Canon Collins Trust currently manages a scholarship programme on behalf of Mrs. Graca Machel. The aim is to provide female students from Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, South Africa and Zambia with scholarships that will equip them to take up leadership roles for the benefit of their community, nation and region.
One of the key concerns of Mrs. Machel is giving a voice to rural women and the scholarship is therefore aimed at empowering rural women. The Graça Machel scholarship is for women who have experienced significant struggle in their life and who have sought to overcome those barriers, be they related to gender, disability, poverty, age or racial discrimination. Applicants will be expected to demonstrate clearly how their application fits within this vision of empowerment.
Postgraduate Study: All scholarships are for postgraduate study, for two years if based in South Africa. The scholarship includes payment of a maintenance allowance, travel, health insurance and tuition fees.
Candidates: Scholarships are awarded on a competitive basis to women on the basis of academic/professional merit, financial need, intended academic programme, leadership potential and commitment to work for constructive change in Africa. Applicants must have at least two years' relevant work experience.
Subject Areas: Health, Education, Science & Technology, Economics & Finance, Development Applications outside these areas will not be considered.
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 poemby 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)
THE RACE DEBATE IN AMERICA: WHAT LESSONS FOR AFRICA?
The current U.S. Presidential contest was marked, during the first few months, by its African-American protagonist’s repeated (re)assurances to the American electorate that his run was all but about race. And, it has to be recognised, for the most part the said protagonist, Barack Obama, has been hugely successful at it. However, developments in the last few weeks, culminating with his memorable speech “A More Perfect Union”, put the race and identity debate firmly back on the agenda and (re)assured us all, in and outside America, that this presidential campaign is as much about race as it is about gender, or about war and peace, or about economic prosperity or decline. In his own words: “(…) race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. (…) But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
Things someone, somewhere in the world, was talking about but you probably weren’t listening…
I was about to post this yesterday when the news of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination made me suspend it for at least a day.
“Now We’re Talking” is part of a show on Gabz FM by top Botswana radio DJ and comedian extraordinaire Michael “Dignash” Morapedi (read about him hereand here). It consists of a delightful series of pranks he plays on unaware, innocent people he manages to get on the phone… Mimicking an amazingly wide range of personalities, voices, accents and tones, he succeeds at caricaturing some of the most interesting aspects of daily social, economic and political life in Gaborone, Botswana and the wider Southern African region. Truly a ‘must listen’ if you are around…
Intro
To help us unwind and try to rescue the rest of this holiday period from the somberness of yesterday’s news, I selected this ridiculously funny episode ('Don't Touch My Wife') about the absurdity of a situation that leaves a poor man crying… Enjoy!
Whoever lives or travels around Southern Africa has certainly marveled at the numerous ‘informal markets’, normally by the roadsides, where all sorts of works of art, by men and women, are sold by Zimbabwean refugees all across the region. Of these, the most noticeable are sculptures, most frequently in soap-stone, but also in wood, iron and other materials. These elaborated, often sumptuous, works of art, for which one would most certainly pay small or big fortunes in big city art galleries, will cost you ‘peanuts’ in those markets.
This is just one of the many facets of the current tragedy affecting Zimbabwe: thousands of nationals from the country, reputed as not just the “former bread-basket”, but also as possessing one of the biggest reservoirs of qualified people in the region, nowadays try to earn a living in such markets or through menial jobs in neighbouring countries, while being targeted by all sorts of xenophobic attitudes from the authorities and nationals of those countries – something not likely to figure in the agendas of the AU summits, at a time when the buzzword in various continental fora is one “United States of Africa”…
There are, however, as with everything in life, exceptions to the rule, and as much as you will find former Zimbabwean engineers, teachers and other professionals washing dishes as domestic workers in some middle-class household in a neighbouring country, you will also find many qualified and competent Zimbabweans well employed in institutions and companies across the region, the rest of the continent and the world at large.
The sculptures depicted above are just one such example: the work of Shepherd Ndudzo, a Zimbabwean artist based in Gaborone, they’ve escaped the roadside and were exhibited at local galleries and sold, well… not exactly for ‘peanuts’! To my chagrin, I couldn’t buy one, but managed to get from the artist one of the limited series of postcards made out of his fabulous collection of female postures.
ANGOLA: 'BLOGANDO' A PARTIR DO INTERIOR DO PAIS (I)
Com uma população estimada em quase dezasseis milhões de habitantes, cinco anos depois do fim da longa guerra que durou cerca de trinta anos, a rede fixa da empresa estatal Angola Telecom apenas serve menos de um porcento da população, os Provedores de Serviços de Internet não chegam a servir uma pessoa entre mil e há apenas cerca de catorze usuários da Internet por cada mil pessoas.*
Porém, apesar deste quadro pouco animador, há alguns 'bloggers' no país, embora eles estejam maioritáriamente baseados na capital, Luanda. Há também pelo menos duas “ almas bravas” a 'blogar' a partir das províncias do interior do país. Dentre estes, tenho vindo a seguir o 'blog' “Serra da Chela” (que comemora este mês o seu primeiro aniversário), do jornalista Manuel Vieira, baseado no Lubango, capital da província sulana da Huíla. Apesar de blogar principalmente sobre/a partir daquela localidade, ele também o faz a partir de Luanda e outras províncias do interior do país (e, nos últimos dias, a partir de Moçambique e Swazilândia).
Um dos seus artigos que particularmente chamou a minha atenção trata de uma questão que revela, por um lado, o espectro da fome causado pelo clima e as condições metereológicas locais e, por outro lado, os conflitos que opõem as autoridades locais, em representação das suas comunidades, e as companhias extractivas que vêem explorando os recursos naturais da região sem, contudo, cumprirem com as responsabilidades sociais por si assumidas:
M. Anne Pitcher with Aubrey Graham, "Cars are Killing Luanda: Cronyism, Consumerism and Other Assaults on Angola's Postwar, Capital City" in Martin Murray and Garth Myers, eds., _Cities in Contemporary Africa_, pp. 173-199 (NY: Palgrave, 2006). The chapter uses cars as the "vehicle" through which to analyze Angola's postwar political economy; includes a photographic essay.
Cristina Udelsmann Rodrigues, "From Family Solidarity to Social Classes: Urban Stratification in Angola (Luanda and Ondjiva)," _Journal of Southern African Studies_ 33, 2 (June 2007): 235-250.
Stefan Helgesson, "Shifting Fields: Imagining Literary Renewal in Itinerário and Drum," Research in African Literatures 38, 2 (Summer 2007).
Linda Ledford-Miller, "'So Few and Yet So Little Known': Historical Recovery and Reconstruction in the Work of Lilìa Momplé," Africa (Rome) 61(2006): 564-82.
George E. Brooks, "Cabo Verde, Gulag of the South Atlantic: Racism, Fishing Prohibitions, and Famines," _History in Africa_ v. 33 (2006): 101-135.
Darlene Miller, "Changing African Cityscapes: Regional Claims of African Labor at South African-Owned Shopping Malls," in Cities in Contemporary Africa, ed., Martin Murray and Garth Myers (Palgrave, 2006) - this article includes a look at Maputo's Shoprite mall, opened in 1997.
Augusto Nascimento, Entre o mundo e as ilhas. O associativismo são-tomense nos primeiros decénios de Novecentos, S. Tomé, UNEAS, 2005
Augusto Nascimento, O fim do caminhu longi, Mindelo, Ilhéu Editora, 2007
Recent Ph.D. dissertations:
Laudemiro A. Francisco, "The State, Development and the Role of Local Economic Systems in Southern Africa: A Comparative Study of Mozambique and Botswana" (Howard Univ., 2006).
Joao Jose Pinheiro Rosa, "Diglossia in Cape-Verde: Discourses, Class, Race and the Promise of Education" (University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2006).
Isabel Maria da Costa Morais, "Creolised and Colonised: The History and Future of the Macanese and Mozambican Chinese" (U. of Hong Kong, 2003).
Azaria Mbughuni, "Tanzania and the Liberation Struggle in Southern Africa, 1958-1975 (Howard Univ., 2006).
LaShonda Nate Long, "Sacred Bodies, Sacred Memories: The Black Body and Collective Memory in Contemporary Luso-Brazilian and Lusophone African Literature and Film" (UCLA, 2006)
Compiled by Kathleen Sheldon (UCLA/ H-Net) Picture: "Encyclopedia of Pleasure" (Ghada Amer, Egypt)
Enquanto navegava pela blogosfera Moçambicana, encontrei o “Diário de um Sociólogo”, um blog de Carlos Serra, sociólogo Moçambicano baseado em Maputo e associado à Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, a universidade pública do país. Tem, portanto, o potencial de oferecer uma interessante mistura de observação pessoal e comentário acadêmico, no meio de, como ele o apresenta, “um pouco de tudo: sociologia (em especial uma sociologia de intervenção rápida), filosofia, dia-a-dia, profundidade, superficialidade, ironia, poesia, fragilidade, força, mito, desnudamento de mitos, emoção e razão.”
Das suas actuais ofertas decidi pegar numa análise comparativa entre as posições políticas do recém-eleito Presidente Francês, Nicolas Sarkozy, e do Presidente Moçambicano, Armando Guebuza. Apresentada em quatro partes, a análise começa com esta pergunta, “Existe alguma afinidade política entre os programas políticos do presidente Sarkozy de França e do presidente Guebuza de Moçambique?”, sendo as restantes três partes dedicadas à resposta. Assim vai:
Christopher J. Colvin, "Civil society and reconciliation in Southern Africa," Development in Practice, 17, 3 (June 2007): 322-337. (Findings of the Southern African Reconciliation Project (SARP), a collaborative research project involving five Southern African NGOs in Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
A. D. Harvey, "Counter-Coup in Lourenço Marques: September 1974," International Journal of African Historical Studies 39, 3 (2006): 487-98.
Sabine Asselle and Joseph Hanlon, "Tribute to Jose Negrão," Review of African Political Economy, v.34, issue 111 (2007): 202-203
Julie A. Silva, "Trade and Income Inequality in a Less Developed Country: The Case of Mozambique," Economic Geography 83, 2 (April 2007) 111-136.
Sandra Roque and Alex Shankland, "Participation, mutation and political transition: new democratic spaces in peri-urban Angola," in _Spaces for change?: the politics of citizen participation in new democratic arenas_, edited by Andrea Cornwall and Vera Schatten P. Coelho (London: Zed Books, 2007).
Todd Howland, "Case study: the United Nations human rights field operation in Angola," in _The human rights field operation: law, theory and practice_, edited by Michael O'Flaherty (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007).
Boubacar-Sid Barry [et al.], eds., _Conflict, livelihoods, and poverty in Guinea-Bissau_ (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2007).
Brian Michael King, "Guinea-Bissau: 'pull-and-tug' toward internet diffusion," in _Negotiating the net in Africa: the politics of internet diffusion, edited by Ernest J. Wilson III and Kelvin R. Wong (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2007).
Maria Emília Madeira Santos e Manuel Lobato, _Política e Territórios Coloniais..._ A.A. V.V.*,O DOMÍNIO DA DISTÂNCIA. Comunicação e Cartografia, *coord., Lisboa, 2006, História e Cartografia, Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical,192 pp. gravuras e mapas.
Compiled by Kathleen Sheldon (UCLA/ H-Net) Picture: "Encyclopedia of Pleasure" (Ghada Amer, Egypt)
"A 26 de Abril 2007, representantes das Comunidades San Angolanas, membros dos Governos Provinciais da Huíla, do Cunene, do Cuando Cubando, Sans da Namíbia, do Botswana e da África do Sul, bem como membros de ONGs e activistas da sociedade civil, reuniram-se no Lubango, capital da Província da Huíla, para o evento histórico que foi a Primeira Conferência Angolana sobre os San.
A conferência foi precedida por 2 dias de pré-conferência, durante os quais líderes San de Angola, da Namíbia, do Botswana e da África do Sul, partilharam as suas experiências, esperanças e ideias para a melhoria das suas condições de vida. Trabalhando em pequenos grupos e em plenário, os San Angolanos e os seus colegas Sul Africanos, reflectiram sobre assuntos como a fome, falta de direitos sobre a terra, conflitos sobre água, falta de escolas e clínicas, e o não reconhecimento dos seus líderes.
As mais importantes recomendações produzidas durante a pré-conferência, foram apresentadas a membros do Governo e ao público durante a conferência, através de uma canção em que se podia ouvir o seguinte:
“Somos todos Angolanos. Queremos ter os mesmos direitos que todos os outros Angolanos. Temos vontade de trabalhar Temos força para cultivar os nossos campos Temos o sonho de uma vida sem abusos Queremos treinamento para os nossos líderes Queremos respeito pelas nossas comunidades e pelos nossos líderes Queremos ser parte do novo futuro de Angola Queremos escolas, postos médicos e uma adequada legislação sobre a terra Queremos um pagamento justo pelo nosso trabalho Queremos uma boa relação com os nossos vizinhos Bantu Queremos a mesma ajuda que outros recebem.”
(Extracto do comunicado oficial de imprensa sobre o evento)
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 Lookson 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!
A manhã azul e ouro dos folhetos de propaganda engoliu o mamparra, entontecido todo pela algazarra incompreensível dos brancos da estação e pelo resfolegar trepidante dos comboios Tragou seus olhos redondos de pasmo, seu coração apertado na angústia do desconhecido, sua trouxa de farrapos carregando a ânsia enorme, tecida de sonhos insatisfeitos do mamparra.
E um dia, o comboio voltou, arfando, arfando... oh nhanisse, voltou. e com ele, magaíça, de sobretudo, cachecol e meia listrada e um ser deslocado embrulhado em ridículo.
Ás costas - ah onde te ficou a trouxa de sonhos, magaíça? trazes as malas cheias do falso brilho do resto da falsa civilização do compound do Rand. E na mão, magaíça atordoado acendeu o candeeiro, á cata das ilusões perdidas, da mocidade e da saúde que ficaram soterradas lá nas minas do Jone...
A mocidade e a saúde, as ilusões perdidas que brilharão como astros no decote de qualquer lady nas noites deslumbrantes de qualquer City.
(Noemia de Sousa)
A publicacao deste poema, que aquifiz ha alguns dias, e agora tambem publicado no blog “A Materia do Tempo”, sugeriu-me uma das formas em que a blogosfera pode ser resgatada de uma certa tendencia de se a transformar em lugar de rivalidades, conflitos e “apartheids”.
O facto de o Denudado ter apresentado um breve glossario dos termos usados por Noemia de Sousa neste poema e o ter ilustrado com uma fotografia de “mamparras/magaicas” nas minas da Africa do Sul, sugeriu-me que talvez fosse oportuno ir desengavetar o texto em anexo (aqui), constituido por breves extractos de uma serie, que publiquei no Semanario Angolense (Luanda) em 2002, sobre a Historia Economica da Africa Austral. Nele faco uma breve analise historico-economica dos fluxos de trabalho migrante oscilatorio nas minas da Africa do Sul, de que o “mamparra/magaica” foi e, em grande medida, continua a ser, a figura central.
Com este post pretendo, portanto, contribuir para essa funcao de complementaridade, interaccao e partilha em que a blogosfera pode ser, positiva e produtivamente, usada e, tambem, salientar a funcao de analise e mensagem social que a poesia, quando escrita por poetas atenta(o)s e lucida(o)s, pode ter para o registo, ainda que apenas parcial, pontual e pictorico, da realidade social, economica, cultural e historica em qualquer pais ou regiao do mundo.
Stimela (Hugh Masekela)
“A análise económica, ou mesmo social, do trabalho migrante falhará em revelar o quadro completo dos seus custos em termos de miséria humana. Para apreender essa realidade, temos que ouvir a esposa solitária, a criança insegura... É ao nível familiar que o maior sofrimento é sentido e não nos podemos esquecer que a herança cultural Africana engloba um conceito de família mais abrangente e nobre do que a do Ocidente. A família alargada demonstrou-se uma excelente fonte de segurança para aqueles que, de outro modo, não teriam segurança alguma. O trabalho migrante destrói [esse tecido humano e social], ao retirar por longos períodos, o pai, o irmão, o marido e o amigo... e que ninguém tenha a ilusão de que esses homens podem viver vidas decentes num vacuum sexual.” (Barker: 1970)
“Há muito poucas dúvidas de que se grandes números de mineiros migrantes não especializados e com baixos salários não tivessem sido recrutados em todo o sub-continente, jamais teria havido uma indústria de extracção do ouro na África do Sul. Se depósitos similares aos da África do Sul tivessem sido encontrados na Austrália, no Canada, ou nos EUA, eles teriam certamente ficado por explorar devido à impossibilidade de mobilização da força de trabalho adequada. Ainda hoje, depois dos grandes avanços tecnológicos e da dramática mudança da estrutura de custos da indústria mineira, isso continua a ser verdade.” (Crush et al: 1991)
“De certo modo é até humilhante observar os mineiros a trabalhar... Levanta-se em nós uma momentânea dúvida sobre o nosso próprio status como ‘intelectuais’, ou pessoas superiores em geral. Faz-nos lembrar, pelo menos enquanto olhamos, que é apenas porque esses mineiros transpiram as suas entranhas até à exaustão que as pessoas superiores podem permanecer superiores. Você e eu, o editor do Times Literary Supplement e os poetas, o Arcebispo de Canterbury e o Camarada X, autor de ‘Marxismo para Infantes’ – todos nós devemos realmente a decência comparativa das nossas vidas aos pobres condenados nos subterrâneos... com as suas gargantas cheias de... poeira, erguendo e baixando as suas pás com braços e músculos de ferro” (George Orwell, Down the Mine, 1937)
“Toda a inveja reflecte um qualquer complexo de inferioridade e todo o complexo de inferioridade reflecte um qualquer complexo de superioridade (e.g. racismo; machismo; elitismo; exclusivismo; segregacionismo) frustrado...” A.K.
COMMENT OF THE WEEK: "Boa tarde/dia, sou angolano residente e estudante nos EUA e escrevo para informa-la que gosto de ler o teu blog. O conteudo e a estrutura artistica em si assemelham-se muito as coisas que interessam-me. Keep up with good work!" Anonymous on "Notting Hill Carnival"
"Education for Southern Africa"
