“Sometimes I imagine flying back to South Africa, the new longed for democratic South Africa, with the sole purpose of seeking out Maria, if she is still alive, and having it out with her, getting an answer to that long vexxing question,” Julia confessed in Summertime Coetzee’s story of an affair. In a way, many of us do.
I had never been here. But it seems familiar, arriving in Durban, the heat that feels like New Orleans, the memories of Isak Dinesen, ever recalling “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”
I arrived Wednesday in mid January. Landing in Johannesburg, pictures of Nelson Mandela, prisoner turned national hero, are all over the airport.
“Free free Nelson Mandela,” the old song runs through my head from 1984 when he was still in jail. Song after song about the movement changed the world.
“What's the word?” sings Gil Scott Heron, in the anthem that reminded us all about Apartheid, its institutionalized segregation and subordination, followed by calls for international solidarity against the regime.
“Tell me brother have you heard about Johannesburg?
They tell me that our brothers over there
Are having a hard time.
They may not get the news, but they need to know
We’re on their side.”
I saw Gil play that song dozens of times. At each one, we screamed louder when he asked, “Whats the word?” “Johannesburg,” we replied. I had no idea. A particularly raucous show took place weeks after the LA riots in the summer of 1992, less than two years after Mandela was finally released from prison to the presidency, the riots reminding a generation of Americans of the persistent legacy of white supremacy. The whole show, I found myself thinking about this mystic place, the beauty of democracy and the endless struggle that Mandela understood to be the destiny of anyone who cared about freedom. Mandela was still on the US terrorist watchlist as we watched that show, singing along, ever reconciling violence with dialogue.
A small child waves at me standing in customs.
Others want money.
We all long for the interdependence that Gandhi and Mandela seemed to understand, as an antidote to material deprivation. The day before in class, we had a long discussion about what creates solidarity in a Hobbsian world, mutual interdependence, common culture, social relations, communication, or material culture. We all breathe and bleed. We also clash. I'm not sure about the way forward anymore. Yet I still believe in mutual interdependence and aid, from Gandhi to King to Mandela.
Max picks me up at the airport in Durban. At the parking lot, we go to pay.
“This whole thing is a scam,” noted one man to another, with an Afrikaner accent, associated with the Dutch settlers who arrived here in 1652. “Like the ANC.”
From the beginning, I get a sense that things are contested here. The parking fee was something like two dollars. But they find it a reason to complain about the government.
First thing, we go to the beach. Max, a doctor I know from NYC, tells me about Durban.
As per Britannica: “Durban, formerly Port Natal, largest city of KwaZulu-Natal province and chief seaport of South Africa, located on Natal Bay of the Indian Ocean. European settlement began with a band of Cape Colony traders led by Francis G. Farewell, who charted the port in 1824 and named the site Port Natal. Land was ceded to the group by Shaka, the Zulu king , and the Old Fort was built. Durban was founded in 1835 on the site of Port Natal and was named for Sir Benjamin D’Urban, the governor of the Cape Colony. Durban has a larger Indian population than white; the area contains one of the largest concentrations of Indians in South Africa. Ntuzuma, Umlazi, and Embumbulu districts to the immediate west were developed as black (mostly Zulu) commuter suburbs. Many blacks were moved from Durban to these areas in the late 1970s under apartheid policies.”
Swimming, the water is lovely and warm. Different groups on different sides of the beach.
After our dip, Max and I drive through the city pasts its docks and the ports, to meet Jenn, Sam and her kids. It's really an African city, Max said, looking about, at the people, with a smile.
Arriving, they’ve ordered us black label beer.
We spend the first night talking about the looting, riots, and floods which have plagued struggles for democracy in recent years, the eight days in July, 2021 in which riots spread, like January 6th 2021 in Washington and Brazil, the week prior. It's the first of a week of conversations, stories about efforts to live democratically within a complicated history conflict here.
What are you doing here, Sam asks.
I was writing about conflict and realized I had to write about South Africa, I reply.
Tomorrow you have a tour with Doung Mauritius, Sam reminded me.
The next day, Doung meets me outside of Musgrave shopping mall, for a tour.
Doung walks me under the parking garage, in the shade. Dressed in black shorts, shirt, a long white beard, he looks tells me about our adventure ahead. A three hour stroll from the mall to the market, through an imaginary of resistance in Durban, looking for cracks in the sidewalk, weeds emerging from below, taking on the cartesian grid, collapsing the binary between this city and that, self and the other, modern and the traditional practices, neighborhood after neighborhood, through a divided city.
Walking is action, said Doung. We can look at it as a politicized long walk for freedom, he continued, referring to 14 April 1921, when 17 artists went out for a stroll in Paris. T. J. Demos describes the moment: “The ‘‘1921 Dada Season’’ opened in April with a visit to the courtyard of St.-Julien-le-Pauvre, the thirteenth-century church located directly across the Seine from Notre Dame de Paris. The destination was perfect for the Paris Dadaists, including Louis Aragon, André Breton, … and Tristan Tzara, who wished ‘‘to set right the incompetence of suspicious guides’’ and lead a series of ‘‘excursions and visits’’ to places that had ‘‘no reason to exist,’’
I’m writing as fast as I can. Doung tells me we are going on a similar random walk, through the banal spaces of Durban derive, not unlike the ones of the Situationist strolls Guy Dubord lead “rapid passage through varied ambiances." Doung gestures to the parking lot, where we are standing, as a liminal space, a place of a transit. We’re off to engage spaces, out of the spectacle, of passive consumption. They were Dadaists, Doung continues. It was a passage from motion into the construction of action, a representation of everyday life. So real it's unreal, ordinary, busy, going somewhere, as opposed to a tour, to be self critical, to effect change.
We started in 2000. Understand the sorrow here to connect; know a little about me to understand the story I am going to tell you. I’m Moracian, from the East of Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean. In 1994, we moved to South Africa, in a moment of change. I remember my first steps here. I saw someone with a gun guarding.
Be careful they said to me. Be careful of ‘them.’ Cross the road if you see a black man. I started seeing signs, dogs raging, cobras spitting, fear, barbed wire, a terror industry. I feel trapped, inside myself. I refer to race. I don’t aspire to categories. I try to understand it.
I was in archetecture school, an artist. When I finished I traveled for a year. We saw the built environment and the culture that supports it, that wanted me to explain, to see walking as aesthetic action, making commentaries.
When I came back, I was on fire. I wanted to explore architecture as poetry. They didn’t like that idea. Ok. Maybe it was the “as”, thought Doung. He made adjustments. Architecture and music? They said no. Two years I was in a depression. I was crying for two years. I had had enough of it, caused self harm, wanted to die. The environment said be afraid. I drew a line from home. This is death. Informed by the in between, with the camera, I walked. Felt like my body dismembered. I stepped forward.
A man said where am I going?
This is my moment, thought Doung.
What's your name, he asked. Nobody goes down there. Where are you going?
To shoot.
Or be shot, he replied.
Susan Sontag’s “On Photography,” essay, with its analogy between cameras and guns, ran through his mind. “Photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one—and can help build a nascent one,” said Sontag.
My neighbor asks my name. It's the time for rebuilding. In that space of my death, I found my humanity.
I performed my story for my parents.
They took me to the doctor, who put me on medication. It was ok. Pill or no pill, in between life and death collapsed into a borderland.
We start in a shop in a mall and end in a market, said Doung.
Along the way, the binary.
The haves and have nots.
Rich / poor.
Male/ female.
Thomas Sankera, the Pan Africanist, visits us. “You cannot carry out change without madness, turn back on old forwards. I want to be one of them.”
Free associations fly.
Listen to the crazies, said Bob, the Stonewall veteran, recalling Sylvia, stories echoing through time.
Beat it on the drums, said Gil Scott Heron. Johannesburg.
We are not walking alone. Step off the sidewalk and into the street. Join the revolt, the dissidents, the freedom.
Free the self.
Free the city. No Apartheid, from Sarajevo to Durban.
On we walk through the mall, chatting, through the doors, past the security guards, stopping the non shoppers, the poor from entering. Inside the body is at ease, in the controlled environment, cool air, comfort, supporting shoppers reaching for the pockets. Lights signal to us, like heaven.
When you submit plans for a mall, you submit a nave, notes Doung, like the cathedral.
Shop after shop, we stop at a window. Clothes behind it, for sale. We look inside; reflections of ourselves looking back. The self is disconnected. Involuntary entertainment everywhere. No chairs, except if you buy. You can stop and sit if you buy.
Learn to look with heart. With dissidence, resistance, freedom, for symbols, seeing, perceiving, looking, seeing, reflecting on the self in the window, in the spectacle.
Today, we don’t look at the world the same way, format changed to 16 by 9, for the screen. Our ratio changed. We think we have a choice not to buy. Do we?
But we do have choices. There are other stories.
The punks thought knew so in Leipzig.
Biko thought so.
People can change.
You can leave.
Walking out into the sunny day, security guards are the first thing we see outside the mall.
You can’t stand in a group in the mall, noted Doung.
It's a sign of revolution.
Outside another regulated environment. Cars zooming, people walking, from the road to curve, to gutter, the pavement, a boundary with the wall, private space and public, layer on top of layer.
Inside the doors keep secrets, cabinets with ideas.
Outside the sidewalk is filled with cracks, many that can never be filled, green creeping out, where urban decay finds expression, human control fails. Nature swirls in a rhizome, ever expanding, in an ongoing, growing system, ever intertwined, connected with our built world.
When everyone went inside during covid, the birds and plants, fish and forests, came back.
It's not all the same grass. A variety of grass makes its way out, noted Doung, looking at the sidewalk. It's magical. Vines of time, overtaking the temples in Anchor Wat, the banyan trees crawling up, overtaking the stone walls of Hong Kong. Today new varieties form, even as New York is busy chopping the last tree in East River Park, Savitri getting arrested, off to jail as we talk.
Look with heart, advised Doung, at the in between, the ordinary, abstract, at the bird splatters, paint from the sky, splashing onto the sidewalk, like Jackson Pollock, forming circles, sections in proportion.
More cracks, more bird drops, the green, new networks, contasts, abstract art, the broken line, the language of the road, open.
The boundry wall is a fiction, a line drawn by someone in a desk, with a capital, the owner on one side, the commons on the other. That side belongs to you and me.
Concrete beckons artists, muralists, to tell stories, on a wall.
Look with heart. Feel the city.
“To capture a rhythm one needs to have been captured by it. One has to let go, give and abandon oneself to the duration,” wrote Henri Lebvre, thinking about Paris.
Look at the tags, said Doung, pointing at the graffiti.
Bricks turn to concrete as we walk, more control, less cracks, less care.
We walk to the crosswalk. That's where it all changed.
An Indian boy, killed, a civil war that followed; Apartheid government started separating people.
A freeway cuts down the middle, gutting the neighborhood in half. It's like Robert Mobert Moses in the South Bronx. 7,000 people walk down here a day, on the 20 minute stroll to the city, people walking from Cato Manor, the unknown, the banal, along the freeway, along the dissident grass, Glenwood and Musgrave and Morningside, a freeway in between, violence. On they walk, one after another, 7000 on a journey to the other imaginary.
Ficus roots in the ground, along the highway. There is grass resistance, old manifest reality in a triangle that lives between the suburbs and city, pavement overgrown, overtaking the Cartesian grid, gripped by grass, revolt, cracks in the road.
The road meets the curve, the pavement, the boundary wall, urban resistance, pushing back, decay, streets, at the market, with more trees, a church, music; people pray.
We cross into the city where I was shot, said Doung.
InWarwick Triangle, a transportation and trading hub, people of different races live together, even in Apartheid, as a multiracial community.
Between Cato Manor and the city, we know the in between. Inside the triangle, twenty plots are empty. During Apartheid, legendary organizer Steven Biko, was expelled from school. He came to the Triangle and started talking with people about black consciousness. “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed,” he reminded those inside. The houses where he organized were bulldozed. Now they are filled with grass and trash. The revolution in black consciousness, that spirit never goes away. Cracks in the sidewalk. Thousands coming down, 250,000 coming through the market each day. You feel the magic, the peace, the feeling Biko organized here. Today the power of this is dissidence itself.
Doung points to a tree.
The ficus are taking over the avocado tree here, he tells me, pointing up.
We look at the old building, now a squat. We have a visitor.
“I am located in the margin,” wrote Belle Hooks in Yearnings. “I make a definite distinction between that marginality which is imposed by oppressive structures and that marginality one chooses as site of resistance - as location of radical openness and possibility. This site of resistance is continually formed in that segregated culture of opposition that is our critical response to domination.”
Thinking about that opening, I flash back to riding my bike, smoking cigarettes in vacant lots in Dallas, looking at the cracks on sidewalk, where the weeds grew, on my way to to VVV records, an old record store that played Africa Bombata twelve in singles, beats from around the world, discos in France and Manchester.
At the corner, we are greeted by Collette, the mother of a friend of Doung’s, as well as two other young men, from the squat at the corner.
A man walks by sick, mumbling.
A bit of a commotion ensues.
He walks off. Collette shakes her head.
He’s bisexual, noted a young man, talking with us.
HIV, said the other.
Lets not air his business.
We’ve been here twenty years, one of the men followed. The building was condemned. It's one of the best flats. Kiney established it in 1949. There’s lots of history here. Inside it's hard; outside it's hard. It's a squat, but we pay for electricity.
A few kids run out of the building, followed by a teenage mom.
If you need anything, or want anything, let me know, one of the men whisperred, looking at myself, gesturing, sitting under a tree. Some guys were washing cars behind me.
Doung walks me upstairs. Stair after stair up, the walls are filled with writing, but the floors are clean. No smell of urine.
“Don’t fuck with the #TDAZ” screamed the the spray paint.
Whose that?
A gang.
“Salting sea,” another declared. More poetry.
Floor after floor we walk up, until we finally come to the top.
Perspective noted Doung as we look at the city, the square below.
Curiosity, conversation, out of dialogue, trust; relationships follow, said Doung. I managed with the tours to build trust. Bradley brought me to Collette. I brought my family. We ate. We drank. We have that relationship. Bradely is in and out of jail because of the circumstances of his life. Poverty.
Doung brings people together, artists, and neighborhood members. He hopes arts can help the neighborhood, that creativity can facilitate development. Yet, narratives of art and neighborhood renewal are not moving in the same directions, as New York. Still we learn to give, not take. New stories emerge, hopefully other narratives than that all too familiar superhighway, transporting lives on a school to prison pipeline. Cars whirl on the mixmaster below us.
Countless other journalists and artists have joined Doung’s stroll, each finding their own meaning in the walks. For me, our stroll feels like dérive, a walk without a destination. The Situationists understood such strolls, so did Gandhi, walking to livelihood, walking with consciousness. Others walk to save money, said Doung, pointing to those walking home to save cash, as a collective consciousness, in a rhythm, a beating heart.
Gradually, our walk takes us to an outside open air market, where people are selling junk, hardware, tomatoes, peppers, spices, everything. The smell of fruit and spaces fill the air. The market is different from the mall, said Doung. First off it's open, full of stories, zigging this way and that, an intention. Tomatoes, peppers stacked together, a wound pepper a story, that found another story.
You look at each other’s eyes here, as opposed to our reflection in the shop window in the mall, a different exchange.
Each step in Africa, you are in a marketplace, said Doung, something for sale, something up your sleeve. Markets connect the city and the people, one after another.
Walking through rooftop, full traditional medicines and ritual objects, Doung asks me to stop taking photos, pointing out a women fixing coke cans, onto a sort of belt talisman, to call the gods. Collapsing the binary, said Doung, traditional and modern, one and the other, modern in traditional, traditional in modern.
Four hours of walking and talking, we stop for a bunny chow, a spicy Indian stew, with lamb and curry, inside a loaf of bread. And we talk about what we’ve seen, the story from mall to market, cracks in the sidewalk as we strolled. What of the fight remains? The cop is still in our heads. No one has said an ill word. But I am about the only white person here. The dream of apartheid is being lived by the people themselves, said Doung, separate, apart.
He points me to the the water. Take a left, a first right, and then go to the water, to Wilson’s Warf. There isn’t much to see on the way.
I take his warning as a challenge, looking out at the scene, the market pouring into the street, a woman selling horse bones, skins, talismans, down the street. People are meandering on the sidewalk, sitting in the street, bodies everywhere, the market, everywhere, everyone out here. The sun is hot. Spices fill the air. The divided city becksons. I keep on walking, through the ever expanding market, street after street, past cab drivers asleep on their cabs, people out in the street, kids lined around the market, ducking into the mall for shade, to City Hall, Kwa Muhle Museum, back to the beach, no wifi, no way to find anyone. More people are pouring into the water, black bodies, lots and lots of them, bodies that could not be here a generation ago, into the water, lights, color, up to the pub, a beer, and back at Glenwood.
An old song playing.
“Free Nelson Mandela,” from the Specials in 1981, everyone dancing.
“21 years in captivity
Shoes too small to fit his feet
His body abused but his mind is still free
Are you so blind that you cannot see? I said…
Free Nelson Mandela.”
Walking, I explore, the streets along the warf, talking with the cab drivers, the workers at the ladies bar, the security guards with keys to secret portals, in between the malls and arcades, thinking about the revolution thirty years prior, wondering about the remains, the revolutions of our lives, beating back apartheid, beating back the wall, those that came in Europe and South Africa, and those that did not, rolled over by tanks in China, the inequalities that remain. People are wondering what comes next. You see it in the faces, the haggard look, hoping for a sale, half asleep in the street, market after market, on each corner, walking through the city.
On the story continued, one after the next, many on the refrigerator in Sam's home.
“Anger yes, bitterness never,” Maya Angelou on a postit.
“Race is a social construction, Gender is a social construction, Bedtime is very real,” a mother another informed her child in comic strip by the postit.
Sam and I talk over coffee, contemplating the friendships, fights, and her years as an organizer, during those vital years as the world changed three decades prior.
“In my mother’s story,” Sam tells me, “is my story.”
Born in 1971, she grew up during the peak years of Apartheid, from 1948 to 1994.
Married at 18 to a boy she didn’t like, off her Mom went to Durban in 1969, stuck at home with two kids, married to an alcoholic. He was good at his job building roads. So when he got fired, someone else was always there to hire him again. Mom left him in 1979. She is a shop worker and a divorce. And things change. People stop talking with me. At twelve, I remember, going to my best friend’s house, knocking on the door. She stuck her head out and said we could not be friends anymore because of mom’s divorce. I was hurt. Mom explained it to me later. Inexplicable social mores seemed to be everywhere. It didn’t make sense.
“It was the beginning of my understanding. Fuck patriarchy,” thought Sam. Mom gets a job at a bookstore on the university campus, meeting everyone, reading as much as she can. She makes friends with students. It was her political awakening. Her life changes. She goes to parties at the houses of Communists. New friends, a woman finding herself, multiple partners, a free spirit.
She is connected with the United Democratic Front, the legal front of the African National Congress.
At the time, activists were in jail as operatives. Others were killed. We were atheists. They didn't did not know what to do with white female activists. They argued that apartheid was about Christianity. Still, they went after families, saying they’d kill your kid if you didn’t talk. They knew what they were doing. So we only knew what we needed to know. Those who talked or turned were known as askari. If caught, they had a tire put on their head and set on fire. We were tough too. Still, they were clever. They did get spies, who broke up families, weakening the movement. The government sent in tanks if they saw organizing. So we went into the townships as cover.
We knew a cell with one askari. Three guys are so close. We got a note saying meet outside the library. I said there is one behind the tree. Then there was Lucky. They would come out to talk to mom. But not together. Then one after another, one was killed, another went into exile, and another disappeared. Ten years after we see him just walking down the street. He must have been the spy. Friendships were always in question.
I was so proud of mom. Mom’s friend has cops outside our house. He protected us. Nothing happened to us. Somehow we were protected by the state, from the state we didn’t believe in. In a white town, we’d go to mixed race parties. People would call us commies. Our friends thought it was endearing. Most were in a bubble.
Only white males over 18 years had to do military service. My brother was a conscientious objector. His buddies became cops. They got us into clubs when we were under age. This is 1987, at the height of Apartheid. My brother’s friends are in tanks. We are organizing. We go to clubs together on Saturdays. My best friend was one of those cops. Mom and I talked, trying to figure it out. We’d go to shows. One was a white guy in the ANC. He recruited mom and protected us. Some wondered if he was a spy. I was accused of the same. At the clubs, my brother would get in fights about race and politics. His two best friends are with him. And they’d calm things, toning it down, smoothing it over. Boys will be boys everyone thought. They taught me a few karate moves in case it happened again.
Finally, I changed to a school for pregnant girls, in the ultimate working class suburb. No one was going to college but me. Most were going into the police reserves.
That September of 1989, we started organizing Free the Beaches, a campaign to desegregate the beaches. We had huge marches, thousands going into whites only beaches. 1989 was the year of protests. We’d had enough. And word started getting out. The LA Times reported:
Combining non-violent civil disobedience, including strikes, song and dance, naked protest, humor, arts, international sanctions as well as global support, Walter Wink (1987: 4) argues the Anti Apartheid movement “probably the largest grassroots eruption of diverse nonviolent strategies in a single struggle in human history.”
More and more people came to the protests Sam was organizing, the whole world was changing. Activists from Tiananmen Square to Leipzig had been mobilizing all year long, pushing to break down walls, calling for more democracy. The activists in South Africa were largely isolated, said Sam. We knew about Rosa Luxenberg, Rosa Parks and MLK. That was all. We heard bits and pieces about the Fall of the Wall. We were at the beach, thousands of us, in the biggest march in Durban ever. We had thousands ready to go to jail, to fill the jails. We had thousands of arrests planned. Fill the jails. Do it again and again until the system could not handle it. We marched down West Street, carrying bodies they planned to kill. My friend had a gun in her back. I say stop, turning around, seeing my classmate, with the gun. We were both shocked. He backed off. Monday, he asked me out. He saw me as a sexy commy.
In the meantime, more liberals are joining the movement. Things were changing. I finish high school in 1989. And find new friends. My mother’s friend’s husband is high up in protection. He hears they are going to need to protection for Nelson Mandela. He’s getting out. That's the rumor.
February 1990, the African National Congress was unbanned. Mixed relations are OK. It used to be nothing of the sort, banned. The government released prisoners.
It had been over a quarter century since Mandela delivered his "Speech from the Dock" during his trial, on 20 April 1964:
Convicted, Mandela would spend the better part of the next 25 years behind bars, organizing, grieving the loss of family members on his own, working in a quarry without a bathroom, and strategizing to route toward a democracy in one of the great campaigns in history.
Sam remembers the day he got out. We watched TV all day, waiting for him to come out. But being Mandela, he spent all day saying goodbye to his guards. Millions of us were waiting for him. We never thought we’d see him free. But the next four years were hell. It was huge and scary. The ANC was an opposition group. It wasn’t ready to lead. The killing fields in Natal followed. One of the Zulu nationalist groups, called the IFP, said the ANC was not ethnic enough. I know they were funded by the apartheid government to show the world there was black on black violence.
The Washington Post reported:
Cycles of violence, noted Sam, then a campus activist at the local college. She joined the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Thousands killed, warring factions with the ANC in a power struggle. Rwanda had its. We had our own. The stories were hard to reconcile. We saw one thing. The reality of the situation was something different.
Half way through our interview, we have to cut it short.
Jenn, Tumi and I go to talk with the Social Work Department at @UKZN Howard College of Humanities.
On the campus, Tumi showed me the statue of King George covered in graffiti. "It must fall... Goodbye G!" This was where Sam was a student. The decolonizing is everywhere.
“We are trying to let them be the experts,” said Tumi, one of the faculty members, describing the decolonial, indigenous model of developmental social work they are teaching there. “Social work was brought in by the Dutch Reform church.” We chat about conflict extending from South Central to Washington DC, Sarajevo to the Ukraine, unpacking a few of the legacies of apartheid, the apartheid in the head, the unsettled, unresolved memories.
“We’ve had Truth and Reconciliation. But it was superficial,” Tumi follows. “Forgive, forget. Political freedom, not economic.” Its a theme that runs throughout the interviews. They got political freedom, without solutions for increasing inequality.
Even this place is a site of struggle, said Patricia Bongi Zengele, another faculty member, referring to recent protests from students dealing with debt. The school was only integrated in 2004, ten years after things changed in 1994. Apartheid of the heart remains.
The roots remain, said Bongane Mzinyane, another faculty member, referring to the work Unsettling Apologies: Critical Writings on Apology from South Africa by Judge and Smythe. There is a long way to go. Pools may be desegregated, but black boys are still excluded. No apology. Some say we apologized. It's supposed to be over. But race issues keep coming up. In reality, many of us don’t admit it. Our leaders talk about our cohesiveness. But we have a long way to go. There is some consciousness raising. We have a progressive constitution. We have democracy, but people are still living in the townships, with floods hitting. We are all still in Los Angeles, I think, the 1992 riots flashing through my mind, flames burning, Sarajevo everywhere.
Livhuwani Ramphabana, another faculty member, jumped into the conversation. We had Truth and Reconciliation and transitional justice. But we skipped a lot of steps. It's not what we thought. Reconciliation for whom, politically equal, economically disabled.
Jenn, our host from Touro, jumped in. We have a capitalist economy, she argued, demarcating race, even in social work, paraphrasing the argument that “racialized exploitation and capital accumulation are mutually reinforcing, often attributed to Manning Marable or Cedric Robinson. “The development, organization and expansion of capitalist society pursued essentially racial directions.” I came here in 2001, they had Truth and Reconciliation. They are going to show us how it's done, she thought. They didn’t implement RDP housing, the program that “provides beneficiaries with a fully built house that is provided free of charge by the Government.” There's still a lot of tension, kids falling through the cracks; they can’t enjoy the fruits of freedom.
And immigrants are coming to South African from all over the continent, followed by not just racial, but gender violence as well as struggles with work and jobs. Mandela said, let's be ideal, let them all in. Now South Africans are competing with those immigrants, said Zengele. And that has led to Xenophobic attacks, people coming from West Africa, and Black on Black apartheid, racially based, people fighting each other. This economic system lets people struggle. Capitalism creates competition. We should not be fighting each other. We should be fighting the power. All the while border fences are going up, from South of the US border to Poland, even in Mozambique. Yet, how do we get the apartheid out of our heads? This wall is a conflict within ourselves. Apartheid is no longer on the books, so how do we address it on the inside?
Can we see the beauty, asked Tumi. We can talk it out. You can tell the president off. We do have access to political power. You can say what you want to.
We are good at talking, but can we put ideas into practice, wonderred Patricia Bongi Zengele. It's hard. Here in social work, we work with widows, with children who need help. The Dutch Reform Church started social work here. It's very Calvinistic, with roots in 1930, only a few years before Apartheid was formalized in 1948. Followed by townships and group areas, delineating races. People could work in town but had to go back to the townships after work, before curfew. Even social work was segregated between Indians, Black, and white people, with different resources, different grants, and pay scales. We moved to a developmental social work model, as “a process of planned social change designed to promote the well-being of the population as a whole.” And then to an indigenous model. Social work was an instrument of the state. Its aim has always been about justice. But how can you speak about an unjust model (as a part of it)? Some social workers are cops; some are change agents. It's a complicated field. Our talk meanders through the boundaries of the heart of democracy, ever contending with competing tendencies, between conflict and connection, justice and expanding inequality.
Finishing the talk, Tumi, Jenn, Max and I drove out to the Gandhi Settlement in the Phoenix township where Mahatma Gandhi lived for 22 years. It's hard finding the place. People still live in tin shantis. Kids walk out in the street. They point us toward the settlement.
In 1893, the Indian community sent for Gandhi to come here. He came in a suit as a young lawyers and he left in traditional clothes. An incident, in which he was kicked off a train although he had a first class ticket, inspired him to fight the apartheid here and back home in India, in a non-cooperation with the empire.
Philosophers from Ruskin to Tolstoy informed his outline of distinct outlook. “The good of individual is contained in the good of all,” wrote John Ruskin, whose work Unto the Last had a vast impact. Gandhi also loved Tolstoy, finding inspiration in his essays on non-violence: “The improvement of life was only accomplished to the extent to which it was based on a change of consciousness, that is, to the extent to which the law of violence was replaced in men's consciousness by the law of love.”
Mandela found particular strength in Gandhi’s example, two of the giants of nonviolent struggle, reimagining what living together could mean. So much to learn about the history here. Revolutions of thought, from Gandhi to Mandela, transformed this place, even as legacies of social and economic inequality remain, ever dueling it out, in a vest clash.
Finishing our tour of the history of nonviolent civil disobedience, it was time for the beach. Jenn and I hiked through the woods, full of mangrove trees, to a secret beach. No one was in the water. Still I jumped in, wonderful, wild waves greeting me, first a kiss, and plunge before hurling me through the ocean, to the rocks nearby. Only a little blood. Jenn’s a little concerned about the ecoli in South Africans waters. Is it any worse than Coney Island? Tap water is safe, but reports suggest we be weary. “... raw water sources, such as streams, rivers and dams, have high levels of E.Coli and coliform bacteria, posing serious health risks.” We patch up the cuts. And make our way out for a bowl of mutton stew and beer and some sleep.
Saturday morning, finally a second for my journal and a quiet moment. I make a cup of coffee and sit out back, joined by a monkey outside in the tropical backyard, jotting a few notes, mosquitos flying. All I can think of are the heroes, the movements, the Gandhi Settlement, Biko’s last hours before he departed, celebrating the life of a comrade, the darkness, Eight Days in July, 2021. Zuma unrest, democracy on the precipice. Never give up the fight, approach life with gusto, proclaimed the DJ on Sams’ radio. Looking at the world, birds chirping, chickens in the back, lives whirling about it, the kids sleeping, life, wondering how to live it best.
Sam sat down and we keep our conversation going. By way of context on things, Sam showed me a copy of 8 Days in July: Inside the Zuma Unrest that Set South African Abright. “In July 2021, with Jacob Zuma's imprisonment, dramatic and violent scenes of unrest and looting unfolded in KZN and Gauteng. More than 340 people lost their lives, and the damage exceeded R50 billion….In the darkest period of our history, the veneer of the rainbow nation was stripped away to reveal its ugly side: racism, xenophobia, poverty and violence.”
Mandela gets out and for a second we are elated, said Sam. Joy. You completely believed. We didn’t realize the violence to come. The Crocodile, the Apartheid leader (Pieter Willem Botha) died. And De Klerk realized he could be a hero. He led the transition with the government of unity. Cyril Ramaphosa, our current South African president, led the negotiations. It was his moment. The right wing didn’t let it happen. Mandela led a revolution. We agreed to a negotiated settlement. Civil war ended. We lost a lot. They did. Mandela was criticized for reconciling, giving away too much.
By the 1990’s, it was violence, recalled Sam. She was at meeting after meeting, with some scary people, including the South African AWB, the right right wing, neo Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement. They were very into minority rights protection. De Klerk is there, middle of the road. In Natal, the Zulu leaders are being supported by the forces of Apartheid. Zuma is a Zulu leader, with a violent history, parties splitting, the IFP is funded by the right wing, not wanting the transition to work. IFP kill ANC leaders, more black on black violence on display, between the ANC, the communists and unions. Chris Hani, probably Mandela’s successor, is killed April 10, 1993, in Dawn Park, Boksburg, South Africa. We will not take revenge, said Mandela. A white, Polish person was the killer. They pushed us to the edge. Mandela pulled us back. His successor, Thabo Mbeki, turned out to be an AIDS denialist, questioning the links between HIV AIDS. By that time, HIV had come to grip some 22% of the population of South Africa.
I go to school to organize in a multiracial coalition in the student movement. We formed a new organization. We can show reconciliation. They send spies in. It came up in Truth and Reconciliation. I stand for election. I’m ready. I’m put up to stand on a nonracial ticket, white, Indian, and Black leaders. The world loves us. At protest marches, we’d see more provocateurs. We don’t have control of the students provoking the police. We know you can’t do this. They were paid by the state. One guy I ran with also on the payroll. We saw he was paid by Apartheid. It helps us understand what was happening. He was a spy.
I’m proud to be a part of that transition. I want comrades to understand. I’m in hiding, laying low. As long as they bring me beer, I'm laughing about it. I’ve never supported violence. Met the Dalai Lamma a few times. My mother was a complete pacifist. The Dalai Lamma could do it. Mandela could do it. I can’t support armed struggle. I would not touch a gun.
We probably got half way there with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Desmond Tutu wrote the forward to the first report:
They were public hearings, said Sam, who worked on the Commission. They’d be televised, with the three pillars, victim, amnesty researchers, and reconciliation. Reparations and restitution never finalized. If you show remorse, you are scott free. Listen to the hearings. What is enough remorse? Our side was the victim side, to give people a voice. We asked why they came forward. They wanted history to recognize their loved ones, their losses to be acknowledged. It was not vindication. We were not able to counsel or support. They wanted history to know. Usually, the matriarch tells the story of the family, not their own story. When we asked about the impact of the violations they usually said they had BP (high or low blood pressure). No mention of stress, trauma. They wanted the puzzle unwrapped. Who did it? Who wore the mask? Where were the bodies? Some of the leaders are in jail. But there was more amnesty than jail time. Desmond Tutu said it's about learning to live together, not vindication. A lot was pushed under the carpet.
Listening, I think about Germany. After World War II, it was hard to find a Nazi anywhere. It didn’t seem like anyone was a Nazi. Apparently, no one was for Apartheid in South Africa either.
Still, the whole country watched the hearing summaries every Sunday. Some whites had no idea what was going on. Some were terrorized about what they were losing. Some black people were collaborators. Some were angry. The overwhelming majority was glad it was acknowledged. One person I never forgave was Winnie Mandela. Famous because of her husband, who she married before he went to jail, she started organizing a soccer team, killed kids. She had Stompy killed. She was Winnie Mandela. His mother is there. Winnie walked in and apologizes before she can speak and she forgives her immediately. Winnie was the one person I can’t forgive, said Sam, looking back.
Still, Sam argues the model is transferable. We looked to Chile and Rwanda. The lesson was giving a voice to victims. We took 22,000 statements from victims. A majority felt heard. Places with conflict need dialogue. People need to talk. Dialogue is needed. Amnesty is impossible. We did amnesty wrong. The process was good. Chris Hani’s family, Biko’s family said investigate. The perpetrators got a chance for forgiveness. But reparations were needed in a substantive way. We couldn’t get agreement. Victims got a little money. People wanted graves. People wanted to talk about it. Mandela said talk about it. Don’t move on. Nobody could ignore it. That’s what we did right. Ramaphosa sat back and let everyone fight it out. And everything was said. The Truth Commission was important for people to figure it out, to learn.
Fast forward three decades, Sam assessed the moment. Looting and riots, how are we back here, she wonders. It's the end of a dream. Worsening inequalities, gender based violence. The townships are structural violence. I said give it twenty years in 1994. It's been 25 years. Zuma led us. And the structural poverty, gender based poverty has not been mediated, dreams destroyed by leaders. Look who took part. We became a society that goes along, oh well, join em. Some drink or go to the ocean or walk to the shopping mall. I’m proud that I’ve been able to live according to my principles. I use concepts of peace in my conversation. We were colonized for three hundred years, said Sam.
It's not going to just change.
Today South African has a progressive constitution, with protections.
But there is still a lot of shame to unpack, self blame.
Mandela always wanted to speak last in a meeting. It was an art. I’m trying to learn that, said Sam.
It's a glorious Saturday, time to get out and see the city. Off, we drive to meet Max and Jenn at The Kwazulu Natal Society of the Arts, eating out in the back yard. And then to the beaches that were segregated until a generation ago. And the 007 African Bar, a crowded spot, showing football, just off the beach, on 12-14 West St, the crowd cheering for Manchester United, drinking black label all afternoon. Back to Sams, more friends.
And off to Max’s Lifestyle, a disco and restaurant in a township. “Max’s Lifestyle is one of the best restaurants in Umlazi, Durban (KwaZulu Natal) with traditional “Kasie” (Ethnic Township Location) culture…. Tourists and Locals alike can enjoy, feel, and experience unique township culture in upmarket trendy and safe surroundings. People from all walks of life, cultures and races, young and old come to enjoy …. maybe just to wind down for the day.”
It's filled with people chilling outside, celebrating the night together. Music is spinning. I starting dancing. Table after table, people join, laughing at it all. The best people. Dancing through it, late into the night, people all over the room, joining, laughing, shaking. So much history to learn. Fantastic people out to laugh and enjoy life. What a city.
Sunday, I thank Sam and jump in a cab for my 20 hour trip back to Berlin, thinking about all I saw, the bunny chow and mullet stew, curries mixing and gurgling, rumbling through my stomach, Mandela’s stories about his family during the wars of resistance, Biko’s organizing for black consciousness, Abdulla Ibrahim melodies, the rhythms of the city, through my mind. Political freedom and inequality is never simple. We know that in the US. The model of cities, full of free wheeling freedoms, with most left to make due, hopefully, to find solutions. South Africa has one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. The cracks in the sidewalk, between the shopping mall and the African market Doung showed me, reveal something unresolved, still a mystery from the novel, with us left to “answer to that long vexxing question…”
“As our struggles return, they produce new ideas, new issues, and new terrains in which we engage, that quest for freedom,” said Angela Davis.
But what of the residue of the conflict, the mystery Coetzee identifies, the cop or colonizer in the head, ever clashing, putting up walls to the reconciliation Mandela understood we all need.
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