REVISITING SOUTH AFRICA - I

ANNOYANCES

When you get to Jo’burg international airport, whether departing or arriving, you can hardly avoid being literally assaulted by a continuing series of taxi ‘pushers’ (informal but not all necessarily illegal) sprouting from all directions and asking you the same question: “do you need a taxi?”... If you happen to be a black woman they will qualify the question with “sister?” or “sissy?”... Which reminds me of an occasion in Swaziland when a white American colleague of mine was addressed as "sissy" by a Swazi sister, to which she responded, irritated: “my name is not sissy”! Well, I tried to explain to her that it didn’t mean any harm and, at most, she should have felt honoured by being treated as such in a Southern African country where such treatment of black women is quite common… But having gone countless times to and fro Jo’burg airport, now renamed OR Tambo International Airport, I just get annoyed at the way they will ask you the question one after another, while standing by or very close to each other and having heard my answer to the previous one: no, thanks. So, this time, after the first two (and for the first time one of them was a woman…) I grabbed a piece of paper and just wrote in huge letters: NO! and put it in front of my trolley… it worked!

***

Another thing that annoyed and, most of all, saddened me was finding Mandela dummies, toys, dolls, whatever you may want to call them (we call them "bonecos de pano" in Portuguese), for sale at the Jo’burg airport. I wrote a brief comment on this the other day at Black Looks on a very interesting post about the “Meaning of Mandela”. This was just the most recent sign of a very noticeable trend (even if with the most apparently 'noble intentions') tending to degrade the image of the great man! Before, the “lower” I had come across was the “Mandela shirts collection”, made up of replicas of the most beautiful and colourful shirts with which he brought his own, and South Africa’s, brand of flavour to the dress code of international state's men. I even bought one (the only white shirt in the collection) about three years ago, at that same airport, for my son, which he used on his graduation day… but now these 'dummies' are just the lowest - too degrading, I’m very sorry to say!

ANNOYANCES

When you get to Jo’burg international airport, whether departing or arriving, you can hardly avoid being literally assaulted by a continuing series of taxi ‘pushers’ (informal but not all necessarily illegal) sprouting from all directions and asking you the same question: “do you need a taxi?”... If you happen to be a black woman they will qualify the question with “sister?” or “sissy?”... Which reminds me of an occasion in Swaziland when a white American colleague of mine was addressed as "sissy" by a Swazi sister, to which she responded, irritated: “my name is not sissy”! Well, I tried to explain to her that it didn’t mean any harm and, at most, she should have felt honoured by being treated as such in a Southern African country where such treatment of black women is quite common… But having gone countless times to and fro Jo’burg airport, now renamed OR Tambo International Airport, I just get annoyed at the way they will ask you the question one after another, while standing by or very close to each other and having heard my answer to the previous one: no, thanks. So, this time, after the first two (and for the first time one of them was a woman…) I grabbed a piece of paper and just wrote in huge letters: NO! and put it in front of my trolley… it worked!

***

Another thing that annoyed and, most of all, saddened me was finding Mandela dummies, toys, dolls, whatever you may want to call them (we call them "bonecos de pano" in Portuguese), for sale at the Jo’burg airport. I wrote a brief comment on this the other day at Black Looks on a very interesting post about the “Meaning of Mandela”. This was just the most recent sign of a very noticeable trend (even if with the most apparently 'noble intentions') tending to degrade the image of the great man! Before, the “lower” I had come across was the “Mandela shirts collection”, made up of replicas of the most beautiful and colourful shirts with which he brought his own, and South Africa’s, brand of flavour to the dress code of international state's men. I even bought one (the only white shirt in the collection) about three years ago, at that same airport, for my son, which he used on his graduation day… but now these 'dummies' are just the lowest - too degrading, I’m very sorry to say!