Books About South Africa

I know that my blog makes for some fascinating reading, but, should you need something to fill the lonely days between posts, here is the rundown of a few books I’ve read about South Africa. Most have apartheid as a major theme; even though apartheid is over, its effects still linger, and its shadow over modern South African history still long and dark enough to make understanding apartheid important to understanding where South Africa is now, and where it will go from here.

A History of South Africa, by Leonard Thompson: This book covers the length and breadth of recorded South African history, from before colonization by Europeans to post-apartheid. And yet it’s only 300 pages! As such, it can be a little confusing, packed with unelaborated-upon references to events and people that make a lot more sense if you’re already acquainted with South African history.

Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane: Mathabane is a journalist who emigrated to America to attend college and wrote this book, about his childhood experiences, while the apartheid regime still reigned. He lived in Alexandra, a black township that is part of Jo’burg, and chronicles the atrocities that he, his family, and his neighbors were subjected to by the ruling white minority and how he eventually escaped it.

My Traitor’s Heat, by Rian Malan: An incredible soul-searching account of apartheid from a liberal Afrikaner’s perspective, this could be read almost as a companion piece to Kaffir Boy. Malan is also a journalist who emigrates to America, though he returns to South Africa to write this book; it explores not only the atrocities of apartheid, but also the hypocrisy of white liberals, the complexities of various contemporary political movements in South Africa, and his own life and family history. This book, too, was written before the end of apartheid.

Cry, The Beloved Country, by Alan Paton: Maybe the classic novel of apartheid South Africa. It’s about a black man who travels from the country into the city looking for a family remember and then returning—it’s not the plot which is important, though certainly each event is telling, but instead the description of life, hardship, and love, revealed in dozens of narrative moments, as it exists for the characters.

Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela: His autobiography, much of which was written while he was imprisoned at Robben Island. A moving portrait that also illuminates a lot of what was going on behind the scenes during the growth of the ANC and why apartheid fell when it did. A very enjoyable read.

Rain

Winter is over, spring is here. Since spring started out with deathly hot days that I had hoped wouldn't come around until high summer, I was seriously considering spending the entire October-March season lying in a cool bucket bath eating custard and fruit, scratching my mosquito bites. Fortunately, the rain has come; selfishly, I am most excited about this because it means that it is cool and overcast most days--the rain comes mainly at night, keeping the mosquitos away.

The rain has other effects. It means that drought is less likely (the rain came late this year), so no more five day stretches without water like two weeks ago! And our mango trees have a chance to flourish.

Less expected effects include the fact that the goats seek shelter in our pit toilet. I don't blame them, since their kraal (paddock) isn't roofed and the pit toilet is very nice and watertight (cement rather than corrugated tin), but it definitely took me aback when I went to use the bathroom a couple of days ago and had to chase the goats out first. Now I'm used to it. Fortunately, the toilet seats are covered so that wandering goats and chickens don't fall in (it's a 10 foot drop, any goat that goes down isn't coming back up).

Also less expected, though eminently predictable, is the amount of mud I have managed to track in EVEN THOUGH I TAKE OFF MY SHOES AT THE DOOR. I don't know where the mud comes from. Maybe the bottom of the laundry bucket? I'm daunted by the prospect of cleaning it. However, it's a small price to pay for not coming home dehydrated every day.

Election Anecdote

This didn't happen to me, it happened to another volunteer yesterday, but it's funny, and I think it says a lot about how South Africa's racial history impacts its perception of the rest of the world.

South African: Ah, I'm sorry about your election.
(white) PCV: Why are you sorry?
South African: Well, you lost.
PCV: No no, we won.
South African: !

In a country where much voting and party-building happens on primarily racial lines, I suppose it's not surprising that many South Africans assume that racial struggles are taking place in the same manner in America; for many, it's inconceivable that so many white people would vote for a black man. Needless to say, most South Africans adore Obama, and for them, his victory isn't a victory against Bush or for Hope (or whatever you think the election was about), but a victory for blacks worldwide of the same character as the end of apartheid.

(Of course, if Obama were South African instead of American, he wouldn't be considered black but colored.)

I am still alive, I swear

More computer issues, so I'm still playing catch up.  I'll post when I can, sorry about the long gaps.  In the meantime...

 

A few weeks ago, I had a meeting with representatives from several recently established drop-in centres, including some from the DIC I visited a few months ago.  The meeting was to talk about whether they would be interested in a training programme if Khanimamba offered one; the drop-in centres we are targeting are under-funded, staffed by volunteers who usually have little experience, and generally held together with both hands, so we are hoping that the sort of training we have offered to crèches will now be helpful to drop-in centres.

 

My supervisor warned me the week before the meeting that I shouldn't expect too many people to show up for the first meeting, and that anyone who does show up may very well be several hours late.  Since this is a fairly common experience for everyone who tries to start something new in South Africa, I considered myself forewarned and not too expectant about attendance of the first meeting.  Much to my surprise, even though I had come into the office well before the meeting to get some things ready, some attendees had beat me there, and most of the people who ended up attending were there half an hour before we were scheduled to start.  We had nearly twenty people from eight different drop-in centres, and no one showed up more than fifteen minutes after our starting time (we actually started on time, or maybe five minutes late but that's on time even in America).  Twenty is a great number to start with since it's nearly the maximum number we would ideally like to have in a training class.

 

The meeting was, on the whole, productive.  Probably the best thing that happened was that we got a lot of data about the centres that showed up—things like when they were founded, how many employees they have, if they're registered with the government, receiving funding, etc. that we can put in our files, plus updated contact information for them.  We tried to get them to do a couple of "exercises" in small groups that took a lot longer than they should have and didn't really get people thinking creatively, but since most of the small group work I have done with South Africans was like pulling teeth I wasn't too surprised. 

 

My supervisor wanted me to run the meeting since the trainer I would be working with on this programme wasn't here (she was at a family funeral) and they needed to get used to working with me, despite the fact that many of the trainers don't speak English very well and my Xitsonga is not good enough to sustain what ended up being a three or four hour meeting.  I gave it a shot, but eventually it became clear that I wasn't explaining the idea of having a training programme very well and my supervisor thankfully jumped in.  She did a great job of explaining what we had in mind and it seemed as though most people were interested.  Hopefully things will continue to come together and we will start actually offering the trainings in the New Year.

Part 3

This past week, my mom’s oldest son and his daughter, Jablila, have been staying with us, which makes me very happy. Now, I love Simeko and Xihluki, the two little girls who live with us full-time, but they cannot decide if they love me or not. While I have on occasion had fun playing with them, the latest pattern seems to be that they will stand in the yard yelling for me (whether I am home or not, I am told) but, when I at last appear, burst into tears. I think the calling for me is instigated by the younger one, Simeko, who is not actually that afraid of me, and the crying is instigated by Xihluki, who is.

Jablila, however, is about six and most definitely not afraid of me. Moreover, along with her come a couple of her friends who are also not afraid of me. They’re shy sometimes, but there’s no bursting into tears. They prefer instead to hold my hand while we walk, play with my hair, sing and dance for me, or even just sit near me staring, all of which I find infinitely preferable to the crying vagaries of the younger girls and makes for a generally brighter, less stressful time at home.

Jablila won several trophies recently at school, one for Xitsonga recitation and the other for song and dance. Jablila is shy enough that she didn’t want to perform them for me with any ceremony, but she still wanted me to see her dance. So, she would start doing the march that went along with the song so that I could see it out of the corner of my eye, but if I looked at her directly she would usually stop. Eventually, in this manner, I got to appreciate the bulk of the marching dance she had won the trophy for. Her only-slightly-less-shy friend was, in the meanwhile, spinning around in his chair reciting every song, rhyme, or hymn he could remember learning at his crèche.

Under their good example, Xihluki at last stopped crying

Part 2

2.  Last week, there was a party in my village for women who completed the circumcision school.  Now, I didn't get quite as thorough an explanation of the women's school as I got of the men's in July, but I gather that they are quite different.  For one thing, the women's school only lasts a week.  For another, the women appear to be generally older than the boys who participate in the men's circumcision school—one of my acquaintances who completed it this year must be at least in her late twenties of early thirties, and none of the women being celebrated at the party seemed particularly young.  Finally, I don't think that the women actually get circumcised; at least, they all seemed very happy and active at the party.

 

I wasn't actually sure what the party was for while I was there, and given the general explanation only as I was leaving.  I came home on Saturday in the early afternoon from doing some grocery shopping, and there were a bunch of people sitting quietly in our yard and some more in one of the buildings.  I couldn't find anybody in my family, but my mom had called me while I was in town to make sure that I was coming back that day.  Since I had told my sister that I was going into town that morning and I always let the family know if I'm going to be away overnight, I was really worried by this phone call—I thought that maybe someone we knew had died this week and I was missing their funeral or something else equally grave.  The number of people sitting relatively quietly around our yard didn't make me any less worried.

 

Eventually my mom got back home—someone had explained to me that she was at Mavis's and would be returning—and she didn't seem too upset or worried, and after we had all eaten a comparatively elaborate meal (not just vuswa and huku!*) we all migrated to the party, which was very clearly a celebration of something.  In addition to the dancing and the skirts that happen at all celebrations, there was a ritual for the women being celebrated where they are covered with clothes, blankets, and headscarves.  The party went on for hours, people eventually coming back to our house to continue talking even after the main event was over.  Even though it wasn't too late, my mom was exhausted from the day and falling asleep in her chair, but she couldn't go to bed until all of the guests left; eventually, they took the hint.

 

*vuswa=pap; huku=chicken

Hello Again

Sorry about the long delay between posts.  South African electricity disagrees with my power cords, so I had a bit of a wait while waiting for the newest one to arrive. 

 

So.  Making up for lost time.

 

1.  Three weekends ago I went to Tzaneen, a township about an hour or so away from Giyani, with a couple of other volunteers to visit Cordelia, my language teacher from pre-service training.  Now, Lonely Planet, ever generous in most of its descriptions and always ready to find delight in even the most boring subjects, basically describes Limpopo as a "barren wasteland."  (I'm summarizing here, I'm not going to pull out my book for an exact quotation.)  While I think the Giyani area is incredibly beautiful, after the dry/winter season where not much is growing and comparing it to the rather more lush vistas of KZN, I was ready to admit that perhaps they weren't speaking entirely out of their hats—though compared to the Bela Bela area, where SA 18 did their training, Giyani is still paradise.  Tzaneen, however, is surrounded by orchards and is intensely green even now, enough so to make even an otherwise cramped and uncomfortable taxi journey pleasant.  Once in town, we indulged in the pleasures of a larger, more diverse town than Giyani: we explored the mall.  I bought pens, we ate Indian food.  It's a good thing we didn't go to Woolworth's, or otherwise I probably would have gone broke buying cheeses.

 

Cordelia lives in a village outside the town, and we stayed the night at her house.  We met her family, all of whom were incredibly welcoming and excited to have us their.  They had purchased an enormous quantity of food for a braai (barbeque), and we, the Americans, were placed in charge of the grill.  We made the mistake of putting the meat on while the fire was too hot, so the first batch of chicken taken off was an exercise in living dangerously—not only was John's hand in danger of being burned off every time he tried to flip a piece of chicken, but the chicken was seriously undercooked (we had the sense to put it back on for a second cooking after the fire had died down some, so no one ended up with salmonella, at least as far as I know).

 

That evening, as happens every time there is a large gathering in South Africa, Cordelia's family sang and danced in celebration of our visit.  A large contingent of neighborhood children appeared and arranged themselves into a choir to serenade us.  We were told that we should sing something as well, but unfortunately our imagination failed us and our self-consciousness at performing further constrained us, so we demurred as politely as we could.  Cordelia helpfully explained that in America, people are too embarrassed to sing and dance like this; this is probably not true of all Americans, but it is certainly true of the three of us.  We were given a reprieve, but told that when we return in November, we must come with something to sing.