Dispatches from Wherever

Dispatch: 100 Schools

2011-06-29T11:48:00.003+02:00

“Can everyone who cried raise your hand?” That was the question last Wednesday morning that started my post-screening discussion at Rustenburg Girls Junior School.

The next questions were all rooted in one -- Why? Why did this violence happen? Why did people use violence instead of just talking to each other? Why didn’t they attack White South Africans who are also really foreigners here? Why was the government so slow to react? Why did the police use violence? How did foreign policemen feel? How did Black policemen feel against Black people? And more and more from these 6^th and 7^th graders. Two girls suggested that the xenophobia attacks could be seen as part of South Africa’s growth as a democracy and now that they are over, the country and people will learn from them so the violence won’t happen again. Sadly, in some places, it already has.

Some of their questions were easy, some were hard, and how to explain unanswerable complexities that we adults have not figured out, well that is a constant challenge.

These girls were 150 of thousands of students across South Africa who watched Where Do I Stand? last week in honor of World Refugee Day, June 20th. Shikaya (the NGO I partnered with on this film) and I partnered with UNHCR to create the 100 Schools Doing 1 Thing on 1 Day campaign, asking schools to show solidarity with refugees by screening the film. Monday turned into the whole week and 100 schools became 115, running the gamut from rural and urban, private and public, and wealthy and poor.

One of the first replies I got to my email about the campaign was from a principal in Soweto who had seen Where Do I Stand? at a film festival last year. I don’t often share feedback directly, but this email articulated the impact of documentary in a way that is hard to describe. He wrote:

Dear Molly,

My school (Moletsane High) will be part of 100 schools. Since I saw your film it has inspired me to be involved. Last month, police in White City in Soweto were closing all shops owned by foreigners without reasons. They also arrested a lot of Pakistanis and Somalians. I approached Moroka police station commander. He informed me that foreigners who own shops were increasing the crime by not banking their money. The criminals were targeting their shops because they bank in their shops. The other reason was that they are having a lot of fake money. After hours of discussions he agreed to give them their shops’ keys because we were able to demonstrate that crime and civil matters are different. We managed to assist the poor Pakistani to operate their business. Once more thank you very much for the film that changes lives.

Best regards,

Elliot Mashinini

I heard from Elliot again last Friday. He screened the film to almost 200 students on Monday and invited local Pakistani residents to join. The outcome, he said, is that learners want to start an NGO to make sure there is a good crèche for foreign young children in Soweto and they also want to conduct workshops to educate people about foreigners in their community.

Another principal used the screening to set off a week of activities in the school supporting refugees. He noted that, “Every single pupil was engrossed, and what made it even more powerful was the fact that they could recognize the sights and sounds of their own city and see that it is taking place on their doorstep.”

Another, from KwaZulu Natal commented, “It’s been a very sobering and eye-opening experience for many of [my students]. Most of our girls do live in this sheltered bubble and it’s very important that they are aware of what other youths their age experience in this country.”

My colleagues at Shikaya went to several schools last week. I made it to four, starting with two screenings on Monday at a high school and a middle school – about 500 students.

At most screenings there is a moment that throws me. Sometimes it is the sadness of a question or the pain or hatred of a comment; sometimes it’s the raw confusion or the incredible insight of a young person. Sometimes, it is simply that I just don’t know what to say … or how to say it.

On Monday, one boy asked how I thought Mandela, Sisulu and Biko would feel about Black South Africans using unemployment, poverty and the history of apartheid as an excuse for violence. Strategy #1 for a Challenging Question – throw it back on the student. He said it didn’t make sense to him, he thought they would be disappointed. He also seemed a bit angry with the perpetrators, at Black South Africans, that they would think this history and their painful past could excuse the violence.

I agreed, I said to him, I think that they would be deeply saddened. But it made me think of a comment made by a girl in the film who says she doesn’t understand how people who were victims could do something like this to others and the idea at the heart of his question -- whether just because people are victims, they won’t turn into perpetrators. It often comes up in these conversations after my film, with adults and young people. I find that most young people are flummoxed by this – it is so hard to understand how these people who suffered so terribly at the hand of apartheid could turn on others. How could people who were victims of apartheid treat others with such hatred and violence? I hesitate always to answer this question because it is so complex, because I don’t want to sound as if I am defending the attackers if I say that being a victim doesn’t mean you won’t be a perpetrator, and it is still hard for me to get my head around.

I imagine that it’s something that has been studied a lot – victims turning into perpetrators, on an individual or a broader scale. Just because people were once victims does that then imply they will always remember that moment and never turn on others? While many want to believe that, in fact, I think it is often the opposite. In the back of my mind, I thought of Israel; how the violence in Gaza and the West Bank is being perpetrated by some people whose families were victims in the Holocaust. That is just one example. I am not sitting here, writing, attempting to take a stand on what is happening in the Middle East, it’s just something that occurred to me – something that I didn’t speak, in part because these were high school students, in part because this was a private Jewish school, in part because I didn’t want to open Pandora’s box.

On Thursday, my conversation with 11^th grade girls took a surprising turn when one student explained that she knows that xenophobia is wrong, but she isn’t sure because her grandmother tells her to stay away from foreigners, that they are bad people, and she knows that her aunt is in jail because of a foreigner. “Xenophobia is wrong but foreigners have really hurt my family,” she added. Across the aisle, a classmate, a friend spoke up, “I am from Zimbabwe,” she said, and then talked about what it was like when she first came to South Africa. Her journey took her via Britain, different from her compatriots who traveled across the mighty Limpopo River, but nonetheless easy for adjusting.

I pointed out that the girl probably had many friends and classmates at school who are foreign. “It’s different when you know people personally as opposed to them just being others,” noted another student. The first girl continued, “If I was in a room full of them and I was the only South African, I would be scared because they are different, they have different manners and different ways of doing things and … (here I should have taken notes.) I stopped her there and repeated what she said. I know that she has studied apartheid and the Holocaust in school so I pointed out that what she just said has been repeated countless times to justify discrimination and prejudice elsewhere, including South Africa and Nazi Germany. But I didn’t want to shut her up or alienate her so I tread carefully. Her teacher also spoke, which was brilliant because often in these situations teachers stay quiet. He spoke in a more frank way than I was comfortable doing and for that, I thank him.

It’s a difficult line -- I want her to recognize the extremes of what she is saying, to learn that her grandmother is wrong, to honor and live by what she first said -- xenophobia is wrong. But I grew up in a house where I didn’t have to challenge my parents on political and social issues. And I imagine it is quite hard to do. I remember reading a book about Wilhelm Verwoerd, the grandson of Henrik Verwoerd, widely regarded as the architect of apartheid, and his work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I told her about him as one example of someone going against their family and what they were raised to believe. But I acknowledged in the same breath that going against your family is not easy to do.

So I mainly challenged her to question -- to question her grandmother and her family, to look outside, to figure out what she alone believes and to stand up for that.

And she’ll get there – I hope.

Dispatch: The Great Divide

2011-05-10T14:31:00.001+02:00

I have started writing this dispatch a few times, so as it comes now, I share a series of thoughts and moments from the last few weeks.

Any time I have visitors, they always look at things with fresh eyes and inevitably open my eyes a bit wider. My sister Liza was just here for two weeks. Amidst our joking and catching up on each other’s lives there was much talk of this country, of the complexities and the divides. Of how it is what makes living in South Africa difficult and how I move through it everyday, of how she isn’t sure she could. We visited Sandile, who is healing. We spent time with my old student Babalwa and on the ride home spoke of the strange dissonance between breakfast at a cute café in town and dropping off Babalwa in the shack settlement where she stays, called Crossroads. When we dropped her off, Liza got out of the car to hug her goodbye and chat a bit, but as their goodbye lingered Babalwa started saying, “Go, go, go,” with a sense of urgency. Liza thought she meant that she, Babalwa, had to get home. But then Liza realized that actually Babalwa was worried about our safety. It was a Wednesday afternoon on a public holiday. We weren’t worried about ourselves, but left her, amazed at how she overcomes challenges in her life, and a bit worried for her as well.

On Liza’s last night we went to hear the iconic Vusi Mahlasela in a concert that was billed as celebrating Freedom Day – a public holiday marking the first democratic elections in South Africa. As we looked around the theatre, we noticed one thing – most of the audience was White. We were celebrating the first time Blacks in this country voted by sitting in a room full of White upper class people (probably fairly liberal I am guessing), listening to the songs of one of South Africa’s treasures. I wondered for a moment if anyone else was thinking what we were. Vusi sings in a mix of Xhosa and English and he often explained the meaning of songs – songs about the struggle, about people’s experiences in prison, about life under apartheid and life now. I had seen him in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, where the audience also probably looked very similar, but I didn’t notice as much. I don’t deny people their right to like any musician and I know I fit into that category that I put everyone else into that night – White, well off, educated, liberal. But it exemplifies the moments here that remind one of the great divide.

Liza left last Saturday and the news here on Sunday was devastating. A shack fire in Masiphumelele, the township where Peter, a Rwandan refugee who is in my latest film lives with his family. Only one person killed – but 1500 shacks burned to the ground, 5,000 people displaced. 5,000. No matter how I try, I can’t picture that in my head.

Last week, as I drove home along the N2 – the major highway here -- I looked to the side as we passed rows and rows of shacks filling informal settlements. I saw darkness in some and lights on in others. Some people get illegal electricity connections, other families, like Babalwa’s use, paraffin and candles. I had just come from a screening of a film about an Afrikaans theatre group. I had just come from a room that was 98% White. The film was great. It’s just the divisions in this country are so stark, so strange, at times so challenging. They are something that you can get used to, sadly. No doubt many people do. No doubt some do, because to continue to look and ask makes it difficult to live every day. Many people at the screening made the same drive home that I did. Maybe they asked the same questions I do, I don’t know. I am not trying to be critical of them, just noticing. While I ask questions, perhaps I am a bit complicit in this blindness. And Liza’s visit made my eyes open again.

Then, last night, I read this, “Is the feeling that the situation cannot possibly continue forever, really a reasonable guarantee that it will eventually change?”

It’s a quote from David Grossman’s 1987 non-fiction book The Yellow Wind about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It seems that it could apply in so many places around the world. It could have applied in South Africa in the 80s and early nineties during apartheid. And yet with so much extensive poverty and unemployment, so many people living in devastatingly inhumane conditions, a faltering school system and deep racial and class divisions, despite the freedom and democracy that came in 1994, Grossman’s quote could apply here today.

Dispatch: Many Moments

2010-10-18T12:09:00.000+02:00

Last week, I had 11 screenings over 8 days in and around Johannesburg. 11 moments when I exchanged ideas about xenophobia and diversity, anger and humanity. 11 times when I listened to the hearts, minds and sometimes prejudices of my audiences– high school students, film festival goers, university students and professors.

I can’t say 11 screenings didn’t feel tiring, but it was also amazing. The diversity of the audiences kept things interesting. Some were smaller or quieter or more frustrating than others, but they all held something valuable. I thought I would share a few moments with you that stick out in my mind.

My second of a 4-screening marathon one Monday was at an education class at Wits University. This one had been organized last minute, so I was surprised to find a lecture hall filled with 100 students. I arrived just as the credits were rolling. For about an hour, we energetically talked about xenophobia, about diversity and divisions in South African society, about economics and poverty. But the first speaker was a White Namibian girl (and here race is important, as we tend to assume that all xenophobia happens to Black Africans). She told about her experience at a local hospital in Soweto during her Occupational Therapy residence. Before her first day, a friend told her not to drive her car there, as it has Namibian license plates. Then someone else suggested she not tell anyone that she is Namibian, “Just pretend you are South African,” the friend said. But as inevitably happens, people found out. One day, she was working with a patient when a nurse came in, “I don’t want you working with my patient. You are from Namibia, you came here and stole a job and a university spot from South Africans.” She left her placement, and since she is in this class, I assume at some point transitioned into teaching. As she told this story, she began to cry.

Another boy, in what I felt was true success, said, “I remember those attacks. I was in Matric. We studied, we partied, but we didn’t do anything.” He added, “There was a police station down the street from my house that housed refugees. I could have gone there and brought blankets or food. But we did nothing.” One of our hopes in showing the film is that people recognize what they did or did not do, so they can think about the meaning of bystander as they go forward in life.

The discussion was not without rancor or anger, or stereotypes, generalizations, and words like “us,” “them”, “like monkeys” and “silver spoon.” But it was discussion, people agreed, they disagreed, they argued, they shared and I left feeling energized.

At another screening, organized by the U.S. Embassy in Mamelodi, a township just outside Pretoria, 55 high school students watched the film intensely. They were the first group that did not laugh loudly and uncomfortably at the sight of adults looting. They were slow to talk after, but soon we were asking each other questions. I left the session excited by what had occurred in the room, but what I remember most are the surprising, the painful moments. One girl, in a flat, earnest way, asked, “They smell and they are usually really dark, but how do I tell if someone is Zimbabwean?” It was her tone that really struck me. In her mind, there was nothing wrong about anything that she said. And that, for me, spoke to the rest of her world, and what she hears from adults and friends in her community. How do you answer a question like that? I value people’s ideas, I value this girl’s bravery in raising her hand and speaking, and I didn’t want to shut her down, to make her quiet next time. So I had a two-fold approach – the funny and the personal.. Then I told her that I was Jewish, that my family had died in the Holocaust, and that some of the things she mentioned were similar, reminded me of reasons the Germans gave for their “solution.”

Then before I finished, I asked her if she knew anyone in her school or community that ever smelled. It was the same strategy I used at a privileged school in Cape Town when I White boy said that Black people were lazy. “Raise your hand if you have friends or classmates who are lazy.” But you can’t know what gets through to people.

My friend Scott, who has worked in South Africa for years, suggested that I ask kids whether or not they see me as a foreigner. The girl who raised her hand said, “No, we call White people tourists. White people contribute to the country, they go to the cinema and the zoo. I’ve never seen a Zimbabwean at the cinema or the zoo.”

I share these not as negative perceptions, but as challenging ones. They are comments and questions that force me to dig deeper for answers than the regular, “What was it like to make the film?” or “How did you choose the students in the film?” Sometimes they make me sadder or more frustrated or leave me with a bit less hope.

*****

I arrived back in Cape Town exhausted and promptly grabbed a cab home. It should have been an easy trip, only about 20 minutes around the mountain to my home. But it was not to be easy. It was a ride that with the driver’s words, “And that’s why Black people snap.”

It started when I told him about my job and my film and he asked me why I thought the xenophobia attacks happened. I was gentle in my assessment, careful, because he had already said something very racist about a Muslim community we drove by. He disagreed with my explanation and began to lecture me. “You have to understand, Black people think differently than White and Colored people,” he started. “Let me tell you why Black people snap,” he added, before telling me a story.

When I got out of the car, I was really upset, and not just by his toxic words. I had just spent 8 days talking to people about sterotypes and difference, about race and divisions in society. And more importantly here, about taking a stand. Taking a stand in situations large and small, for people who are different to you, for friends and strangers, in your community, your school, or even if you hear someone at school or home saying something you find racist or discriminatory or lacking in compassion. And here I was, being silent.

The next day, I ran a workshop for 35 9^th grade students in a scholarship program called Students for a Better Future, run by my friend Susan. In the course of the workshop, we talked about discrimination and we talked about opportunities to stand up. One girl asked me what I did during the xenophobia attacks in 2008. She didn’t realize that with this question, which I have been asked before, she was putting me in my place. “Nothing,” I said to her. “I was simply a bystander. I watched it on TV like many of you.” And in the course of our discussion, I told them about my taxi driver. Not details, just that he had said racist things and I had said nothing.

I regret my silence. I think it was partly because I was stunned. I haven’t encountered that kind of virulent open racism here in a long time. And partly because I was in his cab, alone. Just me and him. What would he have said if I had argued with him, if I had stood up the way I ask others to? If you had been in the backseat of that cab, what would you have done?

*****

Upcoming Screenings of Where Do I Stand? in the U.S.

Tuesday November 9, 8:00 pm, Avalon Theatre, 5612 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC

Sunday November 14, 8:00 pm, Madiba Restaurant, 195 DeKalb Avenue, Brooklyn, NY*

Tuesday November 16, 6:00 pm, Columbia University, New York, NY*

Thursday November 18, 6:00 pm, Laney College, Oakland, CA*

Friday November 19, San Francisco, CA*

*Details to Follow

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********************
Molly Blank
Independent Documentary Filmmaker
Cell: (011 27) 76 288 0279
Office: (011 27) 21 448 9642
Fax: (011 27) 21 447-2027
www.wheredoistandfilm.com
www.testinghope.com
Blog: http://mollydispatches.blogspot.com

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." - Nelson Mandela

Dispatch: What Do I Say?

2010-09-02T21:28:00.003+02:00

When you put work out into the world, there are some things you can control and others that you cannot. Some things that you want to control and others that you want to just let happen. I have been thinking a lot lately about what I try to control and what role I can play as things just happen.

In June & July when there was talk of a resurgence of xenophobic attacks, I had several screenings with young people, some of which I have already written about. I have been thinking lately not of what they said, but of my responses. There was often debate in the room, there was guilt, there was sadness, inevitably while some welcomed foreigners, others expressed animosity, shared the rhetoric about them stealing jobs and houses, were angry at their presence in South Africa.

With talk of anti-foreigner sentiment rising outside of the auditoriums where we spoke, I found myself not pushing and challenging these young people’s perspectives of foreigners, but rather just pushing them to think about humanity. My goal became simple and certainly much smaller and more limited than my true goals. Yes, I want these young viewers to accept, if not embrace, foreigners in their communities and their country. And I really want them to think about how to stand up, how to take action, on whatever level is appropriate, in these situations and in others like them. But that moment, in that auditorium, in that 30 minutes or hour I had with them, I just wanted them to walk away, to not join in.

I’ve found myself thinking a lot about this lately. Was I compromising? Was I just realistic about what could be accomplished in that moment? Had I not been there, had someone else been facilitating, where would that discussion have gone?

I had a different kind of experience at a diverse, well-resourced school a few weeks ago. That conversation and my role in it challenged me more. Some students expressed views about Black South Africans that were troubling, discriminatory and racist – one boy said that “locals” are lazy and don’t want to work at all in life. Another said that his South African gardener came to work drunk and didn’t do any work while their Malawian gardener works very hard and often for free. I was bothered not just by the stereotypes and racism the boy invoked, but also by his sense of authority and entitlement over an adult employee of his parents.

What also struck me was some students' lack of understanding about who was in the room. There seemed to be no awareness of the fact that other students were Black South Africans or perhaps even non-South Africans and of how they might feel. Often we talk about "the other" but don't think of our friends or classmates within that group. I imagine that when one student said that Black South Africans were lazy, he wouldn't imagine the Black classmate sitting next to him as a member of that group.

There were certainly students who disagreed with their classmates. Some brought up arguments and challenged their peers. Others just shook their heads. There were also other great points made and questions asked – although I don’t remember them. Sometimes it’s the negative that sticks with us, I guess.

When I enter these dialogues, no matter my opinion, I never want a student, or any audience member, to feel that they cannot express their honest opinion. I don’t want to tell them they are wrong. So I stood in front of this group and struggled about how to respond.

I ended up starting with something about not judging people as a group and avoiding stereotypes. I tried to challenge some of them. When one said that Black South Africans are lazy, I asked for a show of hands if any of them know classmates who are ever lazy. When one boy referred to Black South Africans as “locals” I asked him if he was South African. When he said yes, I asked if that meant he is local. He said yes. But I don’t really know if any of that sinks in.

In the many interviews I did before filming started on Where Do I Stand? I encountered many young people with racist and xenophobic beliefs. At those moments though, I was a filmmaker, a journalist, in the room simply to listen, not to debate or educate.

But in these screenings, I am there to educate and to encourage debate. At the same time, I am not a teacher or rather I am not the teacher. As a visitor to a school or a youth program or a community, how far should I go in challenging and pushing youth? How far can I go to try and change opinion? I could ask these same questions about an audience of adults as well, and I don’t have that answer either, but with young people the lines are even blurrier, I am perhaps more careful. What would the principal have wanted me to do at that moment, as I stood there, listening to prejudice falling out of the mouths of 15 year olds?

I like to think that if I had been a teacher in that room, I would have spoken up, shown a visitor how we handle these moments in my school or classroom. What I wanted right then was a bit of guidance. What I wanted was for one of the teachers in the room to raise a hand. But no one did.

As I stood there, at the end, searching for the right balance of words, what I wanted to do was ask, “Where did you get that idea? Do you understand what you’re saying is prejudice? Do you hear your parents’ say that? Do you understand why what you are saying is wrong wrong wrong?” I wanted to get on my soapbox and rant about the wrong, racist, prejudice, untruths I heard. Lucky for me, two final hands popped up and instead of struggling for words, I let these kids respond and was relieved when they talked about difference and stereotypes and rejected what their classmates had to say. It was probably more powerful than whatever I might have said, simply because it came from their peers.

Then, after the screening, when I was finally in the quiet of my car, I did let out my rant, for only my ears to hear.

And here are just a couple notes about upcoming opportunities to see my films:

I am planning a trip the U.S. in before the end of the year and will screen Where Do I Stand? in Washington, DC and New York and possibly elsewhere. The film is also now for sale at www.wheredoistandfilm.com/buy-dvd/

Testing Hope will be broadcast on RMPBS, Colorado Public Television, on September 19th at 12:00 p.m. Please tell your friends in the area. For 2 weeks, starting the 19th, you will also be able to watch the film on the RMPBS website www.rmpbs.org

Dispatch: When They Stop Laughing

2010-06-30T17:14:00.005+02:00

I am trying to understand the laughter. What in these disturbing images can be funny? Or if they aren’t funny, then why do they laugh?

I had three screenings of Where Do I Stand? in the last two weeks with over 250 high school students. They all participate in Winter Schools with a group called Ikamva Youth. Different pieces of these screenings moved me, made me happy or optimistic, made me sad, frustrated and deeply concerned, but it is the laughter that I cannot answer for. Is it laughter out of discomfort? Do any of them see themselves in the people looting in the night and dragging a refrigerator down the street?

I always ask. My precursor is to say that as a filmmaker I am curious why people respond they way they do, so I am wondering why they laugh. It’s okay to laugh, I say. The first answer is usually, “It’s the old woman.” The old woman, the woman who we call a “Mama” is holding a box of looted goods and dancing with a big smile on her face. Can I blame them for laughing at this confusing image? It inevitably leads to a discussion about adults, about role models, about what to do and how you feel when you see a grown up doing something you know is wrong. Some students said that in their culture, Xhosa culture, children have to defer to adults and it wouldn’t be appropriate for them to criticize or confront adults on this behavior.

Other things that cause laughter – scenes of looting, a girl saying she thought xenophobia was a disease and that at the time, she enjoyed participating in the looting, familiarity -- a church, a street they know, someone washing his face.

What I do embrace is their responses, be it laughter or oohs and aahs or silence, they are making noise, they are engaged. And as far as I am concerned that is my purpose here.

The discussion after the first screening was like pulling teeth. There were 96 students, many from the high school I profiled in Testing Hope. A few spoke, but I left frustrated. At the end one girl shared a poem she wrote during the discussion – I have included it at the end of this dispatch.

The second screening was in Masiphumelele, the township where Peter, the Rwandan refugee in my film, lives. I started by asking, “What is xenophobia?” One boy replied, “It’s putting someone back where they belong.” “Where they belong?” I asked. “Where they come from,” he replied. Another broke up the words, “phobia is fear,” he said, “and xeno means stranger, so it is fear of strangers.” Here there was the same laughter, but I also noticed a row of boys on the side who watched quiet and wide-eyed, surprised at the noise coming from their peers.

Many kids here connected to Peter and the discussion started with a reflection on their guilt and embarrassment. A sadness that Peter is afraid to walk down the streets of their community. If you run into him on the street, I said, just be nice. When we talked about laughter, the woman who led the group, a White South African, told them that when they were laughing, she was crying. Some students spoke angrily about foreigners being in their community, and the same quiet boy who analyzed the word xenophobia, told them that their fears, their judgments, were wrong.

In the last screening, of about 100 students, it was more difficult to get things started, but once we did, it was difficult to stop. Here, while there was discussion about right and wrong and about guilt, there was also a lot of conversation about foreigners in South Africa. A few people asked, how with so much poverty in their community, they could welcome foreigners and share jobs with them. Another said that Obama and the U.S. and France and other countries have laws about foreigners and immigration, why not South Africa? “What if I went into a hospital and there were no beds because they were all taken by foreigners,” he asked. Then he challenged me, “What would you do if you were President Obama? How would you deal with foreigners and illegal immigration?” Many rejected the violence of attacks, but confirmed an anti-foreigner sentiment, a desire for them to be gone.

There were voices of dissent in the room. “But the foreigners are creative,” said one older boy. “They don’t take our jobs, they create their own jobs, work with their hands, we shouldn’t be jealous.” And another who asked, “Where is our humanity?” “We have been though so much as South Africans, as Black South Africans suffered under apartheid,” he said. “And then we turn on people and do this, where is our humanity?” I latched on to this sentiment and returned to it again and again.

When I lead these discussions, I want kids to participate, I want them to speak and feel free to say anything and not feel judged by me. I don’t want to tell them that their views are wrong or problematic or racist, but I do want to try and change their minds, teach them, pull them into my sphere of thinking. At this moment, in an hour of discussion, and through my film, I may not be able to get them to embrace foreigners in their midst, but if there are going to be attacks again, I can push them to not participate, to talk to friends about what they’ve seen in the film, to choose right – to remember their humanity.

There is talk of a resurgence of attacks starting on July 12, the day after the World Cup ends. I asked every group if they had heard people talking about attacks. They all said yes. One girl said the previous night in her neighborhood a Somali shop was broken into and looted. Another heard someone say that when the foreign tourists leave, all the other foreigners should go with them. Another boy overheard adults on his taxi talking about looting shops and pushing foreigners out. Newspapers have begun to write about the growing possibility of attacks. Some write that government and NGOs are trying to prepare. Others tell stories of foreigners who have been warned by their South African neighbors to leave on July 12. Whatever people are saying, it’s there, the energy is there, the hatred is there, the fear is there and the possibility of more attacks is very real.

All our discussions ended with this question -- if it happens again, where will you be?

We have another screening in Dunoon on Monday. These screenings can’t prevent, but I hope the film can get people thinking. Maybe they leave with a smidgen of doubt in their minds, maybe they question their own prejudices, maybe they’re inspired and tell their neighbors and friends what they saw in the film, maybe they even try to change someone else’s mind. And hopefully, if attacks do happen again, they will remember their humanity.

What’s The Point?

(Written by Zandile Zoya, age 17 from Samora Machel township, after watching Where Do I Stand? )

Because you don’t understand my language

Because you can’t hear what I’m saying

Is destroying my house the only solution?

What is the point of hating me

Because of who I am

What is the point of criticizing me

Because we are both Blacks

What’s the point of neglecting me

Because of my culture

What’s the point of chasing me away

We are all Africans

caring about each other should be our first priority

We are all Blacks

Loving each other and our safety should be our concern

What’s the point of hating each other

Because we are all Africans

The First of 2010

2010-05-28T15:25:00.005+02:00

The first dispatch of 2010 and it’s almost June. Some of you know my year started off a bit hectic with an extended stay in the U.S., a long search for an apartment in Cape Town, and a busy time finishing up the film, which ended with a premiere in Hamburg, Germany in the end of April.

So the new documentary is done. It's called Where Do I Stand? I can’t really believe it, almost 2 years of work finished in one afternoon in a post-production studio with a great guy named Andy over a cheese & tomato sandwich. But that’s how these big things often happen, in small moments.

And then I got on a plane to Germany. I don’t think one can prepare oneself for confronting difficult history, but I was hit particularly hard. I was working more than 12-hour days and then all of a sudden I was on a plane. When I remember the trip now, what stays with me more than the three screenings I had were the challenges of being in Germany, the personal history that I was faced with, the memorials to the Holocaust and the incredible vibrancy of the Jewish community. My grandparents – Mark, Sadie, Betty & Henry – were very present.

So whether to write about the screenings or the history first, I wasn’t sure.

I found Berlin such an interesting and beautiful city, so vibrant, with so much history and sadness. I stayed at with my friend Anja and her parents in former East Berlin and was very aware of their deep and difficult post-war history as well. It was at Wansee Villa, a beautiful house with a lush garden on a lake just outside of Berlin where everything hit me. Wansee Villa is the place where Hitler and his cronies met in 1942 to decide the final solution. The event that took place there is in stark contrast to the beauty around.

It is now a museum with an incredibly detailed, and at times relentless, exhibit. I saw anti-Semitic posters and signs from the early Weimar Republic and read very painful, blunt quotes from Nazi leadership about their steadfast mission, like none I had seen or read before. But it was two other things that challenged my heart most. The first was two pictures of a massacre that took place in Czestochowa, Poland. My grandpa Mark (my mom’s father) was from Czestochowa. We never met -- it’s interesting how through stories and pictures we can become so connected to places and people. But when I saw that pile of people in the photograph, I felt instinctively that someone there was my family. A cousin or a cousin of a cousin maybe, or perhaps just a neighbor. But Family.

In the next room was a quote -- I wish now I had written it down but I know if it were in my journal I would reread it with too much sadness. It was just a blunt statement from an SS high up about getting rid of the Jews – surely not a unique statement then. What struck me was not the feeling of hatred but the sentiment of simply not caring – how disposable we were to him. A reminder not of the death toll or the disappearance of vibrant communities, but of how easy it was for these people to make it happen, to kill. And I stood there, alone in a quiet room, and I cried.

Three days later, I took the train to Hamburg and that night was the premiere of Where Do I Stand? as part of filmfest South Africa. There were about 140 people and watching the film in a dark theatre with quality sound and an audience, felt incredible. A professor from Cape Town who now teaches in Hamburg joined me in the Q&A and said he appreciated how the film told the story with objectivity and no agenda and how it illuminated how young people were really asking lots of questions about their own lives and South Africa. One guy in his twenties started his question by saying he was a real left liberal, but added that even he got goose bumps while watching the film. I just paused and took that one in – probably my favorite comment of the night. People asked what the government is or is not doing about xenophobia, how I developed relationships with the students, and one noted how the young perpetrators seemed confused as they grappled with what they did, what they saw and their thoughts now. One girl just said she cried.

I also got negative feedback -- why did I include three middle class kids who say the same thing (I, of course, don’t think they are or they do), where was the black middle class person and where was background about apartheid and South African history, didn’t I think that the well-off kids just helped foreigners because they wanted to help their parents keep their cheap labor. No to the last one, I don’t think these young people are that aware of those dynamics. I think that the violence and the victims were in front of them and that compelled action.

I had the next day to myself so I went down to the harbor. Hamburg was a major port city and thousands of people, including my Papa Henry, emigrated from here to the U.S. and other countries. Henry, unlike most people, was a stow-away and didn’t pay for a ticket. The captain of the ship caught him captain and when they arrived in New York, his uncle met the ship and had to pay the fare. It’s a story I heard a lot as a kid. At the harbor, I asked a tour operator where to find the boat to the emigration museum. He pointed me in the right direction then I turned away and for some reason turned back and smiled at him and said simply, “My grandfather.” He replied, “I hope you see him, in your memories.”

The final piece of my journey was Friday, a screening of Testing Hope for 400 high school students and an evening screening in Cologne where people made connections between the film and attacks against Turkish immigrants in Germany. My time in Cologne was very special. The screening went well and I stayed at the home of Karl and Krista who ran the Film Initiativ. Karl gave me an incredible tour of Cologne the next day and a very honest expression of what happened to the Jews here. He said in the sixties, it was their fight to get his parents and teachers to acknowledge what happened during the Holocaust. People who say they didn’t see were just lying – there were factories in town and a deportation camp just across the river – now a fair trade centre. We visited memorials around the city, to those who he admired and those who were more complicated to celebrate -- a statue of a famous musician and dancer who also danced for Hitler, a square where Hitler used to make speeches that is right next to Cologne’s beautiful and massive cathedral, the brass squares, which I had seen in Berlin, out into the sidewalk, listing the names of people who lived in the building there, when they were deported and where they died. Cologne was so special in part because I was just able to talk so honestly with my generous and kind hosts about the thoughts and feelings swirling in my head and heart.

Thanks for going on this journey with me. I have a feeling that another journey, of sharing this film, is just beginning. But there is one person who shared this and many journeys with me, who is no longer here to read my dispatches, ask me when I am moving back from “Africa,” or tell me her stories. My grandmother. My sister Liza helped me write the film’s dedication:

To Sadie Ruth Kaminski

who understood young people

and listened carefully to them.

1912 - 2010

Dispatch: Riding the Elevator

2009-11-03T14:06:00.001+02:00

Some of us have jobs where friends and strangers always say, “Wow, that must be so interesting,” and “what an incredible job,” and just “How cool.” But then for the person, sometimes me, being told that, I just think, well, its work. We all can be consumed by our work. And often in going so deep, immersing ourselves in work, experiencing the stress, we can unwittingly put blinders on. When we’re dashing from meeting to meeting, lobbying for quality childcare and innovations in education, do we always picture those kids and families in our mind? [Just an example, I am sure my parents do.] As journalists seeking the next good story or researchers doing dissertations, once we get back to the newsroom or office to write, do we remember the faces of the people we just interviewed? Sometimes, of course. But it is impossible for that to be always.

I have been filming and watching and cutting footage for the last several months, immersed in whether or not a certain bite makes sense, whether someone will misinterpret someone’s perspective, cutting out the umm’s and aaah’s, picking the perfect shot of Peter brushing his teeth and Vuyani at the mic, and trying how I remain true to all the young people, to the events they discuss, and to myself. But yesterday, as I was going through some archival footage from last May of refugees gathered at police stations and refugee camps, I realized that I had forgotten about the victim. Yes, I have found and filmed Peter, a 17-year-old Rwandan boy, but there were thousands of other victims and casualties of this violence.

It hit me yesterday, watching footage of a woman sitting on blankets in a room at a police station, crowded with other women like her, feeding pap to her son. She was being interviewed and speaking French. I couldn’t understand everything, but what I did understand was: “Nous somme pas vene ici pour mourir, non…. Nous somme des personnes comme vous.” “We did not come here to die, no. We are people like you.” Today, I can still see her face. Her French makes me think she is from DRC. She spoke passionately, her son had wide eyes and remains of food surrounding his lips. While my film only includes one young refugee, this film is about this woman. It is about all the people crowded into this police station. It is about everyone who experienced the attacks, on whatever level.

The tough part of my job lately is to create balance. To balance the story of those who experienced the violence with the stories of the perpetrators, the bystanders and the teenagers who live at a distance, who do not live in the space where the attacks happened, but whose ideas and experiences, to me, are just as important. In speaking about her life, one of these young people, a 16 year old named Carey, said, “Its almost as if we live in this very comfortable bubble and anything that happens outside the bubble really doesn’t matter because we are the most important people in our lives and that’s, you know, how we see things. Which is ridiculous because these attacks happened right outside the bubble.” Pretty insightful for a 16 year old.

So what is my bubble? Do I move in and out of my bubble? I don’t think I live in a bubble – well I like to think I don’t. I don’t know what the correct analogy would be. Perhaps I live in an elevator? Able to go from one place to another, remembering the previous floor I was on, even if I am 10 floors above? Maybe it’s not a great analogy. But I do move from one space to the other, I move from Peter’s lunch of jam sandwiches to my full fridge, from the bed Yamkela shares with her mom and brother to a seat at my favorite café, from filming in the suburbs of Constantia or lying on the beach with friends back to Dunoon or Masiphumelele or Nyanga or Khayelitsha, to lives of people that I know, people that I feel close to, and yet lives that I know I do not know. Can I ever fully know their lives, their challenges and joys? There are boundaries that we create unintentionally, boundaries we choose to put up and boundaries that maybe just are. And yet as I write this I wonder if I am wrong about that last one?

Last Thursday, I got up at 4 a.m., picked up my cameraman Bart at 4:30 and by 5, we were at Peter’s home in Masiphumelele to film his morning routine. Peter came to South Africa in 1994 with his mother and older brother from Rwanda. His father was killed in Rwanda, I don’t know much more of their story. When I asked Peter why they left Rwanda he said because there was a problem between the Hutus and Tutsis, but he wasn’t sure which one his mother was. Today his mother runs a crèche with over 100 children.

Last May, during the xenophobia attacks, Peter and his brother fled to stay with their mother’s friend in a nearby suburb. Their house was robbed, beds, mattresses, clothes, school things, anything you have in your home, just stolen. And until a new shack was built blocking the view, he could see bed through his neighbor’s window. He regularly sees a little girl wearing his 6-year-old cousin’s clothes. “Its actually shocking,” he told me, “cause you think in your mind, what did we do wrong to deserve such pain our lives? What did, where did we go wrong? What did we do to them? For what reason do we deserve this suffering? I ask the same question but no one responds.” He added, “Me myself I don’t think I have an answer for that. I don’t know if I have an answer for that.”

Reflecting on that day, Peter told me he was not ready to die. “I want to die a special way, instead of a violent way,” he said.

The shoot ended with Bart riding partway with Peter and his friend to school, first on a taxi, then on the train. Bart rode only one stop and left Peter to continue on to school. I met him in Kalk Bay and we went for coffee at a lovely café. There we were, at 7:45 a.m. A 10-minute drive from Peter’s life, at 7:45 a.m. surrounded by other people enjoying their morning coffee with a view of the Indian Ocean. So how could we have moved from one space to the other so quickly? We spent a good part of our coffee talking about that. In this country that is often so stratified, where many people never see how others live, we go from one space to the other all the time. Many others don’t – whether from one area or another, whether because of fear or language or race or access, they have difficulty moving between these worlds. But what does that mean for us? I don’t remember all the details of our conversation nor do I have an answer, I’ll just pose the question for now and leave you, perhaps, to help me with an answer.

Dispatch: The New Year

2009-09-17T15:09:00.000+02:00

Rosh Hashanah usually comes and goes for me. I enjoy the holiday, I celebrate, I pray, but I don’t normally breathe deep and take it as the beginning of a New Year. Tomorrow I am working from home to make my challah and this year I am taking advantage of a mid-September New Year. I am going to try to use it as it was meant to be, a time of introspection, a time to plan changes in life, to think about starting anew. An opportunity to make a new start -- despite this week’s rain, in the midst of the challenges of the editing process, and as I continue to sort out what it means for me to live in South Africa.

Why the last one? When I lived here in 2005, almost all of my days involved journeys out to Nyanga and Khayelitsha, teaching students or engaging in different spaces. For most of last year, while I wasn’t in the townships everyday, I was traveling regularly to new cities, sharing my work, engaging in debates about education, young people, this country’s future. And in the early part of this year, I continued as most of you read, in one of my favorite parts of my job – going from place to place, classroom to classroom and talking to over 200 young people about xenophobia, foreigners, feelings about their country, and everything in between. These days, my dialogue is between my head and my computer. Most days I find myself in my office, staring at a computer screen, turning hours of footage into a film. I am an inherently collaborative person but I do enjoy the editing process. It is a brilliant feeling to find just the right place for a shot or create the perfect sequence. But I am not deep in the South Africa I used to know. Sometimes people ooh and ahh that I live in “Africa.” “Deepest darkest Africa,” some people joke. Do you know many of my days start with the gym, move on to a cappuccino, sometimes some All Bran, sometimes a visit to my favorite café, work, making dinner, going out to dinner, seeing or renting a movie, spending time with friends. It is why, despite the fact that I like to write, I write fewer dispatches, for what should and can I write about? This life could be happening anywhere.

And yet I am here. In South Africa. Life ebbs and flows, I have been reminded, this too will take me through to next January or February and then who knows what a day will look like? But for now, I am renegotiating being here. I started reading Antjie Krog’s book A Change of Tongue a few days ago, to get out of the shell that can be my life and to remind myself of the richness of where I live. For those of you who don’t know Krog, she wrote an incredible book about the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings called Country of My Skull. She is Afrikaans and grew up in a small town in the Free State. This book is historical, sociological and also very personal. It is not always easy to get through but I find some sections so moving, so pronounced in their historical space. I read something so beautiful and profound the other day that I just stopped in my tracks. It is about watching the speech Mandela made in Cape Town on the day he was released from prison. Krog watched the speech on TV in her home, surrounded by friends and comrades. She writes:

“What Mandela says, or the fact that he has to borrow Winnie’s glasses to read his speech because he’s left his own behind at the prison, doesn’t filter through to us. We are suddenly so utterly aware, and linked as we have never been linked before. Each one with every one. He is of us. We could be the most beautiful colour of change the world has ever seen. The man is free and a new time has dawned.”

This is where I live. I live in a place with possibility and opportunity, also with frustration and sadness, that too. I live in a place where my friend Susan interviews Noluyanda yesterday for a job at her organization Students for a Better Future, and while Noluyanda doesn’t have the qualifications for a job, Susan believes in her and offers her a one month paid internship, a chance to gain new experiences and skills. A place where I cheer because Phila is starting her new job on November 1^st as a clerk at Woolworth’s department store. Where I am holding my breath that she and Sithembele have successful auditions at New Africa Theatre in December and can start school next year. Where I have to say no when the aunt of someone in film asks to borrow 2,000 rand for her nephew’s male circumcision ceremony and worry which high school Siyabulela Mpaku will attend next year. My life may involve an office and a lot of time in front of a computer, but it also involves this.

On Sunday, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, I will go spend time with Sipho’s brothers who I haven’t seen in almost four months. How that happened, so much time passed, I can’t tell you. I’ll look at Sunday as a new start for us in this New Year.

L’Shanah Tovah

Dispatch: Journeys Down Memory Lane

2009-08-17T17:01:00.003+02:00

The world is small. Our experiences constantly echo one another. We learn from each other, from successes and failures, from wars, leaders, freedom struggles and social movements. Sometimes the connections are subtle and sometimes they are right in front of us.

On Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday when I was 12 my father took me to the Uptown Theater to see Mississippi Burning. If my sister or my mother were there, I apologize, because what I remember is him and me, Gene Hackman and Willem Defoe, and the story of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the violence, and my keen interest and fear. I don’t think that was the single moment when I got interested in civil rights history, I don’t know that I can pin down a moment, but it certainly sticks in my mind. In high school I sang along to the theme song to Eyes on the Prize when we watched it in history class and wrote a paper for another class called “With All Deliberate Speed?” about the language in the of Brown v. Board decision. My interest in the civil rights movement continued through college and when my friend Caroline put forth her thought that if not born in the mid-seventies, she would have loved to live in Victorian England, I always thought I would have loved the chance to be in my twenties during the Civil Rights Movement, to sit on the bus during the Freedom Rides.

So a couple months ago, when I had coffee with an American woman working here for a few months and she casually mentioned her mother, maybe I had heard of her, Minnijean Brown, she was one of the Little Rock Nine, I nearly fell off my chair with excitement. Someone from my history book, who I have read about and talked about has a daughter and I'm having coffee with her?! And Minnijean Brown was coming to Cape Town. Since I work with an organization that works with history teachers, I was able to connect them. So it was that two weeks ago, I found myself sitting at a table here in Cape Town surrounded by teachers and a few students, listening to Minnijean Brown Trickey share her memories and experiences as one of the Little Rock Nine. I was so excited to meet her, this was Minnijean Brown, one of the Little Rock Nine. And I was listening to her in South Africa.

It turns out that Minnijean Brown was the same age as Emmett Till. She watched him die in Mississippi before she fought battles for him and Black youth across the U.S. – battles that she perhaps never intended to fight. As this icon of history spoke, I was struck by her humility. She consistently emphasized that what is extraordinary is in fact ordinary. That she was just a girl who wanted to go to a school with great books and science facilities, that she did not set out to transform a town or a country, simply to get the education she deserved. “It’s always simple and it’s always about just plain people,” she said. “It’s not about having extra bravery or courage, it’s about being a regular person. We were 14 or 15 so we didn’t have any good idea.”

As she entered the school, she never imagined the vitriol and hatred she would get from some students. “I couldn’t imagine anyone hating me,” she said. She thought in a couple weeks or a month, the tension would die down. Another reason why she was not so concerned about racism at Central High she said, was because, “I thought this is about old people and these kids must think like me.”

I remember learning about the effort of the Little Rock Nine to get into Central High, but never about what happened to them once classes started. She said there were about 20 nice kids in the school, 100 bad kids and 1900 kids who said nothing, were “silent witnesses.” I thought about the kids I have interviewed about the xenophobia attacks and how many of them may have been silent witnesses. How often have I been one?

MinniJean was eventually expelled for calling six girls “white trash” after they hit her and threw at her a purse filled with six combination locks. She ended up finishing high school in New York, at a primarily Jewish school where she was “furious” to find out that no one in Little Rock had taught her about the Holocaust. I would imagine at that time it wasn’t really part of the curriculum in Little Rock, or many places in the U.S.

She was and still is a fighter. “The punishment is great for people who think for themselves and go against the belief system,” she said. “Does that happen here?”

It was this question that caused me to look around the room and wonder who these teachers were. I’d met many of them before. In struggles and movements, there are some names we know or our history books tell us – Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, John Lewis, Rosa Parks, the students of the Soweto Uprisings in 1976, Hector Pieterson, Joe Slovo, Walter Sisulu and of course Nelson Mandela. It may be cliché, that term unsung heroes, but as I sat there, listening to this dialogue, I wondered where some of these teachers had been during their struggle. Were they students fighting to learn in their own language? Were they in detention? Prison? Were they young believers of Mandela or Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness? If I have learned anything in my time here it is that everyone has a story. What are there’s? The history of these history teachers. I have been privileged to be in workshops when a few of these teachers shared some of their stories. But what of the others?

**************

Yesterday, a long day of shooting in the sun ended over scrapbooks of old articles and photos from the eighties. The parents of one of the students in my new film, Becca, were activists during apartheid. Yesterday afternoon, we planned to just do an interview with Becca outside and then film her and her family together. Nothing too profound. Since Becca references her parents in the film and how they are a big part of what inspires her to want to make a difference in the world, my cameraman and I thought it would be cool to see old photos from her parents back in the day. Of course, they didn’t really stop to take photos at that time, however her father has three scrapbooks of newspaper clippings. So it was I found myself listening and filming as Becca and her mother went through these scrapbooks. And so I come back to my thought from above – everyone here has a story. One article inspired Becca’s mother Jane to tell the story of a particular night of riots and protests in Crossroads when she was worried about her husband and his safety. It was not an unusual feeling in those days, but the irony that night, it turned out, was that the Security Police came for Jane and detained her for three months. I have to thank Jane for going through the scrapbooks and her memories and for sharing these stories with us – this journey down memory lane was not particularly enjoyable for her and I imagine not exactly easy either.

Dispatch: Witnessing the Contradictions

2009-05-25T20:54:00.001+02:00

I don’t remember a specific moment when I learned right from wrong. Clearly I learned it, over time, from my parents, grandparents and teachers and others, but I don’t remember a single conversation where I was sat down and told right, wrong, good, bad, moral. Moral. That word has so many connotations. In the last several years it seems that and the word values have been co-opted– people talk about “values education” and whether or not our leaders and politicians have the right values. Often that word “values” is directly associated with things like abstinence education, prayer, republicans, but whose values some people ask? Whose values are we talking about? Whose values are we supposed to follow? And how do we develop our own? Who helps us grow them, who nurtures our values and beliefs when we are young and helps us to get to the place where we can make our own choices, to follow our own consciences. How do we become the kind of people who step back or walk home when a crowd of friends is looting a shop instead of diving in to grab chips and 5 kg of rice? To not act simply because “my friends were doing it.” To feel shame or sadness at seeing someone’s humanity being stripped from them. And to put that before one’s own hunger?

The one word in my mind lately is contradiction. When I set out to do this film, I had four categories in my mind – the victim, the perpetrator, the bystander, and the resistor. It turns out that these categories are somewhat fluid, that the 16 year old who tried to stand up identifies as a bystander. That the perpetrator didn’t act out of hatred for foreigners but for other reasons. That the perpetrator is ashamed of his or her wrongs, says the violence was wrong, and admits that the pull of wanting to join friends and of one’s own stomach is powerful, but also offers that there are more disadvantages than advantages to having foreigners in South Africa.

Luyalo’s story is unique. He saw his Zimbabwean neighbor bleeding on the street and he and his father brought him into their home. This was a risk and the only story I have encountered where a young person stood up amidst the chaos to help someone. I am sure there are others but this is the only one I have found, after talking to over 100 youth who live in areas where looting took place. Why was this a risk? “My friends might think I’m against South Africa because I help those people [foreigners], but I’m not against them, they are the same as us.” One’s immediate assumption then might be that Luyalo feels it is good to have foreigners in his community and in his country. “They bring opportunities, they sell us things at good prices,” he said, affirming my assumption. But when I probed further I got a different answer. Having foreigners in South Africa, “its bad and right. Shopkeepers can stay, but people who bring disease and take low salaries should go.” So its 50, 50 according to Luyalo. Those he perceives as helpful can stay. Some foreigners are okay, others are not. It doesn’t depend on where they are from, it doesn’t seem to be fear of the other completely, perhaps more those he perceives as a threat or who could cause problems must go. Again, so much contradiction wrapped up in this young man.

Sometimes it is the contradictions of this country that become illuminated for me. And sometimes the words of the young are unnerving. I recently conducted more interviews at a suburban (privileged) boys school. I heard sympathy for foreigners and talk of foreigners who come here illegally or bring and sell drugs. I heard stories from boys who participated in the relief effort and aided refugees and boys who wanted to stand up but were afraid. Some of what I heard disturbed me. The boys are 15 and 16. They are boys.

One said to me:

“When foreigners come they do little things (like selling goods on the side of the road) to get money but South Africans take it so easily, most people who were mobbing are hijacking people instead of buying at a shop. We had a hardworking Zimbabwean domestic worker. Now we have a South African and she doesn’t work as hard. Just the work ethic from foreigners to South Africans is such a big difference…Its just another point of how South Africans value other people’s lives. It has the highest crime rate in the world. People are hijacking. No South Africans find jobs, they just hijack people and have food for a month.”

I have heard this sentiment echoed out of the mouths of many young people, both in the suburbs and in the townships. Not the criminal, hijacking piece. This boy was the first. But I have had young people in townships tell me that members of their community do not take initiative, do not create jobs for themselves like foreigners do. I have also had one young boy tell me that, “Black people don’t know how to work. They think that money floats into their hands.” I never know what to do with these statements and sentiments and generalizations and I am invariably still surprised to hear them, but I share it here in contrast to the above and as something for you to contemplate. The boy above, of course, has little to no exposure to the people he is stereotyping. Then again, we usually don’t.

And here are a few other thoughts I found interesting:

“The scariest thing for me wasn’t that a guy [foreigner] was being hit, but it was the people who were walking away from him and not paying attention.”

“The first time I found out [about the xenophobia] through my dad because our domestic worker came and said there was unrest in Mandela Park [township]. I didn’t think much of it, it seems far away, you think its not coming to Hout Bay. One morning on my way in the car I saw guys attacking another guy with a panga and that’s when I realized. At first it doesn’t seem real, you don’t think much of it but then it is shocking how people value people’s lives and say, “they are foreigners, they mean nothing.”

“I didn’t know how far the xenophobia would spread and what it could turn into. You began to worry about your own safety. You wondered would they come to your house? Next thing foreigners are kicked out then it could have been White people attacked and killed.”

“We tend to make reasons why this is happening. White South Africans were also worried. My family got passports ready because if they could attack their “brothers” what is stopping them from attacking us, we were worse to them in apartheid. White people tend to live in their own perfect world and tend to think it won’t happen to them, what life is like for blacks and coloreds is happening (like poverty or violence). I talked to my friends and my domestic worker and I asked them how long has this hatred for foreigners been around and my domestic worker said that her mother and father hated foreigners and I asked them why and they couldn’t give a reason and I think they were just waiting for an excuse.”

“All I know is that foreigners have rights. But if you look at first world countries and all the immigrants they have and the strict control they have and look at us, we are third world, we have bad hygiene and water and we have weak border control. We let everyone in and we’re third world and can’t cater for them. If first world countries are so strict then we should be too.”

I am troubled by some of this and saddened by the massive divide in this country. But I believe it is important not to judge, and certainly not too harshly. To remember that these -- the boys who speak above, the other young people I have talked to, the perpetrators, the bystanders, those who stood up, are all kids. Kids with massive, perhaps disturbing, preconceptions of other South Africans, kids who have learned to fear, kids who have learned that they are better than others, kids who are convinced there is a difference between stealing and taking when they are looting, but yes, kids. Kids who are still learning and can still be taught, who will grow and change as they experience life and encounter new people, who are each still looking for and finding their own moral compass.

The working title of this film is Where Do I Stand? I don’t presume to ever try and understand where all of these kids come from nor all of their baggage and I don’t wish to make them think exactly as I do. But I know where I’d like them to stand – or at least near – and I am making this film to help them get there, or help them start thinking about it. And perhaps it is as much a question now of what we as adults, teachers, parents, friends – of what you do -- to help them get there.

Dispatch: Conversations on Xenophobia

2009-04-20T13:37:00.000+02:00

Wednesday is Election Day. Barring something radical happening, Jacob Zuma will become South Africa’s next President. The campaigning is becoming more aggressive. My favorite new poster, for the Independent Democrats, reads “Put Criminals in Jail, Not in Government.” Babalwa is in East London handing out pamphlets for her party, the African Christian Democratic Party. Their presence is not huge, but she is a member and it is her first presidential election, the first she is really engaged in which is exciting. On Friday morning at my favorite café, I was procrastinating and eavesdropping on a neighboring table – three women talking about their concerns of South Africa degenerating into another Zimbabwe, people being trapped and unable to leave. Fear? Paranoia? They too will vote on Wednesday. I know people who are voting for the new Congress of the People party (COPE) – some are heavily involved in local party leadership, others may not be 100% sure but see it as an alternative, and many still hope. Others are ANC stalwarts and will vote for the ANC – some are not Zuma supporters, but it is the party that matters. Others still, like my friend’s boyfriend, are ANC stalwarts but do not like Zuma and therefore will simply not go to the polls at all.

The large posters on the side of the road are my constant reminders of the impending elections but I am immersed in new reflections on youth, on how we rationalize our actions, separate what we do from what we think, develop our moral compass.

In the past month, I have been crisscrossing the area, conducting interviews with young people – in groups, one on one, whole classes – about xenophobia and in particular the violence that erupted last May. I have been to Masiphumelele township near the beach town of Fish Hoek, to Imizamo Yethu, in glorious Hout Bay, I have been to private Jewish schools, to a surprisingly diverse former Model C school, and to very exclusive all boys private schools. That last one was a bit intimidating -- the first time I have stood in front of a classroom filled with boys or young men sitting up in uniforms, a school of looming pillars that breathes its many years and very establishment. I have also spent time at Vusisizwe High School in Zwelethemba township outside Worcester, about an hour and a half from Cape Town. Every time I drive into Zwelethemba, through the one road that is the entrance to this township, I am reminded of the incredible strategy of the apartheid government as it built these townships with only one main road to come in and out, so much the better to control people.

I have encountered passionate, dynamic, young people. I have been surprised, delighted and challenged by their views and by my own. And I have learned how little I know and how much my own opinions and views of the violence last May are influenced by what I read and watched about it in the news, and how complex things are when one really begins to interrogate things. I see that the issues presented and the themes here reach far beyond xenophobia.

I have met many young people who participated in looting and were very upfront about it. But what surprised me were their reasons why. We have an image of perpetrators that is a flat image – they are bad people, they committed wrong, they hate foreigners. In fact it seems more complicated and layered now. Many were not xenophobic, are not. They did it for fun. They did it because their friends were doing it. They did it because they were angry. They did it because they were hungry. All of this is just as disturbing. As one boy told me, “Many people were in the streets, some to get food, some do it for fun. Not all people hate foreigners. Others do it for fun or they have poverty at home, others they hate foreigners.” This boy, Alutha, whose Xhosa name means struggle, was in the street, picking up errant sweets that had landed on the ground from the looted shops, singing with friends and having fun. Fun. The violence in Zwelethemba erupted in March – two months before the country exploded. It started when a Somalian shopkeeper killed a 20 year old named Eddie. I was not there. His friends say he was a lovely open person. They say the shopkeeper was robbed earlier in the night, and “rest his soul,” they add, Eddie was drunk. He had purchased cigarettes and not gotten proper change. Then again, as with so many crimes of this nature, we were not there. A friend of mine says that these incidents make the looting and violence that happened after more complex than clear xenophobia in other places – that some might look and see, not something excusable, but a rationalization for the violence.

“When I marched,” Alutha says, “I have in mind the struggles from apartheid. I thought how did they do that. I thought let me do that and have that imagination that I was in the struggle.” “I wasn’t thinking right or wrong, I just wanted hair cream,” one girl told me. And who doesn’t want to look beautiful. Others were angry, wanted to destroy. One, who says he likes his Zimbabwean neighbors and he now understands how important foreigners are to the country, says he just wanted to destroy. He was angry and looted and wanted to destroy. But his moral compass would not push him over the edge to physical violence, to hurt another person.

And several of his classmates simply want foreigners out. One seems to define xenophobia as the violence that occurred, not the belief or energy. He can separate the actual violence from his fierce desire to rid his community of foreigners who he feels take their jobs and strain the community. He told me that “it” was wrong but foreigners still need to get out. “It” is the violence clearly. The idea of that separation is so interesting to me. To see a behavior as wrong but not a sentiment. Like people who have feelings but if you do not act on them the do not exist. People who are anti-Semitic, but have a few Jewish friends who they do not place in the category of Jews they dislike.

I also met many students who felt that they lived miles, a world, a universe away from this violence. Some did not know their place, could they speak up? “As a white South African,” explained one girl, “I was not directly involved. I felt scared to say something to offend people – a black South African or a foreigner might be upset and say, ‘Why are you talking, you aren’t involved?’” She continued, “The husband of my domestic worker is from Angola. What are you when your husband is Angolan and you are South African, what are you? What side are you on?”

Another girl struck me when she explained, “I had a perfect image of South Africa, you are sheltered but when your friends are affected you become part of this terrible vision that is South Africa.” She attends a school with several foreign students who stay in hostels and couldn’t figure out how to comfort her friends.

Many wanted to help but didn’t know what they could do. A big debate ensued about the impact of collecting food as an act of assistance, how we define help and action in these situations. What is enough, but also what makes us feel like we have really made a difference. Several were involved in school, youth group, or church efforts to assist – by making things, collecting, cooking, and engaging with refugees and victims.

One girl admitted to being a bit cynical. “Even though you thought it might not make a big difference you still try,” she says, “despite the big feeling of hopelessness, that giving hope just prolongs their suffering. Befriending people and talking to them in a real way is more helpful than food…They’re not just taking shelter, but they take that feeling.”

Some felt there was not much they could do besides make sandwiches or blankets in their school hall. Could they really go into the townships? “It’s a long way,” said one girl. “If its not in front of our eyes then its like its not in our universe. You have to make a balance between not putting yourself at risk and not being ignorant.”

One group of girls approached their principal to help, they wanted to have a protest outside the school, hold events, take action. The principal was not encouraging and told the girls that these things would scare the foreign girls living in the hostels, but she would think about it. “We were deflated after,” said one girl. In the end they had a drive for food and personal items. And another, “When you have a big vision and you’re told that all you can do is bring a toothbrush to someone, you feel frustrated.” That line is one of my favorites and never fails to make me smile.

Sometimes as the conversation went deeper into the reasons for the xenophobia and what may have motivated some Black South Africans to take this kind of action, it moved into the class and race divide here and I heard things that I didn’t expect. “When I look back this country has been a war zone for many years,” explained one 14-year-old boy. “I heard on the radio, ‘Once we’re done with the foreigners we’re going for the Whites.’ It scared me. None of us have good job opportunities when we’re older. It’s really unfair. Xenophobia is an example of how they act ruthlessly when they don’t get their way. They have no sympathy and it’s their brothers. Its not whites. Its so scary how they do this to their own.” It makes me wonder where youth get their opinions and beliefs. How they are influenced by what they read, what they learn in school, teachers… and parents. Family dinners and the conversations that come with them are powerful forces.

One girl who grew up in a township and attends a privileged school reminded us that poor Black people are not the only xenophobic ones in South Africa. “Everyone says the perpetrators were from the townships,” she said. “They were, but last year catching a train home at peak hour, a lady was in the train and a Somali guy came in the train and by mistake he steps on the lady and she loses it. She said, ‘You’re not even from here.’” A classmate then asked if the woman was White and she confirmed and continued, “It’s easier to say perpetrators are so stupid but you get a lot of people sitting in houses saying people are stupid but inside people are for it. They feel the same way.”

Often it is adults who get to tell a story. But it is a privilege to sit at the table with these young people, be able to ask them any questions I can think of, hear them open up and share their experiences, their honesty, their struggles to find their place, their values systems, their identity and for me, just to listen.

A New Year, New Stories

2009-03-10T17:35:00.000+02:00

It has been over three months since I last dispatched. A month of that was spent at home – I managed New York, Florida, Boston and the inauguration in that time. I returned to Cape Town on January 23 and picked up my exceptional skills visa, which lets me stay here until the end of 2011. I can’t envision that far ahead and imagine that I will move home sooner than that, but it does open up possibilities and make life easier for the interim. Three weeks after returning to Cape Town my sister Liza came to visit. We had an incredible time, relishing the beaches, spending time with my former students and just experiencing this fabulous country together.

So now it is back to reality and back to work. The start of 2009 has brought a new project, a short documentary film about young people’s experiences in and perspectives on the xenophobia crisis in May.

During the xenophobia crisis last May, one of the scenes that panned across television screens was of young people, some in school uniforms, picking up pangas, throwing bricks, looting shops and homes. I am working with an NGO Shikaya to create a short film about the experiences and perspectives of youth during the crisis. I will profile young refugees, perpetrators, people who stood up and did something different, and bystanders, who simply stood by, and try to understand and explore all sides. The film will be used in workshops with teachers who will in turn use it in the classroom. We plan to do some broader outreach as well. The goal is to get young people to reflect on the lives of other youth, their own actions in May and how they might act in similar situations, and also consider how they can be agents of positive change in their communities and active citizens in South Africa. It is a powerful thing, the potential here, and the idea of working on a film that will be used to affect change and engage young people in the world around them is exciting.

For now I remain on step one, finding those youth. I define youth as between 14 and 21 and began my search in Johannesburg a few weeks ago. A man who heads the Alexandra Civic Organization in Alexandra township where the violence started promised to take me in to meet some guys he knew who were involved in the violence. But to my frustration, he cancelled on me twice because he had several meetings for COPE, the new political party. Good for COPE, not so great for me. I was extremely frustrated, feeling a little like my entire trip to Joburg was all for naught, when I called Bishop Paul Verryn and made a plan to go to his church on a Wednesday evening. Bishop Verryn heads the Central Methodist Church. The church is very well known here and around the world for its massive effort to assist refugees and the poor. Currently around 1,000 refugees, mostly from Zimbabwe, but also across Africa and some South Africans, find shelter in the church where they also get some social support services including food, basic health care, counseling, advocacy and help finding jobs.

I had read a lot about the church by the time I walked in at 5:30 p.m. But there is no way to imagine this place by simply reading about it. It is dark, the stairs are lined with people lying down, sitting on steps, on landings, people everywhere. Men, women and children, many of whom made the journey here without their parents. There are people who have lost limbs, others limping or on crutches. Their lives and pasts are difficult to truly envision. Many have run away from something, many are here in search of a better life. Have they found it here in this country? In this church? One man approaches me and asks if I have any work for him -- I– sweeping, varnishing, electrical, anything.

I joined a line of people waiting to talk to the Bishop, and after 45 minutes the Bishop came by, asked if I was waiting for him, remembered that I was looking for youth and asked if I was staying for the service. When a Bishop asks if you are staying for the service, you say yes. So I stayed in line talking to Emanuel who was looking for a scholarship to college and then after an hour or so, went down to the service. The chapel was filling up and groups of men and women were dancing and singing in Shona, waiting for the service to start. As it did, the Bishop walked over to me and took me to meet the principal and vice principal of the church’s new school. These men had been teachers in Zimbabwe. A few months ago, noticing the large numbers of children at the church and the need, the Bishop and these men decided to start a school. We talked, made a plan for me to come to the school at 7:30 the next morning, and then enjoyed the service.

It was an unusually cold day for Joburg in February on the morning that I arrived at the school. Some students were wearing uniforms, donated or bought with donations; others were in whatever they had. I recognized some from the church service by the clothes that I saw them in the day before. The school is attached to an old church and is not very big. Classrooms are packed; some are divided and shared between grades. I passed through a room of about 75 third graders crowded around three long wooden tables with two teachers. A class of very young children was sitting in a hallway. As the vice principal walked me around, he would pause in a class and ask, “Raise your hand if you are from Zimbabwe.” “Raise your hand if you are from South Africa.” Mozambique? DRC? Swaziland? He would continue. Over 100 of these students are unaccompanied minors; they have come to South Africa alone. I talked to several of them.

Takudzwa is 16. Both of his parents died in 1997 and 1998. He came to Joburg in August after walking through the forest for a week and slipping by gangs who prey on foreigners near the border. He came from the border at Messina to Joburg by hiding on a train. “What goes around comes around,” he says of the xenophobia in South Africa. “We will show them we are good. Now it’s our turn. We are people, we eat, they eat.” Takudwzwa loves school and wants to be a lawyer. In the mean time, for fun he goes to Johannesburg Park to play chess and soccer. Sometimes the police stop him to ask for papers, sometimes people call out to him, “Move out Makwerekwere,” a slang word for foreigners, especially illegal immigrants. He is happy because he is learning and with this education he believes he can help Zimbabwe. “What they are doing is not democracy or freedom. I will bring democracy, there will be freedom,” he says. But when I ask what is the best part of being in South Africa, he starts, “The best part of being in South Africa…” Then he smiles, pauses, is silent, laughs, and has no answer.

His classmate Wellington, a head boy at the school, came here after seeing his father tortured by members of Zanu-PF (Mugabe’s party) after being accused of being a supporter of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). His father died a few days later and Wellington fled south, through the waist deep water and crocodiles of the Limpopo River. “I expected to live better than in Zimbabwe because now everything there is expensive,” he says. “I thought life would be good. Its not so good for me for the moment, there are challenges. If you are walking in the street or in a shop, people are rude and it embarrasses me, they say, ‘you are a foreigner.’ But I am an African and you are an African.”

I interviewed about eight students in total, boys and girls. The last was Nkosinathi. At 14 he has lost both parents and his two older sisters. His favorite author is Shakespeare. After his family died, he stayed with relatives, but they didn’t send him to school after grade 5 and wanted him to work in the yard and the house. “One day my aunt hit me,” he says. “I had a bike and I sold it and boarded a train to Beitbridge [a town on the border with a major border post] and then got a taxi to Johannesburg. I’d heard of a school in Joburg.” It was this school. This crowded cold place, warmed by the sounds of learning, which holds the futures and hopes of Nkosinathi and over 300 others.

Tomorrow I am going to visit a school just outside Worcester, about an hour north of Cape Town, where a teacher is doing an anti-xenophobia project with his students. Several Somali shopkeepers here were forced out, their shops looted and some burned and destroyed. One of these shops is directly outside the school’s gate. Thursday, I’ll return to Masiphumelele, a township known for its effort to assist foreigners after the attacks. A couple days after foreigners there were attacked, residents publicly apologized and asked them to return. People went door to door to collect stolen goods and return them to their owners. However, Masiphumelele is not a panacea, there were attacks and since May there have been incidents of violence against foreigners who have returned.

This step in filmmaking is exciting and can be quite frustrating as well. In the next few weeks, I will continue to talk to anyone who will talk to me about these issues and ask as many people as I can if they have suggestions of young refugees, perpetrators, resistors and bystanders who I can meet. Soon enough, I will have found my youth and be ready to pick up a camera and share their stories.

Dispatch: Thanksgiving Eve

2008-11-28T15:51:00.000+02:00

Why is it that sadness is what propels me to write? I have not dispatched since Obama’s win and today, on what is now a sad day, I decide to share. Perhaps it is because I have just finished writing an article and had to think so carefully as I wrote that, that now I can simply be guided by emotion.

Sipho’s father has died. Last week. I found out early today. I was with two of my old students, giving a tour of Nyanga to a couple people from the UK. As we walked around Oscar Mpetha HS, we ran into Anele’s homeroom teacher. She leaned out the door and said, “Mpaku, Anele, you know his father died.” Last week, she said. She apologized for sharing bad news, I ran to my car to call Anele, Siya, their cousin Sandiswa who had been my sole connection to the Mpaku family last May. I finally reached Anele a couple hours ago. He is stoic and I am often told that Xhosa men don’t cry. But his father died. One piece of a fragile support system that is taking care of these boys. He didn’t live with them, he didn’t bring them food consistently, but he was their father. I only saw him a few times in 2005 and we never formally met, but long conversations with Sipho and visits to an empty fridge at his brother’s house this year affirmed my feelings for the man who told Sipho’s cousin, “He wouldn’t have died if Molly had been here.” But he was, in the end, their father.

A few weeks ago Anele faced another difficulty. It turns out that the District department of education translated The Sunday Times article about Testing Hope into Xhosa and put it on the district wide grade 10 Xhosa exam as a comprehension exercise. When Anele sat down to take the exam, he was confronted with his brother’s story. What makes it worse was that 7 of the 10 questions were about Sipho. One asked about their parents’ divorce. Number 6 asked if Sipho was a role model or set a good example for Anele. Number 7 asked why you thought Anele failed grade 10 twice before. I can only imagine what it must have felt like for Anele sitting in that classroom, reading over this test. He went to the teacher and asked her, “What is this?” She had not reviewed the exam in advance and her only answer was, “I don’t know.” I heard from another teacher usually the school picks up the exams from the district and gets them to teachers a day in advance to look over, but for some reason the school didn’t pick up the exams early enough this time. I don’t know if that is necessarily true. Either way, if you give a class an exam, I would think a teacher would take 5 minutes to skim it over quickly. Or at least say to the boy, stop writing, I will figure this out. Something?

On one level, I am pleased that the district office is including stories about the township so that students can read of their own experiences in an exam. I just wish someone – a teacher, a district curriculum advisor, anyone, would have thought twice before sticking that paper in front of Anele. The week after, he told me people were still coming up to him. Classmates who said that they wrote that he was doing drugs. (And just to think of how many classmates, there are 11 grade 10 classes at the school this year.) Neighbors who heard from their children about Sipho and his family and were asking more questions.

I am lucky enough to know people who know people and my friend Dylan called the head of curriculum in the district office. The man felt terrible that Anele had to go through such a thing and mentioned that he wanted to at least call him and apologize. I want to make sure, also, that this doesn’t affect his grade. Nothing has happened yet on the department’s end. And for Anele, something worse has overwhelmed this incident all together.

The funeral will be in Transkei on Saturday, not Cape Town. Anele said I should come to visit them when they get back, so I’ll see them next week. When these things occur, they inevitably bring back memories of other people and today I miss Sipho more than I have in a long time. Sometimes I do wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t had to leave in early 2006. I know he is not my responsibility, but I do wonder, especially now that I am back. Is it a small piece of guilt that I left or confusion that I am back, now for a year, possibly staying for another one, and yet I couldn’t stay when he needed me. We cannot use logic to explain these things, nor can we think that our single presence or power will determine whether one lives or dies, and yet I do know that my presence here does mean a lot for many – including myself. I now wonder who is going to pay for school clothes next year and groceries next week and whether their mother will move back into their house.

There is much more than sadness here lately though. New ideas, new opportunities, new change.

The summer after my first year of college, I interned at the White House. This summer, my students Amanda and Noluyanda both have internships. Amanda is working at Shikaya, a human rights and democracy education organization that works with teachers to develop young people who are responsible, critical thinking, and active democratic citizens. Noluyanda is working for the Western Cape Network on Violence Against Women. (A thank you to Bulelwa and Dylan for helping with internship opportunities.) Yesterday she went to a meeting with the MEC of Social Development for the province. Both girls are being paid through a generous donation from Eileen and Larry Kugler, who came to South Africa in July, and my friend Tom’s mother, who visited from the UK in October.

I have kept myself busy with continued Testing Hope outreach and some freelance writing. I had a great trip to Pretoria to do some work with the U.S. Embassy. We had workshops and screenings for 40 teachers in Pretoria and then went to Nelspruit, the capital of Mpumalanga province, and ended up with 95 teachers on a Saturday. 95 was a bit overwhelming, but it was really exciting to see that much energy and conversation and activity stimulated because of my work.

I will probably be in South Africa another year. I am letting this journey and this time abroad run its natural course and seeing where it will take me. Now I am fundraising and doing some pre-production for a new documentary and outreach program on students’ experiences in the xenophobia crisis in May. This time I am not going it alone, but partnering with Shikaya who will run an extensive outreach campaign. which will include a study guide and workshops for teachers on how to use the film in the classroom. As a filmmaker you are not always sure your work will be seen, much less have an impact and it is exciting to start a project knowing the potential for both.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Dispatch: South Africa for Obama

2008-11-04T18:07:00.004+02:00

Well it has been a while since my last dispatch and there is certainly much to write about -- apparently causing controversy in the district department of education, upsetting a few Afrikaans women in Pretoria who think SA needs to move past apartheid already, and having an article about the film turn up on a grade 10 isiXhosa exam -- something that was actually not to be celebrated, but caused Sipho's brother much pain. But those are for thinking about later in the week. Today is Obama day. I am wearing my pins -- it is as close as I can get to participating today and a moment here where I actually feel like announcing that I am American. I must say I am impressed with and jealous of so many of you who are so active this election season -- my dear cousin Rachel in Florida who hopped on a plane from San Francisco a month ago for an adventure she could not imagine; my lawyer friends Brooke and Alex who are spending a few days in St. Louis doing voter protection work, Thea who has spent plenty weekend hours in the NYC office, and too many more of you to count and that I don't know about. I must say it has been difficult to experience this moment from afar.

But I want to tell you taht South Africa loves Obama. This morning on the radio, the DJ said, "Well today is Obama day." It is not just election day in the U.S., it is Obama day. The elections have been on the news, in political cartoons and mixed in conversations here for the past several weeks, this morning SABC did a show on how the new president, no matter who it is, will handle relations with Africa. But one of my favorite things about living here is that the newspapers post their headlines so as you drive down the street you can see what's in the news. Today, all the papers have one Obama headline -- and I must say, I am not too sure how my grad school professors would feel about this because these papers are not really maintaining objectivity as they go. "Yes Obama Can," is my favorite of the day. I have yet to see a posting about McCain, although he is featured in the articles. But it is pretty clear where this country stands -- well, most people.

I wanted to share a few of these with you, so attached are photos of my favorite headlines as well as a few political cartoons -- one from Friday of McCain and Palin and one from today which says in Afrikaans "Here comes Obama."

Think of me as you watch the returns, I'll be up tomorrow morning at 2 a.m. watching the returns on CNN thanks to my friends Louise and Simon who have a gorgeous 3 and a half week old daughter and cable.

Dispatch: Man Down

2008-09-21T15:51:00.003+02:00

Wow. I feel confused, a bit saddened and deeply questioning. I write all of that with a caveat. I am a foreigner in South Africa, I am active in so many ways, but in many others I can just be an observer. But having lived here for quite a while, being the talkative and questioning observer that I am, I have learned a great deal about politics. Several months ago I had a conversation with former Umkhonto we Sizwe members (armed wing of the ANC) who said they don’t like Jacob Zuma, the President of the ANC and now presumptive President of the country, and don’t want to vote for him, but then also say if they don’t vote, what did they spend years in the struggle fighting for? Last week I was in Pietermaritzburg, the capital of KwaZulu Natal where Zuma is from and has a huge following, where his trial at the Magistrate’s Court was held, where a judge threw out the corruption charges on procedural grounds. There, the man who took me out to a few high schools for screenings explained why he believes Zuma is a great man and will make a great President, why Zuma’s rape trial was a plot, and gave a cultural explanation as to why Zuma told a court that taking a shower after sex would prevent him from contracting HIV. I don’t judge, I listen. In that way, you get to hear everything.

But in the last 48 hours, things in South Africa have been turned upside down. The headlines today are dramatic: OUT! How Mbeki was toppled, Thabo Mbeki: Judgment Day, Mbeki: A Dream Destroyed, Thabo’s Shame, The Anatomy of a ‘Coup’ What follows is a mix of “It’s not a good day for the country,” “Opposition parties condemn ANC move,” “Wish come true for new ANC leadership,” You can guess from this that Thabo Mbeki has been forced to resign as President of South Africa. In a vote last week by the ANC National Executive Committee, they officially voted to ask him to step down. The ANC Secretary General is quoted saying that, “[Mbeki] did not display any shock or any depression, he welcomed the news and agreed that he is going to participate in the process and the formalities.” Who welcomes that kind of news? Perhaps he was stealing himself. Tension between Mbeki and Zuma has been building for years, got stronger when Zuma was elected President of the ANC in January and Mbeki may have known that this was inevitable once the court last week threw out corruption charges against Zuma on procedural grounds and then implied that Mbeki’s government was meddling in the case.

Is Mbeki really that bad a president that he should be kicked out like this? That the democratic process, which would have led to elections and a Zuma victory in March, had to be usurped? Well, as my friend Louise reminds me, many people don’t like Mbeki – he is aloof, an intellectual, not the “man of the people” that Zuma is. His positions on AIDS were egregious and devastating – rejecting the benefits of ARVs, implying that garlic and lemons were a cure, that it was a plot against Africa by the pharmaceutical industry. And his friendship with Mugabe, a friendship from struggle days, clouded his ability to act swiftly and condemn Mugabe, proclaim crisis in the country, after the elections in Zimbabwe earlier this year.

And yet I sigh. In fact, the line that made me the saddest was not hearing that he would not be President of the country, but was a line in the New York Times yesterday – that the ANC may ask Mbeki to leave the party – lose his membership to a party he has belonged to since he was 14, for 52 years. This to a man whose father Govan was tried and imprisoned on Robben Island for 23 years with Mandela, who himself went into exile when he was 20 and was groomed by the iconic Oliver Tambo for his leadership in the party. These are not Jacob Zuma’s struggle credentials – he was on Robben Island for 10 years himself – but they are deep ties to a party and a country I am sure he loves.

Most of my feelings towards Zuma stem from a simple statement he made after he was acquitted of rape, in a big trial a couple years ago. The woman was HIV positive and they did not use a condom. He said his reasons for taking a shower right after sex were to minimize his chances of contracting AIDS. That a man who was such a following could spread these untruths across a country that is plagued by AIDS is what I find most upsetting. If I were a South African, then there might be more.

I wonder what kind of President Zuma will make, but I also worry about his supporters. Those like Julius Malema, head of the ANC Youth League who, proclaiming that Jacob Zuma will be President announced, “Any force in our way we will eliminate. We are on a mission here. We will crush you. It doesn’t matter who you are, even if you are in the ANC.” This was a few months after Malema said that he would “kill for Zuma.” He said that his comment was misunderstood. I’m not sure how. But now, it is this. I can’t be angry, just confused at the turn of events.

The actions of the last 48 hours makes me think that South Africa is fulfilling the worst stereotype the West has of African countries that gain democracy and then don’t know what to do with it and subsequently collapse within it – turn into dictatorships, eject leaders without following the democratic processes they have created. South Africa is not collapsing any time soon. But it does make me think twice about how we all perceive democracy, what it means to people here, and also what it means to us in the U.S. I think we reflect more, care more only as those essential pieces of democracy that we value are at risk of disappearing.

In the past couple weeks, I have continuously gone back to what a South African friend has said. He thinks that people here believe in democracy and proclaim proudly that they live in a democratic country. They know that means an independent judiciary, a free press, and free and fair elections. But they don’t necessarily know why these things, the free press, the independent judiciary, and democratic processes are central elements of what makes a democracy work, why they are important and must be maintained and valued. And that leads to questioning – of the loyalty and actions of judges, of the words and drawings of journalists and political cartoonists. We can make a comparison to home -- George W. Bush has an approval rating of around 25%. Millions want him out of office yesterday. Yet we wait. We know we have a 4-year election cycle, we are in the midst of a tough campaign, we know that no matter how we feel about Bush, we have to wait until November for elections and this President that most of us cannot bear will be our President until January. Could the Zuma camp not have waited too?

What was going to be the subject of this latest dispatch was also democracy – was about a free press and political cartoons. Two weeks ago Sunday brought the publication of a very controversial cartoon by the cartoonist Zapiro. Ever since Zuma’s rape trial, Zapiro has drawn him with a showerhead coming out of the top of his head. In this particular cartoon, he is unbuckling his pants, the top of his butt is showing, and his cronies – Malema from the Youth League, the ANC Secretary General, the head of the South African Communist Party and the head of COSATU, the trade union are holding down a woman. She is labeled Justice and Zuma is getting ready to rape her. The ANC Secretary General is pictured saying, “Go for it Boss.” There were outcries from the Zuma camp. Malema cried, “If he is so disrespectful now, what kinds of things will he do when Zuma is president?!” Zuma may sue Zapiro and has sued journalists before. Other people quoted in a newspaper hear wrote, its about time, this is exactly how I feel, who also say if this cartoon were written in words it would not be controversial. But Zuma and his camp are upset. Do they forget that with democracy comes freedom to criticize those in power? Are we simply supposed to criticize behind closed doors? A week later, the same cartoon appeared in the Mail & Guardian, but this time Zuma was talking, “Before we start, let me just say that we respect you.” Yes, these cartoons made a big statement, they were certainly controversial, but within the realm of democracy, they are should be drawn and discussed. Not silenced.

My roommate just said she thinks the best thing would be if this led to a split in the ANC. To a new party forming. New debate, more discussion, a new life for the party of the struggle perhaps. Tonight I will go and watch Mbeki’s State of the Nation. There will likely be an acting President appointed in the next few days, and elections moved up so that Zuma can take his place soon. I will continue to watch it all unfold. An interesting time, no doubt, to live here and have a front row seat to all of this.

Dispatch: Tired Hearts

2008-07-24T11:43:00.001+02:00

I am coming home for 3 weeks next week. I am, of course, excited to see family and friends (and some of you) but I am also looking forward to a break. I am overwhelmed. If only deep breathing would help I’d be fine, but what causes this feeling will not quickly go away tomorrow, the root causes will probably not go away ever. Today on the radio, I heard an add for a children’s hospital and at the end a child says, “Have a heart, give to children in need.” I have a heart. It is a big one, a generous one, and a tired one.

Mongamo, Babalwa, Noluyanda, Amanda, Sandile, Mabhuti, Phila, Sithembele. Those are the eight former students, some from Nyanga some from my Creative Arts Workshop (CAW) in Khayelitsha, who are on my immediate radar. But I am having lunch with two more from the CAW tomorrow, two stunning boys who I feel guilty about because I have not spent any time with them since I arrived in January. There are two others who have appeared out of the woodwork in the last 3 days, punched me in the stomach with their news, and left me filled with questions and of course dreams of deep pockets. But while some people may think that money alone will help these kids, save these kids, ensure their bright future, it is so much more than that. There are many questions. How do you decide which person deserves an investment? And how do you ensure that they make the commitment? And sometimes, how did I become responsible for so much.

So what’s on my mind, what’s overwhelming me lately? Lest you think all is sad today, what is also making me smile? I’ll just tell you about these kids and you can decide. (I have put the names of the students in bold, but also the names of those who have supported them and me in this journey. There are certainly more and I thank you too.)

Mongamo recently got a spot in the residence at University of the Western Cape. He moves in today. (Smiling) Over the break, he worked for three weeks at Woolworth’s (for those of you in the U.S. it is not a five and dime store!) the company that gave him his bursary. This bursary was made possible through the efforts of my friend and sometimes work colleague, Dylan and his incredible fiancée Jennie who works at Woolworths and has given Mongamo incredible support. It was not a completely thrilling three weeks, but it was his first real work experience. With his bursary, his focus on his studies and his mentor at the company, I can check the big things off my list. I of course do not sit in his classes or take his exams and cannot ensure his passing in applied mathematics or stats or maths or anything else. But I can believe in him and he knows that.

Babalwa just completed two and a half years of a mechanical engineering degree and now needs to find a training position for a year of practical experience. She has been trying for a month, her school sent out CV’s on her behalf, but nothing yet. So yesterday, Dylan asked her to come to his office – where I also work. Dylan, in what will surely be helpful for him, but which is so generous and fills my heart, is hiring Babalwa to do admin work for him for the next few weeks, until she gets a position. Her first job. I think it is good that I will be away for three weeks, to let her try this and get her feet wet without me watching.

Noluyanda lives off campus in a house with 9 other girls, including Amanda from CAW. They have two classes together even though they are studying different things, study together some, cook together some. She is happy and almost sorted. Her scholarship (which she and Babalwa received because of my film and Dylan’s efforts) finally paid the university for tuition, but neglected to pay her for accommodation, food, books etc. Dylan lent her money for rent a couple months ago and I paid for this month. We are actively writing letters and making calls so she can get her funds and her independence. Amanda has a bursary for her education degree; she is committed to teaching for 4 years after she completes her diploma and just moved out of her house for the first time. She is getting used to being away from her family, cooking for herself, being on her own. Whether an hour by taxi and train or eight hours by car, leaving home is always a transition.

Sandile is Amanda’s older brother. He has big dreams and renewed confidence since I knew him a few years ago. He was always confident, but he truly sees his future. Sandile has developed a great concept for a magazine for high school students to inspire them to think about their futures. The magazine will include articles and interviews about higher education and career choices as well as offer resources and guidance to students as they select their subjects and look forward to their careers and the outside world. It will give them what he says he never had. Sandile wants to be a journalist and thanks to Vernon Rose, who I met because of his work with American university study abroad programs, Sandile got an interview at Bush Radio, which calls itself the Mother of Community Radio in Africa. They play great music, but also programs on health and education and arts and human rights and are an important voice in this community. Sandile got himself an internship which he starts September 1. Right now, we don’t know if they give him money for transport or any kind of stipend, but we have a month to sort that out. For now, after months of hanging out at home, Sandile will be paid eight rand an hour as a check out clerk at a grocery store. I am happy, he is happy because he will be busy and have something to do. That could be that if Sandile didn’t want more. And he should want more and I love that he wants more. He wants to go to university to be a journalist. Another generous friend and former co-teacher in the CAW, Kirsten, who lives in Scotland, has offered to help pay for his studies, but she, like me, isn’t rich, and he also has to get in first. So where and how? He can pay R30,000 for a year at a private college or get a very good three-year education at a local university, which we would all prefer. But will 4 months of an internship help him get in, or does he need a whole year and have to wait until 2010 to start. And does he have the patience to wait for his dreams?

Mabhuti shone in a group of upstart boys in class 12D in 2005 who were all smart and a bit brazen, but really enjoyable to teach. Mabhuti struggles at home, he lives with his grandmother and an assortment of other people, sometimes his mother too. In 2005, he told me, “For me, there is no space for me, everything is so tight together – sometimes I think I want to go away from home but I know I will lose things…I sit down and ask myself what can I do for myself so I am not suffocated.” About the education he was getting, he said, “I have never failed a grade. Sometimes I look at my reports and wonder why I passed.” He did pass Matric and started a course in accounting at Cape College, a sort of community college, but ran out of money after one semester. In the first two months of my return, Mabhuti tracked me down so he could ask if I could help him get back into school, sort out a future. There is a great school here called TSIBA, which offers a unique Foundation Year Certificate in Business Administration followed by an enriched Bachelor in Business Administration focused on Entrepreneurial Leadership – and it is free. I learned of TSIBA through Leigh Meinert who works there and now uses my film sometimes. Last week, Mabhuti and I met in the Oscar Mpetha HS parking lot where I gave him an application and information about the school. We went over it and when it is complete, I’ll go over it with him before he submits it. I gave him the application, I explained things and answered questions, but will he complete it? I remain optimistic for that and for him.

Phila was in my Creative Arts Workshop. She is my friend Max’s niece. His brother, her father, died several years ago. She struggled in school, failed Matric, but went to Cape College and receiver her equivalency. Just that will not get her much more than a job as a waitress or a shop clerk. She wants to complete a year and a half course in business management. Her sister, who dropped out of school at grade 11 and now has a child, told Phila she should just get a job, school isn’t important. What will more school get her? An opportunity for a better job or to apply to a university. South Africans have told me that this is a good next step for her. But what about money? When the last term ended in May, Phila about wanting to go back to school, but knew she couldn’t. She got a job passing out flyers about funeral insurance on Saturdays, she interviewed as a secretary. And kept thinking about school. But when she told me that school cost R1500 a term, I couldn’t believe that that was all that was keeping her from a better future. I told Dylan casually that I was thinking of paying and he said I should send him an email and we could raise that money from friends. I sent the same email to both Emily, who started the CAW with me, and Kirsten. When I spoke to the college, it turned out Phila had past due funds, and that a term is actually R3800. So I paid the past due funds so she could start and we have begun to raise funds. As I said before, money is not enough. On Saturday, Phila and I are going to Khayelitsha to meet her family on her father’s side – her aunt, her older cousin who is my friend, and her grandmother. We are writing up a contract so she will have accountability, know what is expected of her and know that she has support. Phila failed Matric. Am I 100 percent sure that she will succeed in this program? No, I can’t be. Does that make me hesitant in asking my friends to raise money for her? A bit. Do I believe in her and what she wants? Yes.

Sithembele was Sipho’s best friend. He has beautiful handwriting and while teachers say they don’t have favorites, he was always one of mine. He also was a production assistant, sometimes translator, and very good soundman on the film. He passed Matric and is now a griller at Spur, a Denny’s type meat restaurant chain. Last year, he spent six months working as a trainer with youth for the Amy Biehl Foundation but the job ended. He would be happy to do another job like that for the time being. When I talked to him last week he said, “I’m frustrated Molly. I can’t be a griller for the rest of my life. I want to go to school. There are people with lower Matric scores than me at university.” And when we hung out on Saturday, we talked about how he isn’t sure what he wants to major in; he wants to go to a career fair to learn about the possibilities. As far as I am concerned, Sithembele MUST go back to school. Sithembele has promise, Sithembele wants more. So for now, I am looking for a career fair. Deciding what is next is first, getting in is second, for now, the money doesn’t have to overwhelm, just the question of whether he will get there.

I had that conversation with Sithembele on Saturday when I hung out with him and Mongamo and Sandile. We ate meat, had a couple beers, talked for a few hours and watched Manchester United play Kaiser Chiefs. It was a great afternoon, I was able to breathe and feel a bit less overwhelmed. The next day I hopped a plane to Port Elizabeth for two days of screenings and then I got a call from a former student. She lost her job that she has had for almost two years. She said she knew they wanted her out and were just trying to find a way. I don’t know. She is four months pregnant and her boyfriend wants none of it. She is happy about the baby. Happy about “having someone to love me unconditionally. When I am down, he will look at me and say, it’s all right mommy.” She said she is opening a hair salon in Delft, I have no idea how that venture will go but her confidence is contagious. She, like everyone else, also wants to go back to school, just a business management program. Can I print out information about the program, she asked. I told her I would bring it by. “And one more thing.” she said. “Molly, can you bring me a book?” A book?! Not money, nothing more than a book. I got off the phone and cried. Today I’ll drop off two books at her house when I go to Nyanga for my weekly visit with Sipho’s brothers.

Monday, when I turned on my phone after a screening, there was another text. This one from Rose who was in my CAW for a month, left and then rejoined several months later. She had a child in the interim, not that we asked her to leave, she just disappeared. Her text:

Hi molly its Rose. Since my mom passed last year no one is interested in my studies and now I owe the college where I study a maximum fee of R2000 which they wont allow me to write my final examination you are my only hope out of this. Since you know I have represented Western Province Netball this year the same thing happened this and also I have financial problem please molly I really need you now. See you soon.

So what do I do? I haven’t seen Rose in a year, and then it was only for an hour, after not seeing her for another year and a half. I do not know how she is doing in school, I didn’t know she was playing netball for the province, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. It is painful to hear all of this, painful to have to prioritize, to acknowledge one’s limits and also be able to say, look, I have no idea what’s going on in your life so I can’t just give you money. And from my position of privilege, some understand better than others that the fact that I have more money than them doesn’t mean that I have tons of money. In fact most of these kids never ask for any.

Yesterday I didn’t know what to do. Today I am a bit more settled. I know that I cannot help everyone, I cannot save everyone. I can be an advocate but not a bank. I can find out what Sandile’s options are for school and take Sithembele to a career fair and counsel him on what seems best. I can edit Mabhuti’s application essay, call the bank for Noluyanda, and see if Mongamo needs blankets for his new room. I can bring Amanda a pizza for dinner and a picture to make her feel more at ease.

But I am just me. And today when Patrick, a refugee from the DRC who washes cars in the parking lot at my gym and helps me with my French sometimes, who lost his shack home in the xenophobic violence in May and just needs to find some food and a shelter for the night for himself and his one and a half year old son and 3 month old baby, asked if I could help him out, approached me because he said he knew the kind of person I was, I said no and that was easy– because I just had no cash in my pocket. So tomorrow I’ll bring him money – but how much? R20 is just $2.60 and R50 is $6.60. Then again, I don’t want to set a precedent.

So today, that’s what is on my mind and my heart.

Dispatch: The Murder Capital

2008-07-03T14:35:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I went to the murder capital of South Africa. I find myself there often, at least once a week, took my parents there a few weeks ago and several of you have been and didn’t even know it. If a personal murder capital is the place where more people you know have been killed than any where else, then it is my murder capital. Between the time that I left Cape Town in January 2006 and when I returned for a short visit in July 2007, three of my former students, one of them a close friend, have been murdered – first Luvuyo, then Sipho, then just a week later Sivuyile. When I left there were 48 students in class 12A. Today there are 45. People would say they were gangsters, I would say they were my students, I would say they tried, while I only talked to Sipho extensively about the future, I would say they all wanted more from life. Is it too much to say they were victims of circumstance? I don’t think so, but I’ll let you decide.

As you may have already guessed, it is Nyanga that is, for the second year in a row, the murder capital of South Africa. The latest crime statistics were on the front page of Tuesday’s paper. South Africa is the fourth most violent country in the world. And then on page 7 in big bold letters – NYANGA MURDER CAPITAL. 303 murders reported in the past 11 months. So what does it mean to live in the murder capital? I would think it must affect your psyche to be labeled such. To have the place you live, where you grew up, your home, splashed across newspapers as the most violent place in the land.

When I asked Anele, Sipho’s brother, if he had heard the news, he had and it didn’t seem to surprise him one bit. “I think murder is the welcome note to Nyanga,” he said. The welcome note. Gangs and drugs are rampant. The police have a lot of work to do here and are quickly defending themselves, saying they could solve the problem with 85 more cops on the force. But it seems the citizens of Nyanga are not surprised. Just like I know that the neighborhood I grew up in is safe, they know that there’s is not. So maybe I am making too much of this, over thinking the label’s impact on the community. It certainly makes other people want to avoid Nyanga. But I also believe that these labels diminish the community.

As I write this I am wondering how my mother will respond, knowing that I regularly travel in and out of this space. I hope that since she has been there, knows and loves people who live there, that she will read this and remember what is good about Nyanga rather than begin to worry. I have never experienced violence in Nyanga, never felt unsafe, rather I, in my whiteness and Americanness and even with my camera, have been embraced.

So tomorrow I will go and pick up Anele and Siya for a movie and next Saturday, I will bring some visitors from the U.S. to meet people, visit Nyanga and eat meat. (If you are reading this and coming to visit South Africa soon, I hope I have not made you afraid.) Then I will go back to Rondebosch, I will return to the suburbs. And they will stay in the murder capital. What does that mean?

POSTSCRIPT - Dispatch: Few Words and Testing Hope Press

2008-05-25T18:03:00.002+02:00

I wanted to write a quick postscript for those of you who were wondering about Brian, my friend from Zimbabwe. I saw him yesterday and it turns out he does live in Du Noon, an informal settlement where two Somalians were killed on Thursday and where the violence started in Cape Town. On most weekdays anjd Saturdays, Brian can be found selling his wares in front of a set of shops near my flat and is well known by people who frequent the shops. When I saw him yesterday, he told me that a family who lives in Rondebosch has taken him in -- the husband is a British Airways pilot who has always been friendly with Brian. As we stood there and talked for 20 minutes, several older women came by to ask how he was, say they were worried about him. Brian is not the only one experiencing this generosity -- my friend Louise said that her partner's friends have taken in a young Zimbabwean who lives in the township of Philippi. I hear these stories and see the huge relief effort and try to feel a bit optimistic ... I saw several kids this weekend, all of whom met me in my side of town instead of being picked up as I usually do. It was Mongamo who initially said, let's meet somewhere safe. He looked terribly tired when we hung out and I asked what was wrong and he said he is just so sad... Nyanga was chaos on Friday and bullets on Friday night, and he is simply so sad that this is happening in his country.

In more positive news, Testing Hope has been getting a lot of great press in papers here and I want to share a couple of the articles.

One was in the Sunday Times today -- a nice profile of the students: http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Article.aspx?id=772179

Another is from Friday's Star newspaper (also national) about the film's implications for education in SA -- http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=105&art_id=vn20080523054804169C716049

Sending out love and hopes for calm.

Dispatch: Few Words

2008-05-23T20:46:00.001+02:00

It seems I would be remiss in not addressing what is happening in South Africa right now, and probably making headlines in your local paper. I’m not an expert, but everyone and anyone who is living here feels palpably the impact and devastation of the xenophobic violence. If you look up Xenophobia on ww.w.dictionary.com you get a standard definition, but before the definition comes two Sponsored Links – advertisements to lure us to another website. The Xenophobia page on www.dictionary.com offers us two:

Xenophobia Photos
Watch the Flames of Hate photos with commentary at The Times
multimedia.thetimes.co.za10

Rules Losing Belly Fat
Lose 9 lbs every 11 Days By Following these 10 Idiot Rules.
www.FatLoss4Idiots.com

I don’t know what is more troubling and strange – that someone perceives a connection between xenophobia and belly fat or that The Times is actively promoting their devastating photos of the latest terror here. I am not stupid, I know the Times is a business, I know they need to promote, but I was not expecting to find them with my definition – then again, these raw pictures do define xenophobia.

If you choose to move forward in your exploration of xenophobia and you click on The Times link, you may see something that you have already seen. A man seated on the ground, on fire, burning to death and two policemen trying to figure out what to do. As a student of South Africa I remember reading about the necklace killings in the early nineties, one piece of the black on black violence that raged in some townships, where people would fill a tire with gasoline, throw it around someone, light it on fire, and burn the person to death. This, I had thought, was this country’s past.

To me, this seems to have escalated so quickly – the majority of the violence has taken place in the Gauteng province, but has moved on to four other provinces, including here in Cape Town. Since the attacks began on May 11, 42 foreigners have been killed in Gauteng, 27,000 have been displaced and 400 people have been arrested. Mozambiqan miners have worked here for years. I read yesterday that the governement of Mozambique is organizing to accommodate a mass influx of people, packing busses and fleeing home. Thousands are awaiting busses to go back to Zimbabwe. I just read of one man who moved here 13 years ago from Zimbabwe, just got his South African citizenship last year, but his neighbors said, he must go, because he is of a different tribe. Here in Cape Town, two Somalis were killed last weekend and another was killed last night, in the first major riots that flared up in Du Noon, an informal settlement here.

So how does frustration turn to anger and then violence so quickly? How do community meetings and discussions turn to mobs? How does confusion build?
I have seen too many pictures of the bleeding, the injured, the looting, the burning, mobs carrying sticks and machetes and knives, the dying. So why? Resentment against migrants who come to Gauteng to work has been brewing for years. “They are taking our jobs,” one hears over and over again. Is that rational for this brutality? In higher spheres, some people say that Mbeki should have spoken out about Mugabe and the elections in Zimbabwe sooner and that is a factor.

These foreigners are from all over – not just Zimbabwe and Mozambique, but Zambia, Malawi, and others. As they plead with people to stop the violence, politicians and others often say, these people come from countries that opened their arms to us during the struggle. When our people needed to escape the apartheid regime, to go into exile, our neighboring countries embraced us, often at their own risk. We must remember that, embrace them. I do not argue with that but I do think that it must be hard to remember history when food prices are rising, when you are hungry, jobless, struggling to make ends meet, maybe living in an informal settlement, maybe didn’t get the education you deserve. That is not an excuse or a rationalization. I do not excuse this ugliness, this brutal behavior and it makes no sense to me, but one can think that those factors might have been a seed.

Know as I paint this bleak picture that people are upset, angry, confused about how this could be happening in their country, how blacks could be killing other blacks because of tribalism, how humans could be treating other humans with such disregard – there was a vigil tonight in front of Parliament, people gathering to mourn, to reflect, to turn to their leaders seeking quick action to bring a stop to this. Sunday is Africa Day, it celebrates the unity of the continent, the founding of what is now the African Union. How will South Africa celebrate this year?

At my gym parking lot, I often talk to Patrick, who is from the DRC and works there washing cars. Yesterday I asked if he and his friends are afraid. “No,” he nonchalantly replied. “We cannot live in fear.” But, he also said, that this violence doesn’t make sense. Some of you have met my friend Brian, a law student from Zimbabwe who has lived here for several years making beaded crafts. He stays in an informal settlement about 20 minutes away. I didn’t see him today. I am sure that he is fine, but I will look for him tomorrow.

Dispatch: Moments From A Visit

2008-05-13T16:01:00.006+02:00

It has been over six weeks since my last dispatch. I can’t honestly say it was to give you a break from reading and must admit it feels strange not to have been writing, although there has certainly been writing, just not of this kind. I recently submitted my first piece for www.edutopia.org, a website and magazine for teachers in the U.S., continue teaching my university course, have moved and moved again and will hopefully be settled in a new flat by the end of the month, but for the last few weeks, life has been wonderfully about visitors.

Thea, one of my oldest friends from high school who many of you know, and her friend John arrived in Cape Town a few weeks ago. We had a stunning trip through the Karoo and the Eastern Cape – we drove through stunning mountain passes, were chased by baboons (safely ensconced in the car, but if you haven’t seen them run, baboons are scary), slept on the edge of the ocean, saw two elephants become friends at a watering hole, and rode horses (after some hesitation on my part!) 5 days of stunning driving, lots of ostriches, good food, then back to Cape Town. We celebrated Thea’s birthday at my favorite restaurant in Kalk Bay by the water where the staff sang to her in English and Xhosa. A bit sick and plied with celebratory wine, I found it one of the most fantastic moments of our journey.

What was incredibly special for me was introducing Thea and John to my old students. A few days after their arrival, we walked around Nyanga with Babalwa, Noluyanda and Mongamo and then had lunch, joined by Sipho’s brother Anele. John brought lots of clothes for Noluyanda’s boyfriend, who recently lost everything when his shack burned down, and Babalwa was thrilled to have some new blazers and dresses from Thea. The next day, Sunday, we all went to Mzoli’s Place with Sandile, Mongamo and his friends who are also my old students, as well as my friends Tim and Jeff. Mzoli’s Place is hard to describe -- a combination butchery, braai place (bbq), people gather to eat, to hang out, to drink, to dance – Thea says it reminds her of a huge block party and there are thousands of people who go every weekend. Tables are crowded outside under a big awning, people are everywhere, you can barely find a table and tons more are hanging out on the street and outside the overhang. You go pick out your meat from a counter, bring it to the braai where they grill it and then call your number. I like to buy a loaf of bread too – and of course most people walk over to a local liquor store and bring in some beer. The music plays loudly – mostly Kwaito –- which is essentially South African hip hop, some American rap and hip hop, and everyone is dancing. Sometimes it even involves proposals -- I met a man named Sibongile who wants to marry me. It is here where the Western norms of the perfect body are upended and this man likes my “African body.” Thea was like a sister apparently, he said, but I was wife material. No date set for the nuptials, but this did get us a table and some chairs after an hour of waiting. He wanted to know how my parents would feel about me marrying a Xhosa man and I explained that he wouldn’t have to pay lobola or bride price because I am Jewish. He said he would still marry me even though the Jews colonized some of South Africa – I corrected him there and moved over to talk to a friend. I took his number because what else can you do, and he said that if I didn’t call him, he would know that fate had it that we are not meant to be. (In case you are still wondering, there was no phone call!)

Thea, for those of you who don’t know, is also a graphic designer and did all the designing for my film – website, invitations, flyers, DVD case, study guide, and continues to do more than a friend should in this capacity. (Shameless plug, www.theakarasdesign.com if you are looking to hire one.) Like many of you, she has been with me on this journey intimately and through her work and the many times she has watched the film feels some connection to my students. These efforts many of my friends and family have made to truly connect and relate to these people on video, in my far away life, have been extraordinarily meaningful. People who have come into this space, either through the film and stories or directly by taking the N2 highway, getting off at Borcherd’s Quarry Road exit and heading into Nyanga, mean so much to me. To that end, I tell you this story –

For the past few months, a great University of Connecticut student named Tim has been coming to Nyanga with me once a week to tutor Anele in math. I usually talk to Siya or sit in a corner and read while they work. Tim has been really generous with himself and his time and I know that the relationship with Anele has been meaningful for both of them. Unfortunately, Tim left SA at the end of April, so last week was my first tutoring session without him – luckily I had Thea (John left a few days earlier). I immediately missed Tim when Anele showed me fraction equations that required cross multiplication, but it is amazing how some of that high school math sticks in your brain.

Before we dove in, Thea and I went outside to see Anele’s new room. For the past year, his cousin-sister (an expression used here for a cousin who is like a sister, also cousin-brother) has been living in the shack in back, and in the last few weeks, Anele and Sandiswa switched. She now sleeps in Sipho’s old room and Anele now has the shack in back as a bedroom. Siya who is 13 is back in their old room and no longer occasionally sleeps with his older brother, which I know has given him comfort. I had never been in back – Anele has a big bed, an old TV with no sound, a bucket on a table to catch the rain that drips in, a side table with a notebook and a framed picture of me and Sipho that I gave Sipho when I left. We talked about him briefly, and then as we were walking out, Thea, ever so gently, said to Anele, “I really wish I could have met your brother. I have heard so many great things about him.” It seems to me that when your brother was involved with drugs, with crime, was murdered by gangsters in a neighborhood filled with crime, people don’t often come to you and say, I wish I could have known him, I hear he was special. But those words are so important to hear, always, and what I know for sure is that a person cannot simply ever be defined as good or bad. While I spent the rest of the afternoon doing math on one couch, Thea sat across from us talking with Siya, looking through a photo album of his and Sipho’s pictures, listening and learning about his life. Now that she and John are gone, I go over our trip in my mind, and lots of our adventures make me smile, but this one always makes me pause.

With friends gone, now I am back to work, working on film outreach and planning my last class at the university for Saturday. I graded my students’ first assignments and was very pleased with most of their work. (I was also reminded of how cumbersome grading can be!) They wrote lesson plans in groups and then had to teach them, and write a paper about the process. Several people did really extraordinary work – high school teachers who showed Freedom Writers and asked students to write articles to local police chiefs about gangs and drugs in their communities, primary school teachers who showed a movie about a dog at a fire station and brought in a fire man, and science teachers who showed Flushed Away and did lessons on sewage and water. Of course there are those students who turned in one or two page papers, who didn’t completely get the elements of the lesson plan I was hoping for, but they will have another chance in their final project.

And that brings me to the end of this dispatch. With class Saturday and my visit next week to Joburg for a screening at the Development Bank of South Africa and a visit to the… Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls … there will no doubt be a new dispatch soon.

Dispatch: Welcome to Fort Hare

2008-03-24T19:40:00.000+02:00

Well it’s the end of Easter Monday – at least on this side of the world. My Easter yesterday was sunny and quiet. I bought a card from a man on the street in front of my video store. When I asked where he was from he said, “Rhodesia.” “Not Zimbabwe?” I replied. Most of the men who sell crafts in the intersection near my flat and this row of stores are all from Zimbabwe, but this was the first one who said Rhodesia – and he couldn’t have been any older than me, so clearly grew up in Zimbabwe. His answer to my question, No, Rhodesia. He continued, explaining that this Zimbabwe has too many elections and too many disappointments.

For those of you who don’t have a 12-page insert in your newspaper about the upcoming elections, March 29 is election day in Zimbabwe, and a question looms, will this be a referendum on Robert Mugabe, will one of his opponents be able to win, or will things continue to be the same. To be, according to this man, a disappointment.

This is not the real moment that I wanted to share with you in this dispatch, just one of many small moments that seem to continuously define my time here.

Rather, it is a visit to the University of Fort Hare that I made two weeks ago that had quite an impact on me. Fort Hare is historic – it is the oldest historically Black university in Southern Africa. It has produced such leaders as Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Robert Sobukwe, and even Robert Mugabe.

I was invited by Scott Chiverton, a fellow American who is here on a State Department fellowship working in the education faculty at the university, to screen the film. The first screening was at the East London campus. This campus actually used to belong to Rhodes University, based in Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape, and is therefore more diverse than its counterpart, the original campus two hours away in Alice.

The audience was third and fourth year students and several faculty members – Black, Colored, White. I have learned that no screening is the same. Whatever questions I anticipate, there are always unexpected moments – moments of surprise, moments of anger, moments when I realize how wonderful it is to create something and have people respond. The racial dynamics when we walked in to set up were stark – a reminder of my Afro American Studies class in high school – White students on one side, Black on the other. We moved seats around, into the middle of the room like a theatre, but still most Black students remained at tables around the periphery. During the film, there was laughter, there was visible discomfort, there were audible sighs, there was, at times, complete silence from the audience, and when the title card came up that Noluyanda had had a baby, there was a loud, “WHAT?”

In this first of three screenings, it was a brave White student named Kim who lingers in my mind as well as the silence of many others. I saw Kim’s hand up before her tears began and she explained how privileged her childhood and life has been, how she couldn’t believe that people lived and learned this way and couldn’t believe how much she didn’t know, doesn’t know, and how much she took for granted in her own life. Surrounded by fellow White students as well Xhosa students, most of whom grew up in rural areas or townships and probably attended similarly struggling schools as Oscar Mpetha, she bravely acknowledged her advantages, her opportunities, as well as her ignorance of the lives of so many others. I would be remiss not to explain that the Xhosa students in the room didn’t say anything. Not one of them spoke –- to comment, to question, to argue. Later, a few told Scott they felt self-conscious of their English so they didn’t talk. He was not surprised at the dynamic.

The next morning we took the two-hour drive to Alice. To get to Alice, you drive through the rolling former homeland of the Ciskei – long stretches of grasses, mountains in the distance, the occasional animal, everyone from young men to older mama’s hitchhiking to work, school and town. It is beautiful. About half way between East London and Alice is King William’s Town, the home of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko and where he is buried. I was last here when I took Sipho to see Biko’s grave on our way back from filming in Noluyanda’s home village in December 2005.

The University of Fort Hare is beautiful—many old buildings, trees, a much older campus than UWC where I teach. I got a tour from an enthusiastic man who heads the international office. He told me the stories of Freedom Square, pointed out the former dormitories of Mandela and Sobukwe and spoke of the division between the African National Congress and the Pan African Congress. The University holds all of the ANC archives as well as the archives of several important people including Mandela and Govan Mbeki. There on a shelf were Mandela’s photo albums (not that I opened them!) and in front of me on a table was Mbeki’s guitar case, collaged with pieces from magazines, along with a few songs, written on napkins from his time on Robben Island. The amount of history in those rooms is profound and only emphasizes to me the power of the history of that university and this country.

We had a good crowd at the screening. There was more laughter and more engagement, more talking during the movie, than I have ever heard, but in a new and different way. Many see their lives and the lives of those they will teach on the screen. Some come from very rural Eastern Cape, they may know Ngcobo where we filmed and they may not have ever seen a city like Cape Town. As they learned of Sipho’s death there was an audible, “Jesus Christ,” from a girl who’s eyes looked like they were popping out of her head.

There were several questions about my comfort level in Nyanga – about race, language, privilege, and, of course, danger. Nyanga in what I feel is such an unfair label, won the prize of being the murder capital of South Africa in the last crime survey. Moving on, one professor spoke passionately of how they need to create not just good teachers, but social activists as well. One student asked why I didn’t tell the story of a White school and a Black school. I explained that I wanted to keep my focus small, to truly tell the story of a few students, of one school, rather than a larger comparison. He seemed satisfied, but I appreciated the question, particularly coming from this space.

The final screening was back in East London for first year students. The power of this discussion was unexpected. In this mixed class, the Xhosa students spoke out. All stood up when they spoke, just like many of my students did. One talked about how the film was a challenge to all of them to be good teachers and commit to all aspects of their students lives. Another, a 37 year old mother of five, first asked forgiveness for her English, then turned to the White students and asked them not to be afraid to go into the townships, to meet the people, to teach in the townships like I had. I used the moment as an opport5unity to emphasize that no matter who they end up teaching, they have the obligation and the power to tell them and show them about the lives of all South Africans. One woman said, “But we are not free. Apartheid is still here.” Her classmate responded, “But we are here. We are all in this room together. We have opportunity.” Here I took the opportunity to be honest about the failings of my own country, to talk about the persistent segregation in U.S. schools over fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education and how as much as we want things to move forward quickly, as much as we see some of the same injustices which plagued the country during apartheid, and the legacy of that terrible system persists, that change itself takes time.

Gives us some much needed laughs, one Xhosa guy got up to speak and first said, “In my culture, we usually don’t let women cut the ice, but because of the caliber of this conversation, its okay.” And then again there was a young White woman, the daughter of a single mother, tears in her eyes, talking about how her mom struggled but about how sheltered she was. Then she gave a caveat, “don’t think I am racist,” but, she continued, some people use apartheid as a reason not to work hard for themselves and I think it is important for people to not see themselves as victims.

There is always difficult feedback too. One professor sent me an email praising pieces of the film but finding in it a sub-text of blaming apartheid for everything and the subjects, my students, identifying as victims. He feared that an African audience would leave pitying themselves, that I am perpetuating a sense of victimhood. I was surprised, for these people are certainly not victims and do not see themselves that way. But we all look with our own eyes, approach things with our own pasts and experiences that color how we see the world. So it makes me sad and disappointed that he perceives the film in that way and I certainly hope that I am not encouraging a self-perception of victimhood, and I was upset to see the email. But I move forward, knowing my intentions, knowing the story, knowing that it is not perfect, but hoping to continue sparking the kind of dialogues I was able to engage in at the University of Fort Hare and to continue to be surprised.

Testing Hope Plug

2008-03-05T18:48:00.002+02:00

For those of you in D.C., please tell your friends that Testing Hope will be screened on March 15 at 1:30 pm in the D.C. International Film Festival. Go to www.dciff.org for more information. If you have friends in Madison or Miami, details on those festivals to come.

Dispatch: Prior Knowledge

2008-03-05T18:32:00.001+02:00

Prior knowledge. Have you ever been having a conversation with someone and you start to talk about something – an issue, a person, an idea – and realize the person you are talking to doesn’t know what you are talking about – they have little familiarity with the topic or one might say, minimal prior knowledge.

I think I first learned of the term “prior knowledge”, as it relates to teaching, when I was in Houston for my Teach for America training. But sometimes as a teacher you assume, especially when teaching adults, that people know certain things, have experienced certain things.

I’ve been thinking about prior knowledge for a few weeks ago, since my first day as a lecturer at the University of the Western Cape. My course -- Comparative Education A, Film and Pedagogy. I started off by asking my students to answer a simple questionnaire – where and what do you teach, what are your goals and concerns about the course, and a start to every film class, what is your favorite movie? We went around the room of about 20 teachers and each person shared one answer. The first teacher to share – my oldest and proving to be my most challenging student – felt the need to read the answers to ALL her questions. When she got to her favorite movie, she said Generations. Anyone who has ever lived in South Africa knows about Generations. It is one of the most popular soapies (soap operas) in the country. Every night at 8 pm, thousands tune in to see the dramatic goings on of characters like Queen, Sibusiso and Jack. Generations is, as you may have gathered, a television show. It is not a movie. I took a deep breath, but instead of correcting my student, probably more than 20 years my senior, I moved to the next student. As we went around, amidst Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone movies and one teacher who admits to being a sucker for teacher films like Dead Poets Society and Freedom Writers, at least five more people named a television show as their favorite films -- Generations, another soapie Rhythm Nation, and the popular American sitcom King of Queens. There I had it, a room full of adults, some of whom did not know the difference between a television show and a movie.

I have to admit, it hadn’t even occurred to me that the first thing I should do is discuss the difference between a television show and a movie. Why would it? It is a classroom of adults, of teachers and of course in my world, everyone goes to the movies. I make and watch documentaries, my parents go the movies almost every week and if you ask my sister what its like to rent a movie with me, she’ll tell you difficult because I usually have seen everything she wants to see.

Once the whole class had shared, I pointed out that the television shows they mentioned were not movies. But I didn’t pursue a discussion about the differences between the two. We moved on to other activities and when I went over the homework assignment –watch your favorite film and analyze it based on the main elements of film we discussed as well as any piece or theme in the film that might carry over into your curriculum -- I emphasized that they must do a movie and not a television show. (I am grading them now, a few will have to redo their papers, and again I am learning about prior knowledge, writing levels and the skills of those educating the youth of South Africa.)

I went home feeling like class had only gone okay and mulled over what needed to change. As I read over their questionnaires, I thought more about who my students are, where they come from and their journeys to get to my class. They are all working on B. Eds, at night and on Saturdays. All but one of my students are Black or Coloured. All teach in township schools and many grew up and some live now in those same townships. While I don’t know their exact ages, it seems everyone is at least 30 or older. Some are teachers because it was one of a few professions they had access to. Many were trained at colleges were not always the highest. They are children of apartheid, they own the legacy of their country’s history and as their teacher, it is a history that I must consider as I work to help them understand and experience film and think about how to bring it to their students. I sit and write this in my favorite new café, where they make a brilliant coffee and I could find the same atmosphere in a café at home. But most days that I am here, Trish, the owner, and I get into a conversation about the latest news or something we read and it generally leads to a discussion about South Africa, often about race, about the legacy, the history. It is always present, always here.

I realized that in order to teach film in their classes, I needed to make my students watch movies, experience movies, know different genres, love movies -- maybe not as much as I do. One of the first things I did on my return to Cape Town was renew my membership at the video store. So it was there, when I was looking for a movie to screen in my second class that I had my epiphany -- how many of my students had ever been to a video store? My mom took me to a library when I was very little and I still love libraries, love bookstores, love touching books, smelling books, reading the synopsis on the back. In that same way, I love lingering in a video store. I needed my students to feel that.

So I started class two by handing out index cards and asking them when they last saw a movie in the theatre, on TV and rented one from a video store, if ever. Some answers are below:

When was the last time you went to a movie theatre? What did you see?
While a few said last week, several people said years back or a very long time ago. For one man it was 1982, another woman saw Message In A Bottle in 2000, and others said a year ago.

Have you ever been to a video store? What was the last movie you rented?
More people said yes than I expected, but it was usually a long time ago. Some may have never been to a mainstream store, but rented a movie at a small spaza shop in the township – perhaps pirated DVDs. One had been but didn’t rent. Another had been but mostly watches cable now. Movies ranged from Happy Feet to Sweet November to A Dry White Season.

As I collected the index cards, I noticed that someone a new student Walker Texas Ranger was the last movie he saw which prompted our necessary discussion about the difference between films and TV shows. Finally we were all on the same page – as we moved forward, raced to see who could list the most movies in 3 minutes – winner gets a candy bar – watched some of Mad Hot Ballroom and worked in groups to think of how to use it in the classroom, I saw the energy rise, I saw the class gel. And I was excited to give them homework:
Go to a video store. Spend at least a half an hour there. Identify ten films that you haven’t seen that you think you could use in your classroom. Then write a page response about what it is like to be in a video store.

Our third class is this Saturday afternoon and I am excited to see their homework and for our lesson. As we move forward, doing our first activity with video cameras (thanks Andres!) and writing lesson plans to test out in their classrooms in the next few weeks, I will keep in mind my prior knowledge and their prior knowledge, my life experiences and there’s. Not lower my expectations or make things easier, but just consider it as I teach and present. We are all products of our experiences, our pasts, but also where we are born – from who our parents are to our neighborhoods and our schools to our country. And for me, here in South Africa, more so than, I think, at home, the impact of country looms larger.

Much is happening here – Jacob Zuma announced today that if he becomes president he will think about making a referendum to reintroduce the death penalty and racism has been all over the news with a meeting of the Black Journalists Forum that excluded Whites and a video made by White students at University of the Free State in protest to the university’s racial integration of the residences. The video depicts four white male students taking Black workers in their residence through a mock hazing process – making them swallow a bottle of beer, run a race, play rugby and then kneel and eat meat, which had been urinated upon. At the end of the video, the students say in Afrikaans, “That is what we think of integration.”

No doubt there will be more to write about soon.

Dispatch: What I Don't Know

2008-02-12T16:54:00.000+02:00

Every so often I have a moment when I realize that I know absolutely nothing. Not completely nothing, but just nothing about one subject or another – I know that my electricity went out for a few hours on Friday, but can’t explain the intricacies of the electricity crisis here; I can advise a friend on how to handle a tough work situation, but I am not with her in Mississippi, so I can’t truly see; I can look at a situation, meet a person, assess their life as if they are a new story to tell, but cannot truly know all the intricacies, no matter how many questions I ask.

This most recent moment occurred on Sunday. To start with some background, since my return, I have made a commitment – really to my friend Sipho – to spend time with his brothers, show them caring and help them in whatever small way I can. They are not him, they will not be my friends, but I truly feel in my heart that Sipho would want this, that my efforts and our time together would make Sipho smile, wherever he is. And so it is because I know Sipho would desperately want his brother Anele, now 18, to finish school, that I have made a plan to tutor Anele once a week.

A few weeks ago, we found out that Anele failed 10th grade for the second time. It came as a great surprise to him and to some of his teachers. But had the teachers been paying attention, it would have come as no surprise. Anele told me that last year he missed a lot of school – sometimes he went looking for odd jobs, sometimes he just didn’t go, and there was one entire month where he didn’t attend at all. I told him that I didn’t blame him. I mean his brother died halfway through the year. And if I steal myself to be objective, I understand, at a school where students are sometimes absent not only because of sickness but because they have been arrested, where funerals in the community are common and students’ siblings, friends, cousins and parents are passing away from AIDS, violence or other things, the death of a student’s brother can go unnoticed.

But of course I am far from objective and the idea that no one at the school acknowledged that Anele’s brother died, much less noticed that he wasn’t in class, tried to give him extra help, check in to see if he was okay, and just pay a bit of extra attention. That his parents do not live with him, do not open their eyes enough to note his absence from school is a whole other story. I do not really know them and why they do or don’t do what they do or the complexities of their lives, so I should not judge. But I know how I wish they treated their sons and had treated their son. I shouldn’t blame, and there is no one in particular to focus on my energies on, but I am deeply angry. These boys deserve so much more.

I told Anele that I didn’t blame him, that it had been a hard year. But I told him that if he wanted to stay in school he needed to really make a commitment to get an education and go to school regularly. He told me he was really committed, that it was important for him to get an education. It was what came next from him that was the most difficult for me to swallow, the part where he explained why he felt like he had to get odd jobs. “Molly, I am the parent now.” The parent. Whose parent? His own parent… Siyabulela’s parent (his 13 year old brother). And why? Some of you may remember that I met their mother for the first time in July. She moved back into their house just after Sipho died, but a few months later, moved back to live with her boyfriend nearby. So now the boys live with their 24-year-old cousin who is busy, has a job and a boyfriend, and certainly does not want to be “a parent” to these boys. Caveat – I have not met her, she hasn’t been home anytime I have stopped by, but I hope to soon.

Anele didn’t show up for our second tutoring session last Wednesday so I drove to their house to see what was going on. I ran into Siyabulela hanging out outside. He told me that Anele was sleeping and his eye was really swollen so stayed home from school. Then Siya told me that his teachers were mad at him because he hasn’t covered his books yet. He has 13 books to cover (I think some are just notebooks but they are supposed to cover them) at R3.50 a cover. Since his dad wouldn’t give him any money, he was going to see if his mom would give him 15 rand to start. Without asking me for money, he also told me that his dad hadn’t bought them new uniforms for the school year. Most students don’t get new uniforms, but Siya recently split the butt of his pants and so was really in need. I sat there wanting alternately to open my wallet and give him money for book covers, throw him in the car and go to the mall for pants, and knowing that I would do neither. If I step in, his parents will think that I will always step in, that I will give their kids money when they don’t. And that is not my role. It was easy with Sipho, he worked for me and I paid him. That was clear. I know once, the day he found out he passed Matric, his mom came by asking him for money. When he said he didn’t have any, she responded, “I know you do, you work for that White woman.” I would like to think that since we have met, and since I learned she wants to see me again, I am no longer just “that white woman,” but I still am a woman she knows has money. And aside from the fact that I have limited finances, I cannot step in with my wallet when their parents can’t or won’t.

Since I didn’t see Anele on Wednesday, and they hadn’t called me like I asked them to (they would have had to borrow a phone), I drove there on Sunday, thinking I would take them to the movies. When I told Mongamo my plan, he kindly offered to come with me to their house. Siya immediately got in the car. Before I could blink and before he even knew where we were going, he was sitting up in the back seat, seatbelt on, ready to roll. Anele told me that he went to the clinic and they said he had dirt stuck in his eye, which is why it was swollen, and it is healing well. One piece of relief.

So back to the moment when I realize what I don’t know. When I asked Anele if he would come to the movie, he said he couldn’t. He said he had washing to do and he had to cook for Siya and clean the house. I tried to persuade him, said that we would only be gone a few hours and that I would feed them so it would be okay if he cooked later. But that boy, like his older brother, is so steadfast in his responsibilities, that I couldn’t persuade him. “Molly, I can’t, I am in charge now.”

And as we drove off, I was hit by all that I don’t know. It was the “now” in the sentence that initially brought the tears, for the now is of course now that Sipho is dead. But as I said to Mongamo, I realize that I have no idea what it is like to be Anele. What it is like to own that much responsibility. The idea that an 18 year old boy would refuse an afternoon movie because he has to cook and clean, even when there is no adult in the house to assign him chores or get upset with him if he doesn’t get them done. It is such a profound sense of responsibility, sense of what it is to be the adult in the household. What a privileged childhood I had. When I was 18, I lived in Houston Hall and just had to make sure my side of the dorm room was relatively clean. My responsibilities were to study, to read and write – responsibilities that were to my parents, in part, but really more for myself than anyone else. More than that, I thought, wow, there is so much about Anele’s life, about what happens for them at U41 Mfenyane Street, that I know nothing about. And so much that I will never know. It seems like a fairly obvious conclusion – and some of you may have reached it before me – but it was 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, when I couldn’t persuade this boy to come to the movies, that I realized how much I do not know.

Dispatch: A New Man and A Birthday

2008-02-04T16:32:00.001+02:00

Saturday was another extraordinary day -- a day when I recognized the rich relationships which I have cultivated in this fascinating place and homes away from home that are mine.

The first time I saw Sandile, a student in the Creative Arts Workshop I taught in 2005, I immediately noticed his clothes and knew the meaning of this dress. He wore nice slacks, a buttoned down shirt buttoned up to the collar, a 3-buttoned suit jacket and a hat. Always a confident person, he walks with a new stature, seems to stand a bit taller, and feel a bit more ready to take his place in the world. As Sandile’s dress indicates, in Xhosa tradition, he is now a Man. Just as my parents must have anticipated my sister and my Bat Mitzvah’s from the time we were young, Sandile’s parents have anticipated this day for years. It is a huge moment when a Xhosa boy, usually between the ages of 18 and 21, becomes a man.

This is a very secret tradition – a man’s tradition and women are generally not privy to the details of what happens in the bush when men go to perform the ceremony. I know what I know because I am nosy and asked Sipho as much as he would tell and then Sandile. Some boys have their initiation in this area, but since Sandile’s parents, like most people here are, are originally from the Eastern Cape, they went there. A boy generally stays there for about four weeks and I can't tell you much more as the details are kept for men - even Xhosa women don't know everything.

For the next 6 months, when he is outside of the house, Sandile must wear his jacket and hat. I think that if he is in the company of other men, he is permitted to take his jacket and hat off, but I am not entirely sure.

Saturday was the big ceremony and party for the community where he lives to recognize his manhood. I decided to bring some new friends to share in this tradition, so bottles of brandy in hand, Katie, a senior at the University of Connecticut, and Jeff, a grad student and R.A. on Katie’s program, and I headed out to Khayelitsha.

As we were driving into Mandela Park, I heard a scream outside the car and there was Luando, one of my former students. We hugged and caught up and then there was another scream and my former student Phila was running down the street. She hugged me, but I tell you this because in her enthusiasm promptly hugged Katie and Jeff too.

When we walked into Sandile’s, there were several “Mamas” or older women sitting in the living room. One was in the middle and she began singing for us. Katie and I sat down and Jeff was ushered into the garage with the other men where he had his first sip of African beer. Then the ceremony began.

Video camera in hand, I followed everyone into the garage. Benches were set up on either side, lined with men and the women sat further in the back. Sandile was on a bench in between the men, hat and jacket on. As the ceremony went on, people would get up, explain to Sandile what it means to be a man, how he needs to act and behave in his new role, and what is responsibilities are to the community. Then each person would announce that they were giving him money – usually 20 rand – and put it in a bowl by his feet. Before the women spoke, they would start singing, then everyone would sing some, then the woman would make her speech and also give money. Sandile’s mother was wearing a stunning red traditional outfit and cried as she told him how happy she was (See attached of her dancing.) The ceremony took about an hour and as things progressed, the men passed around a tin bucket filled with Umqomboti, homemade African beer. It tastes a bit smoky and looks kind of creamy and people drink it out of a communal bucket. (Again, see photo of me enjoying the tradition.)

Then there was the presentation of the gifts. This was done by the women of the community who had arranged everything – the new bed set, the electronics, and the dresser – at the opening of the garage. Several women spoke as they presented the gifts to Sandile. The tradition is that members of the community buy the gifts for each new man. Sandile’s mother had bought a bed set for the man next door so they bought one for Sandile.

Then the party began. Everyone separates – the men in the garage, the women in the living room, girls somewhere else, young men in another room. Case after case of beer and other alcohol were brought in. One woman told me that as a man Sandile wasn’t supposed to drink – I told her I guess that starts tomorrow! We were handed massive plates of a big slab of meat, potato, rice, cabbage, and samp, which is dried corn kernels that have been stamped on and broken and are similar in consistency of rice. Then the drinking began. Katie and I were encouraged by the mama’s to join them, so we took a seat on the floor and grabbed the bucket of African beer. Then came the brandy. There was a woman walking around giving all the women shots of brandy. She told us she couldn’t give us any because were not women and were not wearing head scarves and pointed to the females around us who were not in head scarves and had no drink. But in a quick second, she smiled and said, “But you are visitors!” and the libations flowed. I tried to imagine of my mother and my aunts and her friends sitting around singing and drinking brandy, but I don’t think it’s a tradition that will catch on in Chevy Chase, MD.

We left Sandile’s and headed to celebrate my friend Max’s mom’s 70th birthday. We got there just in time for me to make a speech to Hilda and present my gift. Once again, we were given big plates of food, but this time, since this feels like my extended family, I told the woman that Jeff didn’t eat meet. “Oh, a vegetarian,” a woman echoed from the next table. Katie encouraged us to find our second stomachs, but none of us were able to eat much. We moved outside to Max and the other men. I had a great conversation about politics with 3 men. We talked about Clinton and Obama, who I thought would and could win. We talked about Bush and one man was incredulous that the U.S. could have elected him twice. We fantasized about what the world would look like if Gore had won. Of course his incredulousness allowed me to open the Zuma door. I knew Max, a former member of the armed wing of the ANC and a major housing activist, didn’t like Zuma, but I had never met these men. They all said they wouldn’t vote for Zuma. But then who? The ANC is their party and the party of the struggle, they would never vote for another party. So if Zuma were the candidate, they said they just wouldn’t vote. But then, he explained the dilemma, “If we don’t vote, we are giving away all of our power.” How tragic it seems that people fought so hard for the right to vote and 14 years later are considering giving it up for one election. Here’s hoping that Zuma is not the candidate, but I think it will take several decades before the ANC is no longer the party of the people and there is a shift in what democracy means here.

I end this on an extraordinary note. Today is the first day of school for Mongamo, Noluyanda and Amanda at the University of the Western Cape. Noluyanda said it’s great and I smile imagining them sitting in class, walking through campus and simply being university students. So if you need a lift today, think of them and smile, for this simple act of getting an education for me represents so much.

Week One - Mission: University Acceptance

2008-01-20T21:44:00.000+02:00

I have been back in Cape Town only a week and it feels like much longer. It has been a week of reunions, hot sunny days, checking out cars, and settling in. In between I met with the professor who brought me here to teach at University of the Western Cape and went to the first day of school at Oscar Mpetha on Wednesday.

But the bulk of my energy, both actual and emotional, was spent in my capacity as, what my sister calls, social worker. I arrived just at the right time to take on the mission of making sure that every student I know who is trying to go to university or some sort of tertiary institute gets settled with everything before school starts. This list includes Mongamo, Babalwa and Noluyanda, three of the students from Testing Hope, as well as my former student Sithembele, and two students from my Creative Arts Workshop, Sandile and his sister Amanda.

And so the story begins with Noluyanda. She has big dreams of becoming a lawyer and helping people in the rural areas where she grew up. The fact that she is now a mother has not tempered her enthusiasm for the law a bit. Last year she took a paralegal course, but UWC won’t count those scores for admission to their LLB program. On only her Matric scores, she was rejected. But the door was not closed completely and a few weeks ago she took a test that could let her into the B.A. program in the Law Faculty (department) if she does well enough. Scores didn’t come out until this Friday. Of course when Noluyanda tried calling on Friday the phone rang and rang and no one answered. She is persistent and says she will try again tomorrow and go to the school on Tuesday, when she has childcare, if there is still no word.

I saw Mongamo on Monday. He retook the Matric exams in November and is disappointed with the results. His scores did not improve the way he had hoped, the way that he knew would get him into the University of Cape Town (UCT). In the midst of this new self-doubt about whether he would be able to study, his mom recently lost her job as a domestic worker because the family she works for got a divorce. He said he was thinking of forgoing university and working for his family, but when I asked, he said his mom wants him to go to school. Mongamo’s first choice was to study Math at University of Cape Town, his second choice, to study Math at UWC. His back up plan – study to be a Math teacher.

And so it was on Thursday morning we found ourselves in a long line outside the Faculty of Sciences, which includes the Math Department, at UWC. This compares to no line I ever waited in at Tufts or Berkeley. I have never seen anything quite like it -- a long line of students, far more than fit in the few chairs set out, curling around the hall, all waiting for some piece of information from the department, most with Matric scores in hand hoping hear that they have been accepted. There was a man running back and forth, talking to people in line, rushing back to the office, and back out again with his answers. Mongamo had his provisional acceptance letter that he received a few months ago and his Matric scores, but if his scores weren’t high enough, the provisional acceptance would be rescinded. After about an hour, the man came to us, took Mongamo’s scores and disappeared. 15 minutes later he came back, called out a few people’s names and finally we heard, “Mr. Tyhala.” He walked up to Mongamo, handed him a piece of paper and said, “Congratulations, you are accepted.” I was ready to jump up and down and scream and cheer, but Mongamo was more subdued. He was thinking of the next step… money.

Our next mission was the residence office where my excitement turned into anger when we found out there are only 575 spaces for 3000 first year students and even though Mongamo had indicated on his original application that he wanted to stay in the residence, he is now number 1101 on the waiting list. But that’s next week’s project.

I dropped off Mongamo and drove out to Khayelitsha to pick up Sandile so we could go into town to City Varsity College to find out about their journalism program. When I called Sandile to tell him I was moving back to Cape Town, he said, “When you get here, remind me that I want to talk to you about an idea for starting a youth magazine.” He is spunky and curious and thoughtful and I think he would be a great journalist.

His sister Amanda was home and I asked her how her efforts to get into the Law Faculty at UWC were going. Amanda took a semester of law courses at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and as is not uncommon in correspondence courses I think, did not do nearly as well as she anticipated and certainly not as well as she would have done in a class, with a real live teacher and other students to study with. So her hopes of studying law at UWC are gone and with it her confidence. My comment that she had a future that was more than as a checkout person at a grocery store (her current part-time job) actually brought her to tears. I can’t tell you how angry those tears made me – this is an energetic, bright person who loves learning, speaks brilliant English and when I last saw her had big dreams. So I said what seems to be coming out of my mouth a lot lately, “I know it isn’t your first choice, but how would you feel about being a teacher?” What an terrible thing to tell a kid –I know you are smart and I know you want to be a lawyer, but since you can’t, it would be better to do something at a university than another year of struggling so what about this alternative? (Caveat, I think teaching is a great career and wonderful alternative for her, I would just like Amanda to get her dreams and not her second choices.) Her response, “I might be interested in being a teacher if I thought I could be good at it.” Her lack of success at UNISA had made her believe that she couldn’t be good at anything.

Teaching is Amanda’s option because Aslam Fataar, an education professor at UWC who is now my boss, met Amanda (and Mongamo) when we had a screening of Testing Hope here in July, and basically said that if either one of them wanted to be teachers he would get them into the program.

While Amanda was thinking it over, we got into the car and drove into town for Sandile. Sandile just got back from the bush in the Eastern Cape, where he had his initiation ceremony which signals manhood in the Xhosa tribe (and includes circumcision) and has returned now a Xhosa man. He is dressed in nice slacks, a button down shirt buttoned all the way to the top, a beige suit jacket with 3 buttons, and a black cap. He will dress this way for the next 6 months, an indication to everyone who meets him that he is now a man.

Colleges are generally one to three-year programs, more career focused. City College focuses on multimedia, film, television, and journalism. The person we spoke with was very nice and gave us all the details. He addressed my biggest concern when he said that most students get jobs in the field after they finish the program. I was excited, Sandile was excited, he took the application and then asked how much the year costs. 30,000 rand or about $4,300. It is a private school so there are no loans. You can pay it off in a few installments over the first 6 months but it is a huge amount of money. It would be a great opportunity for Sandile, if only he had the money, and that is where I wish I was independently wealthy and where my ability to advise stops. How can I keep encouraging him or pushing him to go to school and seek out opportunities when I have no idea how to help him pay for them? There are so many different private colleges, some trustworthier than others, and I don’t want him to have to settle in life. He remains optimistic on the drive home and says he will talk to his parents about it and check out a few other things because, “Molly, I must keep my options open.”

We were supposed to go yesterday to the Open Day at the college to learn more about the program and any credit payment programs, but Sandile called me yesterday at 7:30 am to say he couldn’t go. I know that if he had the money he would be applying. I am not sure he will even apply but he is capable and independent and I am trying to let go, to know that if he wants to, he will and if he wants my help, he will ask.

That night I got a call from Amanda. She decided she wants to be a teacher, so Friday she went to the education faculty at UWC with her application fee and applied – well tried to. There is an electricity shortage here and that means occasional blackouts, one of which Amanda encountered at UWC on Friday. But she applied online at the internet café in Khayelitsha yesterday and I think orientation starts this week. There are a lot of scholarships around for teaching so I hope that she can get one.

Last, but not least, there is Babalwa. She is starting her third year in the Mechanical Engineering program at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, and I saw her Friday to give her the R600 she needed to register and get her grades from last term. I received two generous donations for Babalwa’s education, one from my dear friend Anja’s mother in Berlin and another from a Hebrew School teacher at Beth El Congregation in Bethesda, MD, and so I actually have the money to help her. She called me a few hours after with her results from last term – 3 Bs and 2 Cs!

As it turns out, the rest of the donation I got for Babalwa will not be necessary for this year’s tuition. A bank in South Africa has offered Mongamo, Noluyanda and Babalwa full scholarships, including tuition, room, board and books for their entire education – all 3 years. We are still trying to find out if they will pay Babalwa’s loans, but if not, the donations will go towards that. Let me publicly thank my friend Dylan Wray who works at an NGO here in Cape Town for helping to make this happen. It is certainly beyond my wildest dreams.

The First Day of School

2008-01-19T10:18:00.000+02:00

Wednesday, January 16, 2008.

Today was the first day of school here in the Western Cape. Half of the country starting school last week, but the Western Cape and a few other provinces held off until today. Driving from my flat towards the highway, I passed students dressed in all types of uniforms, blue skirts, green dresses, grey slacks and shiny new shoes. Some were going to the elite private schools near my flat – I was going a bit further.

I visited Oscar Mpetha High School once when I was back here in July, but being at the school was incredibly difficult – many memories of my time filming and teaching their in 2005, of the loss of my friend Sipho – and I was not sure how this return would be. I also know that while some teachers really like me, and the film, others in their own quiet ways wish it hadn’t been made. But where else was I going to go on the first day of school

I arrived at 8:05 am and the opening assembly was just starting. Students were crowded into the main hall, standing in rows, neat in their maroon uniforms. Almost 100 other students were hanging out around the courtyard, waiting to be let in. They were tardy, school started at 8 am and enduring a brief punishment before the principal opens the doors. In the next hour, late students would continue to stream in.

There were very few new uniforms here. One boy’s grey pants had been carefully resewn along the hem of the seat of his pants. Another girl’s skirt was far too short – she is in grade 12 and probably bought it when she was in grade 8. But all spent careful time getting ready for school. It is what we all feel on our first day of school – the anticipation, the excitement of reconnecting with classmates and friends, the energy of a new year. One student took a rag out of his pocket and handed it to a friend who bent down to polish his shoes. In my entire life, I never polished my shoes when I was getting ready for school and while I remember liking my shoes, I can’t remember any of my friends taking such care in what was on our feet.

In the main hall, the principal was addressing the students. It was a typical first day of school speech – be on time, behave in class, follow instructions, get permission to leave the classroom and, of course, where your uniform every day. The last comment got a laugh from the students.

Context for this school is important. The unemployment rate in Nyanga is over 50%, many families live in shack settlements, and HIV/AIDS has left its mark here too, as it has all over South Africa. While this main hall is new, the students are standing on the concrete floor – no chairs. Much of the school is in disrepair. Many classrooms have broken doors and windows, they are freezing in the winter, hot in the summer, students sometimes have to share desks and chairs because there aren’t enough. Many teachers are committed, but according to the students, they are not committed enough and it is not unheard of to walk past a classroom and have the students just hanging out, studying on their own or waiting for a teacher who never shows up for the class period.

But there is a confidence here and a pride here and today, the first day of school is about motivating students.

The metaphor of the day was “the race.” The principal congratulated students who passed “the race” last year and had been promoted to the next grade and a round of applause was made of the 12th graders who passed their school leaving exams, known as Matric, and graduated in 2007. But his next words struck me as most indicative of the space that I was in.

“For those who didn’t complete the race, but managed to come back for a new race of 2008 – I am referring to what is known as dropouts – we hope you’re coming back resolved to finish this race. We will do everything in our power to help you successfully complete this race.” I looked at the mass of learners in front of me, wondering how many passed, how many failed, and how many never picked up their results at the end of last year to even know. The principal continued, “You’re provided with another opportunity to correct and rectify what went wrong last year. It is up to you to use that opportunity that is given you.”

I have never heard such a direct call to students who failed a grade, such an openness or perhaps bluntness. Of course the speech would not be necessary if so many students hadn’t failed. In 2006, only 36.5% of grade 12 students passed their Matric exams. Last year, the rate doubled, to 67%, where it had been in 2005, but it is far from where it should be. The drop out rate here is high and it shows. This year, there are 11 10th grade classes, 10 11th grade classes and only five 12th grade classes. Where did all those students go?

After students took exams last year, they had to come back to school to check their results. But many never came. They have arrived here today not knowing if they passed or failed. Is this ignorance their fault because they never showed up? Should the school have sought them out or created a system so know one starts out the first day of school unsure? The principal and staff are faced with a dilemma -- students excited for a new year, unaware that they will have to repeat the previous one.

Before students are sent to their classrooms, there is a special guest speaker. The Minister of Safety and Security for the Western Cape Province has arrived, bringing the press in tow. Why this school? It is in, as the principal so clearly says in his introduction, “the capital city of crime.” Recent crime statistics have brought it the distinction of being labeled the most murder capital of South Africa. The people I know who live here take this in stride. They know their community, the great parts and the risk, and after all, home is home no matter what other people say about it.

One cannot ignore the devastating poverty in Nyanga, one cannot deny the danger, but the astonishing thing is that in the midst of this, most students have a hope and a belief in themselves and the future despite these challenges. They know they struggle, they know former students who have been robbed or even killed, they exist within it everyday. The Minister asks them to keep their eyes and ears open and tells them he is working to help fix the problems and turn Nyanga around. One can only hope.

The school is not immune to the crime. In preparation for the start of the year, 11 new doors were put on classrooms. Some replaced old doors, others were for classrooms where there never were doors. In between last Friday and today, there were two burglaries and all 11 doors were stolen. Last year the school was just about to get set up on the internet, when its two computer labs were ransacked. But for the start of 2008, it was more simple – 11 doors.

The principal pleaded with the students to give him or the police information if they had it, but I imagine the doors are long gone -- sold, burned for warmth, used to build shacks, or any number of other things.

Finally he began to direct learners to their classrooms, “If your results show a pass and you were doing grade 11 and we call your group, and I must insist your results say you have been promoted from grade 11, not that you think you have promoted…” The students broke out in laughter.

As rain started to come down on the sunny morning, students began to move. I ran into one nervous student I know who is very bright and has never failed a grade, but has convinced himself that he didn’t pass last year. Luckily, I found out later, he did.

Then I ran into Kholeka, the teacher from the film who I substitute taught for in 2005. She is teaching grade 12 English again this year but today she has an unenviable task. She is making a list of students who failed last year and going from classroom to classroom to tell them that they are in the wrong grade. It is hardest for those who are supposed to be in grade 12, the top of the school, the preeminent year. Kholeka has become the ghost of exams past, spreading only very real disappointment today. As she told me, the alternative, these students finding out in a week or even two, is far worse.

On a more personal note, I learned Sipho’s younger brother, Anele, failed grade 10 for the second time. I found out by asking someone to show me the test results, because I couldn’t find Anele in the mass of students. Sipho was killed in a gang related shooting last year. Clearly this was a huge factor in his success in school, but unfortunately, personal loss is not factored into the end of year exams. I hope Anele stays in school, but I can’t imagine what it takes to try a grade for the third time. He is smart and special, a 17 year old who loves penguins and aquariums and the ocean – but it takes so much more than just my words, and I realize that I can spend time with him and encourage him to keep studying, but I really know little about what it is like to be in his shoes.

As I roamed around the school, I saw some students hanging out waiting for teachers to come – students here stay in their classrooms and teachers go from class to class – and others sitting quietly as the teachers checked their class lists, took down contact information, and passed out books and papers. We start full force tomorrow, one teacher told me. Again… I only hope.