live in self-built shacks – without sanitation, adequate water supplies, or electricity.
But A Place in the City will overturn all your assumptions about ’slums’ and the people who live in them.
In this film, shot in the vast shack settlements in and around Durban, members of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the grassroots shackdwellers’ movement, lay out their case – against forcible eviction; for decent services – with passion, eloquence, and sweet reason. The film captures the horrible conditions in which shackdwellers live – but it also captures Abahlali’s bravery and resilience, in a political climate where grassroots campaigners like them are more likely to be met with rubber bullets than with offers to talk.
‘For the first time now’, says S’bu Zikode, Abahlali’s elected leader, ‘poor people have started to speak for themselves. Now, that challenges those who are paid to think for us – who are paid to speak for us.’
At the heart of Abahlali’s struggle is the struggle for meaningful citizenship rights for South Africa’s poor majority. ‘Or does freedom in South Africa,’ asks Abahlali volunteer organiser Louisa Motha, ‘only belong to the rich?’
Miriam Makeba, the world-renowned South African singer, has died at the age of 76 after being taken ill near the southern Italian town of Caserta.
Makeba died on Monday after taking part in a concert for Roberto Saviano, a writer threatened with death by the mafia, an Italian news agency said.
“I’m not yet absolutely certain of the causes of her passing, but she has had arthritis, severe arthritis, for some time,” her publicist told an Italian radio station.
Makeba was best known to her fans as ‘Mama Africa’ as she became the distinguished voice of Africa and a symbol of the fight against apartheid in her home country.
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Everyone called her Mama Afrika. Her voice was like a bird singing in a cage. Many of us grew up listening to her proud music. She was a steady fighter against racism and discrimination in her native South Africa. I will miss Miriam Makeba, as will a lot of other people in the world. Words escape me.
Early this morning, we lost one of our Mothers, Mama Afrika. I once had the privilege and pleasure of seeing Miriam Makeba at an open air concert here in London and she was everything beautiful and more. Activist and singer, Miriam Makeba brought us all so much with her music and her strong, proud, elegant persona and though she rests now with her ancestors she will aways be alive through her music.
In 1957 EsKia Mphahele left his home in South Africa for what became 20 years in exile. First to Nigeria and then on to England, Kenya, Zambia and the US before finally returning home in 1977. He became the first Black man to to be offered a chair at the Wits University in Johannesburg where he taught African Literature. Mphahele, who started out as a journalist for Drum magazine was a huge literary presence in Africa as much for his own novels as for his work as a literary academic and critic. His most famous book is his autobiography “Down Second Avenue” which includes his early life in Apartheid South Africa as well as his time spent in Nigeria at the University of Ibadan.
Saturday night. Darkness. Sounds of snoring from my uncle at the corner. Like the muted lowing of a cow. Tomorrow the other uncle sleeping with him on the floor will complain that he had been roused from his sleep by the snoring. My younger brother doesn’t stir beside me. Nor the youngest uncle the other side of him under the same blanket as we. They say I’m a bad sleeper and when sleep descends on me there is going to be tugging and tossing and rolling among the three of us. I know the cold air coming through the hole in the flooring boards will whip us out of sleep as it plays upon bare flesh, else one’s leg will rest on my neck and then I shall dream that some fiend is slitting my throat and I shall jump up with a scream… Tins of beer dug into the floor behind the stack and the strong smell of fermenting malt and grey spots on the floor around the holes. No policeman will find it easily. Policeman? Saturday night. The men in uniform may even now be sniffing about in the yard. Far to the west end of Marabastad a police whistle, the barking of dogs – no it must be in Fourth Avenue maybe because I hear heavy booted footsteps, it’s sure to be a person running away from the law, the police cells, the court and jail. Saturday night and it’s ten to ten. I can hear the big curfew bell at the police station peal “ten to ten, ten to ten, ten to ten” for the Black man to be out of the streets to be at home to be out of the policeman’s reach… The Saturday night buzz has now been muffled. Siki is walking down the street playing his guitar the one he carries about on him, the guitar he plays while he coughs on and on, for he has been coughing ever since I knew him, a long long time. Siki’s music comes and goes and comes and goes… the music fades and is gone fused with the night. “The white man is strong”, funny this comes to me as I seem to hear my mother say it: the white man’s strong I don’t know you mustn’t stand in his way or he’ll hurt you, maybe when you’re big I don’t know you will open your mouth and say what is in your heart but remember now the white man has a strong arm. Saturday night and I’m thinking of school and my classmates. I feel so weak, inferior, ignorant, self-conscious. Saturday night and I’m still thinking and feeling… Mathebula is asleep maybe but I think through his herbs he can see me wide awake. He put a stick into the fire when he went to bed as he always does to keep away other people’s baboons but he cannot tell us how to keep the police away. I wonder what the matter is with Mathebula’s herbs…
What is different about the IJAN? Unlike other Jewish organisations such as Jews for Justice for Palestinians Anti-Zionist and unequivocally committed
to the dismantling of Israeli apartheid, the return of Palestinian refugees, and the ending of the Israeli colonization of historic Palestine.
I really felt I was witnessing something different in the launch of IJAN and saw it as a very important development in the fight against world racism, imperialism and capitalist oppression because for the first time I was hearing Jewish people standing up against the state of Israel and the ideology which seeks to legitimise the oppression and genocide of Palestinians. IJAN represents a network of Jewish people who do not want to be associated with Zionism and Israel, support the right of return of all Palestinians and oppose the Jewish homeland and the reject the right of all Jews to live in Israel.
Zionism is racist. It demands political, legal and economic power for Jews and European people and cultures over indigenous people and cultures. Zionism is not just racist but anti-Semitic. It endorses the sexist European anti-Semitic imagery of the effeminate and weak “diaspora Jew” and counters it with a violent and militarist “new Jew,” one who is a perpetrator rather than a victim of racialized violence.
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