40+ hours, one lost piece of luggage, three movies, several television shows, two read books, several newspapers, and virtually no sleep later, I arrived back home last night. I am catching up on life and will resume posting soon.
[Crossposted at the FPA South Africa Blog and at dcat.]
After three weeks here in South Africa, this evening I will board a South African Airways plane bound for Washington, DC’s Dulles International Airport via Dakar, Senegal. If all goes well I will land at 6:00 am eastern time tomorrow, Tuesday, at which point I’ll hope that I can get to BWI in time to catch my onward flight that will eventually take me back to Texas.
Leaving South Africa is always bittersweet for me. I love this country, its people, its culture and politics and sport and even, in odd ways, its history. And every time I leave I have no real idea when I will next be back. Next year? 2010? As of right now, I am simply not sure. South Africa is a part of my life, a vital part, and when I leave I will miss it even as I am excited to be home again, to see my wife and friends, to sleep in my own bed, and not to live out of a bag.
Over the course of the next few days I will continue my assessments about what i have seen and done in the hopes that it will continue to shed light on how I see South Africa right now, in the middle of 2008. Between now and then I have much traveling to do with a very cranky back. in the airport I am set to see a Zimbabwean friend who has fallen on difficult times here in South Africa. And then I’ll leave South Africa again, knowing full well that I will return, soon if not soon enough, to this place I have so come to love over the last decade-plus.
[Crossposted at the FPA South Africa Blog and at dcat.]
I’ll be the first one to admit that I tend to see most social phenomena through a political lens. Those of us who work on politics are akin to the guy with the hammer who looks at most problems and sees nothing but nails. That said, South Africans tend to be a politicized lot. Everything is political. Even those things that are not.
These are fascinating times to be an observer of South African life. There is a divide within the African National Congress that can only vaguely be attributed to policy differences or even to ideology, at least in the broadest sense. That divide has manifested itself in two personalities: That of President Thabo Mbeki and that of ANC president and presumptive successor to Mbeki, Jacob Zuma. Of late the rhetoric from Zuma’s most ardent supporters – most notably the leadership of the ANC Youth League – has been heated, indeed dangerous. When future generations of leaders begin talking about killing and dying for their leadership you either have inordinate loyalty or a dangerously volatile political climate. Most South Africans fear the latter.
Furthermore, the country’s legal culture reflects the Mbeki-Zuma divide, with high-level judges falling on one side or the other and thus making the judiciary a potential political flashpoint, if it is not at that stage already. With Jacob Zuma still very much caught up in corruption charges that could derail not only his political aspirations but also his freedom, and with the possibility that such an event would cause
South Africa to convulse.
And then there is the litany of issues that the country faces, and that no leader is going to have an easy time addressing: Inter alia, Crime (the new fad among South Africa’s bad guys is blowing up ATM machines and looting the contents), corruption (among the political class but also other elites – think the recent arms sales scandal), poverty and the entire economic apparatus tied up with it, and foreign affairs (Zimbabwe now, Darfur, the role of China on the continent, and then the usual putting out of fires that is the role of a regional superpower).
The reality is that the Mbeki-Zuma divide has little to do with differences on how to approach any of these issues and everything to do with internal divisions in the party that for now is the only viable source of political power and patronage in the country. Theoretically Zuma’s support comes from the left, from the COSATU-SACP wings of the tripartite alliance, where Mbeki’s comes from the center (there really is no right-wing of the ANC, no matter what the left would have us believe), the party’s putative mainstream, though the fact that Zuma benefits from significantly more support than does Mbeki throws the idea of what exactly the ANC’s mainstream is right now.
I have long argued that the only way there will ever be a serious challenge to the ANC will come if COSATU and SACP break away and form their own leftist party, at which point the ANC would probably garner a plurality of the country’s votes, but not a pure majority, which would bring with it the interesting spectacle of a party such as the Democratic Alliance becoming kingmakers in what would become a coalition government along the lines of those in many parliamentary systems. But with Zuma’s status as a longstanding ANC stalwart, that break has been tabled for the foreseeable future.
[Crossposted at the FPA’s South Africa Blog.]
My apologies for the silence here for the last week or so. Traveling in South Africa sometimes means not having the sort of internet access or opportunity to write as I might like. The last few days have taken me from Cape Town to Grahamstown and Rhodes University, one of my old homes. From there I came up to Johanneburg where my South African adventure will end without the hoped-for Zimbabwe trip for reasons simultaneously byzantine and prosaic.
In the next 48 hours before I leave for my return flight to the US I shall make some observations about a number of facets of South African life as it is in 2008.
[Crossposted at the FPA South Africa Blog and dcat.]
At the end of the day, travel is, for me, about people. Whether I am returning to Africa or to the UK, places I visit regularly, where I have lived and worked, or whether visiting someplace for the first time, such as when I went to China a couple of years back, the most important component to me is always the people I meet, and friends new and old. This is not to say that there are not other factors — work, for example, certainly requires me to travel quite regularly, and provides the justification for these trips. And like anyone who leaves home a lot, I like experiences as well, whether cultural, aesthetic, adventure, or what have you.
But the most important element of travel is people. I am staying in Sea Point, in Cape Town, with my good friend Doug, a black Zimbabwean who has lived in South Africa for more than a decade. We met in 1997 when we were at Rhodes University, in Grahamstown, and he is one of the people I always try to meet up with when I return. The time here will be too brief, but it is important, indeed crucial, that i spend it here. The conference in Stellenbosch provides another example. I walked into the conference venue knowing of a handful of the people there but actually knowing only one, a grad student at The University of Texas who I nonetheless always seem to see in South Africa. By the time I left Stellenbosch yesterday I has made a handful of new friends, some of whom I’ll maintain contact with professionally, a few of whom I will likely remain friends with over the years.
In some ways I think I’be grown almost sanguine about the opportunities travel affords me. I brought my camera on this trip, have been able to see some new places and revisit old ones, and have yet to snap a single shot, which probably seems like a waste, but in my eyes just remonds me of all of the time I have spent here and the ways in which I try to immerse myself.
In any case, Cape Town is raw this morning — rainy and damp, cold — and I have decided to devote a day to trying to catch up on work. I apologize for the fundamentally personal nature of this entry, which lacks much insight into South African politics or history or culture. But South Africa is, for me, more than simply a tableau for politics and work. It is a real flesh and blood place where I’ve spent a large proportion of my life and energies for nearly a dozen years. So today I’ll just work for a few more hours until Doug, my friend, gets home from work, and we’ll go out to eat and for a few drinks before tomorrow, when all too quickly, I’ll be leaving again.
[Crossposted at the FPA South Africa Blog and dcat.]
Greetings from Stellenbosch, the historical intellectual center of Afrikanerdom. I am here for a conference on sport history at the University of Stellenbosch, and as I did with Melville, I have seen changes in this picturesque little university town.
Clearly the city parents here are no fools. No longer can Stellenbosch be merely the epicenter of Afrikaans intellectual life in South Africa. Seeing its potential as a tourist town, as the crossroads to the country’s booming and burgeoning wine routes, as a close bucolic escape from Cape Town, the city has marshalled its resources. The Afrikaans accent might loom heavily over so many conversations here, but above all the universal language of trade and commerce and tourism looms largest of all. Where even a decade ago most shopkeepers and bartenders greeted patrons in Afrikaans as the default, now it is as likely that you’ll receive an English greeting. Whether this qualifies as progress or cultural abandonment is in the eye of the beholder.
My three nights here follow one night in Cape Town, where I’ll be returning on Wednesday. Cape Town sits in one of the world’s most fortuitously beautiful settings. Nestled between the water and the mountains, with Table Mountain as the main though not sole backdrop, Cape Town stands as the symbolic representation of South Africa to the world even if the vast majority of visitors to the country arrive via sprawling Oliver Tambo airport in the decidedly less picturesque megalopolis that is Gauteng. No longer is there a truly recognizable Midrand, that space between Johannesburg and Pretoria, as expansion and growth mean that the suburbs of the one city are close to blending with those of the other.
The conference is going well, though for a host of reasons I’ve missed most of it and will make up time tomorrow, when I’ll give my paper on rugby, race, and nationalism in the New South Africa. I’ve met some old friends — one a PhD student at UT, a five hour drive from my home, who I nonetheless seem only to see in South Africa — and made some new ones, and that, in the end, is the real purpose of conferences.
[Crossposted at the FPA South Africa Blog.]
Sawubona!
I’m writing from the 7th Street Guesthouse in Joberg’s Melville. The trip here was quite the trek, involving many layovers (Houston, Jackson, BWI, Dulles, Dakar) and more than one trip in an automobile, but I finally got into my B&B at about 8:30 South Africa time last night.
Not wanting to go to sleep and end up wide awake at about 4 in the morning, I went out and visited some old haunts. One of the striking aspects of Melville, and I think it tells us something about South Africa, for good and ill, is the subtle but definite ways in which it has changed since I first started coming to this little Joberg semi-suburb a decade or so ago. It is still fundamentally the same — a little oasis of affluence and upscale dining, drinking, and shopping options in a village that feels far from the Central Business District that is actually not far away at all. Many of the restaurants and other businesses that were here in the late 1990s are still thriving, though there has also been turnover and there are new places competing with the old.
But what is remarkable, and I think telling, is how much more, well, African, Melville has become. Not so long ago Melville was affluent and white. It was rare to see a black person not involved in labor or else on the streets. But today Melville represents a ployglot mixture of the New South Africa. There is no ideal racial climate anywhere in South Africa yet, but Melville just about qualifies inasmuch as the South Africa tourism board could present a pretty good face with videos and pictures from just about any restaurant in these few blocks.
And yet black, white, Indian, or coloured, the crowds that descend upon Melville do share one thing that separates them from the masses across the country: overwhelmingly they are wealthy. I do not want to quibble about what I mean by wealth. I am not saying that everyone I saw last night is rolling in money, driving BMW’s (though many do), and could retire today. But I am saying that they are distinct from the vast majority in this country in that they could afford the R250 dinner, followed by round after round of R25 drinks and R15 beers.
And in a sense this is good inasmuch as the increased black presence in Melville shows that there is a growing black middle (and upper) class making their way in the country. At the same time what it tells me is that South African divisions, which have always been both class and racial, with the latter more powerful than the former, have turned 180 degrees so that while race will continue to be a dividing line in the country, class draws even more permanent lines.
And I have no idea what the solution to this is. I am no class warrior, I believe in at least the fundemental tenets of a capitalist market economy, and I do not resent success. I was, after all, one of them last night, and one of the changes in my own life since 1997, when I first came, and lived, in South Africa is that my own travels have become decidedly more upscale, though I’m still not far from rich. At the same time, believing in the fundamental tenets of market capitalism is far from saying that ours is a system that is unreformable. And in South Africa there is still need for massive reform. The gross disparities of wealth that any society has are acute here and without alleviating poverty the country will continue to see not only the violent crime that South Africa is so well known for, but also the paroxysms of mass violence such as the xenophobic backlash against immigrants that have convulsed the country in recent weeks.
It is good to be back. I’ve missed South Africa in the time that I’ve been away. I’ll post more reflections here — I’ll probably be light on the usual links-and-analysis approach in favor of these more discursive reflections in the weeks to come.
[Cross-posted from the FPA South Africa Blog.]
The dueling headlines tell of the tricky course South Africa has chosen for itself with regard to the situation in Zimbabwe. It is widely recognized that South Africa has the potential to be the biggest external power broker, whether through sticks or carrots, words or deeds. And so far, it is no secret, South Africa has chosen to act so tepidly that the country’s virtual inaction can only qualify as appeasing Robert Mugabe.
And so for readers of, say, the Cape Argus, it may have been reassuring that At Last, SA Condemns Mugabe. But for readers of The New York Times the message was quite different: A.N.C. Rejects Pressure on Zimbabwe. So which is it?
Well, as the Argus story makes clear, while South Africa did finally speak out against Mugabe, it also helped to block even stronger statements from the United Nations Security Council, which has unanimously rebuked Zimbabwe. And in so doing, South Africa’s leaders have once again forced the world, which little understands the situation to begin with, to wonder, rightly, what on earth Thabo Mbeki could be thinking? Loyalty, even fairly blind loyalty, to the revolutionary generation is one thing. But at some point that currency was long ago spent. The idea that South Africa owes fealty to ZANU-PF at the expense of the masses of Zimbabweans desperate for change is absurd. Mbeki’s approach mystifies and infuriates much of the rest of the world. It is hard to see how either Zimbabweans or South Africans benefit from such an approach to the gravest regional crisis in years.
[Crossposted at the FPA South Africa Blog.]
Is President Mugabe beginning to feel the increasing pressure from the outside? There is some indication that Mugabe’s overheated rhetoric of late comes at least in part because of increased scrutiny of his country from regional leaders. Thus his threat to go to war if he loses the run-off and his warnings that people will be too scared to vote seem less like typical Mugabe bombast and more like the desperation of a man who sees his power, and thus potentially his freedom, slipping away.
Meanwhile challenger Morgan Tsvangirai is at turns confident but also wary. He believes that despite Mugabe’s threats and the violence underway that is intended to cow the opposition the turnout on June 27 will be immense and he is confident that he will win. Nonetheless as he looks around his country he sees a nation and a people under siege. The news that the United Nations anticipates a severe food shortage in Zimbabwe, which is hardly flourishing as it is, cannot help matters any.
From the outside world leaders continue to condemn Mugabe’s regime. Leaders in Africa continue to deal with their Zimbabwe dilemma while more and more of them speak out against ZANU-PF. Even Thabo Mbeki has been roused to action, if only to question whether holding the runoff is a good idea and to encourage Mugabe, with whom Mbeki met last night, to engage in negotiations with Tsvangirai. Mbeki’s proposal seems a bit pie in the sky, and more than a little bit too late, but nonetheless reveals that the world is becoming engaged as the clock ticks down toward the scheduled runoff election.
How does a country reconcile itself after horrific paroxysms of violence? Numerous countries have had to deal with precisely this dilemma. South Africa, through its Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), did so most famously and most extensively. And the TRC process has served as a model, an inspiration, and as a template for several other countries that have followed with processes of their own to reconcile the past with the present and with a hoped-for future, though the process was also fraught with imperfections and faced sometimes intense criticism from across the political spectrum.
Zimbabwe will almost surely have to go through a comparable process, whether in a matter of weeks and months or years. And today Kenya is trying to deal with its relatively brief but still nightmarish political violence of a few months ago. President Mwai Kibaki has declared categorically that his coalition government will not provide blanket amnesty for the perpetrators of post-election violence, once again putting him at odds with his erstwhile rival and uncomfortable supposed government coalition partner Raila Odinga. Kenya’s violence did not endure like that in most of the countries that have gone through formal reconciliation processes, but the chaos that exploded nationwide nonetheless reveals fissures in Kenyan society that runs deeper than the mere electoral divide that provided the proximate causes of violence. At some point Kenya is going to have to address those divisions in something other than a patchwork manner.