Dispatch: 100 Schools

“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: What Do I Say?

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