I'm going to tackle a tricky subject, for me, with the full awareness that I have only scratched the surface of understanding- racial integration in ZA. This is my central question: given that other nations have been the product of centuries of conquest and division, suffered colonization, civil wars, apartheid and held truth and reconciliation commissions, did South Africa manage to get it more right than their neighbors? I absolutely cannot answer this properly, but I can relay my impressions and conversations. My impression is yes, and on pure instinct, I think the reason why is the particular quality of people like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Yes, Mandela started out as a terrorist, and Winnie, his wife for a time, came before the TRC for some horrifying abuses- and it's still a mess out there- but something extremely powerful did happen with the TRC. I read Country of my Skull by Antjie Krog, an award-winning reporter who covered the entirety of the TRC. Interspersed with her accounting of the peoples' stories themselves, she references such ideas as the "culture of shame" found in Japan, and how the defeat of the emperor in WWII is the defeat of a people because individual identity is submissive to identity with the leader. One story that particularly struck me was that of Winnie Mandela- she had no apology before the commission. testimony was heard, she was steadfast in its absurdity. Until Tutu, beacon of leadership that he is, stood at the conclusion and simply begged her to apologize. The TRC had no formal clout, it was an independent, mostly nonpartial body fueled completely by its moral authority. Tutu was, in some eyes, demeaning himself by begging her for an empty apology. But the author argues that it was a brilliant move because she did actually apologize, and though they were empty words, the clan power structure of which she was the leader in many ways collapsed when she, by words if not in sentiment, acquiesced. she was, in some ways, dismantling the identities of her clansmen. one example of subtle but important groundshift.
Krog contends that simply by entering the collected truth into the national consciousness, a kind of peace can be made. An admission of guilt on the part of the perpetrators was in many instances as difficult to give as it was for the victims to forgive. But in other instances, despite conflicting versions of the same story, the inherent imperfections of language, the subtle and strange ways that widely different cultures living in such close proximity interpret an event, and the twists in individual psychological composition, great catharsis was achieved by bringing enemies before each other in a forum of respect. My brief perception of Cape Town culture was of great cultural variety and integration at least in public spaces. As anywhere, people self-segregate- that was also evident. I don't know what the proportion of blacks is in the city- in the country it's 80%. In the city, multicultural is the word- muslim, jew, indian, black, british, afrikaner and trendy white all swirled around each other, night and day, though my perspective is limited to daily "safe" wanderings and downtown clubs at night. I did not stroll through the shantytowns where 25% are HIV-pos.
So what of reparations? Germany gave reparations to the Jewish people- Israel was in large measure, created out of the German coffer. (is it gauche to point at Israel's systematic apartheid against Palestine?) In South Africa, there have been no reparations- there was no governing body that organized it, and no money anyway. (there is, intriguingly, a suit in US court currently that would bring international corporations to task for their role in SA apartheid then, with the aim of reparations). In the excellent company of our learned family friends, I heard a joke that clarified one perspective. Tutu was unfortunately misunderstood in a q&a session after a speech he made here in the states. the question was about the gravy train. Wikipedia says the gravy train is a british rock band but originally the gravy train was the train that the parliamentarians travelled on inbetween their summer and winter government houses in Cape Town and Pretoria. Gravy, of course, referred to the whiskey and cigars they all enjoyed en route. In the q&a, someone asked if there were still problems with the proverbial gravy train. Tutu replied that it wasn't a problem anymore, now they all just had their own jets. Which is to say that what happened with the election of the ANC in 1994, the first free elections, a population-proportional representation was elected. But that meant that people were, and are still, elected based on affirmative action and not on merit. The leaders do not know how to lead, they are still operating out of a tribal-based mentality in which prestige is measured in blig- (oh, wait, maybe this is too familiar), so tax money is fundamentally misunderstood to be personal money and spent on such things as -private jets. Moreover, affirmative action measures effectively closed down trade schools because qualified teachers could no longer be hired beyond a certain quota. Education in general suffered mightily- the quality plummeted so steeply that students wishing to enroll in med school were so fundamentally ill-prepared for the coursework that they would fail out. which in turn meant that capable students found that school an undesirable name, and turned aside. Affirmative action has also ensured that small businesses is stymied because beyond a ten(?) employee limit, one must be population-proportional regardless of skills sought (or languages mutually understood, etc.) These are observations through one filter.
Me, Claude, and Noah
Another set of stories from the same visit focused on trying to set up a small fishing business in Mozambique. Claude relayed for us the wearying quantity of bribe money needed to get the proper permits to run a fish boat, as well as a insider's communique of the creepy clarity of Saudi Arabia's systematic anti-western education of the young and impoverished. In a related thread, I enjoyed the conversation of an american gentleman who spent some of his school-years in Saudi Arabia, and he told me of the conniving ways he and his brother experienced when they had won an engineering competition of building a toothpick(?) bridge capable of standing under so many tens of pounds. the next day their names on the placard were replaced by their rivals... he contends that the Saudis will squeeze every penny out of their oil fields regardless of the resources' destructiveness for the next fifty years and fight tooth and nail for power.
intermission for photo of me and Noah battling the skalliwags in their pool-
I digress, but here the thread returns- my seatmate on the plane was a Jewish businessman from Johannesburg (with these lovely shiny shoes...). We also were talking about resources, Africa being so rich in them, and his contention, if I read it right, is that although focused reparations may indeed be a good idea, the general attitude in the African interior is one of "tomorrow, I will do it. or maybe next week. perhaps next year". he happens to find the relaxed life highly attractive and dreams of retiring into it. My question to him was about climate reparations: If the "developed world" financially helped the developing world essentially jump into a whole other kind of sustainable infrastructure, could that particular form of reparation be well-received and effectively implemented? He did not hazard a guess. We talked about the enormous sums it would entail. We agreed that enormous sums are being spent on war. We spoke about valuable work in the world, leadership, ethics, and where revolutions begin (coffeeshops). I wondered how much worse it could get before it gets better, and he reassured me that there will be a second coming. By their calculation, I'll be dead by then (250ish years from now)- too bad, I'm sure it will be exciting.
Meanwhile, uptown: Pop and I were on a mission in wine country and ended up in a cellar.sorry you have to turn your head sideways That wall is a beautiful wooden relief of three monks tasting their wine.
and then kidnapped to Franschhoek Valley where some of the most exclusive wineries are, but on the way, ran into a fire
goodbye with photos of the ocean at Tsitsikamma Park well east of Cape Town- I've never seen Pop's jaw drop before, but it did as we first spied this drama
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