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: The Great Divide

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

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