Wish you were here

December 14, 2013 by 6 Comments

Wish you were here

Wish you were here
voices a local headline
not used to solemnity
of the non-rude kind
in getting folks to read

Wish you were here
everyone wants a piece
the sweaty ones so-called
the selfie-I-me-mine crowd
not to mention those
of the empty promises variety

Wish you were here
Madiba-jiving away
piloting the path
of the straight and narrow
(now in whose hands is it)

It now is in our hands
wandering they are
often in the state’s coffers
or in someone else’s

Wish you were here
many lost souls flapping
in their rainbow fishbowls
on their way backward
to past habits and customs

Wish you were here
the weightiness lifted
if only for an Ubuntu-while
then it is the same old ground

The same old ground
women know your place
speak when you’re spoken
children should just be seen

Wish you were here
to remind those who need
to be reminded lest
we forget why we wish
you were here

A tabloid headline reporting on the Cape Town Stadium music tribute brings forth Pink Floyd’s sombre ditty “Wish you were here”, itself marking the life of an artiste-past.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , ,

Hamba kahle, Madiba

December 6, 2013 by 12 Comments

In 1995, my wife, son and I spent a little over six months in South Africa, in Cape Town. It was a heady time. Giants roamed the earth, often right around the corner, sometimes in the same room. Madiba aka Nelson Mandela. Walter Sisulu. Albertina Sisulu. Govan Mbeki. Sister Bernard Ncube. The list goes on. The Rugby World Cup was on. The RDP, the Reconstruction and Development Programme, was in its most intense moments. Women were organizing. Workers, students, gay and lesbian people were on the move. Those living with HIV and AIDS were organizing like crazy. Everybody was organizing. And the buses, the Golden Arrow buses, the bus for us, encouraged everyone to smile.

South Africa was one big hopeful project, and so much of that hope passed through the very body of Nelson Mandela. He helped people of all communities and persuasions focus the light of hope into the fire of transformation. While the policies of Madiba’s own government and those that have followed have often worked precisely against the hopes of the marginalized, the violated, the disenfranchised, today we remember the person. So let me tell you a story.

In 1995, my wife, son and I were watching Dali Tambo’s People of the South, a talk show of the highest kitsch and a great family favorite. That evening, Madiba was to be the guest. Mandela came out, sat on the sofa, surrounded by women in antebellum United States frills and bonnets. Madiba and Tambo talked for a while, about the government, about hopes for the future, about their families. Dali Tambo is the son of Adelaide and Oliver Tambo, the President, and then National Chairperson, of the African National Congress until his death in 1993.

And then Dali Tambo introduced the next guest, Jermaine Jackson. Jackson entered. Madiba stood up, shook his hand, looked him straight in the eyes and said, in his unforgettable voice and manner, “I have always been a great fan of yours.”

And he meant it.

That is Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, better known as Madiba. During the 27 years of imprisonment, apparently, he was organizing and teaching and leading, always by example, while dancing and singing to the Jackson 5.

Nelson Mandela brought dignity, humor, principle, humanity, great shirts and an extraordinary, almost magical, transformative capacity to every encounter: as a young lawyer and boxer, as a representative of the ANC, as a founding architect of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the anti-apartheid struggle, as a prisoner on Robben Island and then in Pollsmoor and Victor Verster Prisons, as a democratically elected President, and finally as an elder.

He touched each of us, and for that reason, he is loved. We remember. Hamba kahle, Madiba.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , ,

It’s that time (of the year again)

November 27, 2013 by 4 Comments

It’s that time (of the year again)

It’s that time
of the year
again

The ritual of
16 Days of Activism
for No Violence
against Women and Children

(It is here
can you feel it)

(It is here
in the troubled area
that is the mind
and its beliefs
wherever it finds itself)

The ritual of 16 Days
is here with its white ribbons
official fanfare and road shows
smart slogans adorn banners
and good men marching

(a sudden media hype
tweeters and twerkers
personalities surface
all out to pledge themselves
with quasi-religious fervour)

How long
is the road
we will travel
these 16 days
and beyond

How long
still is the road
we have to travel
beyond
the 16 days

How many more
more 16 days

The Cape Times Editorial tells us that “16 days” is with us again; we hear of “16 days of activism to target 16 troubled areas”, and the SA Faith and Family Institute’s Elisabeth Petersen’s writes “Act against abuse” (Cape Times, 25 November 2013).

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , ,

I am on cloud nine

November 9, 2013 by 2 Comments

I am on cloud nine

I am on cloud nine
says a school principal
of two young people
just up your street

(but not high as a kite
at a Kite Festival
or on a local quick fix)

I am on cloud nine
for bursary recipients
one old one new

(in a manner of speaking
the old on a doctoral journey
the new inspired by law)

No victims they are
due to their circumstances
in post-apartheid South Africa
far too many still trapped
in racial and tribal habits

I am on cloud nine
down Spes Bona High-way
for young Shameez Camphor
a grade 12 pupil there
(and past matriculant Eugene Davids)

Setting boundaries and standards
consciously, of their own
their school helping them
to reach their potential

Inspiring and motivating
rather than the habitual
barefoot and pregnant
no-role-models variety

(business is as usual
are folks the world over
all charmed by bling-bling)

I am on cloud nine
might you not be too

Spes Bona High School principal Abu Solomons is on cloud nine (“Bursary recipient gets life-changing opportunity” – Athlone News, November 6 2013).

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , ,

Delusions, madness, and statistics

August 26, 2013 by 6 Comments

I give you the fifth edition of the Development Indicators that were approved by the South African Cabinet in March 2012, published by the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, published on the Presidency’s website.

According to which South Africa’s conviction rate for rape was 71.7% in 2011.

On whose planet? In which universe? What drugs haves these guys been mainlining? Have they being playing a lot of contact sports recently, without helmets? Did someone steal the calculators, again? Can we please stop smoking the aspadistras?

Lilly Artz from the University of Cape Town says that in South Africa, rape has one of the lowest conviction rates of all serious crimes, with research indicating that only about ten per cent of reported rapes receive guilty verdicts (SALC 1999). The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development figures also show that of more than 54 000 cases of rape reported in 1998, fewer than seven per cent were prosecuted.

Of course, they just don’t prosecute unless chances of a conviction are pretty good. But the basis on which the Presidency is planning is that 71.7% of rapes resulted in conviction.  I see.

I have to go and lie down now, in a darkened room.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , ,

More support is needed for South Africa’s subsistence fisherwomen

August 22, 2013 by 15 Comments

South African women fish for a living, and for their lives.

Fishing for a living is a hard life, everywhere. Subsistence fishing can be brutally difficult, but it has its dignity. For example, in Durban, on the east coast of South Africa, women and men have been subsistence fishing off the piers and beaches for over a hundred years. Generation after generation, they have used the skills their forebears brought when they came from India as indentured workers. Across generations and for decades upon decades, subsistence fishing brought fisherwomen and fishermen economic income as well as spiritual and cultural fulfillment.

Four years ago, that all came to a crashing close when much of the harbor was closed to fishing. On one hand, there were `security’ issues. On the other hand, there was rapid private development, referred to `expansion’. It wasn’t `expansion’. It was privatization; it was theft of public and common space. The results for the subsistence fisherwomen and fishermen were devastating, and continue to be so.

For the fisherwomen and fishermen, the act of fishing successfully, of bringing home food and some money from the sales of their day’s labor, is value. Honoring the labor of their forebears is value. Being on the water, being together, being a community, is value.

For those who occupy the commanding heights of Durban, real estate is value, and the water, the beach front, recreational fishing, have all become big business, and promise to intensify, or `expand’, in the future. For them, extraction is value.

For fisherwomen, the closure of and exclusion from public spaces has particular, gendered aspects. Fishing together off the piers provided safety. As the spaces closed, competition increased. As the competition intensified, tensions turned to violence. This occurred in an environment that was already hard on fisherwomen. Women’s subordinate position in fishing communities generally made them more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. This has meant high levels of HIV and AIDS, drug and alcohol abuse, and violence. With the reduction of available spaces for fishing, the loss of income, increased and intensified unemployment, the daily lives of fisherwomen and of women in fishing communities predictably became more perilous and more toxic.

It’s the predictability that has to be taken into account. None of this is a surprise and none of this is a secret. It’s public policy; it’s part of the development scheme for Durban … and beyond.

During the last two decades, South African fisherwomen have organized. The South African Fisherwomen’s Association, organized by Sahra Luyt, has been on the frontline of integrating women into the fishing industries, as well as combating the increased difficulties due to climate change. There’s the Oceanview Fisherwomen’s Association, colored women from the Cape Flats who took up fishing to survive and to live with dignity, as documented in Penny Gaines’ 2002 documentary, “Strong Enough”.

That women fish for a living, and for their lives, in South Africa is well known, except at IRIN, “a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs”, which ran a news piece today headlined, “More support needed for South Africa’s subsistence fishermen.” The article should come with a disclaimer, “No fisherwomen were interviewed in the making of this article.” Nowhere does the article reference fisherwomen. Not even fisherfolk. Only `fishermen’ make the IRIN cut.

South African subsistence fisherwomen have always had a tough time in fishing communities. More recently, they have been under attack by State and private developers. And now they are erased by coordinators of humanitarian affairs. More support is needed for South Africa’s subsistence fisherwomen.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , ,

Marikana: Don’t commemorate. Compensate.

August 14, 2013 by 9 Comments

It’s been a year, almost, since the massacre at Marikana, and the nation, and its media, are struggling, sort of, to find a way to address all that has, and even more has not, happened in the intervening year. A year later, tensions simmer, the Farlam Commission is more or less falling apart, some great and moving documentaries are beginning to emerge, and the widows of Marikana organize and wait, wait and organize.

This is how the week began. On Sunday, in a prayer service in Langa, national police commissioner Riah Phiyega announced that South Africa would `commemorate’ the Marikana tragedy. How exactly will the police, who used live ammunition to put down a mineworkers’ strike, `commemorate’ the event?

More to the point, is commemoration the best way to honor the dead miners and, even more, their survivors, the widows and children? As one widow explained, soon after the massacre, “Today I am called a widow and my children are called fatherless because of the police. I blame the mine, the police and the government because they are the ones who control the country.”

How will `the nation’ commemorate those who are now called widows and those who are now called fatherless? What happened on August 16, 2012? 34 miners were killed. Many others were wounded. And widows were made. Soon after one mineworker was arrested, police told him, “Right here we have made many widows … we have killed all these men.”

The State machinery, call it a factory, produced widows of women that day, and has continued to produce widows of those very women every single day since. So, here’s a suggestion. Rather than `commemorate’, compensate.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , , ,

I nearly lost it

August 11, 2013 by 3 Comments
I nearly lost it
I nearly lost it
on our Women’s Day
dropped Alice Walker’s
“A poem travelled
down my arm”
A gem amongst others
found at the Rotary Club
containers where there are
Books for the World
I nearly lost it
(later) on Eid-al-Fitr
traipsing around
showing off our collection
(The Babysitters Club series
A series of Unfortunate Events series
the Sweet Valley Twins series
even the Captain Underpants series)
The morning after
reading aloud extracts
to a literary associate
(from Mutual to Lansdowne
journeying Metro-hell turd-class)
What hair
we here!
Mandela
Douglass
Einstein
Between assassination
&
suicide
living
happily
I nearly lost it
on our Women’s Day
Our Women’s Day skies are blue as Alice Walker’s lovely tome drops from my grasp, on the way to show off Belthorn Primary School’s collection of books in the neighbourhood. She invokes “Mandela with a free heart … (Frederick) Douglass the same … refusal of enslavement … Einstein different but similar” in her intro titled “This is a strange book”

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , ,

So it’s Women’s Day in South Africa

August 10, 2013 by 10 Comments

So it’s Women’s Day in South Africa, and we went down to hear a friend of mine speak at a local event. It was faintly cheering: we got to sing Malibongwe, which is the one struggle song white people can actually sing. There was clapping, and a bit of praying, which went down well. We then settled in for a desperately dull morning, in which we all bemoaned the general state of women in South Africa, and the wave, torrent, oh all right, tsunami of violence that is unleashed on us every day.

Yawn.

Yes, we agreed, we are dying. In fact, more than we can count, because the statistics are so unhelpful, given the level of underreporting of rape. Yes, we agreed, it’s very bad. We must fight patriarchy. We nodded our heads. Yes, indeed we must.

And speaker after speaker belaboured this, as though we had just woken up, and decided to talk about this for the first time. Lordy, it was dull. Except for one moment, one interesting electrifying moment. A woman academic, and feminist, and part of the national Commission on Gender Equality said, in one of the tightest, most frustrated voices I have ever heard, ‘We should go and stop the traffic. We should go to the nearest national road, and protest, and stop the traffic.”

And the hall of women groaned and rumbled, and it seemed like for a moment, for a flicker of time, that they would rise up as one and march, limping and dancing, out into the streets and burn things, and break things, and generally get seriously out of hand. It seemed to me that this wave of the possible reached her across the stage and she caught herself, aware of her responsibilities, and said, ‘No, not that I am suggesting violence or anything. But we must do something.’

The hall settled back down. We went to lunch. But that thought spoken aloud is still ringing in my ears.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Be a leader in your community this Women’s Day

August 9, 2013 by 4 Comments

This week’s news of the rape of a four-month-old baby and a seven-year-old boy in the same household has left the community of Ceres reeling in shock. These rapes form part of a litany of abuse and violence against women and children in South Africa that just doesn’t seem to stop.

Victims, families and communities are reaching out for support in the immediate crisis and for healing over the longer term so that they can stitch their lives back together again. While services are available in some of the bigger cities and towns across the country, in towns like Ceres there is no specialised Rape Crisis organisation. Victim support will be limited to general welfare services and lay people who volunteer at the local police station.

How can this be the case 47 years after 20 000 women marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria in order to claim their rights to move freely in their society without harassment? Women activists and organisations have been working ever since to try and create safe spaces for women in our communities. At organisations like Rape Crisis we can truly say that survivors of rape leave our counselling programmes with a sense that they have recovered from their trauma with more confidence in themselves, with a greater sense of meaning and purpose in their lives, feeling more in control, with closer relationships and more willingness to be open to new experiences.

The extent of rape in 2013 is enormous and incidents are becoming increasingly violent in nature. In this context why is there such a dearth of services to victims? Rape Crisis was threatened with closure a year ago and was in part pulled back from the brink by the incredible support and generosity of our community of supporters who gave generously of their time and money and in part by the amazing dedication of our staff who worked alongside volunteers with no pay. Yet we are still not meeting the need in the Western Cape. In part this is because provincial government has so seriously underestimated the problem of rape in their situational analysis and have therefore failed to allocate adequate resources.

Many people feel overwhelmed and helpless. Community members are calling out for NGOs “to be everywhere”. This Women’s Day Rape Crisis will celebrate by launching a rape information portal on MXit so that wherever you are in the country you have the information you need at your fingertips if someone has raped you or someone close to you. In this way Rape Crisis is finding creative an innovative ways to extend our services to women in poor and rural areas.

At the end of the day NGOs are simply groups of concerned people that have come together to find a way to support survivors in their communities and to try and talk about violence against women in order to try and bring the voice of the victim of rape to the leaders of our country so that they will again have to listen to the demands of women and respond in a meaningful way. In order for this to happen, people have to do what they did for Rape Crisis. Step forward. Talk about the problem. Donate time. Donate resources.

In past Women’s Days we looked for leaders to step up and respond with purpose and resolve. This Women’s Day we are calling on ordinary men and women to become the extraordinary leaders that the women of 1956 were in their day and ask them to do what they can, where they are, with what they have.

(This was originally posted at the Rape Crisis Cape Town Blog. Thanks to Kathleen Dey and all the workers at the Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust. Do consider joining their 1000Hearts Campaign and donate now.)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , ,
Next Page»