I was not here in the 70s so no, I don’t remember Olive Morris but do remember the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) in the early 80s which she was a founder member. Morris was part of the Brixton Black Panther Party and early post -WWII Black struggle in Britain.

Olive Morris was a key figure in Lambeth’s local history. She worked with the Black Panther movement; set up Brixton Black Women’s Group, was a founder member of The Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and was central to the squatter campaigns of the 1970s. She died tragically young in 1979 at age 27.

The aim of this weblog is to create a collective portrait of Olive Morris, bringing together the personal memories of those who knew her, and publishing online information and materials relating to her life and work. Lambeth Council has one of its main buildings named after her and yet there is very little information about Olive Morris that is publicly available, especially on the Internet.

By the mid 80s police racial harassment along with the “sus - stop and search” laws contributed to the Brixton riots of 1981 and 1985; the Handsworth riots of 81 and 85 and Broadwater Farm riot in 1985. .

Tags:

Black Britain
Brixton Black Panthers
Brixton Riots

Today ntate Mandela is 63 years old, if you consider the fact that he spent 27 years in jail for wanting to live like a human, and wanting the same thing for his people. But he’s really 90 years old, if you consider the fact that he used those 27 years to change South Africa and, I dare say, the world. He changed me. Happy birthday, ntate Mandela.

In 1981 my family ran away from Lesotho, as the then government of Lesotho had tried to kill my father, and killed my 3-year old nephew, instead. How does one forgive? My country is completely surrounded by South Africa, so we had to find ourselves in South Africa at some point, in our quest for asylum elsewhere. While we were there, we were duly picked up for pass law offences by the SAP.

We spent 24 hours in prison. It was very long. And there was a lot of sadism on the part of the gaolers. I won’t go into details but one of their favourite practices was sleep deprivation. The next day we went to court and faced a judge: “Why didn’t you have your pass?” The fact that we were not South Africans took a very long time to register. Not that black South Africans had to carry the damn thing, but I mean…

Once we were out, I had an experience. I had a light bulb above my head, just like in cartoons, and the hair on my arms stood on end. The name Nelson Mandela dropped of it’s own accord into my head, and I truly, really understood why he had sacrificed his life against this… thing. For that particular zombie instant, hair on end, a stupid smile on my face, I knew why. I want to wish him a happy birthday today, and tell him that we know.

Rethabile introduced me to Geoffrey Philp a couple of months ago - now I visit his blog all the time. This poem he wrote reminds me of the conversation a few weeks ago here on Black Looks on xenophobia, belonging and the words not to call people

Red by Geoffrey Philp

It burst from those lips that I’d adored, “You’re just too red!”
The curse of being apart, neither black nor white, but red
followed me through the streets, staining the shadow
of those fires that flared behind my mother’s garden: red
ginger towering over anthuriums with their naked phalloi
straining against the bark of the live oak, stunned red
petals bending in the sunlight to the weight of shame,
their pliant skin absorbing yellow and blue to become red
like the way by resisting we become the thing we fear the most–
as I now accept this blessing freed from race. Call me Red.

Tags:

Poetry + Caribbean

The Chinese in South Africa have won their case to be designated “Black” showing us how arbitrary racial categories are. Lucky them, under apartheid they were able to take advantage of not being “Black” (they were coloured” - slightly up in the racial chain) and now they can take advantage of being “Black” and go for BEE programmes having been unfairly (in their opinion) left out of the “disadvantaged groups”.

In another depressing (racial switching is depressing) story, supporters of Jacob Zuma vow to “kill” in his name.

“We are prepared to die for Zuma,” Malema told a Free State rally. “We are prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma,” Malema added at the end of his speech, while the crowd clapped hands and laughed.

Why does supporting someone have to be so absolute and end up vowing to commit acts of violence. Cant you support someone 100% without killing and maiming others? One of the comments trys to defend the words of violence by saying that in Xhosa vowing to kill for someone does not literally mean you will go out and kill for them - maybe someone can explain this to me. In English saying “I will kill you” doesn’t necessarily mean I will take a gun and shoot you but it’s not the sort of thing I would go around saying in public speeches in any context.

Staying with the “violence” theme, I had a message from a friend in Zimbabwe saying things are really terrible (I don’t feel able to quote for the sake of their personal safety). Then I read this piece in the Guardian and despite my wariness at the Western especially UK media reports on Zimbabwe, it is damn horrific.

Thanks to Truista Africana for the SA stories

Tags:
South Africa
Chinese + South Africa
Jacob Zuma
Zimbabwe
Mugabe

The sms’s came fast and furious. As furious as the fiery images we were subjected to by our television and our daily newspapers. The front pages are a festival of beastly pictures of the victims of the negrophobic bloodletting which has gripped South Africa in the past weeks. I dreaded opening a newspaper for days - afraid of being confronted by yet another grisly product of the negrophobic xenophobic violence, which by the end of week three had claimed the lives of about one hundred people and displaced about 100 000, according to some estimates. The mind spins out of the axis of the normal.

As the Alexander Township burnt, I was reading text messages from my cappuccino-loving Tito Mboweni-fearing middle class friends. The messages were generally along these lines; “I’m so embarrassed to be South African right now”, or more engaging: “I’m so tired of feeling angry about this and not being able to do something about it…” . Email lists held similar messages of shame; at least Winnie Madikizela-Mandela went to Alexander and told the terrified victims cramped at the police station; “We are sorry, please forgive us. South Africans are not like this”, before hopping back into her nice car and driving back to her life. Desmond Tutu, our beloved archbishop of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) followed with another “sorry, we are not like that”. The leader of the narrow Zulu nationalist movement, Dr Gatsha Buthelezi, went to the police station as well and cried for the cameras, at the same time as his followers from the hostel he had just addressed continued their war cry that they would kill all the “foreigners”, Hambani! Of course our president in waiting, Mr Jacob Zuma, was also told by an angry crowd, “go back to Mozambique with your Mozambiquens”. Apparently his favourite solo “Mshini wam” is sung by the marauding gangs as they go about their murderous deeds. The killings, burning and looting continued. Something has definitely broken, the despised are telling their leaders in their faces that they must all go to hell.

A former fiery revolutionary, now a sadistic tax collector friend, phoned one night, also indignant, saying “we need to do something”. He decried the barbarism of the Alexander attackers. The next days, an sms announced the clarion call; “fight xenophobia! Donate food, clothes and money if possible”. I thought about a nice warm latte as an incentive for risking ones life and limb in the fight against Xenophobia via ones cheque book. Donating your last summer wardrobe is a great revolutionary act, these days. The limited imagination of my fellow cappuccino sipping buddies defies logic. But it’s the hypocrisy I find even more interesting. We are not like them!

I must state that one of my friends has been working non stop even on weekends to try do something to ease the hardships of the refugees now cramped in police stations and other camps. Yes, everyone who has been displaced by the violence is now a refugee according to our media. If you ask any black African who has been trying to get refugee status in South Africa you will soon realise that you have a better chance of success at being a midwife to a lioness than being declared a refugee in this land of Mandela. I ask my exhausted friend, but why don’t you cook a big meal once in a while and send it down to our permanent refugee camps? She burst out laughing. Truth is the many squatter camps which host millions of South Africans are nothing but permanent refugee camps. The multitudes that are trapped in these squatter camps are the excluded of our democracy. Their lives are punctuated by violence 24/7. The multiple violence of hunger, denigration, hopelessness and perpetual terror of what the state is going to do next, what dust bowl would follow are everyday accompaniments. The poetry of the Abahlali baseMjondolo tells the story of legalised state sponsored violence against the squatters better. Their story is indeed the story of the millions of other squatters.
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