Black Looks

Remembering the Soweto uprisings 33 years ago remains important as the dreams of equity and justice in a new post-apartheid South Africa remains elusive for the majority. Pambazuka News has two features this week on the importance of the uprisings in today’s South Africa.

Blackwash [a new initiative committed to black consciousness in post-1994 South Africa] writes an open letter to South Africa’s Black youth. Reading through this article I get the feeling that the Black youth being addressed are male. There is no reference to women nor to the crimes against women particularly rape and that many rapes are committed by young men – see the video “Corrective Rape“. Yesterday’s I posted a survey on rape in South Africa which found that one in 4 men had raped. Surey addressing the issue of violence against women is an essential aspect of Black consciousness?

Anti-Apartheid activist, Mphutlane wa Bofelo, questions why “considers why ‘former freedom fighters can sometimes be more vicious in attempts to abort freedom” as residents of a squatter camp prepare a class action suit against the government for decent housing.

How is it possible that we have arrived at the point where people take a people’s government to court for such basic things as water and housing, which the constitution fully enshrines? Just recently a South African court ruled in favour of the people for their right to water. Guess who took the people to the appeal court to try and overturn the decision of a judge who is probably inherited from apartheid era? The appeal court ruled in favour of the people. Guess who is thinking of appealing the decision through the constitutional court? Who stood against the decision of the victims of the apartheid-capitalism to take the big corporates that benefited from this system to the international court? Who? Who killed Biko and Hani and Solomon Mahlangu and Hector Peterson and Muntu ka Myeza and Masabata lwate and many others? The Boers and their vigilantes only killed the flesh. The spirit of Mahlangu, Biko, Hani, Peterson, lwate is being killed here and now by us. The Boers failed to kill Biko and Hani. We are succeeding where apartheid-capitalism failed. We kill the spirit of Tambo and Biko everyday. We hate each other. We kill each other. We rape our children . We burn our grandmothers. We love beautiful things for ourselves but ask our brothers and sisters to endure conditions such as Kenville squatter camp. for them Rome will be built in zilion years, for us it takes only one day in office as a CEO, counsellor, director, business big-shot to relocate from Zamdela to Vaalpark and from Mofolo to Hougton.

The only news we seem to hear about in South Africa, after the elections, are about the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the recession and worker strikes.

On one hand things are looking up, the elections are over and the democracy is still going strong after 14 years. FIFA 2010 World Cup preparations seem to be finally getting somewhere, at the same time various sectors are being disturbed because people have decided to take a stand by striking and demonstrating, asking for better pay and an improvement in working conditions. What do these confusing times mean for the woman and man on the street? Nurses, teachers, doctors, miners, bus and taxi drivers and many more in the public sector have taken this course of action. These demonstrations over the past few months have immensely delayed service delivery simply because workers feel that they are not met half way by the authorities.

One Saturday, my friend asked me what I think a recession is, I told him that: “it’s recess, a break from consumption. Human beings are constantly consuming food, money, information, alcohol and a lot more. So if we are limited by our wallets, we consume less.”
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A survey by the South African Medical Research Council found that one in 4 men have raped a woman and half admitted they had attacked more than one woman. Many of the rapists started in their late teens. One in 20 had raped in the past 12 months. A further one in 10 said they had been raped by other men.

Links:
Rape of lesbians in corrective rape
One in Nine Campaign
South African rape survey shock

Human Rights Watch publishes the results of a qualitative survey of 100 sexual rights activists from 50 countries on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation. From an African perspective the findings of “Together Apart”are predictable but it is helpful and supportive to know that activists face similar challenges across the world. For example the lack of funding needed to challenge the legal and social status quo, the violence faced by activists, state sponsored homophobia and the constant struggle against cultural and religious fundamentalism which is growing rapidly across Africa.

South African AIDS and human rights activist Zackie Achmat offered one explanation for how state-sponsored homophobia began. “Many African politicians,” he said in 1998, “want to blame the West for everything, homosexuality included”:

“And so these governments are precarious and terrified. The people are roused up against them, and there is no one to support them. Their only real hope is that people die of AIDS or hunger before they are angry enough to rebel. And what do [the governments] find? They say “homosexual” and two sorts come running to them: the Christian churches and the African traditionalists, two groups who usually won’t even speak to one another, come flocking behind the government’s banner. Suddenly they have support. It’s a magic word.”
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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?
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Portrait artist and cultural activist, Gabrielle Le Roux and Sipho Mthathi, poet and activist both based in Cape Town have created a wonderful exhibition of some of the participants at last years AWID Forum in Cape Town. The women in the portraits either volunteered themselves or nominated each other in a process of “naming and honouring” each other’s work and life, resisting and speaking truth to power.

Gabrielle drew the movement-builders portraits from life in this space so the exhibition took shape during the days of the conference. Each woman was invited to write and draw directly onto her own portrait, making her mark and sharing insights and symbols that were precious and meaningful to her, she also wrote more about herself on a separate sheet of paper.

Sipho interviewed them about their lives and work away from the noise. The process provided a dynamic and unique reflection of the diversity of participants, capturing examples of best practice in the field of movement building as well as providing another platform through which women activists can engage with the broad spectrum of current questions facing them as movement builders.

View the online exhibition here

Gabrielle also has an exhibition “Living Ancestors” at the London Docklands Museum which runs until the end of July AND another online exhibition here on BlackLooks – Sexuality and Social Justice

A great post on Miriam Makeba by The Roots Cause

South African activist and Banyana Banyana soccer player, Eudy Simelane was murdered on April 28th 2008. Thinking about how to honour her memory, the Equality Project decided to start by cleaning the field where she was found. On April 4th 40 people turned up with shovels, plastic bags and brooms and spent the day cleaning the field. The initiative is part of a desire to reclaim public spaces and take ownership as a way of making the community a safe place for everyone especially women. Part of the project included building a bridge which will not only act as a physical crossing but a way to bring together members of the community around the open field.

Phumi Mtetwa of the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project explains….

This initiative is part of others that aim at re-building and maintaining clean community spaces that are open to all to enjoy and use for leisure and transiting. For lesbian and gay activists this space bears additional symbols: a fellow struggler was killed there for transgressing pre-assigned societal gender roles and for living openly as a non-heterosexual.
The wooden cross, put where her body lay on the morning of 28 April 2008, is a further symbol to remember Simelane and the many others who died in similar circumstances and motives across South Africa. It is a reminder of the struggles faced by those who survived death and who continue to live in fear for their lives.

All photos by Laurie Adams from her Facebook

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.

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

Please take the time to view this exceptional film “A Place in the City – produced by the Shackdweller movement of Durban”

South Africa nears its fourth election since 1994, Andile Mngxitama laments the country’s overall lack of progress toward genuine black liberation in the post-1994 era. Highlighting Steve Biko’s emphasis on ‘conscientisation’ to counter the normalisation of black people’s material and mental subjugation to the entrenched white power structure, Mngxitama decries the continued suffering of the poor black majority in post-1994 South Africa, arguing that the race-based understanding of impoverishment once used to describe marginalisation has now been effectively eradicated under the anti-racialist hegemony dominant in national discourse. With the state still essentially rooted in its apartheid-era model of white capitalist accumulation and exploitation – albeit with a new black leadership at the helm – Mngxitama contends that the country has simply moved into a neo-apartheid phase of little discernible distinction from its past, stating that to vote within such a system would merely be to grant it legitimacy.

South Africa is on the verge of going to its fourth national election since 1994.[1] The socio-political changes which have occurred in the country for past 15 years point to a dramatic failure to realise the dream of liberation as developed by Steve Biko. Here I develop an argument for why Biko, like so many, would not be voting.

BIKO’S CONCEPTION OF LIBERATION

Biko’s idea of liberation is fundamentally anti-racist and anti-capitalist, as opposed to being anti-racialist, non-racialist and intergrationist – these latter conceptions of change naturally lead to the de-racialisation of capitalism and thereby the legitimation of the white supremacist political, economic and social existence created over the last 350 years in South Africa. Biko’s framing of the fundamental contradiction in South Africa as one of white racism emanates from his conception of capitalism as it emerged in the country as an inherently racist project. In his words then:

‘[T]he color question in South African politics was originally introduced for economic reasons. The leaders of the white community had to create some kind of barrier between black and whites so that the whites could enjoy privileges at the expense of blacks and still feel free to give moral justification for the obvious exploitation that pricked even hardest of white consciences.’
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