Discovering Stories of Slavery

I finished reading Andre Brink’s Philida a while ago and it’s taken a long time to process the violence of the relationship between slave and master in the Cape during the 19^th century. I remember hearing that the slaves in South Africa never had it has bad as their counterparts in America.  Of course, I knew that this was propaganda along with other things we were told about the benign nature of our history. However reading the details of rape, whipping, impaling on top of the humiliation of being sold/auctioned, objectification, and the cruelty the slaves were subjected to, was nothing short of distressing.

Brink was inspired by the story of a relative who had owned the farm, Zandvliet, which is now Solms-Delta*.  Francois Brink had fathered four children with his father’s slave, Philida. He had promised that he would marry Philida but the farm is in trouble and his father orders him to marry a white woman from an important family in Cape Town. It wouldn’t do to have reminders of his former transgressions. So Philida is sold and separated from Ouma Nella, the only mother she has known.

The story unfolds in 1830s just before emancipation. Brink, the writer, skilfully juggles with religion, the tensions between the English and Dutch, and relationship between the landowners and the slaves. There were places in the book, though, where I wasn’t sure that a woman would say something quite in the voice that he uses.

There’s a poignant scene in the book which has stuck with me. Slaves were not allowed to wear shoes and one of the slaves on Philida’s new farm secretly makes a pair for each of them so that they can celebrate the emancipation with shoes. And celebrate they do, “…running up and down the street…singing and dancing and kicking up the dust...from now on everything will be different.” Of course they weren’t really free as they were forced to spend a further four years serving an “apprenticeship” on the farm.

Andre Brink was the first Afrikaans writer to have a book banned by the South African government during the apartheid era. He challenged the policies of the Nationalist Party through his writing in books such as A Dry White Season and A Chain of Voices. He died almost a year ago today, aged 79. Philida was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2012.

Philida reflects near the end of the book that “Ouma Nella’s stories… are all that remain now. Perhaps, when the end comes, they are all that can go on living.”

*When Mark Solms bought the farm in 2002, he set about uncovering its history, revealing not only the foundations of the first house built there, but also the remnants of a Stone Age site dating back about 5 000 years ago, and the story of Philida. A museum has been established to preserve the history of the farm as well as the musical heritage of the Cape. 

Lest We Forget

Photo taken at District Six Museum 2015

I am reading William Pick’s The Slave has Overcome, and the humiliation of being a student in the medical faculty of the University of Cape Town during the 1980s, has coming sweeping back in waves over me. Professor Pick is the former head of the School of Public Health at Wits University and President of the Medical Research Council and holds a string of other awards and accolades including a fellowship from Harvard University. He tells his story as a descendant of the historically-repressed indigenous Khoisan people who overcame the barriers of apartheid to become an internationally recognised leader in the field of Public Health. 

Prof Pick studied medicine at UCT in the 1960s. It was painful to read of the discrimination he faced and to be reminded of the same issues which I experienced 20 years later – the difficulties of travelling from the Cape Flats to campus, the awkwardness of being able to sit next to whites in lecture theatres when we couldn’t sit next to them in restaurants, not being able to treat white patients, not being able to dissect a white cadaver…

In the hospital you were able to work out the race and sex of your patient without even seeing them – the folders were green for blacks and pink for whites, a number in the corner of the name labels classified patients according to race and sex with number 1 being equal to "white male", 2 for "white female", 3 for "coloured male" and so on until the classification at the bottom of the hierarchy was "black female". 

I remember having great difficulty as a third year student on my first psychiatry placement at Valkenberg Hospital in the coloured ward where a mix of neurotic and psychotic patients had been dumped together because of a lack of facilities. My supervisor sympathised with me but said her hands were tied because I couldn’t be placed in the white ward at Groote Schuur Hospital. 

In the last while I have been disturbed to hear opinions that this government is worse than the apartheid government. I, too, am angry at the slow rate of transformation, but sympathetic at the overwhelming burden of the apartheid legacy of gutter education, inferior health care and segregation at every level and I am insulted when I am told that apartheid wasn’t that bad, that it’s over now and we must move on. 

To say that apartheid was better than what we have today is to dismiss the suffering and humiliation of millions of people, the death and torture of thousands more and the brainwashing of generations of people who believed that they were inferior or superior and had a right to treat fellow human beings in a certain way because of the colour of their skins. To say that apartheid was better than what we have now is to minimise the suffering of all those forcibly removed from their homes, those denied entry to university. To say that apartheid was better than what we have today is to give the perpetrators permission to pat themselves on the back and smile smugly because they were justified in treating black people the way they did. 

I salute Prof Pick and the countless others who, like him, have overcome the legacy of apartheid to excel in spite of the barriers. 

Relate Bracelets - Making a Difference

There’s a rhythm to threading beads which I had to learn this morning – 4-1-1-1, 4-1-1-1, and so on. I sat down and started threading without making sure that my beads were in the right order and pretty soon I had made a mistake. Luckily, I was sitting in-between two experts, who quickly showed me the secret. 

The bracelets we were making are the basics of an inspired project for social upliftment, started by Lauren Gillis in 2010. The project offers township seniors dignity, companionship and an income to support themselves; offers disadvantaged youth an opportunity to earn a living, and, at the same time, helps new organisations grow their potential. What’s more, the bracelets which are produced help raise awareness of causes as varied as early childhood education, clean water, malaria and wildlife conservation. 

The finished product in aid of Masikhule

The concept is simple – the bracelet which can be completed in a matter of minutes, is the tool which provides purpose, income and awareness. To date, Relate has created earning opportunities for over 350 people, supported over 70 causes and sold almost 2 million bracelets. Young adults are employed to turn the strings of beads into a bracelet which bears a disc identifying the cause which will benefit. We had the opportunity to engage with them and hear their dreams of a future as a teacher, butler, musician and more.

Younger experts putting the bracelets together

But back to the threading room... to end off, the gogos and tatas (grannies and grandpas) showed us how they keep fit with a series of seated exercises to some lively music, before a feast of Nando’s chicken. The project is truly holistic!

Visit the website, www.relate.org.za, for more information or to purchase bracelets. 

Red Roses and Blue Wigs: A Tribute to Edward Mellerick

I keep replaying the last time I saw you. Were there any clues I missed? Were you in more pain than usual? Sad? Miserable? But, no, I think you were your usual flamboyant self as you drilled me for the details of my son’s dance date.

You made me angry sometimes. “Have I come here to be abused? Whose hair is this anyway?” I learnt to go with the flow, shed the objections with the hair dropping onto the floor. And then you’d pronounce, “You look beautiful. If only I was ten years younger…”

“Yes, Edward, and straight…”

“Oh, shut up and get your lipstick out the bag.” You’d raise your eyebrows in despair at me never having the magic wand you thought could fix any mood.

You lived vicariously through all of us, your loyal followers.

“How are the beautiful babies?” (never mind that they were adults now) and then, like a praise-singer, you’d recall their achievements and milestones from first haircut (which you insisted on giving even though you had no patience for cutting children’s hair), relating the story of my son, aged 9 or 10, being interviewed regarding playing chess, (“… and then the interviewer asked him so what was your shortest game? Five minutes. And against who? Pause for dramatic effect … with sheer delight at the answer – my dad!), my daughter’s matric dance (who is that bouncer she’s taking?), her graduation and her save-the-world sojourns to foreign places. My trips to Sweden were deliberately confused with Switzerland; my flippant answer to your question, what’s the Muslim version of a kugel? (a koeksister) got retold many times.

You’d embarrass me by running through a richly-embellished version of my life every time you introduced me to someone – “from virgin to mother of 6” – adding details about life on campus, meeting my husband and having kids, weaving in overseas trips and the accomplishments of various members of the family … you took as much pride in my return to studies after many years as if you really were the brother you told people you were.

“When those hands get too tired to work you should write,” I said. “We’ll get you onto that computer yet.” I’m writing this for you now. You would’ve loved a blog all to yourself, although you probably wouldn’t have been able to find it on the internet you viewed with such suspicion.

I’m going to remember you for the single rose that used to arrive on my birthday from “the other man”, slobbering me with kisses, your beautiful garden, the enormous displays of flowers that greeted us when we came to visit you, getting ready for functions and you booming at me – “colour? colour!” – and the collections for all your charities every Christmas in lieu of gifts and, most of all for the time you walked down the hallowed corridors of Vincent Pallotti hospital to cheer me up post-op, wearing your blue wig. Thank you for making me laugh.

Towards an Archive of Freedom

Siona O’Connell is on a mission to tell the stories of growing up in Cape Town and to that end has directed and produced a number of documentaries that have emerged out of her research as a faculty member at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art and the Centre for Curating the Archive. Siona and I grew up opposite each other on the edge of District Six and share a similar background. Her work is centred on issues of identity, memory and belonging in post-apartheid SA, which all resonate with me. In the past few years she has inspired and cajoled me into exploring similar issues.

I was fortunate to be at the premiere of her latest offerings which screened at the Baxter Theatre on Thursday evening. The first documentary, An Impossible Return, deals with the forced removals from the Cape Town suburb of Harfield during the apartheid-era.

Capetonians in general seem to be unaware of the extent of the forced removals, tending to focus on District Six, but removals occurred across most suburbs subsequently declared “for whites only”. These include Woodstock, Newlands, Kenilworth, Plumstead and Simonstown. Something that had never occurred to me before was that people had to chop up furniture to make it fit into the matchbox dwellings the government moved them into. 

What I remember most about my grandmother’s removal to Mitchell’s Plain in the 1970s, was her loss of independence. Suddenly, the fiercely-independent woman who had survived two husbands, was exiled to a suburb without any infrastructure and had to ask for help to fetch her pension from the Cape Town Post Office as she could no longer get there via public transport.

The second documentary, The Wynberg 7: An Intolerable Amnesia, is a deeply moving account of the lives of the group of teenagers who became known as the Wynberg 7, after being detained during a protest march on the same day as the Trojan horse massacre in Athlone. They were sentenced for public violence, a criminalisation of the public protest.

The documentary includes original footage from the march, court case and detention. It includes interviews with a lawyer, student activist and photographers plus the family of the 7. The trauma is fresh in the minds of the family, especially for the aged mother of one of the young men, who was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia. She is concerned about who will look after him when she dies.

I was shocked to hear that those who hadn’t testified at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission still have criminal records. Listening to their stories and the lack of acknowledgement 30 years later, I don’t blame them for wondering whether the sacrifices they made were worth it.

The admission to the screening of the documentaries was free and open to all. The theatre was packed with more than a few who were in the theatre for the first time in their lives. The emotion was palpable and the audience rose in a spontaneous standing ovation after Siona’s powerful speech.

                                

The title of the blog is borrowed from the title of the symposium hosted by the Centre for Curating the Archive I attended last week. 

For more, see
Centre for Curating the Archive 
Story of Wynberg 7

Bricks and Mortar or People?

When I was young and idealistic I had a poster on my wall that said:

IT WILL BE A GREAT DAY WHEN 

OUR SCHOOLS HAVE ALL THE MONEY THEY NEED

AND THE ARMY HAS TO HAVE 

A BAKE SALE TO BUY A BOMBER

That must have been at least 20 years ago but I was reminded of this recently while in a forum where we were posed the question, "Bricks and Mortar or People?" We were discussing the future of traditional education and  whether it was more bricks and mortar that was needed or better teaching methods, in order to address the imbalance of access to education in our societies. 

Four out of ten, children, globally, will never enter a classroom; 250 million children don't learn basic reading, writing and math. In South Africa, particularly, we have an entire generation of people who not only had limited access to education but the education we could access was generally of an inferior quality.  If we want to reverse this legacy and impact the future of our country positively, we need to focus our resources on education. With almost 40% of our population children under 18, this is no mean task. 

There are many people who are hungry for their children to now have the education which was denied them. So hungry that they are prepared to walk kilometres or sit under a tree as long as they have a teacher. while I am not advocating that it’s alright to run classes under a tree, I think that (if we have to choose) our resources might be better employed by investing in people.

By training more teachers to teach more children we’ll be approaching this problem from two directions – transferring skills and creating employment for adults AND providing education for our children. It's equally important to ensure that what goes on inside the buildings is what our children deserve. In some of the most deprived regions up to 75% of children still cannot read after several years of school.

Our children deserve a free, quality education so that they may realise their full potential.

Read more in this blog: 
Education to Change the World 

Happy Birthday, Pa

A Man of Character

I met Henning Mankell two years ago at an author's dinner. I had heard him speak the previous day in a talk entitled, A Man of Character.  I sat, enthralled, as he shared his experiences in Mozambique as the director of a community theatre and his involvement with various humanitarian causes. This is why I want to write, I thought. He spoke about greed which, he reflected, seemed to have become a virtue, about poverty - an unnatural state forced on people, and illiteracy - he thought we should be ashamed that we hadn't dealt with this problem yet.

Mankell spent half the year in Sweden and the other in Mozambique since the 1980s. He joked that he lived with one foot in the snow and the other in the sand. "Africa has taught me to be a better European," he said.

He was well-known for his crime fiction books which sold millions of copies and were translated into 40 languages. He explored the human condition through the protagonists in his novels; the mirror of crime tells of the contradictions in society. "Whatever I write, the reality is much worse," he said.

"We are a story-telling and a story-listening people," said Mankell at the dinner. "It is our capacity to talk and eventually to listen, that will save mankind." He told the story of two old African men sitting on a bench outside his theatre. They were talking about a mutual friend who died in the middle of telling a story. "That's not the way to die, without finishing your story," one of the men remarked.

Mankell died last week.  He has left many stories unfinished. 

Picture of author: Wikipedia Commons

For more on the author visit  http://henningmankell.com/