Dispatch: The New Year

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

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?

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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

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.