MANDELA 90th BIRTHDAY PARTY IN LONDON

WHAT’S THE WORD ON JOHANNESBURG (AGAIN)?*

Photo: Soweto by Ana Santana

For the last ten days the word has been violence spurred by xenophobia. Nothing can justify the levels it has reached, but it certainly begs explanation, understanding and rational, long-term, solutions. A common definition of ‘xenophobia’ will hold it as “a strong feeling of dislike or fear of people from other countries.” Is this really what explains the appalling scenes from Johannesburg’s shacklands being shown in the media all over the world? I do not believe that South Africans in general fundamentally ‘dislike’ people from other countries, but there is certainly some degree of ‘fear’ behind the shameful attacks against foreigners of the last few days. So, perhaps ‘xenophobia’ only explains part of the issue - more precisely, the part arising from fear. But fear of what exactly?

I think it is safe to posit that it might be fear of being engulfed, overtaken, swamped by massive inflows of economic migrants from all over the continent. Fear of losing out on a totally uncontrolled competition for access to all of their already meagre sources of survival: jobs (or just the increasingly fewer employment opportunities available), housing (or just the decreasing space for their own shacks or more solid and larger houses for their families), marketplace (or just their shrinking share of the local informal markets), food (just bound to become even more expensive and of limited availability as the current food crisis spreads around the globe), health (compounded by the AIDS pandemic in the region) and education (whatever little of it they may access in a financially restricted educational system).

In short, fear of losing out on an open competition for scarce resources and extremely limited opportunities. Hardly anything new elsewhere in the world or in South Africa itself. In effect, Black South Africans have seen the chances of improvement in their living standards undercut by labour competition from the region and the wider continent for more than a century, particularly in the backbone of the country’s economy: the mining industry.

A brief look at the economic history of the Johannesburg region (also known as the ‘Witwatersrand’, or simply the ‘Rand’) tells us that monopsonic control (i.e. control of the labour market by a single employer that sets all rules and wages) of recruiting for the mining industry was vital for the ‘Randlords’. The mining industry was faced with diminishing returns and rising costs of operation, which could not be passed on to the consumer due to the fixed price of gold. Therefore, it vitally depended on the institutionalisation of oscillant migrant labour: only an infinitely elastic supply of labour at rates lower than its marginal product could guarantee profitability.

Monopsonistic organisation of employers, especially in its ability to generate economies of scale by reducing the costs of recruiting, transportation and accommodation of migrants from outside South Africa, prevented competition for labour from pushing wages up. This required an immobilised, disorganised and dependent labour force, the maintenance of which was guaranteed by an array of segregationist policies restricting access of Africans to skilled jobs and their permanent urbanisation, thus hindering their ability to acquire and develop bargaining skills.

In 1893, the South African Chamber of Mines established a ‘Native Labour Department’ with the explicit objective of taking “active steps for the gradual reduction of native wages to a reasonable level.” This was followed, in 1896, by the creation of the ‘Rand Native Labour Association’ which, a year later, claimed to have promoted an increase in employment by over 500% above its level in 1890 “without any appreciable rise in wages.” By the end of the century, the organisation of recruiting had managed to increase the level of African employment by 600% at a wage rate below what it had been at the beginning of the mining industry.[1]

Yet, in spite of that achievement, competition for regional labour still prevailed in the industry and, in 1900, employers created the ‘Witwatersrand Native Labour Association’ (WNLA), which was the only body allowed to recruit in Mozambique, the main source of labour supply. The WNLA was to structurally define the regional labour market, for the rest of the last century to this day, as one of dependency for migrant workers and permanent low wages for Black South Africans – certainly lower than what they could have been if not for the institutionalised influxes of foreign migrant labour.

It is against this historical background that the growing tensions, conflicts and, ultimately, extreme violence of the last few days ought to be analysed. Of course, since the end of Apartheid, a mere 14 years ago, substantial changes have occurred in the nature of institutional relations within South Africa and between the countries in the region and in the structure of the regional labour market, translating into a relatively stronger bargaining power for the South African labour force. Along the last century, there was also a significant diversification of the South African economy away from the mining industry.

However, and in spite of the prevailing status of South Africa as the regional powerhouse, poverty and social exclusion levels in the country have not decreased sufficiently as to offset the potentially distortionary effects on the local economy of a permanent influx of economic migrants from all over the continent, as far afield as Nigeria and, for the best part of the last decade, particularly from Zimbabwe. Although official figures show only around 120,000 people applying for asylum in South Africa in the last decade, at least another million Africans - and some estimates say two million - have moved there (figures from 2005). And this time without any regulator, such as the WNLA, to somehow control it. To quote Mamphela Ramphele, Co- Chair of the Global Commission on International Migration, “South Africa is finding it difficult to absorb the flows of immigrants, which have increased faster than the South African economy. We are like a little Europe, without her resources.”

This is a reality that the South African government, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) have to tackle with unwavering determination. In particular, SADC and the AU have, more than ever before, the duty, under their existing general legal and institutional frameworks and specific sectoral protocols, to regulate economic migration fluxes within the continent in such a way as to guarantee that both migrants and host country residents have their economic, social and human rights protected.

Moreover, all countries in the continent (and here I am particularly thinking about my own country of origin, Angola, which has also been attracting significant levels of migrants from all over the continent and the rest of the world since the end of the war) must understand the current events as a desperate cry from the poor and socially excluded for their governments to put their houses in order, i.e. to improve their economic and governance performances, and in particular their income redistribution policies and social support systems, in order to, if not totally stem, at least make the current levels and specific directions of intra-continental migration controllable overall. Only such an integrated approach to the problem can turn migration into a productive, culturally and humanly enriching experience to the benefit of the entire continent.

Finally, to all brothers and sisters, victims and perpetrators of the unspeakable acts of violence of the last few days in Johannesburg, I would like to dedicate this song, Chileshe, about which Bra Masekela said: "We first recorded this song in 1968 on the 'Promise of A Future' album. People from Jo’burg always thought of themselves as being much more advanced, civilised and hipper than anybody that did not grow up there, especially people from the outlying provinces like Northern Transvaal, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Mozambique, Zambia, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Malawi, Swaziland. I was also thinking about how the whites used to ill-treat us and call us 'Kaffirs' and all kinds of dirty names. The song is a call to those who are denigrated and vilified by these attitudes to stand up proudly and not allow themselves to be called derogatory names like 'Mighirighamba', 'Makirimane', 'Makwankwies', 'Makhafula', etc. With the influx today of peoples from all over the African diaspora into South Africa, the level of xenophobia has risen to disgusting heights. Most paradoxically, the song is even more popular amongst black South Africans today and is deeply loved by the new immigrants which helped the 'Black To The Future' album to platinum heights."

*****

*The title refers to this poem by Gil Scott-Heron
[1] Figures from Wilson F., Labour in the South African Gold Mines 1911-1969, (Cambridge UP, 1972)
Other references: Katzenellenbogen S., South Africa and Southern Mozambique: Labour, Railways and Trade in the Making of a Relationship, (Manchester, Manchester UP, 1982); Milazi D., The Politics and Economics of Lbour Migration in Southern Africa (1984); Crush J., Jeeves A. & Yudelman D., South Africa’s Labor Empire – A History of Black Migrancy to the Gold Mines, (Oxford, Westview Press, 1991)

*****

Article also published at Africanpath

INTERROGATING THE BLOGOSPHERE (IV)

SO, WHAT’S THE WORD ON SOUTH AFRICA?

Gil Scott Heron put the question to the world, in what seems now a long while ago, in relation to Johannesburg. I started asking it myself in the last few days as I got news of what has been reported as the most talked about story in South Africa in recent times.
In my search for answers I found this article, which to me seems a good example of “as close as the (good) media can get to objectivity”, whatever that is…

Probably, mainstream media, in this case AFP, at its best!

No, not simply because they seem to be “sympathetic” to the “black cause”, whatever that is, if that’s what you’re thinking… But because they approach the subject from different perspectives, using various illustrative cases and, while highlighting the case of the humiliating video in question, also mention the case where white journalists were barred from a meeting between black journalists and Jacob Zuma, and all they have as “opinion”, placed against a brief, yet accurate, historical background, is gathered from relevant voices in the country on the issues at stake.

Now, I must say that my praise for this particular article is not completely unrelated to the fact that I couldn’t find a single word on the video story in my “much loved GVO”… Why was it? Where have all the bloggers always so keen on pointing the finger at, or forcefully acting upon, what they perceive, rightly or wrongly, as “black racism” been in the last few days? Or was it GVO that didn’t notice their presumable posts on the issue?

UNDER THE DRUM BEAT

I am not exactly someone to judge a book by its cover but I must admit to being sometimes inclined to buy a magazine just for its cover…
Now, here’s a magazine I would certainly buy just for its covers: the Drum magazine of ‘50s and ‘60s South Africa. I might have bought one or two of its more recent editions for their content, but those early ones would have got my money just for the covers. Of course, they are now collector’s items and highly protected by the Black African History Archives (BAHA) and The Bailey Archive, so I doubt that a common mortal like me would have a chance to get hold of one these days. But I can, nonetheless, claim possession of one of those highly coveted t-shirts printed with Drum covers put on the SA market by the very talented, clever and praised Nkhensani Nkhosi, actress and founder/creative director of fashion house Stoned Cherrie and one of the symbols of the New South Africa.

I mean, who, among those of us grown up in Southern Africa knowing of and experiencing, even if only indirectly, the antics of the apartheid system, would have imagined that within that system there was ever a place for a magazine telling through its covers of such a glamourous and exciting Black South Africa? And beyond that, of a Black Africa – there were, in fact, a South African and a West African (based in Ghana) versions of Drum, the latter telling us such amazing stories as Louis Armstrong’s visit to his motherland in February 1961 – precisely when armed struggle against colonial rule in Angola had started?

From a historical perspective, I would venture that that Drum of the ‘50s and early ‘60s could only be a testimony of the resistance of a social makeup the apartheid system (instituted in 1948) hadn’t yet managed to completely suppress, which makes those numbers even more valuable. That is precisely what those fortunate enough to have looked inside its covers will tell you: Drum was a repository of all the gripping stories chronicling the early years of the apartheid regime – except, apparently, for the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, which its legendary owner, Jim Bailey, reportedly didn’t allow to have mentioned in the magazine…

About Bailey, Bongani Madondo and Don Morrison wrote in an investigative story on Drum, What Made Drum Beat?, for the, now defunct, British “Zembla Literary Magazine”, in 2004: (…) After all, nobody knew about sensationalism better than Jim Bailey, a man whose name inspires perjoratives from former friends and victims. Ruthless. Dreamer. Freak. Wannabe Black. Bohemian. Drinker. Rich liberal son of colonialists (and quasi-colonialist himself). But also Visionary. Scholar. God’s gift to African publishing. Bailey’s father, Sir Abe Bailey, was a well-known South African mining magnate, financier and friend of arch-colonialist Cecil John Rhodes. Jim’s mother,Lady Mary Bailey, was an aviatrix whose 1927 solo flight from Croydon to Cape Town is legendary. After graduation from Oxford, young James Richard Abe Bailey joined the World War II British army and became a fighter pilot. Somewhere in the mid-to-late 1940s, he headed to Cape Town, then – as now- a magnet for bored Europeans in search of sun and excitement.

There Bailey met Robert Crisp, sole proprietor of a dull magazine called ‘The African Drum’, previously ‘The Bongo Drum’, which covered the quantly colorful lives of rural blacks who feared God and endured the missionary. Bailey saw an opportunity. All over the world, black people were becoming style-makers and urban culture creators. In New York and Paris, blacks were arbiters of fashion for both the counterculture and the mainstream. The Beat Generation imbibed jazz and the blues, smoked and wrote out of an existentialism espoused by blacks.Poetry, music, fashion – aaah, to be black, Bailey thought. He purchased the publication in 1951 and moved it to Johannesburg, where he imported from England an energetic editor named Anthony Sampson (who later found fame with his ‘Anatomy of Britain’ and 'Mandela', the official biography). Together, they got down to the business of remaking the magazine and making waves.

Bailey fell in love with Sophiatown and its rowdy, urban energy. A slum on the surface, Sophiatown was a mix of Africans, Indians, Chinese, Portuguese, Greeks and Jews doing business and living in relative harmony. The town offered everything white South africa and Europe did not: sex, alcohol, extraordinary characters, style, hope, hopelessness. “Noisy and dramatic,” was how David Coplan described Sophiatown in his 1985 book ‘In Township Tonight!” “A new synthesis of African culture sprang out of its potholed streets, communal water taps, the rectangular jumble of yards, brick and wood dwellings here and eye-catching mansions there. Sophiatown was crime-ridden yet heaved with music and wishes and dreams, vulnerability and stubborness that gave it its swaggering personality.”

Into this heady atmosphere, Bailey launched ‘African Drum’. He quickly cut the title back to ‘Drum’ and assembled a staff of untrained township youngsters into what would be known as the “Drum School” of writers. A few of its graduates – Casey Motsisi, Todd Matshikiza, Ezekiel Mphalele, Bloke Modisane, Bessie Head – went on to become successful novelists, poets, dramatists and composers. To the thousands of blacks who migrated to Johannesburg during the 1940s and ‘50s, ‘Drum’ was a manifesto of social realism. The magazine’s lurid, over-written feature stories, with their violent, tragic, fashionably dressed characters – dice hustlers, jazz musicians, racist policemen, babes and molls – and especially the accompanying pictures, not only entertained Sophiatowns but embodied Sophiatown. Drum portrayed celebrities, especially actors and jazz musicians (who were often the same), as accessible pople who lived within the same poverty-stricken township as their fans. At its peak in the late-1950s, the magazine had editions all over the continent recording “the ladder down the stocking” of Bristish Imperial rule. Its total circulation topped 800,000.

Bailey and his staff took particular care with the covers. The most beloved of all the cover girls was blues singer Dolly Rathebe, an icon to Sophiatown ‘tsotsies’ (gangsters). To them, she was Marilyn Monroe and Josephine Baker rolled into one. Blessed with a husky, sometimes coarse voice, she would wisper, coo, and sing-talk like Nina Simone. She wiggled her hips to the ‘tsotsies’, sang the blues to the troubled, and crooned Yiddish lullabies to the rich Jewish patrons of the Johannesburg jazz scene. Dolly reshaped the whole continent’s sense of African feminine beauty. She was even courted by one of Drum’s writers, Can Themba. Themba, along with literary journalist Bloke Modisane, “Hollywood detective” columnist Arthur Maimane and music critic Todd Matshikiza, were the ears of Drum. Photographers Jurgen Schadeberg, Bob Gosani and Peter Magubane became the eyes that captured the town’s vibrancy. But one personality reigned supreme: Henry Nxumalo, who more than anyone embodied the magazine. “From the coffee plantations of the Gold Coast to the jazz-stung nightclubs of Nigeria,” he wrote in a 1956 blurb, “in the dreaming hamlets of Zululand, among Cape Town’s fun-filled coon life, and Johannesburg’s teeming, thrilling thousands, everywhere, every month, Drum is read and relished.”

After obtaining his junior certificate at a missionary school, Nxumalo trekked down to Jozi, where he served as a messenger at the ‘Bantu World’ newspaper. When World War II erupted, he signed on with the British Protectorate regiment and served as a sergeant in Egypt before coming back to the paper as sports editor. In 1951, he was hired as Drum’s first black reporter. Slim and dapper, he quickly became a familiar presence on the Sophiatown scene, covering crime and club dates with equal verve. Within a year, Nxumalo began writing as “Mr Drum”, a byline under which he produced some powerful exposes. “In those days”, remembered fellow reporter Themba in a posthumous 1985 memoir, “rumour was strong that farmers were ill-treating their labourers in the Bethal district. [Indeed, one had been flogged to death.] Dear ol’ Mr Drum fastened his braces, tied his shoelaces, fixed his Woodrow hat and got on a roll to investigate – simply by getting himself a job as labourer himself, in one of those Bethal potato farms.” It wasn’t just the emotional shock of the labourers’ conditions that excited interest in what Nxumalo wrote, but the courage he displayed in getting a job as a virtual slave and then escaping from it. The piece he wrote turned both Nxumalo and his magazine into urban icons.

Not long afterward, authorities at Johannesburg’s notorious Number Four prison were rumored to have introduced a dehumanizing new way of searching inmates for smuggled items such as tobacco, dagga (cannabis) or anything that could have been hidden in the rectum. Prisoners were lined in a row, naked, and made to skip and jump as they ran in front of their jailers. This was called the ‘Tausa’, or monkey, dance. On 19 January 1954, Nxumalo contrived to get himself arrested in Johannesburg by staying out past the night-time curfew without the required pass. By a stroke of luck, he was sent to Number Four. In “Mr Drum Goes to Goal”, illustrated with clandestine photos, Nxumalo described the ‘Tausa’ dance and other abuses at Number Four. The expose’ caught the prison system by surprise. Authorities were enraged, and Nxumalo suddenly became a figure of great interest to South Africa’s security branch. By then, his exploits as an investigative journalist had earned a number of enemies, among them thugs, crooked politicians, farm owners, and police.

On New Year’s Eve 1955, Nxumalo headed into the warm Sophiatown night, humming to himself. He stopped at his cousin Percy Hlubi’s place and, shortly after seeing in the new year, walked out into the night. His battered body was discovered the following morning by a cousin’s wife on her way to catch the day’s first train. Still in his suit, he was face-down on a patch of dry grass, with one shoe missing and a blood trail that went back a thousand metres to the entrance of Coronation Hospital in Newclare. Nxumalo left a wife, Florence, who died in 1979, and five children. No one was ever convicted of his murder.
Can Themba died of alcohol-related complications in exile in Swaziland, Todd Matshikiza died in exile in Zambia, Nat Nakasa committed suicide in New York and William Bloke Modisane died in exile in West Germany. Dolly Rathebe died on 16 September 2004 from a stroke.


Drum’s home turf is gone too, a victim of the apartheid policy of forced removals from “white areas” – which included a longtime black enclave like Sophiatown. At 5:30am on 10 February 1955, government trucks backed by 2,000 heavily armed police removed the first hundred and ten families to what is now part of Soweto, the black township. Over the next three years, other families followed as bulldozers razed the buildings around them. Before long the place was a wasteland of rubble. A white suburb was developed on the site. The government called it Triomf (Triumph).

Today, Johannesburg – “Jozi” to initiates – is a multi-ethnic sprawl, where Somali Muslims rub shoulders with Nigerian drug lords and Congolese le Sapeur fashionistas. Drum is a mere shadow, resold, repositioned and defanged since its glory days. But the magazine’s early spirit of iconoclasm is being celebrated with a new zest: Drum’s golden era of the ‘50s and ‘60s and Nxumalo’s story have been the subject in the last few years, among a flurry of books, essays, articles and documentaries in SA and abroad, of a feature film, Drum: Stories from Sophiatown (2004), directed by South Africans Zola Maseko and Dumisani Dlamini, produced by Hollyhood’s Chris Sievernich (The Quiet American) and Rudolf Wichmann (Love and Rage), co-written by Jason Filiardi (Bringing Down the House) and starring US-born Taye Diggs (Chicago) and a posse of talented South African actors.

{You can download an excellent video about Drum here}


(Sophiatown is Gone - Miriam Makeba)

SUNDAY COVER & POETRY (IV)

(…)
Talking about gender issues she laments: “Young men should learn to be more gentile with women. They must not be like their older brothers, some of whom kiss and tell.” This reference is clearly directed at Hugh Masekela’s revelations about their marriage in New York City in the early 1960’s. She then recalls the words of her late ex-husband, Black Panther leader, Stokely Carmichael (aka Kwame Toure), whose speeches included: “We have to respect every woman, even a woman who is one day old. Why? Because some day she will grow up to be somebody’s mother.” And she adds words of disappointment: “One thing I’m not proud of was to marry Hugh Masekela.”
(…)
And Makeba also urges young South Africans to be more curious about their continent that has done so much for our liberation: “We have to stop it (xenophobia) and know that Africa belongs to us and we belong to Africa. And together we should walk and walk tall.”

¡GET MORE CONTENT HERE!

{Poem: What Is Exotic?, by Sujata Bhatt. Sujata is an India-born poet and translator. She received her MFA from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and now lives in Germany. She has published seven collections of poems with Carcanet Press. in Life Lines 2/Poets for Oxfam/Edited by Todd Swift, 2007}

GRAZING IN STRAWBERRY FIELDS

Miriam Makeba recorded “Strawberries” in 1961 on an Harry Belfonte-produced album called “The Many Voices Of Miriam Makeba.” The two of them sent me through music school in New York and created a first break for me when they had their contractor Al Brown come and get me out of class at Manhattan School of Music to come and play on four tracks on the album. Jazz D.J. Symphony Sid played this track every night on his WEVD radio program “Jumping With Symphony Sid” and this got me my first recognition and praise from American listeners and the music industry. My muted trumpet wailed hauntingly behind Makeba’s melancholy cries, even reaching musicians like Don Laka down in South Africa so much so that in 1997, when he was to produce our “Black To The Future” album, he insisted that we do it. I will never forget the sweet little girls from Mmabana Centre in Mafikeng who came to sing it with us, they made a beautifully innocent and sweet song out of it. Thank you little girls, thank you Ms Makeba, thank you Mr Belafonte, thank you my dear brother Don Laka. (Hugh Masekela, 2000)

Strawberries (Hugh Masekela)

“I remain an ardent admirer of Ms Makeba’s compositions, she is probably the most prolific writer to come out of Southern Africa.” (Hugh Masekela, 2000)

Strawberries (Miriam Makeba - 2003)

SUNDAY COVER & POETRY (II)

(…)
If the old recording industry in South Africa was totally white-controlled, it was still not half as horrendous as those which existed in places such as Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Congo, Cameroon, Kenya, Senegal, Angola, Mozambique, etc., where the music companies were personal kingdoms, which never got to grow to even a fraction of those in this country. At this writing, they still basically remain in that form or are extinct.
(…)
Some individuals might consider such a suggestion to be devoid of any moral merit; however, the one quality the history of Africa’s music recording industry can never claim to ever having possessed is any once of morality. It can only pride itself with exploitation, of the most despicable kind, one that proudly matches its colonial, economic and industrial counterpart’s atrocities.
(…)
If Africa’s present leadership can show as much interest in the development of the continent’s artistic excellence as it does in the promotion of some of its often misguided and destructive policies, if it can succeed in stopping the wars which consume frightful amounts of money that could be alternatively channelled into developing safety and security health and education, arts, culture, the traditional environment and the well being of the continent’s natural resources, then music, film, design and architecture would take a greater priority in our everyday lives.
If this were indeed at all possible, then Africa would surpass all other countries in its monopoly of the music and arts industries in the world. Would that such notions were dear to the hearts and minds of Africa’s political and business communities, then this Africa would become a great continent indeed.

[Read More Content Here]

{Poem: Back To What?, by Benjamin Zephaniah. Benjamin is a poet, novelist and playwright. His poetry collections include The Dread Affair: Collected Poems (1985) and Too Black, Too Strong (2001). He has produced numerous music recordings, including Us and Dem (1990) and Belly of de Beast (1996). in Life Lines 2/Poets for Oxfam/Edited by Todd Swift, 2007}

LUCKY DUBE (R.I.P.)

It's very sad when a human being is brutally murdered. Even more sad when he is such a talented human being as he was. Unbearable when it happens in front of his son. That's what happened to internationally acclaimed South African reggae musician Lucky Dube, two days ago in Jo'burg. That his untimely death at least serves a purpose, that of curbing crime in SA, are my wishes.

May his Soul Rest in Peace.

(Read more about Lucky here)

(Lucky Dube - Prisoner)

QUERIES...

As this blog heads to its first anniversary, I’m still puzzled at how many readers prefer to “make contact”, either to comment, suggest, contribute or enquire, by e-mail... Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this, since I have an e-mail address on my profile page. However, perhaps it wouldn’t go amiss to remind visitors that this blog has an open space for comments and that they're all (well, it depends...) welcome!
In relation to this, I have decided to take the editorial liberty to post here one of the queries I received by e-mail this week, hoping that its author won't mind. For one reason: the reply can be of interest not just to the person who sent it, to whom I hereby thank for visit and query.

“Olá,
I just visited your website. Can you tell me about the incredible artist playing as your site comes alive? I need to buy that music.
Obrigado,”

The incredible artist, and I totally agree with you on this, is Busi Mhlongo (please click on the picture to access her profile). She is part of what, as far as I am concerned, is the most exciting jazz scene in the world today: the South African.
Here’s a bit of her bio that might interest Portuguese-speaking visitors:

Her own story began in Inanda, in the mountains of Kwazulu Natal. Born into a musical family, she was given a small drum and two sticks and encouraged to sing at weddings, in church choirs and at school. She left school to pursue a musical career in Jo’burg and became a member of African Jazz. She then found herself living in Portugal via Mozambique and Angola with the group Conjunto Juan Paulo. She watched audiences applaud songs sung in Angolan languages as well as Portuguese and was invited to sing her own songs. “In South Africa we had to sing in English to get jobs. I began to realise that music truly has no border, no language”.

Enjoy!

REVISITING SOUTH AFRICA (V): PLEASURE!*

During this stay I finally could experiment, at the Lanzerac Spa, something I’ve always wanted, but never got to do, because whenever and wherever I tried to have a go at it before, sessions were all either temporarily unavailable or fully booked: stone therapy.

It was a full body massage with stones bathed in natural oils alternatively cold and hot.

It was a bit disappointing because I didn’t get to rest with stones sitting down all my spine as commonly seen in the advertising pictures, but it was a pleasure nevertheless.

***

I started this visit with some of the things that annoy me at the OR Tambo International Airport, only to leave it in the most pleasurable way: at the check-in counter, soon after I handed-in my documents, the assistant, a very young black man, started talking to me in Portuguese. It took me a few moments to recover from the surprise, upon which I said to him something like being always impressed at “how far Angolans can get” – yes, from his accent I could immediately tell that he was not Mozambican, which would be a more plausible hypothesis given the sheer numbers of our brothers from the Indic in South Africa…
He then explained: “nao sei se ja’ ouviu falar do 'Batalhao 32'… os meus ‘parentes’ faziam parte desse batalhao e eu nasci aqui” (note that ‘parente’ in Portuguese means ‘relative’, but he really meant ‘parents’, or ‘pais’ in Portuguese). I then asked how come he could speak Portuguese, to which he told me that they normally speak Portuguese at home.
I was really pleased to meet him, not exactly, although also, because he spoke Portuguese, but mainly because I felt like I had found a long lost relative from whom I had been separated by the war… I was also pleased at the fact that he was well employed in a country where foreigners or their descendents find it very difficult to get integrated.

So, the end of my “revisitation of South Africa” was all marked by one thing: pleasure!

*Pleasure!: that’s how South Africans generally answer to something like ‘thanks’.

MANDELA'S STATUE UNVEILED IN LONDON

Attended by large crowds and graced by a gospel choir and some pomp and circumstance, a statue of Nelson Mandela was unveiled today in London, at Parliament Square, alongside those of Jan Smuts, Winston Churchill, Benjamin Disraeli and Abraham Lincoln.

The ceremony was introduced by Lord Attenborough, trustee of the Mandela Statue Fund and perhaps best known as director of the highly acclaimed film Cry Freedom, based on the life of Steve Biko and the experiences of the late South African anti-apartheid activist Donald Woods, who had the original idea for the statue.

On the occasion, PM Gordon Brown referred to Mandela as “the most inspiring and greatest leader of our generation” who would be “forever remembered as the man who symbolised the end of Apartheid in South Africa”, adding “from this day forward, this statue will stand here, in sight of this ancient forum of democracy to commemorate and celebrate for the ages triumph in the greatest of causes. This statue is a beacon of hope."

In his speech, Mandela recalled how, during a visit to London with the late Oliver Tambo 45 years ago, "we half-joked that we hoped one day a statue of a black person would be erected here alongside that of General Smuts" and stated: "Though this statue is of one man, it should in actual fact symbolise all those who have resisted oppression, especially in my country. The history of the struggle in South Africa is rich with the story of heroes and heroines; some of them leaders, some of them followers: all of them deserve to be remembered."

REVISITING SOUTH AFRICA (IV): "HOW'S THINGS"?

While at the Lanzerac,* I came across a report entitled “Black Advancement: Hype Outstrips Reality”, authored by Lawrence Schlemmer and published by the Helen Suzman Foundation.
It is a well-balanced analysis, based on detailed statistics, of the process of social change in South Africa since the first democratic elections in the country in 1994. Some of its main findings may help explain the upsurge of strikes and demonstrations in the country, particularly by public sector workers, earlier this year. Here's a summary:

***

In the period from 1993 to 2002, Africans increased their share of the top 10 per cent of household income dramatically, from under 10 per cent just before 1994 to 23 per cent in the second half of 2002. Coloured people also increased their share slightly, whereas the white share fell sharply from nearly 80 per cent to some 63 per cent. Indians retained their share. Very significantly, however, the rate of change slowed dramatically after 2002. Coloured people continued to advance but the shares of all other groups remained static, and may even have fallen very slightly among Africans. This stalling of progress has occurred at the very time that talk of black economic empowerment and employment equity has been intensifying. Why is this?

The affirmative action bonanza has passed. Between 2002 and 2004 the effects of inflation are fairly slight, and roughly equal for all race categories. A very tiny super elite of empowerment beneficiaries may well be expanding massively but this is confined to a few dozen individuals and does not affect the basic patterns. The most meaningful trends and shifts are:

 A slight but significant decline in African poverty is occurring, due largely to the expansion of social grants.

 There is a modest but significant expansion of the numbers of Africans in the “not so poor” category of R1 400 to R4 000 per month.

 Abject or severe poverty among coloured people is roughly half of what it is among Africans.

 Abject or severe poverty affects less than 10 per cent of Indians and less than 5 per cent of whites.

 The “lower middle class” among Africans (R4 000 — R12 000 per month) has not expanded over the two years.

 A barely discernable expansion of the more wealthy categories among Africans has occurred.

 The expansion of the categories of relative wealth of R12 000 and more per month has been more rapid among coloured people, Indians and even among whites than it has been among Africans.

These results tell us that most of the stereotypes and loose impressions about a burgeoning new middle class floating around in popular debate are generally gross exaggerations. The reality is rather bad news for those who are committed to rapid or quick fix transformation. The really good news is that deep poverty is not increasing as many people fear. The extension of social grants has indeed stopped the socio-economic rot at the lower levels of livelihoods. However, the ongoing celebration of “empowerment” and with it, quick and easy wealth, may have serious implications. Revolutions of rising expectations have the potential to tear societies apart. The recent concern expressed in government about elite empowerment comes not a moment too soon. But government itself has to think about the contradictions within its own policies.

What does all this tell us about racial inequality? The evidence shows that whites and to a lesser extent Indians still enjoy considerable socio-economic advantage. They are both dominantly middle class communities. At the same time, however, there are very large economic overlaps between the races today, indicating very widely shared circumstances. The middle and upper middle classes are still largely white but no longer overwhelmingly so. Approximately 1,4 million people in what we may call the “middle-middle” class, some 62 to 63 per cent are white. This means that almost four out of ten South Africans in the “solid” middle class are no longer white. Whites have a greater relative advantage in what one might call the “upper middle” class in which they account for nearly three-quarters of the class composition.

*(… and how I missed then the times, years back, when I would go on my own “fact-finding missions” all over Jo’burg… when I took these pictures in Soweto…)

AMAZING GRACE!

What an amazing evening it was yesterday! At my son’s (much appreciated) diligence, we went to see the Soweto Gospel Choir performing at St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was a memorable event on many accounts, not least because it was my first time in St. Paul’s Cathedral – I’d been around it, had stood and sat at its doorsteps, had meals at its surroundings, but had never been inside it – mainly because for most of the time I’ve been around it (I used to work nearby) it was closed to the public.



Asimbonanga/Biko

It was also remarkable in that the last time I’d been in a church it was at St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, for an operatic performance of Handel’s Messiah about one and a half years ago. I couldn’t stop myself from musing at the irony of having been to a church in South Africa for a performance of a European composer’s music and being for the first time to St. Paul’s in London for the Soweto Gospel Choir! I couldn’t avoid to notice either how, though still in huge minority, there were much more black people at St. Paul’s yesterday than there were at St. George’s…



Lelilungelo Ngelakho

Well, I can only repeat myself: it was just amazing! The cathedral, which is at least ten times bigger than St. George’s, was filled to the brim, even with tens of extra seating places … the choir, which I hadn’t properly seen or heard before, was at what you are only left to believe it's their best performance – leaving you wondering whether they were rehearsed to the most minute pitch and previously unheard or unthought of variations of the standard soprano, alto, contralto, tenor or baritone, husky and rusty yet clear, powerful and heavenly voices, colourful intonations, polyphonic harmonies, banding and disbanding to banding all over again within the same tune, graceful gesture, thoughtful dance and minimal percussion beat, or if their outstanding performance was just enhanced by the setting: this was a cathedral after all! – something you become unequivocally aware of when back at home you play “Blessed” on your humble CD player…



Masigiye'bo

Here’s how the performance, integrated in the City of London Festival, was presented: ’Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)…’ One of the most instantly recognisable hymns ever created is the musical heart of this spectacular evening of solo and choral song and dance by the Soweto Gospel Choir. Following their triumph in the 2005 Festival, the Choir are warmly welcomed back to St. Paul’s Cathedral as recent Grammy Award winners for the ‘best traditional World Music’ category for their album Blessed. Their programme celebrates a double anniversary: 200 years since the parliamentary abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and 200 years since the death of Amazing Grace’s author, John Newton.*



Thapelo

But, as soon as they start their ‘presentation’, the Choir quickly “rest assures you” that they are not up there just for Amazing Grace, which they only deliver after opening with Asimbonanga/Biko and a few other resounding numbers, including less pious traditional ‘township’ and liberation songs, to close with Oh Happy Day! And just short of two hours later, you leave the Cathedral to a clear sky night with the most profound sense that this was an evening to cherish for the rest of your life.



Nkosi Sikelel'iAfrika

*Born in London in 1725, Newton first went to sea at the age of 11 with his father, a merchant navy commander. Press-ganged into the Royal Navy, Newton deserted and was captured, flogged, and transferred to service on a slave ship, eventually rising to command one of these himself. On 10 May 1748, at sea during a ferocious storm, he cried out ‘Lord, have mercy upon us’ – recording later in his journal that his ship was saved, and with it his own soul. Leaving the slave trade, he was ordained as a minister in 1760 and became a leading abolitionist, also writing the several hundred hymns that included Amazing Grace. Newton was rector of St. Mary Woolnoth at the heart of the City of London at the time of his death, a few months after the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act which perfectly rounded off his life’s work: he had been one of William Wilberforce most important mentors.

REVISITING SOUTH AFRICA (III): “SHACK CHIC”

I already had the ‘coffee table’ book for a few years, but this time decided to buy (with this post in mind) the postcard set made out of it, in Cape Town.

Here’s how it is presented by its editors*: “This book is a documentary on the lives of ‘previously disadvantaged’ but presently overcoming individuals. It is about the dignity to be found in the dusty streets of South Africa’s shack-lands. While these people obviously don’t take pleasure in the poverty they live in, they stand proud in the face of it. These are people who are doing the best they can with the little they have and, in the process, coming up with something aesthetically unique and fresh to offer the world. This is creativity and ingenuity. This is Shack Chic.”

Yet, for some reason, I can't get 'round this question: is “Shack Chic” really about

CELEBRATING CREATIVITY OR GLAMOURISING POVERTY?

***

“victory: to build a shack and call it home”

“houses are built on foundations and walls and roof. homes are built with things much deeper and less concrete”

“temples are never built in one day. but mine, this shack, was built in half a day”



“there is something sensual about the rattle of rain on a corrugated roof”

“after the rain, earth, as whiff, comes knocking on my fragile door. earth as fragrance embracing the musk and unmasking the undressed breath of another night of tender love making under the naughty stars peeping through the transparency of a revealing plastic roof”



“on that chair there, we conceived Sipho the gift. that was before the bed and a job from Airflex Recliners (Pty) Ltd”


“jesus was not born here but sometimes he comes in through the little holes in the walls and sits on that chair”


“there are many ways to make music. sometimes it is a deep blue against the wall, a bright yellow against fear, another red to tribute imagination, hopefully an orange to earth bad vibes and my black voice saying my life is beautiful”



“these walls, thin as membranes, keep nothing outside. they are here to keep our beauty inside, away from that solitude out there”


“the tentacles of despair are challenged by the soft touches of eternal determination. many times between void and void it is only us testifying to creative essence as hope.”


Photography by Craig Fraser
Poetry by Sandile Dikeni

*Quivertree Publications, Cape Town, South Africa (2002)

ADENDA: Pela sua relevancia nao so' para o tema deste post, mas tambem para algumas discussoes aqui tidas, decidi colocar aqui em anexo este artigo publicado esta semana no jornal Capetoniano 'Cape Times'.

ABOUT THE "MAY 27": I. 30 YEARS ON

Today is the 30th anniversary of May 27, 1977, a date which conveys what are arguably the deepest wounds in the Angolan soul. It marks the brutal repression of a “movement”, mainly by high-level militants of the ruling party MPLA, the so-called “fraccionistas”, allegedly intent on overthrowing the then President, A. Neto, and his entourage from power. Neto then pronounced a famous sentence: “Nao Havera’ Perdao” (“There Will Be No Pardon!”).

In the ensuing months and for several years afterwards, thousands of Angolans from all social, racial and cultural backgrounds (although some more targeted and victimised than others) were either eliminated, imprisoned or confined to “Campos de Re-educacao” (“Re-education Camps”), in some cases in the same camps where they, or their fathers and/or other family members, had been imprisoned by the colonialists, without any formal judicial process.

Personally, not having been involved directly or indirectly in either side of the events, I had, nevertheless, as with millions of other Angolans, family members, friends, colleagues and aquaintances eliminated or otherwise victimised by the purge. The total number of dead is estimated at at least 30.000, which is ten times more than the number of Pinochet's victims... Just imagine 1.000 dead each year since that date...

To this day there are parents, wives, offspring, relatives and friends of the disappeared in psychologically suspended grief for not knowing why, when, where and what happened to their loved ones.

Countries such as South Africa have instituted mechanisms like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address this sort of issues. Yet, Angola is still hung on its inability to face head-on its darkest traumas, thus unable to rationally heal, or at least try to, its deepest wounds on behalf of its future as a Nation.

(