This weekend I awoke in the Karoo, in the town of Cradock. Like each other South African town I have encountered, Cradock has a twin-city. These South African twin cities are not allied provincial towns in Hungary, Finland, Dakota or the likes, they are situated right beside their older brother and are commonly referred to as ‘the location’ or ‘township’.
Surrounded by the same Karoo mountains and bordering the same Great Fish river, one finds Cradock and its sister town of Lingelihle to be barely three kilometers apart. It appears that this geographical resemblance is all they share. Cradock-city has historical white buildings, broad lanes with trees, pedestrian walkways, fast-food franchises and the latest ‘bakkies’. Lingi sprawls through the valley, jam-packed with small houses, dirt roads, people, colours and few greens. Cradock-city is described as quiet, orderly, pretty and boring, while stories of buzzing shebeens, witchcraft, loud chanting and poverty shake off Lingi.
This in honour of the Cradock Four, community leaders who were gruesomely butchered in 1985 and whose legacy and burial sparked off an immense uprising against the Apartheid regime. Although I expected that linking the ‘fun run’ to such a political affair would influence the crowd, a delightfully varied and hastily growing congregate pitches up. At 5.50, just ten minutes before the blast-off, an organizer asks me if we can quickly drive the 10km route to set out some last signposts. In an absolute record time we spin around the town, rallying extra runners and supporters along the way. With five guys in the back and three in the front we return to the start. Just seconds later a gunshot marks the beginning of an extraordinary race.
Past the white church, the beds and breakfasts, the gas stations, Cradock’s people cheer, clap and get excited. Past Madiba’s spaza shop, the People’s supermarket and the local shebeen, Lingelihe’s people shout approval, applaud and get excited. The organization has put up water-points and marshals to direct runners through the Karoo heat.
The township stadium aka finish is in sight as four women on a porch warn me for my biggest nemesis: a 10 year old boy wearing clumsy large leather school shoes.
The Karoo is renowned for its wide landscapes and temperate tints. Travellers awake there to experience a blazing solitude on a dusty mount. Running through Lingelihle with the Cradock residents was not a typical Karoo morning. Shame.
Great article and it is such events that bring about UNITY South Africans need to participate in as well as INITIATE.
ReplyDeleteIt seems such a lovely place with such lovely people; still have your shoes?
ReplyDeletePerhaps the Karoo morning starts reflecting the rainbow it has been promised for years..!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great story and a truely interesting place. Lets hope that more events like these can be organised to bring South Africans together.
ReplyDeleteGreat read Dhoya.
Jane
Beautiful story, Dhoya.
ReplyDeleteI almost feel the lonelyness of the Cradock Four fun runner.
Frans
Nice mr. Snijders!! I enjoyed my morningread.
ReplyDeleteCarlijn Rupert
What great comments, from worlds apart!
ReplyDelete@Mzi - how about our own Mamelodi to Menlyn Mall Marathon? Or a Sandton to Soweto? Haha, I'd say it would make up about 42195 paces.
& JohanHBS - you go to the heart of this text, bravo! Cynical humour and actual fears go hand in hand in this country. If I lend you my shoes, will you run along next time?
I see you're busy in a good way as always Dhoya, keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Jos
This is an amazing article and really potrays the sense I got when I visited SA last year. The country has gone through so much and has still along way to go but it seems as if the right steps are being taken. I have never met such an honest nation before accepting their faults and not trying to hide the past.
ReplyDeleteLovely words
Evelyn
Undoubtedly the fun run is an example of how we can break social barriers in S.A... but having said that, in these spaces, it's the whites who struggle to cross the road to run with people of colour, people of colour spend most of their day in white people's spaces....it's the culture of social distance whites grow up with that creates ideas of fear and insecurity about people you could otherwise just run with and have no issues... and so with that in mind I hope the comment about the shoes is tongue in cheek ...or it could be really ignorant and offensive... unless i totally misunderstand it... which is quite possible...
ReplyDeleteSocial distance, fear, and insecurity are unfortunately a reality in South Africa, but only rich liberals behind high walls and with private security would call it phobic imagination. Once in 2006 went shopping for car parts, I returned to my car and two previously disadvantaged gentlemen held and choked me while a third assaulted me, liberating from my oppression my wallet and my cell phone. Less than a year later five previously disadvataged gentlemen walked into the shop I was working at at the time (at minimum wage I might add), poked a pistol in my face and robbed the registers, and me of my laptop. It is not only whites who suffer from crime and violence, but the FEAR IS NOT IMAGINARY. Many people lose their shoes, and lives, everyday. Social barriers are being created faster than anyone can break them down. Ignorance unfortunately remains the luxury afforded to safe, rich, white, liberals.
ReplyDeleteJohan, if I assumed every white person I met was a racist because they were the skin markers of a particular history, I think you'd be able to see how irrational that would be. It just so happens that Lingelihle is one of the safest places in the country, therefore, the fact that one is surrounded by black people during a fun run does not mean that you will be a target of crime because I judge the place on its merits. Now, if I was running through any part of Joburg I'd be paranoid because it's stats speak for itself. To associate crime so glibly with race is doing nothing more than to follow a tradition of thinking that says that someone's skin colour is the primary indicator of their behaviour. It's offensive and insulting given the fact the Lingelihle has one of the richest histories of political discipline and consciousness in the country. It is an insult because instead of breaking the mold of racialist thinking that assumes the worst of black areas, you impose that thinking on one of the most remarkable townships in S.A. Dare I say the obvious - Black skin is not a marker of universal black behaviour. Social distance in South Africa is partly a driver of crime, as much as a result of it. Precisely because of the lack of social and political integration South Africans struggle to have a coherent social vision that would result in the break of economic and class barriers in particular. Elites in S.A, of all colours, instead of devising policies that decrease inequality, stick with policies that increase it. This, even any so-called Afrikaner would know, is not the way to build social cohesion, especially since it takes on racial permutations. The way to build social cohesion is to break barriers and create as much opportunity for a society to equalise, something which the white goverment did successfully amongst whites for about 80 years preceding the 1990s. Common citizenship is the only way forward. I sympathise with your fears of crime, but it's no excuse for assuming danger exists simply because people of a certain skin colour live there; crime stats would be a better indicator.
ReplyDeleteWhich reminds me of when our white neighbours tried to sell their house in the 1990s when we moved in. They'd only ever greet the dogs and give us horrid looks when they saw us. Two years later they realised this was stupid and discovered my father was doing great work providing clinics to rural areas. The neighbour, to break his distance, threw some lovely huge fish over the wall which we found on the grass. My dad went next door to say thank you. Even now I think it's odd, he didn't know how to come to the front door to say 'Hello' but he still did a huge thing by throwing his fish over the wall. Funny stuff... And from then on, we were lovely neighbours. It was his fears of our blackness that were the problem. Having lived all over Africa where many whites don't think like that, we were like, 'whatever', strange un-decolonised South Africans.
ReplyDeleteI would like to commend Sunshine for stringing together so many big words in such an intimidating paragraph. Unfortunately I am not very smart and barely understand half of it. It is also an unfortunate reality that the intelligentsia in any given nation accomplishes very little with their idealistic critiques, save where nations are relatively hegemonic. It is easy to assume that community and society can be defined through the processes we assume make them work, however inefficiently. It is equally as easy to forget that big words do not change the lived experiences of individuals within those communities and societies, and it is in fact those experiences that define community. To 'create' social cohesion in the absence of hegemony smacks of fascism, again. It is also commendable that Sunshine does not assume all whites are racist, but to quote her first comment... 'it's the culture of social distance that whites grow up with that creates ideas of fear and insecurity about people...'. Mmmmmmm?!?! Anyway, good luck with breaking down those barriers (try throwing fish at people).
ReplyDeleteJohan, I'm sorry that you do not understand the words that I use. This is not a function of the words or of my argument but of your grasp of the English language. I am not an advocate for the supremacy of the English language as I live in a multilingual country; if I could have written the paragraph out in a language that would facilitate better understanding for the discussion, I would have. But I am not going to take seriously a response that personalises an argument by pointing at words I use rather than the point I make.
ReplyDeleteOn social distance read anything by Richard Dyer on whiteness and Melissa Steyn's book "Whiteness isn't what it used to be: Changing White Identity in South Africa."
There's a difference between assuming something about the individual 'white person' and the ideologies informing what is white South African society which was created very deliberately through racist and separatist ideology; it was white governments that wanted a separate white society and did everything to defend it. We live with those ideologies to this day. Good Luck to you broadening your horizons. and P.S. don't be threatened whoever you call 'the intelligentsia', it's either you get those who care to argue through reason or Julius Malema. Take your pick.
I would like to thank Sunshine for being so patient with my English incomprehension. She has also, though I think quite inadvertantly stepped into a pragmatic reality. Though her grand sweeping statements about white people and their outmoded ideologies are no less prejudicial than statistics about black people and crime, she has finally pointed out that white people are not exposed to her well considered arguments and good intentions. Instead white people hear Mr Malema, Mr Mokaba, Mr Kasrils, and dare I say Mr Zuma's (et al) hateful sentiments about whites all the time, and they react accordingly... with resignation. If people are told they are racist, who are they to disagree?
ReplyDeleteAbout the impotence of the intelligentsia... one needs not be fearful of academics clacking away at each other, ever, for they are after all exclusively their own audience, even on blog sites. I am sure Ms Sunshine and our compatriots from crime free Lingelihle have all read Dyer and Steyn, while everyday whites, like me, unfortunately are restricted to the insights of YOU magazine, and SABC news. Dyer and Steyn, mmmmmm?!?!? Sounds familiar; Are they that magic act that managed to suspend conclusions on race in mid-air without any visible means of support (off the silver screen and like, questionaires, you know) or is that the other Dyer and Steyn? When did art become reality?
Sincerely, to throw fish at people will actually achieve more in bringing people together than discussing how bigotted people are in a forum such as this. Racism is not the exclusive domain of whites.
But I might have gotten it all wrong: Sunshine's English is quite difficult after all.
For the sake of those who will read this blog, not so much Johan, I will conclude my contribution. Johan’s fears of being a crime victim are legitimate, his crude analysis of black people and crime is not. It is Matthew Goniwe’s legacy of social stability in Cradock that I must stand up for.
ReplyDeleteFALLACY1: All generalisations are equal.
No they are not. The generalisation that most Germans were anti-Semites even after the holocaust is NOT the same as saying Jews dominate business because they are miserly schemers. The first statement is based on an uncomfortable historical fact about attitudes that were widely held enough to allow the Holocaust to occur. The second is prejudicial. It is based on historical prejudice about Jewish people and terrible ideas which some hold about them to explain anything that is done by Jews. The fact of many Jews in business does not excuse prejudice against them.
Statements that naturalise the link between black people and crime are based on similar prejudice. It is an uncomfortable historical fact that white society was held together irrational ideologies about the dangers of black people. Hence racist oppression endured for close to two centuries in S.A. Many townships did become dangerous caused by state violence and havoc and the social deprivation to build white society. But other black communities fought to retain their social cohesion.
FALLACY2: There is an agenda against whites who express fear of crime in South Africa.
Im confused by Johan’s statements so Im inferring from his huff about the supposed hateful statements made about white by some politicians.
Malema’s views are as dangerous as those glib statements about blacks and crime. He has no ability to argue or apply his mind to complex social issues. I don’t stand for that. Kasrils is no such person, so I don’t know what Johan is going on about. Kasrils is denounced by Zionists because he is a Jew who supports human rights in Palestine, was called terrorist for fighting for non-racism in S.A.
FALLACY3: The ability to put forward a counterargument to narrow-minded views on South African crime and society makes one something called ‘intelligentsia’ who is divorced for reality.
Obviously Johan has no idea who I am and what I do with my time. He makes misplaced ad hominem attacks on my argument which deserves little attention.
This argument does show the deep frustration that South Africans feel with the absence of a silver-bullet or straightforward answer to crime. Unfortunately for South Africans, crime is tied so many intractable structural and social realities. Until we change the structure of our society, and the same goes for Brazil, we will be unable to deal with crime. Causes of crime in S.A are the deep violence that has been institutionalised and socialised into South Africans, the poverty that people detest because it came a terrible cost and the greed that saturates this society. This greed is the same greed that some people to take what belonged to other people under the guise of civilisation, it is the same greed that leads politicians to drive over potholes with their jeeps. We need to fight greed and promote equal education.
FALLACY 4: Making counterarguments to narrow-minded statements about crime means denying it exists and that the majority of its perpetrators are black.
I am not going to go into the long history of prisons and the criminalisation of the black population. Steinberg’s ‘The Number’ shows how crime and gangs have come to be entrenched in some parts of S.A. in the context of fascist oppression and now and how it deepened through globalisation.
I can only assure Johan and those who have those views, that all South Africans are concerned about crime. For families of colour it has been our reality for a very long time. We have fought this social disease under apartheid when whites were oblivious, and we continue to now that ALL South Africans are faced with this terrible social destabiliser. It rips families and dreams apart.
Condescension! Slander!
ReplyDeleteMy word what words. I have received news of people that check this space on a daily basis to see if Sunshine and HBS have visited. I invite these people to join in. If one uncovers the mud, fish and borrowed shoes that have been flung around in this digital sphere, some sharp analysis and critical reasoning stands out. What is the role of intellectuals in (South African) society? Do they merely scream at each from ivory towers high up over the masses? Do they enhance respect for pluralism, an attitude of tolerance, an understanding of political culture, a valuable critique of it? There seems to be a general critique of elites in the discussion between sunshine and rain ;-). Political, intellectual and economical elites are accused of doing more bad than good (are both of you trained social scientists or what?!), is this truly justified?
How long will skin color and degree of being African or Afrikaner be an emphasis in contemporary debates? Is there an agenda against whites who express fear of crime in South Africa? How is urban planning creating spatial separateness? Can there be a straightforward answer to crime in the present cultural climate? Too many questions & I do not know how sufficient this digital platform is to answer any of them.
But with Cornel West I say… where would we be without a culture of criticism, debate, contestation and dialogue!?
Skin colour doesn't matter, ideology does. If we debate 'race', it ought to be at the level of ideology. Thus, where it turns up in a discussion it should not be seen as yet another tired invocation of an old dead topic, we should look to see what ideologies it is masking, what practices it is concealing, what conceptual crimes it is being invoked to commit in a debate. That goes for Malema, Sunshine, Snijders and fortunately for the fish, they have nothing to do with it.
ReplyDeleteI find staring at a bowl of fish much more charming than chucking them at people we love to hate. All the power to you Sunshine!
ReplyDeleteoh yeah and Dhoya... As long as there is memory of the past, as long as there is a chasm between rich and poor, as long as the Republic is positioned within sub-Saharan geopolitics, as long as there are bigots in government or at home behind high fences, as long as the sun shines or fish swim in our seas, that long race will be an issue in South Africa, and not a second longer.
ReplyDeleteI disagree Johan
ReplyDeleteI think there is a differentiation between segregation and Racism. Racism is a deep hatred for one race and a favouring of another. I believe that Segregation is a tendency for one race group, or religious affiliation, sexual orientation etc to stick to their own. I believe there will always be segregation which is a natural force of genetics and genetic attractions but not racism. South Africa can be free of the hatred while remembering the past. It is possible and can be achieved.
Paul
It seems real interesting. I need some time to read it fully. Compliments, any way! See you soon.
ReplyDeleteI'am ok. I was shoked to see Angola in a kind of dictorship and running a development of immage, form (no substance).