Can you afford the new South Africa?

I was visiting my dear friend Thendo in Milnerton when it struck me: he is living in the ‘new South Africa’ – in Mandela’s Rainbow Nation. He lives in the kind of community where you see black and white kids of equal social standing play together. In his kind of South Africa the race and nationality of the next door neighbours do not matter. 

What really matter though are the cost of living and the taxes you pay. This is the price you must be willing to pay for your piece of Mandela’s ‘new South Africa.’

In his community the conversations are not limited to cars, hoes and sport, or to furniture, colour schemes and hair styles. Actually we did not speak about any of these. We had conversations about our Rector begging for money in the Mail & Guardian and why the BRT system has to be in Milnerton and not in Khayelitsha. Debates on whether, we are middleclass or working class, and interestingly enough none of us see ourselves as middleclass – we see ourselves as part of the working class. Rather wishful thinking but allow us to have our wishful thinking.

It was during this visit I realised that the ‘new South Africa’ comes at a price and if you want it you must be willing to pay for it. You have to pay for a truly interracial, interethnic and international experience. Pay to be relatively safer than others. Pay to have the BRT at your door step. This is the kind of life we were promised in 1994 but it is now only accessible to those who have university degrees and have far better jobs than the majority of South Africans. Not that there is anything wrong with pursuing a better life and escaping poverty, I am applauding anyone who strive for a better life; I myself is pursuing Utopia.

However, I cannot help but wondering how we got here? How did the middle class become Mandela’s new South Africa?

Mandela’s new South Africa and the poor’s new South Africa are two completely different ones. The poor’s new South Africa is a life with access to water, electricity, health care, housing and employment. Racial integration is the least of the poor’s worries. 

The reason why the middle class appear to be Mandela's new South Africa is because the majority of black people in 1994 were poor and only a handful was in the middleclass. In 1994 the middleclass was predominantly white and now 20 years down the line there are more black people in the middleclass and still almost no white people in the working class. This also shows that the status quo for white people largely stayed the same whilst the standard of living for black people marginally increased. 

The interracial, interethnic and international transformation of the middleclass is thus largely an appearance; the reality is that more black people can afford a middleclass lifestyle. Hence, Mandela’s new South Africa comes at a price: a university degree, a house loan, car finance, a contract phone, medical aid and dog food. 

A price the poor cannot afford.

Enhancing Humanities in Africa

It seems as Humanities across the globe is in a crisis. Several reports contribute this crisis to a decrease in funding, a declining number of students who enrol for Humanities and a declining number of graduates who find a job after they graduated in Humanities (Delany, 2013; Levitz & Belkin, 2013 and Tworek, 2013).

A recent study by the Academy of Science of South Africa echoes some of the global trends. One of the key findings, in their report titled Consensus Study on the Future of the Humanities in South Africa, indicates that humanities is a state of intellectual stagnation and has been in this moribund condition for the past 15 years. A report commissioned by the Department of Higher Education called the Charter for Humanities and Social Sciences had similar findings. The difference between the two was that the Charter was institutionalised as the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences and has to address the challenges Humanities in South Africa are facing. Even though these reports are only based on the state of Humanities in South Africa we may infer that this is most likely the case in the rest of Africa.

However, the reality is Humanities in Africa inherited a particular history of privilege and subjection at independence and since then we have been grappling with it, and it seems as we are stuck. These reports opened a debate in South Africa and other parts of Africa as to what is the way forward for Humanities in Africa.

Pillay (05 April 2013, Mail & Guardian) argues that “we should lead the critique of the humanities and social sciences we have inherited by pointing to its limitation.” Leading the critique would mean we are taking responsibility for a ‘new’ Humanities going forward. In addition to this, Premesh Lalu in an article in the Mail & Guardian encourages African scholars to think ahead and out of the deadlock (Lalu, 07 June 2014, Mail and Guardian). I have to agree as I found that the majority of scholarly work in Africa is stuck in the past and disregard the present and the future. There are two things we have to bear in mind in this debate: we cannot change the past and we live in the present. I am not disputing the importance of the past but we have the tendency of disregarding the present and the future in scholarly work.

Like many other disciplines, Humanities also operates in the present. Our reality is that the present is materialistic and technologically driven society. Technological advances shapes a future which is changing so rapidly that even the most progressive technologically driven disciplines find it hard to keep up. This can be either a threat or an opportunity. If we see it as an opportunity a new generation of Humanities students has to be innovative, contemporary and at the fore front of societal change. Thus, we must anticipate changes and approach it progressively. However, this can only be possible if we are clear of the future we want for Humanities in Africa.

So what is our point of departure?

Mahmood Mamdani of the Makerere Institute for Social Research (MISR) recently asked the question how do we think the world from Africa? In the famous Hollywood movie ‘Blood Diamond’ the mentor of the protagonist said to him TIA which means ‘this is Africa.’ He referred to the main stream Western view of Africa which is seen as violent, corrupt and exotic. Since then a new movement amongst young African musicians developed which is called TINA which stands for ‘this is new Africa’. This movement decided to reclaim African music and expose it to world. They are not standing back for any of their Western counterparts and have some of the most popular videos on Youtube. It is time for Humanities in Africa to reclaim their place in world but we can only do this if we know what our point of departure is and only then we are able to think the world from Africa.

Race and the ‘politics of beauty’ – A male’s view

I recently paged through the latest edition of Men’s Health SA and it struck me how the majority of cover models tend to be white.

I decided to count all the black men in the December 2014 edition and I found 27 different black men of which 17 are models; the other ten appear in DSTV and Telkom adverts. I then counted all the white models and I found 47 white men. This total would have been more if I included the DSTV and Telkom adverts.

More disturbing was the under representation of black women in this edition. I counted 3 black women compared to the 24 white women. More interesting was how these women were portrayed. Firstly, the 3 black women shared the spotlight other white women. Secondly, white women were portrayed as sexually desirable which ranged from the girl next door to models who suggestive press against men in jeans and libido enhancing adverts.

I did not stop there, I also looked at the cartoons in the Magazine and I found that it is evidently racialized and there is a clear underrepresentation of black people.

So what does this say?

Firstly, this edition of Men’s Health is targeting white men and this is evident from the underrepresentation of black people.

Secondly, the underrepresentation of black people in Men’s Health says something about how Men’s Health sees and portrays beauty in the cosmetic industry. This is obvious by how they portrayed intimate relationships (relationships between men and women). Their portrayal reinforces the apartheid objective[1] which was that white people must date and marry white people and black people must date and marry black people. Through this they do not encourage interracial relationships. The evidence is their lack of portraying black women as sexually attractive beings. They clearly work from the assumption that white men would not be interested in black women. Thus, they do not encourage interracial relationships.

I see this as a ‘politics of beauty.’ For me the ‘politics of beauty’ is where the dominant social force reinforces or enforces their notion of beauty through popular media such the television, radio, print media and social media.

Fanon speak about this phenomenon in length in Black Skin, White Masks and it worth mention here briefly. Black women in particular are guilty for reinforcing the mainstream portrayal of beauty. Fanon speaks about the whitening process black women undergo to become desirable for white men and to match the standards of what white women consider as beauty. Fanon point out how black women will go through extreme measures such as skin bleaching and hair straightening to become more like white women.

This is still the case today. In South Africa there is currently a ‘yellow bone’ trend going on amongst ‘black’ women[2]. If you are considered to be a ‘yellow bone’ you automatically moved up the beauty hierarchy in the ‘black’ society. The same trend is visible amongst ‘coloured’ women. The lighter you are in complexion the further you move up the beauty ladder in the ‘coloured’ society. Some ‘coloured’ women do not even want to be in the sun for 10 min because they do want to ‘become black.’ Another trend is weaves and hair straightening products amongst ‘black’ and ‘coloured’ women.

However, we black men are not saints because we let our inferiority complex cloud our notions of beauty. This is evident by the gender of the male in interracial relationships. My observation is that in the majority of black and white interracial relationships the male is white and the female is black. The minority of cases are the other way around.

Once again let’s use Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks to make sense of this. Fanon argued that for the black man to see himself of worthy dating a white woman he will first try and overcome his material limitations so that it equals that of his male white counterpart. Only once this is achieved he will develop a sense of self-worth to approach a white woman. The reality however, especially in a society like ours it is hard for a black man to equal the resources of their white male counterparts. Thus, white women stay goddesses which mere mortal beings such as black men can only dream of and since they dream of white women they encourage black women to become white so that their fantasies become a reality even if it is only in their dreams.

I cannot but conclude that in this particular case Men’s Health’s portrayal of beauty is racialized and reinforces the racist notion that white people are more beautiful than black people. Their aim, intentionally or unintentionally, is to maintain the status quo in a society that was torn apart by racism. However, this notion is also reinforced by black people’s inferiority complex towards white people.

This left me with something to ponder: can you consider this kind of politics as racism especially since it has the same end in mind as the racist project which started in the previous century.

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[1] For those of you who do not know to what I am referring to it time you take a history lesson on the effects of the Immorality Act.

[2] Where I use inverted commas to describe races I refer specifically to the racial classification of the groups of people in South Africa. 

Women are no Saints

Women are as equally bad and evil as men. Mamdani (2001) in his book on the Rwandan genocide ask a very important question: Was the perpetrators of the genocide only males?  He found that women played an active role in pointing out potential victims and they were standing by supporting and encouraging their male counterparts to kill. This made women equally the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.

We must ask that same question when we want to determine the gender of the perpetrators of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. In all these cases you will find that women must be attributed equal perpetrator status as that of their male counterparts. 

If you read the autobiography of Frederick Douglas and if you read James Walvin’s book titled ‘The trader, the Owner and the Slave’ you will soon realise that women during slavery were sometimes crueller than male counterparts. In Frederick Douglas’ book he explains how a slave owner’s wife asked one of her ‘white’ sons to beat up their mulatto brother because she hated the slave girl by who her husband had the child.

Karel Schoeman in his book ‘Kinders van die Kompanjie’ explains how Dutch women were against soldiers and vryburgers taking Khoi women as wives. The Dutch women of the Cape Colony considered the Khoi women as barbarians and thus it would have been a sin if any of the men married any of the Khoi women. The children that were born from these relationships (between Khoi women and Dutch men) were rejected by the Khoi and by the Dutch women and they were raised as servants in the homes of their fathers. 

The attitude of ‘white’ women during apartheid was no different than that of the ‘white’ males. The ‘white’ women like in the case of the Rwandan genocide supported apartheid openly even though they did not commit the physical atrocities. Thus, I cannot help but feel a sense of sympathy for ‘white’ males because today when you talk about the atrocities of apartheid, colonialism and slavery you imagine a ‘white’ male with a whip or a gun. Feminists strategically removed themselves from the atrocities of the past by painting them also as victims of a ‘white’ male dominated world. However, this is one of the biggest fallacies or dogma modern day feminists follow. History shows that women at times were also active participants in the atrocities of the past like for example Queen Isabella I of Castile who violently converted Jews and Muslim, and funded Christopher Columbus’ expedition to the Caribbean. An inconvenient truth feminists would like to hide is that women were staunch supporters of slavery, colonialism and apartheid, and at times they were active participants. 

I personally have been more abused by women than men. When I say abuse I refer to both physically and emotional abuse, of which I regard emotional abuse as the most destructive of all. All men who abused me or tried to abuse me did it through physically means which allowed me to fight back once I was strong enough. However, being abused through psychological means, if it starts at a very young age, shatters you self-esteem which fills you with self-doubt. Doubting yourself holds you back and literally over time mentally enslaves you. My experience is that women are masters in abusing men emotionally.

Part of my life I grew up in a monastery and the nuns used to employ both emotional and physical abuse. If we were naughty we were made out to be sinners (emotional abuse) and had to kneel on gravel for long periods of times (physical abuse).  Luckily I only stayed there for two years of which I am grateful because if I stayed there for longer I do not think I would have recovered, like many others. This is one of just the many incidences of abuse I experienced at the hands of women.

After reading this I hope men would start a process of de-demonising themselves and speak out against the abuse they experience at the hands of women. I know it is hard for any men to speak out against abuse because it is harmful to their egos. However, if this demonising of men continues there will be any egos to protect.

And the winner is … patron client relationships

This is my conclusion after the June 7, 2014 convocation elections. I was hoping that the winner would be the current student generation; who picked up the struggle where the ‘hek toe’ generation left it in 1994. ‘Hek toe’ (to the gate) was the famous words students at the University of the Western Cape used in the 1980s when they protested for democracy and freedom. The ‘hek toe’ generation is now the very same people who are now buying student votes for their narrow self-interest. For this, they are using struggle rhetoric and beer to manipulate struggling students into voting for them. 

The ‘hek toe’ generation failed the current generation of students. I came to this realisation in Friday’s staff meeting called by Professor O’Connell. The SRC President wanted to say something in the meeting but staff members refused to give him an opportunity to speak because they felt it was not his place to speak. I was one of two staff members who asked the house to reconsider the decision and give him an opportunity to speak. I did this because I could see this would further alienate the staff (mostly the ‘hek toe’ generation) from the current generation of students.  Not surprisingly my appeal was shot down. It was after this that I came to the realisation that the ‘hek toe’ generation are failing to see themselves in the eyes of the current student generation. Not so long ago the ‘hek toe’ generation were also seen as irrational and destructive, and yet they were the ones who changed the course of history.

 This is how the ‘hek toe’ generation failed the current student generation – they rejected them. When students realised that they have been rejected they started looking for people who would listen to them and entertain their issues, and this was when opportunistic patrons started using students for their interests. To explain this in more detail we have to look at studies of criminology and political violence. Where the state is absent or rejected its citizens you would find the most violence which is perpetuated by members of the patron client networks. These networks to a certain extent give people what they need but it comes at a cost. The only and the most important difference between the state and the patron client network is accountability. The state through various mechanisms is held accountable which is not the case in a patron client network. Unlike the state the ultimate aim of the patron is to make money and use those in the network to make it happen. However, those in the network are to blinded and flabbergast by rhetoric that they are willing to do all the dirty work of the patron. Those in the network doing the dirty work genuinely believe they do this for the greater good of the people.

Thus, coming back to the elections of the convocation this year it explains why student leaders from rival political parties joined the biggest UWC patron client network. The ‘hek toe’ generation are so caught up in their 1994 achievement that they are blinded to see the struggle of the current student generation, which is a continuation of their (‘hek toe’ generation) struggle. Thus, after being rejected many times by the ‘hek toe’ generation these student leaders joined a network that listened to them and filled them with rhetoric. 

With this in mind, I cannot be but disappointed at the ‘hek toe’ generation. However, my biggest disappointment is that the current generation do not see their strength and what they can achieve when they join forces. The convocation and the university council are crowded by the ‘hek toe’ generation and they have forgotten the struggle of this generation. Yet, the current generation convinced themselves that they are not old enough to join the ranks of convocation and council. Inexperienced and too young is what they called the only student candidate. More outrageously she was also the only female candidate and the irony is that it was mostly other females who verbally attacked her. I asked one of females who were campaigning for two of the candidates whether we must deny young and inexperienced females Employment Equity opportunities. She responded by saying it is different. I asked her how, especially if the principle is seeking equality in a male dominated environment. To make matters worse I saw the Gender Equity Unit of the University of the Western Cape campaigning for two of the male candidates, this after they are refusing to run any programmes for males. 

It saddens me this happened in Youth month. Every year we celebrate and commemorate the boldness of the 1976 generation. A generation who did not convinced themselves that they are too young or are too inexperienced. It was the 1976 generation who radically change the course of the apartheid history, and they were so powerful in their conviction that the apartheid state had to kill them.

The truth is, a patron client network will not achieve the struggle of this generation. I have to say that it is not only a UWC phenomenon but that it happens throughout the whole of South Africa. The most evident example is the ANCYL. The once revolutionary ANCYL has become the puppet of some strongmen in the ANC. The ANCYL were disbanded and banned from speaking their mind.

If there is one thing this generation must realise is that they are alone in their struggle and that no patron client relationship will help them achieve it. So here is my challenge to the students at the University of the Western Cape. It is time for you to take over Convocation and Council in sheer numbers and get your issues on the agenda. Here is my strategy to those leading the struggle. Capture both SRC and Convocation bodies before you go after the Chair of the University Council, why follow when you are capable of leading.

Practice What You Preached!

Sometimes people use terms such as good governance without knowing what it means. If it is incorrectly used in a conversation, it is still forgivable but when it is used as a campaign strategy and you are transgressor of that value system (good governance) it is plain stupid.

Two of the candidates who are running for University Council through the Convocation are using good governance and academic excellence as their campaign strategy. This is to infer that the current leadership of UWC do not adhere to the principles of good governance and academic excellence.

However, before they point to anyone else they must have a look at what they have been doing the past nine years as the Convocation leadership. They must ask themselves whether they adhered to the principles and norms of good governance.

Central to good governance is openness and transparency. Since I joined this institution in 2007 I never saw them adhering to these principles.  For example, never before did they inform members of the UWC Convocation about the workings of the Convocation.

They also neglected to inform members of Convocation that two members of Convocation can be elected to the University Council. Never before did they explain the election process for both Council and for the Executive of Convocation. 

They have rather kept the information to themselves which placed them in a privileged situation. Good governance is a liberal democratic ideal which advocates for access to information. Something they neglected.  

With regards to academic excellence I have never heard of a campaign or programme by the Convocation that focuses of academic excellence. In actual fact, I did not hear of any campaign in the past 8 years that was projected towards the student population. Surprisingly the people who are campaigning for academic excellence are the same people in power for the past nine years and have put themselves up for re-election.

Now please tell me how you can preach good governance but you are also a transgressor of the same value system. Please tell me how is it possible to hold academic excellence dear if you never valued the UWC student population.

And for those of you who are wilfully to be misled by these individuals please go ahead and follow them, protest on their command, drag your names through the mud on their command and maybe just maybe, will they give you a job once you completed your studies. However, I will not count on it.